Yves here. Kobybko points out that Europe has now woken up to the fact that it now captive to the US, and is unwilling to do what it needs to do to retain some room of maneuver, which is to mend fences with Russia and resume energy purchases. But he greatly misreads how the US came to dominate Europe. Europe was physically devastated at the end of World War II. The US represented 50% of world GDP. It set up international institutions like the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank that even BRICS wants to preserve. So US domination of Europe was a long-standing status quo.
A, and arguably the key mechanism for the US preserving its influence long after its sell-by date was NATO. Even though legally it is a weak alliance, it functioned in a much more influential manner due to the US having bases and troops all over Europe and most important, bearing the financial burden of European defense. That enabled European nations to fund more generous social welfare systems than they likely would have otherwise. As far as I can tell, the only European leader who pushed back in a fundamental way against this relationship was de Gaulle, who among other things was a moving force in France being the only European state to build nuclear weapons.
Recall also that neither the US nor Europe deemed it to be conceivable that Russia would prevail in its conflict in Ukraine. Russia was supposed to have been subjugated by now.
Regardless of your views of how the EU got itself so vassalized, Korybko’s discussion is timely. The lead story in the Financial Times focuses on the EU moving out of denialism and starting to grapple with how to recover a measure of autonomy. From its lead story, EU-US tensions over Greenland and tech are far from over, says Macron:
The EU should not be lulled into a false sense of security that tensions with the US over Greenland, technology and trade are over, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned, as he called on the bloc to embark on an “economic revolution” and finally become a true global power.
Macron said he would press his fellow EU leaders at a special summit on competitiveness this week to capitalise on what he called “the Greenland moment”, when Europeans realised they were under threat, so as to move ahead quickly with long-delayed economic reforms and reduce their dependence on the US and China.
“We have the Chinese tsunami on the trade front, and we have minute-by-minute instability on the American side. These two crises amount to a profound shock — a rupture for Europeans,” Macron told the FT and other European media outlets in an interview.
“My point was to say that, when there is some relief after a crisis peaks, you shouldn’t just let your guard down thinking it’s over for good. That isn’t true, because there is permanent instability now.”….
Europe was now dealing with a Trump administration that was “openly anti-European”, “shows contempt” for the EU and “wishes its dismemberment”, Macron said….
Macron once again called on the EU to raise massive new common debt to invest jointly in three innovation “battles” — AI and quantum computing, the energy transition and defence — so that the bloc could become a global economic power.
Macron said the recent crisis over Greenland, when Trump threatened punitive tariffs against European countries opposed to his effort to secure control of the vast Arctic island from Denmark, was “not over”.
He also predicted the EU and the Trump administration would clash later this year over tech regulation — an area where the EU has long irritated the US for applying stricter rules on data privacy, hate speech and digital taxation…
The US could also retaliate against EU countries, including France and Spain, that are planning to ban children from social media, which would lay down a test for the bloc, he said…
EU leaders are due to meet at a Belgian castle on Thursday to inject fresh momentum into flagging efforts to boost competitiveness and deepen integration of the single market.
Macron said he supported attempts to further simplify EU regulations, break down barriers to intra-bloc trade and reduce dependencies on foreign suppliers for critical inputs and technologies.
But the discussions are likely to be dominated by a long-standing French push for the EU to protect key industries through “buy European” policies, with the European Commission due to unveil legislation on the issue this month.
Back in the day, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake called the position that Europe is in the veal pen. The trigger then was the way the Obama Administration kneecapped organizations that had institutional funding yet had the temerity to cross Team Obama by advocating for progressive programs. From our archives in Frustrated White House Slams “Professional Left”:
What passes for the left in this country has been so marginalized that it has limited sway to begin with (although the public is strongly supportive of some positions they defend, such as preserving Social Security and Medicare). And Team Obama would have to have a badly distorted self image to think its centrist (at best) policies qualify as progressive.
