Europe has been occupied by the US since WW2, and by now has been fully vassalised into dependency. The EU was an American imperial project from the start, a big business cartel fully intertwined with NATO, and intended to undermine and finally destroy European democracy and distinct national identities. As such it needed fixed exchange rates or a common currency. European integration followed a fundamentally flawed path, beginning with a monetary union that functioned during expansionary times, when the lack of a unified bond market didn’t matter and no shock absorbers were necessary, but couldn’t handle the contraction that set in after the 2008 financial crisis. The situation has now become so toxic that the very idea of further European integration has become anathema to most of the population. Nationalism is rising again as a result, and is being suppressed for the time being, but cannot be contained forever by a weakening centre. When it finally breaks out, it may well take a very unfortunate form, as it has done in the past.
American military bases are all over the place in European countries, not for protection against Russia as Europeans are told, but for control. There is no threat from Russia, so the protection narrative made no sense. European leadership benefited from this as it kept them in power, even as they became less and less competent or attuned to the needs of their own citizenry. Subservience allowed elites to maintain their fiefdoms and privileges while imposing austerity on their own citizens. Europe’s ubiquitous technology platforms are all American, meaning its citizens pay cloud rent to use them, and are propagandised. Palantir is worming its way into European governance structures, notably the British NHS, to steal the data and implement technological control.
The cheap energy supply from Russia that had allowed European manufacturing to thrive, and Germany to be the driving force at the heart of it, was destroyed by a US that wanted to isolate Russia and to sell Europe over-priced American LNG instead. A German-Russian alliance could have controlled the Eurasian heartland, and the US would not allow this to happen. This new level of imperial control was then used to subjugate Europe explicitly through a one-sided and exploitative trade ‘deal’, where promises that cannot even be kept were made in desperation by an unelected and extremely unpopular European leader. Europe is now effectively owned by the American mafia state to which it pays ‘protection money’.
Europe is stagnating and deindustrialising due to its energy predicament, now exacerbated by the war in the Gulf. It’s making a desperate attempt to revive its economy through military keynesianism, by converting its failing auto plants into factories producing Leopard tanks, even though these are now largely obsolete death traps in the era of drone warfare. This last ditch attempt to prop up GDP artificially is not going to work. Continuing a war in order to justify a military production line is a terrible waste in every possible way.
There is growing discontent among the various European populations about the failing economy, the increasing hardships due to neverending austerity measures, the bailouts of the already wealthy from their bad bets, the constant donations of money and gear to the corrupt Ukranian state, the humiliations imposed by compliance with extortionate American demands, the threats around conscription, the death of freedom of expression, the war on farming, and the flood of mostly culturally incompatible immigrants, who are mostly young men of military age. This discontent is destroying trust at a rapid pace. This is going to accelerate the rise of nationalism, and remind the various European identities why they’ve been at war on and off for a thousand years.
The prospects for Europe are unfortunately bleak. Unrepayable debt, housing bubbles, an expanding gap between have and have nots, a long war, and increasing authoritarianism are bad enough, but these will now be aggravated by a major energy shock followed by the collapse of supply chains and then famine, as fertiliser supplies have been heavily impacted by the war. Farmers who’ve been targeted by regulatory harassment for years, on the spurious grounds of a non-existent climate emergency, are now facing skyhigh prices for both fuel and fertiliser, and later there may be none of either available at any price. The planting window is already being missed in many places, while in others planting is happening, but with insufficient fertiliser for a normal yield, and fuel may not be available come harvest time. All of this is leading to the break up of the EU, as the trust horizon collapses, with the prospect of the region becoming balkanised and ending up like a giant Yugoslavia. The era of outsized European influence on the world is coming to an end as power shifts inexorably eastwards. Geopolitics is dynamic, and nothing lasts forever. A century of humiliation begins.
