Can Europe Stand on its Feet?

they'll never know unless they try

Ever since our imperialist President Woodrow Wilson went to war in Europe to fight the war to end all wars and to make the world safe for Democracy, the US has been baby-sitting western Europe.

After World War I the Euros weren’t up to the challenge of sorting out their differences, so the noble FDR had to go in and get them sorted in World War II, sacrificing a mere half a million Americans to stop the killing of 7 million Germans, 20 million Russians and 6 million Jews.

After World War II the US couldn’t decide whether to knock Germany back to the Stone Age, courtesy of the Morganthau Plan, or not. Still, 20-year-old PFC Kissinger managed to get the government of the town of Kreveld going in a few days. Inconceivable, experts agree! In the end the Germans decided to enact a Wirtschaftwunder on June 20 1948 that so frightened the Russkies that they closed off Berlin in the Berlin Blockade four days later, and so we got the Cold War. Because.

In the 1970s Nixon and Kissinger decided to fox up our Commie enemies by dividing Russia and China. And now I wonder. Was Watergate all about the Deep State deciding that Nixon and Kissinger were betraying the sacred Cold War and were probably Commie spies and so Nixon had to go. WaPo reporter Woodward, of the immortal reportorial team of Woodward and Bernstein, was a pal of Gen. Haig and had previously served in the US Navy as an intelligence officer, so you do the math.

Well, then the Soviet Union broke up in 1989-91 even though the intelligence community didn’t see it coming. But we kept NATO going, just in case.

All along, the Euros have just jogged along, happy for the US Empire to do the heavy lifting for them. My judgement is that nobody in the US imperial ruling class was willing to ask the question: what’s NATO for? What is the benefit of NATO? Is it a good thing for Europe to rely on a country across the Atlantic Ocean for its defense?

My guess is that nobody in the Euro-American ruling class ever had the cojones to ask a question like that. Until Trump. And that’s partly because the whole defense establishment is designed and implemented to fight the Cold War, from the US bases all over the world, to the State Department and the Intelligence Community and the various and sundry NGOs funded by the security state. It’s a huge massive operation and because of secrecy isn’t really well managed. For decades they’ve been salting media with intelligence community narratives. For decades they’ve been destabilizing regimes. From time to time they’ve done Arab Springs or Ukraine Maidan thingies. Because that’s what the CIA and the State Department and the NGOs were set up to do. And you know how it is with government programs.

So, we had Trump 45 and he told the Euros that unless they bumped their defense budgets up to 2 percent of GDP he was outta there. And Trump 47 looks like a repeat, only more so.

And, if you ask me, it all comes down to the question: does western Europe really need NATO to protect it from Russia? Given that Russia seems to be barely able to fight and win a war against Ukraine. Which doesn’t have any mountains in the way.

Yes, I know. The Russians could invade western Europe through Poland. But somehow I have a feeling that the Poles have decided: Never Again. Maybe that’s why they get on fairly well with the Germans these days.

Anyway. As the Zman writes, now we have Elon Musk messing up the Euro linen, by backing the AfD in Germany and raising the question that Brits are not allowed to raise about “grooming gangs.” How dare he!

I tell you what I think. I think that it’s time for the Euros to grow a pair, and figure out how to keep the Russian bear out of Eastern Europe. Although I do think that Königsberg, home of Frederick the Great, accomplished flute player, and Immanuel Kant, greatest philosopher of all time, ought to be restored to Germany. Right now it’s part of Russia, and it’s called Kaliningrad. And that’s just not right.