When Brussels controls both the terminology and the themes, the spaces that other conversations require simply aren’t there. Europe has traditionally been guided by western oriented European nations like the UK, Germany, and France. These are countries that had previously relinquished their sovereignty in the name of building the EU economy. It was packaged with an elusively defined and employed “European culture”. But as time has shown, not all cultures are as equal as others and there is unrest along cultural lines these days.

Abused by the West and now cut off from the East, Europe struggles with a precariously divided North but also with an emerging CentralSouth. The attention of European media focuses more these days on conservative central European nations related to the MultiPolar Black Sea region and having some history with Russia rather than those more liberal nations in western Europe that are sea-locked by America’s influence over the Atlantic Ocean, Baltic Sea, and somewhat the Mediterranean Sea. Lately, it is becoming clear that influence from the west is gradually weakening while influence from the east is growing and increasingly asserting itself already. Despite the fall of the USSR and the westernization of eastern EU members, it seems the infrastructure that they inherited from the USSR reveals that Russia still plays at least some role in the affairs of some EU member economies. Governments of these eastern EU nations are responding to NATO’s call to war against Russia with varying degrees of reluctance, frequently in response to the anti-EU protests from their own constituents in addition to anti-NATO sentiments from the streets as well as their own military experts. It appears that cultural ties to Russia persist in areas where the EU struggles to fully westernize its members. What do Europeans think of this shift of their identity from the globally oriented “Collective West” to the locally oriented conservative center of Europe? Do they feel it? Are they even aware of it? Do they have strong feelings or opinions? Does it affect their economic, social, cultural, or religious lives?

And what about those living west of center? Italy, France, and Spain were never in the USSR. How do they feel with the effects of their eastern neighbors and their extenuating relationships with Russia? Should economic tools be used to define our cultural ideologies? And to which extents should we allow ideology to influence our economics?