A more logical explanation is that the Administration presumed it could either co-opt or corral enough liberals so that any salvos from that flank would be limited to those deemed so extreme that their opposition might actually be a plus (think the controversial Noam Chomsky). Jane Hamsher has chronicled the aggressive Obama efforts to shackle liberal groups :
Someone asked me over the weekend to be more explicit about what the term “veal pen” means:
The veal crate is a wooden restraining device that is the veal calf’s permanent home. It is so small (22″ x 54″) that the calves cannot turn around or even lie down and stretch and is the ultimate in high-profit, confinement animal agriculture.(1) Designed to prevent movement (exercise), the crate does its job of atrophying the calves’ muscles, thus producing tender “gourmet” veal.
[]
About 14 weeks after their birth, the calves are slaughtered. The quality of this “food,” laden with chemicals, lacking in fiber and other nutrients, diseased and processed, is another matter. The real issue is the calves’ experience. During their brief lives, they never see the sun or touch the Earth. They never see or taste the grass. Their anemic bodies crave proper sustenance. Their muscles ache for freedom and exercise. They long for maternal care. They are kept in darkness except to be fed two to three times a day for 20 minutes…..
I heard it over and over again — if you wanted to criticize the White House on financial issues, your institutional funding would dry up instantly. The Obama campaign successfully telegraphed to donors that they should cut off Fund for America, which famously led to its demise. It wasn’t the last time something like that happened — just ask those who were receiving institutional money who criticized the White House and saw their funding cut, at the specific request of liberal institutional leaders who now principally occupy their time by brown nosing friends and former co-workers in the White House.
And so the groups in the DC veal pen stay silent. They leadership gets gets bought off by cocktail parties at the White House while the interests of their members get sold out….
Where are they on health care? Why aren’t they running ads against the AMA, the hospitals, the insurance industry barons who have $700 million in stock options, PhRMA, the device manufacturers and the White House for doing back room deals with all of the above?
Why are they not calling for the White House to release the details of those secret deals?
Because they are participating in those deals, instead of trying to destroy them. Well, that and funneling millions of dollars in pass-throughs to their consultant friends that they are supposed to be spending on the health care fight.
The truth is — they’ve all been sucked into insulating the White House from liberal critique, and protecting the administration’s ability to carry out a neoliberal agenda that does not serve the interests of their members. They spend their time calculating how to do the absolute minimum to retain their progressive street cred and still walk the line of never criticizing the White House.
Back to Europe being hobbled and readied for slaughter: Aside from the fact that Macron is even more “all hat and no cattle” than most EU leaders, he and his peers at the helm of large states suffer from very high levels of unpopularity. Simplicius highlighted this tweet:
World leader’s disapproval rating:
🇫🇷 Emmanuel Macron: 77%
🇬🇧 Keir Starmer: 68%
🇩🇪 Friedrich Merz: 64%
🇪🇸 Pedro Sánchez: 61%
🇿🇦 Cyril Ramaphosa: 57%
🇦🇹 Christian Stocker: 53%
🇸🇪 Ulf Kristersson: 53%
🇮🇹 Giorgia Meloni: 53%
🇳🇴 Jonas Gahr Støre: 52%
🇧🇷 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva:…— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) February 7, 2026
BTW, this is the second time in less than 24 hours in which I have seen the image of a tweet, searched for it on Twitter, came up empty, and then went to the feed of the specific Twitter account (manually going back to the date of its publication), and was still unable to find it. It would then turn up immediately on an external search, as in site-specific on Google. So Twitter really is very aggressively suppressing certain tweets.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
It’s unimaginable that the US would allow any competitor to reduce its enormous new market share in the European energy industry, which it plans to further expand to make Europe even more dependent on it, and that the US wouldn’t weaponize this if Europe ever defies it on anything of significance.
The US’ dispute with Europe over Trump’s planned acquisition of Greenland, in pursuit of which he even threatened punitive tariffs against several NATO allies before relenting after they agreed to a framework deal, exposed the strict hierarchical vassal-client relationship between them. This was explicitly acknowledged by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who said that “Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else” in response to Trump’s pressure upon Europe.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech at Davos complemented Wever’s worries when he accused the US of trying to “weaken and subordinate Europe”, in response to which he called for “clearly building more economic sovereignty and strategic autonomy”, though it’s arguably too late for that. Politico recently reported that “Fears grow over Europe’s soaring dependence on US gas imports”, which the US could weaponize amidst serious future disputes with the EU over whatever the issue might be.
