The expanded European summit held last Sunday in London, which included the UK and Turkey, was not a European summit at all, but rather a meeting of NATO countries on this side of the Atlantic.
Even the intentions expressed align with what the Americans have been asking for: greater investment on our part here, and a disengagement of theirs towards the Indo-Pacific.
The unresolved controversy of euro-atlantic doctrine
Kohl’s dauphin, Schäuble, foresaw this about twenty years ago, anticipating the times and proposing the doctrine of “reciprocity” within the Atlantic Alliance, which went something like this: “We become autonomous in terms of spending in this quadrant, but we take on the local command.”
In the endless verbal dispute, this doctrine was opposed by the French doctrine, which, sheltered by its nuclear deterrent, maintained a swaggering Gascon attitude (“we’ll go it alone”) that proved inconsistent when put to the test.
Even if, to be fair, they are the only ones in Europe with a minimum of strategic autonomy — something they also demonstrated in Ukraine. First, even supporting Donbass, and then, after the Russian stab in the back in Mali, supporting Kyiv in a qualified manner.
Orphans under guardianship
Now, in the face of American disengagement and their “betrayal” of Ukraine (as if this hadn’t been ongoing even before the Russian invasion and as if it wasn’t already glaringly obvious what objectives the US was pursuing), we find ourselves suddenly intending to go it alone, to organize ourselves militarily as well.
And so, the farcical debate on whether or not to use the word “rearmament” and the need for a common European defense starts up again. Really! You’re only realizing this now? And now that you’ve realized it? With treaties that make the European Union subject to the whims of the 27 sovereign states — and thus still subject to the masters of Yalta, even if today only one real master remains, with the others reduced to head waiters.
The Bite of the Earthworm
The Unresolved Controversy of Euro-Atlantic Doctrine
Orphans Under Guardianship
To become emancipated
American disengagement from the Euro-Mediterranean quadrant is interesting and holds potential. But first, we need vitality — the escape from the mental AIDS that afflicts our societies even before it afflicts our ruling classes, and our so-called “oppositions” even more than anyone else.
And we need political unity.
As for the tricks to somehow cobble together a European army, bypassing the constraints we managed to impose on ourselves, we are concentrating on them and we will find them. But without the will, it won’t be enough.
And I’m talking about will, not wishful thinking.
For example, sending troops to enforce the partition imposed on Ukraine by Washington (because that’s what it will come down to) requires more than good intentions — it even requires a legal framework. One that needs to be created, because it doesn’t exist; as of now, we could only send troops under a UN framework, and only if the Americans don’t ask their henchmen who receive orders in Moscow to veto it.
We must not extrapolate the particular from the general picture
This will depend entirely on how they’ve decided to arrange the future order in their global game of Risk.
Because there’s no point fragmenting the picture of the war in Ukraine. Since 1994, it’s been the Russo-American tool for dismantling German growth and European potential.
With the 1997 Russia-NATO agreement and the advance of denuclearized troops to the east, the Americans ensured they regained ground over German influence, which had exploded during Perestroika. Meanwhile, their Russian helpers were aiming their warheads at our cities from Königsberg — now called Kaliningrad — and Moscow began destabilizing Ukraine, stripped of its military arsenal, blatantly starting in 2004 by poisoning future president Yushchenko.
Then, through President Yanukovych, they began looting Ukrainian assets and dismembering the nation, until the popular (and cross-party parliamentary) response of 2014 at Euromaidan — which Lavrov now admits was not planned and led by US Undersecretary Nuland, contrary to the lies spun for years by the Lubyanka.
Both accomplices and infectors
The Americans (and the British) contributed to wrecking Ukraine, apparently in opposition to Moscow, but in reality closing Ukraine in a vice and crushing it together.
After all, the spark that ignited the gunpowder at the end of 2013 came immediately after the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) laid out Washington’s strategic needs, which I’ll summarize:
Remove the UK from the EU: done.
Promote Polish power to the east: done.
Sever the Russian-German energy link: done.
Split the Franco-German partnership: done.
Bring the Mediterranean under Israeli influence: done.
All this and more (think of Africa) was achieved thanks to the Russians, who made the American cause triumph everywhere at their own expense — retreating in influence, power, and even military capability across all quadrants. And now they await — accompanied by Western stupidity, which sees them as victorious simply because we never stopped repeating it — to be partially compensated for their suicide by their American master.
Now we find ourselves exactly where they wanted us.
Russian-American misdeeds
I wrote, long ago and when no one suspected it, that the trigger for the invasion of Ukraine was the agreement between Kyiv and the EU for the use of local rare minerals, crucial for our civil and military reindustrialization. The agreement was signed in July 2021, in the middle of the de-escalation in Donbass (76 dead in two years!), and tensions with Russia flared just weeks later.
The intelligence journals from China, India, and Italy warned that Putin would invade because he had an agreement with Biden.
I don’t know if they were referring to the meeting held in Switzerland just before the signing of the European minerals agreement, between the two presidents — with no European representatives present.
I don’t even know if the agreement was explicit or tacit. What’s certain is that Biden’s entire behavior before the invasion and up until Ukraine’s victory at the gates of Kyiv was brazen in its satisfied acceptance of the Russian special operation — which miserably failed, contrary to expectations.
Again, in those distant and unsuspecting times, I wrote that the Americans would deny the Ukrainians support for their counteroffensives — something they even boasted about — and that, since Russia is incapable of winning and, in fact, has spiraled into itself and embarked on its third systemic collapse in about a century, the US would step in to save it. They’ve almost succeeded now, although two variables remain: the Ukrainians’ stubbornness, and the historic and never-changing, absolutely galactic capacity of the Russians to collapse on their own.
Barring those two, we are heading — as I predicted long ago — towards the partition of Ukraine in a Cold War-like climate entirely centered on Europe, and the continuation of economic warfare against us. And not just economic, given that it includes targeted migratory operations and jihadist terrorism in the most vulnerable metropolises.
Who collects the cash
The war in Ukraine has benefited not only the US, but also Turkey, Israel, and Middle Eastern energy producers — except Iran, which will be downsized and handed over, as a (neo)American servant, to the Russian capo, who has already said yes to his master.
That’s why we shouldn’t mistake fireflies for lanterns: European rearmament is good in any case, but it must be directed toward Schäuble’s vision.
The EU needs to be revolutionized, not celebrated.
Just as it shouldn’t be opposed in its unity, but that unity must overcome national sovereignties and transform into a national-imperial cohesion — a European sovereignty.
We are still far from that.
We must not wait for the right time, but work to facilitate what is already logical, normal, and automatic for the younger generations.
We have always been right
Because we have always been right — for over a century.
It’s the ideology of frustrated, bitter, rebellious servants — which creeps into our ranks, inflated by the populist phenomenon — that has always been and will always be wrong, operating against nature.
There’s little hope in the gestures of the 27 and their partners — much more in the material needs of the clash between capitals, which allows for a shred of optimism. This is true for the anonymous intersection between mechanisms and dynamics.
But what must be capitalized on most, especially now, is the blood and spirit released by Ukrainian volunteers, that sort of military/humanitarian Erasmus Project that has united thousands (and I’m not joking) of young Europeans in support of their attacked brothers — and finally, the growing awareness that the Russian meat grinder serves the American meat grinder.
We can finally seize and update the message from Manzoni’s Adelchi* (“the one presses the other upon your neck”) — a message of the Risorgimento. Today, a European one.
- Adelchi is a poem whose author explains to Italians that just as those who, in order to free themselves from the Lombards, ended up being enslaved by them and by the Franks who had overtaken them, so it will always happen to those who hope to entrust themselves to a foreigner.
