Page 23 - AEI Insights 2020 - Vol. 6, Issue 1

AEI-Insights: An International Journal of Asia-Europe Relations
ISSN: 2289-800X, Vol. 6, Issue 1, January 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37353/aei-insights.vol6.issue1.2

Opinion

FUTURE OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH: SOME CRITICAL FOREIGN
POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

Anis H Bajrektarevic

International Law & Global Political Studies,
Vienna, Austria

anis@corpsdiplomatique.cd

Abstract
Economic downturn, recession of plans and initiatives, systematically ignored calls for a fiscal
and monetary justice for all, €-crisis, Brexit and irredentism in the UK, Spain, Belgium, France,
Denmark and Italy, lasting instability in the Euro-Med theatre (debt crisis of the Europe’s south
– countries scrutinized and ridiculed under the nickname PIGS, coupled with the failed states
all over the MENA), terrorism, historic low with Russia along with a historic trans-Atlantic
blow with Trump, influx of predominantly Muslim refugees from Levant in numbers and
configurations unprecedented since the WWII exoduses, consequential growth of far-right
parties who – by peddling reductive messages and comparisons – are exploiting fears of
otherness, that are now amplified with already urging labour and social justice concerns,
generational unemployment and socio-cultural anxieties, in ricochet of the Sino-US trade wars,
while rifting in a dilemma to either let Bolivarism or support Monroeism. The very fundaments
of Europe are shaking. Strikingly, there is a very little public debate enhanced in Europe about
it. What is even more worrying is the fact that any self-assessing questioning of Europe’s
involvement and past policies in the Middle East, and Europe’s East is off-agenda. Immaculacy
of Brussels and the Atlantic-Central Europe-led EU is unquestionable. Corresponding with
realities or complying with a dogma?

Keywords: EU, Economic downturn, socio-cultural anxieties, Middle east, Brussels

Introduction

Both Islam and Christianity lived in harmony (or at least they successfully cohabitated) for
centuries within the MENA proper, notably in Lebanon, Syria Egypt and Iraq. Why then there
was no harmonious relationship between Christian Europe and the Middle East? Was Europe
opting to demonise the Muslims in order to artificially generate a homogenous European self?
No enemy at gate, no unity at home?
This is a story of the past centuries – one may say. Still, absence of any self-reflection on the
side of the EU towards its policy in the Middle East today, makes it worth to revisit some of
the bleak chapters of European history, and the genesis of its pre-secular and secular thoughts.

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