Not only could it cut them off from its exports, but its blockade of Venezuela proves that it has the political will to seize energy tankers at sea, the policy of which could be employed in that scenario to ensure that other suppliers aren’t able to satisfy Europe’s needs. Likewise, the only realistic ones that could potentially do so are the Gulf Monarchies, which are all under US influence as it is. It’s therefore indeed possible that this dependence could be exploited to coerce concessions from a recalcitrant EU.
The question thus arises of how this dependence came to be, which is due to the US weaponizing Europe’s paranoia of Russia supposedly being the one to weaponize energy geopolitics as punishment for Europe’s military support of Ukraine, though nothing of the sort materialized. To the contrary, Russia remained committed to meeting its contractual obligations to Europe in spite of its energy exports literally fueling European arms factories producing weapons that are given to Ukrainians kill Russians.
In its defense, Russia’s calculations appear to be retaining its reputation as a reliable supplier in order to not scare away other clients (both current and prospective) as well as secure additional budgetary revenue, some of which is then invested in producing the weapons used in the special operation. To this day, Russia still exports energy to Europe, albeit at a much smaller scale due to Europe’s anti-Russian sanctions and its pivot away from Russian supplies to American ones.
Scaling up Russian energy imports isn’t in the cards, however, since no major European economy dares to anger the US by importing less from it. They only still import much lower levels of Russian energy due to the market’s inability to replace its exports till next year. Any move to scale up imports from Russia, such as resuming imports via the one undamaged Nord Stream pipeline or the several overland ones, could lead to their destruction as proven by the Nord Stream precedent, which is a powerful deterrent.
In retrospect, Europe ceded its sovereignty to the US by sanctioning Russian energy, which it did after the US weaponized its Russophobic paranoia. The US then replaced Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and is willing to weaponize this if Europe ever defies it on anything of significance. Had Europe and Russia maintained at scale their “Faustian bargain” of fueling each other’s arms industry, financially in Europe’s case and literally in Russia’s, then Europe would still have its “strategic autonomy”.
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Russia had been supplying Europe with gas since the Brezhnev days. Mostly smooth and problem free bar certain shenanigans from Ukraine syphoning off gas without paying. For Russia it was business, not politics. And yet, we in Europe kept being told that we must not become dependent on Russian gas as they could leverage this to their own advantage. The EU vassals also boasted how they would get US gas instead despite the significant price discrepancy.
So now, Europe has burned its bridges with Russia, even to the point of looking the other way when Nordstream was blown up – nothing to see here, move along – and face Trump who will exercise as much leverage as he can. Stupid is as stupid does, and the EU leaders lack nothing when it comes to the utmost stupidity. The whole lot of them should be shoved into a veal pen for 14 weeks
I would say that at any point, any EU country wanting to do it, could diversify NG supplies including Russian LNG if necessary. Any EU-level agreement on this issue is, IMO, wet paper. Here the question would be running on LNG quotes and that’s it. I might be mistaken but i think that i am not.
With the writings about some EU (so-called) leaders noting that, ahem, the EU has got a problem with the US wanting to exert energy dominance, hence what? Nothing, my dear, nothing. You don’t see any political alternative in the EU these days with any real idea on how to operate. This I say including all political far-right, far-left and far-too-centrist alternatives of which i know anything. Most are idiots who believe that every solution consists on throwing money at the problem (Macron, Draghi etc.). You can count on nothing significant being done in the foreseeable future except a painful, slow effort to reduce dependence on NG in general. Faster in the case of power electricity but extremely slow regarding heating demand.
Bruegel, the think tank, believed in 2023 that what the EU needs is a “coherent strategy” regarding NG imports in which “coherent” means anti-Russian. I on the contrary believe that the EU needs diversification as a strategy and anti-Russian is not coherent but stupid. Will we see a change in Bruegel policy advise because Trump? I am still waiting for that.
If you go by the latest Bruegel report on EU NG imports you will note that US LNG imports (since 2022 after the war started, see figure 5) have increased but not really that much lately and these account for about 25% imports behind Norway as the first source. Russian LNG is about 12% of imports and posted a “surprise” small jump in the last quarter of 2025. It might be “coherent” to take it to 0 by 2027 if we like to enjoy high volatility in NG quotes and if we want lo live in short term expectations which is what US shale gas can provide.
