In less than a week, the European Union will host meetings in Kiev to negotiate a new Black Sea policy. This is remarkable, given that less than 20 years have elapsed since the Berlin Wall was breached, enabling a newly united Germany to once again pursue a national strategy of lebensraum under the protective cloak of the EU.

The total territorial gain to the European Union since the wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, is vast. The EU, now totaling some 170,642 square miles in area, with a combined population of over 400 million, represents the third-largest geopolitical bloc following China and India. It has grown from the 12 nations that it embraced in 1989 to 27 previously sovereign nation states now bowing the knee to the Baal of Brussels, three others recognized as candidates for membership, and others, such as Serbia, pending interim agreements with the Union.

The haste with which this meeting has been convened in Ukraine is quite remarkable, considering that less than two months have elapsed since the elections that returned Yulia Tymoshenko to power as the pro-EU prime minister of that country.

For years, the Trumpet has forecasted that Ukraine would be the point at which Russia would cry “halt” to the rapid post-Cold War encroachment of the EU on former ussr territorial possessions. Traditionally regarded as the breadbasket of the old Soviet Union, mother Russia is just not about to give up access to the great, fertile sweeping plains of Ukraine without a fight. The EU meeting in Kiev is bound to stir reaction from Moscow.

Since Gerhard Schröder’s defeat by Angela Merkel in the contest for the German chancellorship, Germany’s relations with Russia have soured. As Vladimir Putin strengthened his hold on power in Russia, as Russia rebounded economically, filling its coffers with cash courtesy of its great energy-rich cartels, and as Putin revived an overt anti-West Russian foreign policy, pressure has been building to bring things to a head in relations between these two dominant powers on the European continent, a German-dominated EU and Russia.

Given the cycle of history—and given the reality that nations tend to revert to type under pressure—the post-Cold War scenario in Europe was always going to come down to a territorial contest between Germany and Russia.

For those who only have a surface view of EU-Russian relationships, the temptation is to see this as a contest between a European Union benignly intent on opening up trade with the East and a territorially contained Russia. Scratch the surface, however, and not far below it becomes apparent that the contest is between two reviving imperialist powers: Germany, under its EU cloak, and an expansionist Russia.

The contest currently centers on the Balkans and Ukraine.

At present, though the national constituencies of both Serbia and Ukraine appear to favor EU membership, and though their governments intend to pursue such membership, each has a thorny, controversial issue to resolve that involves Russia directly. There are currently two pressure points: the issue of future independence for the Balkan enclave of Kosovo—resisted by Russia and Serbia but supported by the EU—and European Union expansion toward the strategic region of the Black and Caspian seas.

In each of these arenas, one in the very heart of EU territory, the Balkan Peninsula, the other on its extreme eastern flank, Ukraine, Russia has its embedded pro-Kremlin minions playing the Kremlin’s tune.

On the Russian side in the Balkans is the pro-Russian Serbian Radical Party, the largest party in the Serbian parliament. Recently, the Radicals had powerful influence on stalling Serbia’s accession to the EU, at the same time guaranteeing the Kremlin a continued ability to meddle in the heart of surrounding EU territory.

On February 6, the EU consigned the thorny issue of Kosovo independence to its “too hard” basket. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn postponed indefinitely the signing of a partnership deal with Serbia, which would have been the first step toward Serbian EU membership. The EU’s main concern is that such a deal, given strong pressure against it from pro-Kremlin forces within the Serbian government, would lead to the collapse of that government. Such a collapse would upset the delicate balance involved in continuing negotiations to grant Serbia future EU membership—and Brussels’s goal is to seal the whole Balkan Peninsula into the EU corporate body. That has been Germany’s intent since it first instigated the Balkan wars in 1990. The whole issue of dragging Serbia and Kosovo into the EU now has to await another day due to Russia’s resistance.

Regarding the European Union’s Black Sea policy, one source observes that “the launching of a Black Sea Synergy presents unavoidable challenges at the broader strategic level. Russia’s assertiveness in the region is of course the major stumbling bloc here. Should the new EU policy really fulfil its promise, it may further ratchet up Moscow’s aggressive posturing, especially in relation to its western neighbors, energy and the frozen conflicts” (EUobserver, February 7).

The term “frozen conflicts” refers to the difficulties obtaining resolutions to ongoing relationships between the ex-Soviet, non-EU states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all bordering states of the Caspian region, and Moldova bordering Ukraine. The EU considers the development of positive relationships with these nations as crucial to its energy supply diversification policy as it seeks to reduce its present strategic dependence on Russia for supply of much of its oil and gas. EU access to energy resources in the Caucasus would come via the Black Sea. Sound relations with those nations comprising the narrow isthmus between the Caspian and Black seas—Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia—are necessary to gain those resources.

The long-term strategy within the European Union’s Black Sea policy is most significant in the light of the prophesied expansion of this great northern power toward the south and the east. Should the EU be able to tempt Ukraine and neighboring Moldova into its ever-widening maw, then, added to Romania’s and Bulgaria’s existing EU memberships, this would give the EU possession of the whole of the western and much of the northern shores of the Black Sea. That would open the way for its further drive eastward into Georgia and Azerbaijan, and from there to the strategic Caspian Sea bordering oil-rich Iran.

Considering this scenario, much is at stake for both Russia and the German-dominated EU as the European Commission and the Black Sea states meet in Kiev on February 14 to explore the way forward in this renewed imperialist competition for strategic territory.

Germany has now agreed to deploy a rapid reaction force to Afghanistan, where it is already strongly embedded. The German Navy is patrolling the Mediterranian and the Gulf, and will soon stretch its remit to the shores of the southern Levant. Any strengthening of the EU’s presence to Iran’s north is sure to make Iran nervous about being caught in a German pincer movement.

The Persians have a far better grasp of history, and its tendency for repetition, than do the Anglo-Saxon nations so obviously in rapid decline. Persia well remembers its history with the ancient nation of Assyria and Assyria’s later dominance as the German nation leading the Crusades of the Holy Roman Empire against the Islamic nations.

Sooner or later—we believe much sooner than is generally realized—Iran, old Persia, will react with a powerful foreign-policy push against the German-led imperialist European Union. That will be the final undoing of a resurgent Iran and the Islamic powers it seeks to dominate.

All this is clearly prophesied in your Bible. The February meeting between the EU and the Black Sea countries’ foreign ministers is but one more step toward the inevitable clash between the rising northern power of a German-led European empire and an Iranian-dominated Islamic power to its south.

For a deeper understanding of this coming clash between north and south, read our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. It will put you directly in touch with the most vital world events that are even now beginning to climax at the close of this age of world disorder, leading to the ushering in of a new golden age unprecedented in mankind’s history.