Only the future interests me, because that is the place where I have decided to spend the rest of my life.
Albert Einstein
Last month’s decision to restore a Constitutional Monarchy in Russia came as no surprise to many international observers. No wonder, given the fact that it is only the latest in the long chain of far more surprising transformations of Europe which have taken place since the Great Middle East Oil War of December 2014. So much has happened in recent years that perhaps it is time to look back and take stock
Firstly, no-one would deny that the roots of these transformations do go back beyond December 2014. For example there was climate change, caused by pollution, and the catastrophic droughts, floods and hurricanes that have affected Western Europe, especially since the turn of the century. Certainly, these manmade disasters helped lead to the change of heart and mind among governments and peoples, and the clear return among many to authentic and historic European Christian values.
Again, the roots of 2014 can certainly be traced back to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. That led to the real turning-point of the 2014 War. Nobody would deny that the transformations of the old oil-based consumer-economies since the War and the ensuing terror campaign of 2015 also played a highly significant part. Although it was realized that the real solution lay in justice for the Palestinians, no-one then foresaw this month’s liberation of Jerusalem, which came on the one hundredth anniversary of its first liberation by the forces of General Allenby on 9-11 December 1917. The establishment of Jerusalem as a free international city, surrounded by the tiny Jewish Free State and the proud new Republic of Palestine, has been welcomed by all, with the exception of a few diehard Jewish fanatics.
The consequences of the 2014 Middle East Oil War, together with the complete inability and humiliation of the United States and China to control the Islamic countries they had occupied, brought many changes to the world scene. First, this brought isolationism to the USA, then the fortunately brief Civil War in China, which led the disappearance of that country as a single entity in 2015. And this in turn pushed Russia, with its huge natural resources and ever-expanding industrial and agricultural sector (which this year alone virtually saved Africa from famine), to the fore. This was all the clearer after the miraculous events at the Russian monastery of Diveyevo in December 2014 with the acts of mass national repentance there. And nobody would be so foolish as to deny that today’s establishment of a Constitutional Monarchy in Russia is the clear result of mass repentance in Russia.
Then there was the other consequence of the Middle East War of 2014, the Turkish Revolution of 2015 and the withdrawal from European territories, held by Turkey since 1453. That Revolution led to the break-up of the Turkish State, much to the relief and joy of its Kurdish, Armenian and Greek minorities.
But even so, few had foreseen the eventual disintegration of the so-called ‘European Union’ and the collapse of its currency, known as the ‘euro’ and its replacement by the new CEN, The Community of European Nations, in December 2014. Forty-eight nations strong, uniting Europe from the Azores to the Urals and Iceland to Armenia, it includes all the countries, such as Norway, Switzerland and all those in Eastern Europe, which had refused to have anything to do with the old EU and its corrupt ruling elites.
Who would have forecast the Mafia-inspired dynamiting of the old European Commission building in provincial Brussels? Deprived of their subsidies, the Mafia naturally took their revenge. Then there was the call for the transfer of a democratic Commission away from the outer edges of Europe to the much more central Bucharest. Who could have thought that the European Parliament would also be transferred from Strasbourg to Sarajevo and the European Court of Justice from Luxembourg to Riga?
On the other hand, in hindsight, it all seems so logical now. Why ever should important Pan-European Institutions still in the twenty-first century have been fixed on the fringes of north-west Europe, on the fault-line between the Latin and Germanic peoples? It was much more logical for them to be set up more centrally and unitively, in the geographical, political, economic heart of Europe between Eastern and Western Europe. Now, in hindsight, it all seems so clear: corrupt Western Europe could no longer go on denying the existence of Eastern Europe with Russia and had to move, in an act of reconciliation.
Again, the massive Slav Orthodox emigration to Western Europe between 2004 and 2012 also played an immense role. Even small, provincial Western towns ended up with their own Orthodox churches. The witness of Orthodox Christian values to an astonished, paganized Western Europe at that time, coupled with the collapse of Roman Catholicism and other Western religious organizations, especially after 2006, was quite unforeseen.
Who could have imagined that millions of ex-Catholics would have wished to join the Orthodox Church in Western Europe? The rapid formation of an independent Orthodox Church of Western Europe was inevitable. Of course we should not forget the role played here by the then Geneva-based CREDO (the French acronym for The Centre for the Restoration of Orthodox Europe). Under Metropolitan Peter’s wise guidance, CREDO and its European sister organizations, like the London CEOT (The Centre for the European Orthodox Tradition), definitely established Orthodox Christianity in Western Europe.
Orthodox Christianity has in fact become the main spiritual force in the CEN today, in a way in which the gerontocrats of the old EU had always refused. Does anyone now remember how the same old bureaucrats once tried to make an atheist Constitution for their Union! Nowadays, people laugh at this, but we have to remember that it was actually taken seriously at the time. The establishment of Orthodox Christianity in Western Europe has only been reinforced by the recent transfer of the Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe to its new, purpose-built centre of the New Lateran in Rome on the site of the old Vatican, destroyed in the Muslim terrorist outrages of 2014.
At last month’s CEN Russian centenary summit, the heads of the forty-eight nations of the CEN, gathered in St Petersburg in repentant mood. They were there to remember the victims of the Western-inspired Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917. Indeed, the Kings and Heads of State of the CEN nations listened to the thoughts of Patriarch Seraphim with great interest.
Speaking before a worldwide audience of some three billion, Patriarch Seraphim unveiled the new European flag with its white cross. He recalled how the Europe dreamed of by the old EU elite, had in fact been an anti-Europe. It had been the same as the Europe of Charlemagne, Charles V, Napoleon and Hitler. It had been a Europe of coercion and tyranny, seeking futile uniformity. It was a Europe which had made its own Wars into World Wars. Now in November 2017, it was time, he declared, to create a New Europe. In his view the CEN should be a Christian Confederation of Free Sovereign Nations, a model of unity in diversity, recalling the Holy Trinity. In this way, said the Patriarch, Free Europe could at last breathe with both its lungs, and the wrongs of the past could at last be righted.
It was this inspiring speech which led immediately to the Federation of German States (FGS) offering to rebuild Belgrade, exactly as it had been before the Nazi bombing of 1941. Then Berlin promised to restore Kosovo to the Kingdom of Serbia. Following this act of humility, both the French and Italian Federations have stated that they are willing to rebuild Constantinople (as Istanbul has been called ever since the Turkish Revolution of 2015 and their withdrawal from occupied territory in Europe). A Montenegrin spokeswoman for the Balkan Confederation, which jointly governs this territory, greeted the offer with enthusiasm. As for England, at last with its own Parliament since gaining its independence in December 2014, it immediately declared that it was offering to restore the towns and churches of northern Cyprus, a scene of desolation ever since the pullout by Turkish occupying forces after the 2015 Revolution.
Amid last week’s solemn commemorations all over Russia and throughout the rest of Europe, there must have been many who were thinking that only a decade or so ago, such events would have seemed completely impossible, indeed unimaginable.