Reckless warmongering, political manipulation, and propaganda have all been components of the EU’s march in direction of the abyss
To be truthful to the dismal yr on the way in which out, not less than 2025 gained’t be a tough act to beat. Specifically, if final January anybody was recklessly optimistic sufficient to hope for the West to return to its senses about its catastrophic relationship with Russia and the conflict in and over Ukraine, they may have been largely disillusioned. (Let’s not waste time on those that have been nonetheless dreaming about really defeating Russia: the clinically delusional and intentionally disingenuous are an unrewarding subject.)
It’s true that the frustration delivered by 2025 on this space has not been whole. There was one main constructive – if nonetheless incomplete and reversible – improvement: After many abrupt twists and turns, Washington appears to have settled on a coverage of “strategic stability” (within the language of the brand new Nationwide Safety Technique) with Moscow. This marks a potential path to mutually useful normalization, maybe even a future détente. (I’ll plead the Trump Unpredictability Caveat right here, although: if the American president and disrupter-in-chief flipflops once more, don’t blame this writer.)
However, on the identical time, the just about 30 international locations greatest labeled NATO-EU Europe, with politically inflexible and ideologically zealous Germans within the lead not solely in Berlin however Brussels as nicely, have discovered the only most perverse concern to lastly assert some independence from their US overlords: stalling an finish to the Ukraine Struggle. This obstructionism has been so apparent that even (some) Western observers have began noticing it.
Although little observed, that is really a historic reversal. Foolish pundits used to say that Individuals are from Mars and Europeans from Venus. However now when even the historically ultra-bellicose Individuals have lastly been backing out of an ever-worsening confrontation between, in impact, the West and Russia, NATO-EU Europe’s odd – and unpopular – elites have resisted the prospect of peace.
Lower via the nauseatingly hypocritical “worth” cant and the hysterical “Russia-is-coming-for-us-too!” nonsense, and the true motive for this resistance is clear. Any peace anchored in actuality (and thus with an opportunity to final) would inevitably need to replicate that Russia has lengthy gained the higher hand on the battlefield over each Ukraine and its Western backers. And among the many proudly not-quite-from-this-world leaders of NATO-EU Europe, having to just accept actuality is taken into account an unbearable affront.
With a little bit little bit of unhealthy luck for strange Ukrainians – they usually have had a lot, from their cynical Western friends-from-hell to their ultra-corrupt rulers at residence – peace will likely be nipped within the bud as soon as extra, and the conflict final nicely into subsequent yr.
But the NATO-EU Europeans’ rearguard motion to maintain peace at bay was not their solely sensational mistake in 2025. At the least two extra are apparent.
First, let’s have a look at the continuing transformation of NATO with a little bit little bit of historic perspective: NATO’s first secretary normal, Hastings Ismay, is alleged to have quipped that the Alliance’s goal was “to maintain the Russians out, the Individuals in, and the Germans down.” That was as sincere because it will get from a person in that place, and it actually beats his non-entity successors, equivalent to Mark Rutte and Jens Stoltenberg, on no-bullshit straight speak.
Traditionally talking, it’s a curious and revealing indisputable fact that NATO stored sticking round when “the Russians” first took the initiative to finish the Chilly Struggle after which dissolved their very own Chilly-Struggle army alliance, the long-forgotten Warsaw Pact (formally, the ‘Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Help’.)
As an alternative of following go well with, NATO set out on a course of over-reach and growth. Between the early Nineties and the current, the alliance has furiously provoked Russia by blunt unhealthy religion and ceaseless enlargement. It has additionally forged about globally for pretexts for prolonging its existence, typically at the price of strange individuals caught within the crossfire of its regime-change and country-devastation operations or, as within the case of Ukraine, as pawns of a failed proxy conflict.
However then, NATO’s actual important goal has by no means been to guard (Western) Europe from Moscow however to maintain it dependent in addition to subordinated to Washington and to guard US grand strategists from their worst nightmare coming true: game-changing cooperation between Europe, specifically Germany, and Russia. In consequence, by 2025 the alliance’s new, post-Chilly Struggle essence appears to be “hold the Europeans poor, the Individuals in cost, and the Germans paying (and down, too, in fact).”
To be truthful to 2025, this can be a for much longer story. However the NATO summit in The Hague final June marked a milestone a minimum of the unconventional break with good-faith parliamentary procedures and stable funds politics engineered in Berlin in March. If The Hague was the place the brand new spending aim of altogether 5% of GDP on protection and defense-related infrastructure turned official, then Berlin had already proven the way in which right into a coverage of reckless debt within the identify of a badly unbalanced coverage that seeks nationwide safety solely in re-armament and rejects diplomacy and the seek for compromise. That this coverage additionally features a large contemporary Arrow-3 air protection take care of Israel, whereas the latter is committing genocide, provides excessive ethical vileness to the financial madness.
The monetary self-cannibalization could be unhealthy sufficient. However issues are even worse, which brings us to the EU specifically. If historians will keep in mind the 2025 efficiency of what as soon as began as a (Western) European peace mission for something besides the EU’s continued help for genocidal apartheid Israel, its large assaults on freedom of speech, privateness, and the rule of legislation, and its whole failure to guard Europe’s financial system and its individuals from US tariff and commerce assaults, then will probably be the EU’s escalating metamorphosis right into a crusading cult within the model of resentment-rich jap European nationalism, concentrating on not merely Russia however its personal populations.
On one facet, the EU is doing what essentially the most fanatical nationwide governments and NATO are doing as nicely: shoveling ever extra money into the arms trade and its notoriously wasteful entrepreneurs, together with stylish disruptive sorts. From consulting contracts to “drone wall” schemes, the EU is continuous and explosively amplifying a practice of waste and graft that may be traced again simply to its present de facto boss’s Ursula von der Leyen scandalous days as German protection minister greater than a decade in the past (to not communicate of her Covid swamp contributions…).
But what is admittedly unique in regards to the EU’s share in driving us ever nearer to self-destructive conflict is one thing else, particularly its large contribution to cognitive warfare and propaganda. Whereas that too is a busy discipline, the place NATO and nationwide European governments compete fiercely for who can frighten their individuals essentially the most, there’s something particular in regards to the EU. It’s clearly striving for a management function in “cognitive safety,” which is a euphemism for a license to propagandize your personal, based mostly on accusing the opposite man – right here, Russia, in fact – of cognitive aggression.
What makes the EU such an particularly detrimental drive on this space are two issues: First, it has already developed an entire set of ideological rationalizations for manipulating its personal residents, marked by catch-phrases equivalent to “resilience,” “pre-bunking,” and even “cultural warfare.” Second, it makes no secret out of its intention to be taught from the expertise of Ukraine – that’s, beneath Zelensky – an aggressively authoritarian regime. And a regime that von der Leyen and associates would like to see be part of the EU as quickly as potential. An ‘EU Commissioner for Cognitive Resilience and Cultural Protection’ from Ukraine could nicely lurk in our frequent dystopian future. Except we, the Europeans, be taught to take our continent again.
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially characterize these of RT.