Some say that more unification, more powers at EU level, would be necessary in the new geo-strategical context. The problem i see with this is that the highest level is precisely the one farthest from ground realities. EU level so worried with competitiveness instead of capabilities, coherence instead of diversification, money and AI are the solution etc.
I have a hard time believing that, after all his gyratory politics, anyone takes seriously Macron’s pronouncements.
Interestingly, the French “Commissariat au Plan” — a long standing institution of the civil service that lived its glory days under de Gaulle — just published an assessment (as reported by Le Monde) on the European economic situation with respect to China.
It loudly raises the alarm.
The remaining areas where Europe is still competitive or has a technological mastery are now under imminent threat to be completely overwhelmed by the “Chinese steamroller”: chemicals, machine-tools, aircrafts, nuclear. The report indicates that China can build nuclear infrastructure of equivalent safety and performance, 4 times faster, and 4 times cheaper. In the aeronautics industry, insiders admit that the sector is now beginning to undergo the same process that has put the European car industry in dire straits. The fear is that what happened to solar panels in Europe (going from a 40% world market share in 2009 to basically nothing nowadays) will reoccur in other sectors.
The recommendations of the “Commissariat au Plan”:
1) raise generalized EU-wide 30% custom duties on all imports from China;
2) devaluate the Euro by 20% to 30%.
Approaches including “buying European” (favoured by Macron), achieving productivity gains, reorganizing production processes, and focusing on high-end products are deemed totally insufficient, as differences in production cost are way too large now.
I find it interesting that the recommendations seem to me completely defensive and mercantilist in nature, lacking an actual industrial component (such as State-financed and -directed projects to create a new industry and its environment of suppliers), although the authors of the report stress that these customs and currency exchange measures are necessary, but not sufficient conditions, to revive the European industry. They also repeatedly note that energy (and esp. electricity) costs in Europe are way too high — but of course do not connect the dots as Korybko in his article.
The EU is now deciding on a 20th package of sanctions against Russia that will cut it off from desperately needed affordable energy supplies and raw materials. Now, I have never heard of veals eagerly participating in the construction of their pen, but this is where we are. I also object to describing the EU as a “vassal”: vassals have military and economic power needed and callable by their suzerain, who in turn has actual obligations towards his vassals. Europe has enthusiastically left the condition of a vassal which it held since WWII, for the one of a serf — as the French expression starkly and accurately describes as being “taillable et corvéable à merci” (under the feudal regime, taille was a direct tax, and corvée forced labour — hence can be taxed and exploited at will).
The EU is fully in the throes of neo-liberalism, due to that state support is only allowed in a very narrow and limited scope. Any attempts to go further results in the true believers in the EU throwing the book at you.
As to not connecting the dots? They do connect them, it is just that if they had put something like that in a policy paper the paper would not be published and they would be looking for a new job. Most of the upper management of the EU are not just true believers but fanatical zealots when it comes to Russia. Trying to go against their world view is committing career suicide (or in the case of people they can’t direct control they just put sanctions on them to prevent them from shoving reality in their face).
There has been a systematic neutering of the media and what were “left” parties underlying the subject matter of this post..
Consider the firestorm in 1983 caused by the US deploying Pershing II and nuclear-armed GLCMs in among Germany’s “left” and media, and contrast that with the European MSM accepting Kallas’ statement that Russia has invaded 19 countries.Euro MSM is de facto state media and just as hawkish as US MSM, but with the added danger that the European populace has much higher trust in MSM compared to the US. Why has this happened? There has been some M&A activity, such as KKR’s 2019 acquisition of a majority interest in Axel Springer and subsequent loyalty pledge requirements to the EU (the Israel pledge requirement may have been abandoned), but that is on the margins and does not explain DW and BBC turning into Neocon Pravda.
Parallel to the MSM takeover, the Euro “left” has experienced a neoliberal takeover similar to the US Democratic party, and Germany’s Greens are as hawkish as US Democrats. Looking at the electoral performance of Germany’s BSW party, I assume this is largely attributable to the neocon/neoliberal MSM takeover and hatchet jobs of any parties that question The Narrative. Sweden is another example.
