The Death Of Europe As A Geopolitical Power
Politically, Economically, and Ethically Bankrupt
Through World War 1 and World War 2, the European powers committed fratricide, ending up as vassals of the United States. In the first few decades after the end of WW2, continental Europe was rebuilt under US tutelage. Even the de Gaulle rebellion of the French was later overturned. The bankrupt United Kingdom did not fair so well, as it was overtaken by its modernizing European neighbours across the Channel. The Suez Crisis of 1956 showed the UK and France that they were no longer global powers and must pay heed to the directives of the US. France, the UK, Holland, Portugal and Belgium also had to painfully remove themselves from their vast colonial holdings; or were forced to in such cases as Indochina, Indonesia and Algeria.
Their ruling classes were utterly co-opted by the US oligarchy over time, their secret services linked tightly with the CIA, and US occupation troops stationed in Germany, the UK and Italy. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the joining of East and West Germany, the freeing of Eastern Europe from the Warsaw Pact, and the dissection of Yugoslavia promised a new dawn for Europe but it was not to be. The German-hating Poles were happy to become a US vassal, with so much more of Eastern Europe turning into US tools. Instead of industrial policy the nations embedded neoliberalism.
After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the fallout was utterly mismanaged with the losses being socialized and year after year of government austerity to make the general populous pay for the bailout of the banksters. The European industries maintained profitability through exports to the still booming Chinese economy, together with the growth of their Chinese operations.
With Ukraine, they decided to once again try to subjugate Russia and use it as a spatial fix for the profit crisis of their industries. But as they threw themselves into the war with Russia, they did not understand that they had once again chosen an implacable opponent while not seeing the threat at their back. They weakened themselves by cutting their industries’ access to the Russian market, and to the cheap Russian gas that was so central to the German industrial powerhouse. When faced with the obvious US backed destruction of Nordstream they looked the other way, in any direction but the obvious culprit. Instead, they utterly tied themselves to the much higher cost flows of LNG from the US.
And then China changed from being a market for European technological goods to being a competitor during the COVID years, when the Chinese economy kept growing while the Europeans mismanaged themselves into an economic contraction. Ever since, the core EU nations of Germany, France, and Italy, together with the United Kingdom, have hardly grown at all. While China continued to grow at 5% per year, and Russia shrugged off the 2022 small economic decline to outgrow them.
At the same time the crumbling imperial centre of the United States was searching around for a new strategy after so many failures, and arrived at one that was not good news for Europe. They should have been guarding their back as much as being aggressive toward Russia; they would now be in a two-front war. The US strategy:
Force much greater levels of tribute from the vassals
Transfer more of the work of fighting Russia and China to the vassals
Utterly dominate the Western Hemisphere (including Greenland)
The first two parts unfolded as the European elite folded like deckchairs in a hurricane to the demands for unequal trading treaties (more tariffs for European goods no tariffs for US goods) and massive increases in defence spending. The first part is still playing out, as the US demands greater and greater trade concessions, as with the demands of the UK such things as the acceptance of much lower US food standards that are incompatible with the EU, and the acceptance of US professional accreditations. The picture of the EU vassals sat like school children in front of the headmaster Trump is both sickening and representative of the pathetic vassal behaviour of the EU leaders.
Then, as Trump kidnapped a foreign leader and demanded neo-colonial subservience of Venezuela, they looked away while carrying some performative remonstrations and hand-wringing. But when dealing with a bully, weakness is only ever rewarded with more demands. So now we see more performative BS before the inevitable folding, where one colonial power (Denmark) will sell its colony (Greenland) to the US. Just like France was coerced into the Louisiana Purchase in the 1800s; “gold or lead” as the mafia boss requests an answer. This will not be the end of the demeaning surrenders, only a marker along the road.
To underline their lack of either a backbone or basic ethics, the European elites (with the odd exception) have fully supported the Zionist genocide of one third of the population of Gaza and the escalation of Zionist violence and land theft in the West Bank and even Syria. The Germans carried out the WW2 Holocaust and are now fully supportive of the Gazan version, with much of the victim population of the first becoming the instigators of the second. Utterly trashing the ridiculous assertions of the munificence of the European “garden” which has sunk so low compared to the “forest”.
As the imperial centre sucks the energy out of Europe through ever-increasing imperial tribute, the Ukrainian proxy war now dumped onto the Europeans shoulders does the same, and accelerating Chinese competition adds to the sucking sound. The European elites did this to themselves, one incremental step after another. What has become obvious is that in a geopolitical sense there is no “Europe”, just a bunch of US vassals with no independent foreign policy; not even allowed at the table as the adults of Trump and Putin discuss the future of Ukraine.
With no strategic autonomy Europe will not become the “western peninsular of Greater Eurasia” that Glenn Diesen referred to, but rather a declining sad archipelago off the western end of Asia, with an even more declining island off its western coast. Heading back into the irrelevance of the Dark Ages. Many will celebrate the fall of the continent that brought so much pain and suffering to the rest of the world through colonization and wars, but the vast majority of the European population will not be celebrating. It will take time for the European elites, drenched in European supremacism, to get over themselves.