By Ben Blushi
THINK OF IT
Although Donald Trump doesn't have much literary imagination, he sometimes starts his bombastic posts with the phrase "Think of It," which in Albanian would be "mendo sikur," meaning "think as if it were like this."
So let's do a logic experiment that starts with Think of It.
Imagine that tomorrow the war between Ukraine and Russia ends with a ceasefire that initially
stops the killings and bombings on both sides.
Russia undertakes to withdraw militarily from the territories it has occupied on the condition that Ukraine renounces membership in NATO, sanctioning its neutrality in the Constitution.
The Russian minorities in Ukraine, which number nearly 8 million people, or more than 17 percent of the population, gain a kind of constitutional autonomy along with the right of veto, as Ukraine cannot join either the EU or NATO without their approval.
Russia recognizes war reparations, that is, the damage caused to Ukraine by the occupation, and guarantees that it will rebuild the destroyed areas and buildings it blew up.
Europe and America lift sanctions on Russia and Ukraine enters a reconstruction phase with shared costs borne by Europe, America, Russia and many other countries.
6 million Ukrainians who have emigrated are returning to their homes, relieving Europe itself of a financial burden that now pays for their stay, housing, and food.
Ukraine holds free elections, free from suspicions of Russian interference and the buying of public opinion with USAID funds, which today finances more than 90 percent of this country's newspapers, portals, and television stations with American taxpayer money.
A large part of Ukraine's rich subsoil is being exploited by large American and European companies, creating security, independence, welfare, taxes, jobs and income, in a country almost destroyed by war, where today out of 100 people, 22 do not work because unemployment is 22 percent.
European citizens are freed from the threefold increase in energy prices since the day they refused to be supplied with gas, oil and electricity from Russia due to the war.
Russia and Ukraine make a long-term non-aggression pact with jointly signed American and European and perhaps even Chinese guarantees.
Russia opens the doors to American and European companies that can exploit the world's largest reserves in a territory of 17 million square kilometers, which is almost the entire area of America and Europe combined.
NATO and Russia reach a lasting disarmament agreement, turning from enemies into partners and eventually negotiating Russia's membership in NATO and perhaps later in the European Union.
Nuclear weapons are gradually reduced and destroyed, and no country in the world is allowed to enrich uranium anymore.
Think about it.
If Russia joins the European Union, this Union would be the largest in history.
The European Union with Russia would reach a population of more than 600 million inhabitants and an area that would stretch from Portugal to Sakhalin Island opposite Japan.
In this entire giant market, there would be a lot of movement of goods, a lot of transactions, a lot of prosperity, a lot of new inventions, and many more jobs than Europe offers today for its people.
Today's Europe, frightened and terrorized, would be calmed by the panic, sometimes feigned, that Russia seeks to conquer it and Russia itself, and would be saved from the paranoia that the new Europeans want to destroy it by completing a colonization project that Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler could not achieve.
Weak European leaders, who unlike Napoleon and Hitler are threatened with losing power every four years, would never dream of invading Russia, as it would be part of them just like Germany or France.
Under these conditions, America, Europe, China, and Russia would also reduce their insane spending on weapons and invest more in technology, education, health, infrastructure, demography, and cooperation.
Democracy, which Europeans love so much and in the name of which they accuse all those who do not think like them, would be a state of art in Russia as well, that is, a permanent state of society that would respect the opposition, guarantee an independent press, and hold free elections as happens everywhere in Europe.
The countries of Eastern Europe would be saved from the Russian threat and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, along with Finland, would keep their borders open, without fear of being invaded by an ally, as is the case today with the Netherlands and Belgium, who do not sleep with the fear that in the morning they will be invaded by Germany, although this has happened before.
The Greater European Union would be a cooperative of peoples, from Russians to Albanians, who, regardless of size, are equal in political rights and have the same voting weight in decisions made at the common table.
When voting for the European Parliament, once every four years, would take place simultaneously in Berlin, Paris, Athens, Oslo, Moscow, Pristina, and Tirana, and the vote monitored by so many eyes would not be able to be manipulated because this intervention would automatically take you out of the Union.
Peace with Russia would pacify the Balkans by making it easier to integrate into Europe the peoples living in this area, including Albanians, Serbs, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins, who have been divided and killed as many times as Europe and Russia have wanted.
Albanians and Serbs would find an agreement much more easily, given the conditions when Europe and Russia are together, and from this understanding, no people would gain more than the Albanians, who have lost every time they have had Russia against them.
The world would be divided into three large blocs, America, Greater Europe, and China.
In a strategic sense, Russia would break away from its current alliance with China, and Greater Europe would escape America's military and political dependence by becoming a superpower equal to the other two.
Greater Europe, which would include both Ukraine and Russia, would have an area larger than America and China combined and a population twice as large as America's and half as small as China's.
So Greater Europe would be the superpower with the optimal size, the Optimum Superpower, neither too big nor too small, but very strong, very rich, and very knowledgeable.
The democratization of Russia and its inclusion in Greater Europe would quickly end most of the world's current conflicts, where Russia supplies weapons, money, and political support to balance Western interventions in these areas.
The UN would be freed from the permanent, annual, and eternal opposition of its 5 veto-wielding members, America, Russia, China, France, and England, and would return to a government with global goals as it was conceived.
Without Russia's support, Iran would immediately democratize, the ayatollahs would fall from power, the country would give up nuclear weapons, relations with Israel would normalize, and the Palestinian issue could be resolved without bloodshed.
Islamic terrorists around the world, supplied sometimes by Iran, sometimes by Russia, sometimes by America, would disappear from the face of the earth, and Islam in general would be softened, seeking a leader in a regrouped world, a leader that could be Saudi Arabia or Turkey, or both.
North and South Korea could unite, as happened 35 years ago with the two Germanys, which united when Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev, Mr. President, Tear this Wall, and when the latter accepted, with the guarantee that NATO would never go to Ukraine, that is, to the border with Russia, as unfortunately happened.
In many African countries, starting with Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Libya and the Central African Republic, the civil wars instigated by Russian mercenaries who have caused countless coups d'état, inciting the rebellion of poor former European colonies, would cease.
Wars in the world, which in 100 percent of cases are instigated by America, Russia, and Europe, would cease indefinitely.
Think of It
Are Russians and Ukrainians European?
Are Europe's borders cultural, geographical, religious or ethnic?
Was Modern Europe created equally by Balzac and Dostoevsky, by Nietzsche and Tolstoy, by Goethe and Pushkin, by Pasternak and Remarque, by Mozart, by Verdi and Tchaikovsky, by Goya, by Picasso and Chagall, by Bertrand Russell, by Kandinsky, by Kazantzakis, by Camus and Kundera, by Sartre, by Saramago and Solzhenitsyn?
Think of It.
Imagine if Ukraine and Russia were together in Europe and NATO.
Ultimately, is this what Ukraine wanted?
Is this the reason why nearly 200,000 people have been killed there so far?
Is protection from Russia the reason NATO was created?
Imagine that one day you will have your enemy as a friend.
Think about how Germany and France sat at the same table and killed several times more people than Russia killed Ukraine and vice versa.
Imagine if this happened again.
Think about it.
Think of it, because the other way would be a war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine.
Think of it, because since Albania is also a member of NATO, Albanian children would also go to fight in the endless fields of Ukraine.
Think of It.
What would our children fight for with NATO helmets on their heads?
Therefore Think of It.
If you don't want to take your children to Ukraine,
Think of It. (A2 Televizion)