The BBC was always neocon Pravda. Its employees relish their PMC status and are thoroughly politically correct. Orwell’s Room 101 was in Broadcasting House.
101 – I forgot that detail!
p.s. In case you haven´t seen the odd “Mr. Jones” by Agnieszka Holland – despite all her covert Soviet-hatred she at least conceded Orwell an appearance in the very end where he argues that the Russians didn´t want to cause a famine.
Actually the time is ripe for a new feature/series about Orwell…
Thanks for the links.
For instance the NC-entry from 2010 on left professionals.
It contains this detail:
“(…)
Instead, the ones that have annoyed them are those who have followings not because they are paid operatives of leftie groups, as Gibbs intimates, but effective, charismatic commentators on TV, such as Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and Dylan Ratigan. So the “professional,” which should be a compliment, is instead a slur, implying they make their money by (per Gibbs’ rant) hewing to an ideological line, as opposed to simply calling out obvious and persistent Obama Administration hypocrisy.
(…)”
Did these individuals who are rather evil-ish today do represent a saner version of US mainstream 15 years ago? And thus they eventually sold out? When? 2016? 2020? 2022?
“Recall also that neither the US nor Europe deemed it to be conceivable that Russia would prevail in its conflict in Ukraine. Russia was supposed to have been subjugated by now.”
I’m leaning towards that was all being said to keep the grift flowing and Ukranians fighting.
Besides, there are still theatres where US and other NATO countries are coordinating and ideologically aligned.
“EU leaders are due to meet at a Belgian castle on Thursday to inject fresh momentum into flagging efforts to boost competitiveness and deepen integration of the single market.”
If one boogeyman isn’t enough to do it, try two?
OK, we’ve been here before, but just a quick summary.
The US was never “protecting” NATO: this was a caricature by right-wing US politicians. Only a small proportion of the US defence budget was spent in Europe, especially since much of the infrastructure, training areas and airfields were provided free (in Germany they were generally those occupied by the US at the end of the War.) US officials were quite open at the time that, given the forces had to be stationed somewhere, it was cheaper to keep them in Europe than the US. Likewise there is no pot labelled “government spending:” public finance doesn’t work like that. The Europeans invested heavily in social spending after the war, which reduced unemployment and boosted tax receipts.
US forces in Europe were dwarfed by European conscript forces: the Germans could mobilise one million men within a couple of days, the French only a little less. The value of US forces was largely symbolic: it meant that in any crisis with the Soviet Union over Europe, the US would have assets at risk and could not back off. The Europeans generally regarded this as a reasonable bargain: for smaller states in particular sovereignty was and always had been an illusion, and they could play the US off against France and Germany. Europe being able to play the US card was worth letting the US strut around playing leader and having a preponderant influence, when the alternatives were considered. At the end of the Cold War, many in Washington realised the constraining nature of this bargain, especially as NATO wasn’t doing very much, and there was a significant school of thought under Little Bush that wanted to wind up NATO, or at least greatly modify it. But the debate was won by those who pointed out that Europe was a major security interest for there US anyway, so it made sense to continue to formalise it.
As I’ve pointed out many times, traditional fear and antipathy among many European countries towards Russia, and more recently the Russian rejection of the Brussels consensus on economic and social liberalism, explains most of the European approach since 2014, and especially since 2022. It was precisely this rejection of the Brussels values that persuaded European capitals that the war would be short one and that Russia would quickly fall apart. Now, all they can do is pray.
Macron’s speech has to be seen in the context of Carney’s earlier remarks, less anti-US than the sickening realisation that globalisation has failed, and that Europe has left itself exposed. European elites are more worried about China than the US. Macron personally was deeply involved in selling and offshoring French companies, both as a politicians and when he worked for Rothschild. This is the closest we’ll ever see to a mea culpa, and it suggests he has one eye on the history books.
Well, I guess some countries can stop asking for a US “backstop” if they send troops into Ukraine.
US troop deployments in Europe was pretty consistent between the 1950s and 1990s between 300 and 400 thousand. That amounted to 10% of active duty personnel at any one time and accounting for rotation, it can be assumed 15-20% of the US military was dedicated to Europe. Perhaps it was only a “small percentage” of the gargantuan DOD budget was spent in Europe when it was consuming 12% of US GDP. But you should also factor in part of the costs of the Strategic Air Command, 6th Fleet and the SSBNs. Those were hugely expensive and part of the so-called defense of Europe. All those people and kit were not “symbolic”, they were integral.
Even today the costs of maintaining US forces of 85,000 in Europe and other strategic forces is enormous (obviously some is now directed towards the Zionist state and African neocolonialism). It certainly exceeds the military assets and expenses of any single European country and combinations of many.
We can blame the neocons and their successful breeding of European lap dog poodles for not having a unified, demilitarized Germany 70 years ago and the retention of the cold war mindset of the Clinton era. That enormous bill is only becoming clearer. We should revisit the December 2021 proposals.
Politically NATO was a necessity to help European elites stop considering socialist alternatives they in fact were afraid of.
Fighting serious Socialists in Europe was way easier for Europe´s leaders with a military alliance in place which achieved what NATO achieved again with 2022 – create the threat it was invented to counter.
As I wrote weeks ago in 1955 German soon-to-be SoD Franz-Josef Strauß could easily silence the SPD resistance by asking the rhetoric question in parliament: “Are you willing to leave NATO?”.
Fearmongering over the Russian hordes was the bottom-line of German realpolitik and raison d´être for more than 100 years.
Whenever SPD or more leftwing were fancying talk about a Third Way, serious rapprochement with USSR and even unification for neutrality the establishment would play the same card it plays now, Russia.
I therefore find it hard to believe that any European leader of the past generation, be it the 1970s or 1990s, would have acted different than the clowns we have today.
p.s. My limited studies of NATO strategy suggested that it was never necessary nor possible for NATO to seriously challenge Sovie troops in a conventional war. German units were to lure USSR into the Rhine area – and then nukes would do the job.
Afaik NATO troops in larger numbers would arrive too late anyway – in case the Red Army would seriously attack by land forces which was very unlikely.
I never looked into the plans for the NATO-version of a conventional attack on the Warsaw Pact…
Europe colonized us and then we colonized them. The French Nouvelle Vague directors loved American movies and made that clear either ironically (Godard) or more seriously. Pauline Kael scolded Truffaut for his devotion to Hitchcock–the wrong Hitchcock–and those of us who visited Europe decades ago could already feel disappointed when encountering giant super markets and other evidence of Americana.
Now French movies seem to have lost their own culture–something that in the De Gaulle era was defended by law–while only the English seem to still be doing their own thing
since we Yanks, establishment division, are still rabid Anglophiles. Some say the Brits are even running our foreign policy.
Perhaps it’s that we non establishment Yanks are from a different time when multiculturalism was something to be celebrated and enjoyed rather than feared and suppressed.
So please Europe don’t be like us. Look at our president.
“So please Europe don’t be like us. Look at our president.”
I suggest you look somewhere else.
Although I´m aware published opinion is not public opinion – the inexistence of any institutional resistance to the dismantling of all meaningful critical thought, theory and organizing despite the most obvious and towering evidence to what is truely happening domestically and abroad can only leave one conclusion.
Just like the post 9/11 deep state was never reversed neither will the militarization and new authoritarianism in Europe. And I admit it´s depressing. Especially that almost nobody is aware of this. That one actually is terrifying. But the failure of the educated is…how shall I put it…gargantuan. I encounter it every single day.
I hate fascism comparison but for sake of argument – neither in Nazi Germany nor in today´s Ukraine was it necessary to convince 70% of the people to be fanatic. 10% would do.
Not mentioned as a method of control (way more than Chomsky!!) whose magnitude cannot be understated , is the Epstein Effect (and whoever is the new Epstein).
It is telling that Macron focused on foreign investment in data centers, which makes France look great. However, in reality, investment is mostly domestic, and Europe is a two-bit player – trillions in arrears. Amazon alone planned to spend more than France just to support the US gov’t (50 billion) in 2025! And cumulatively… The EU has been snoozing (or drinking wine) at the starting line for years.
And this neglects China’s truly massive data centers, where a yuan goes far, far, far further than a dollar (or euro) in hyper-scaling, and where energy costs are the real long-term determinant, for which the EU self-strangled.
yeah so I’ve wondered about the Estein Effect too. After Maduro’s kidnapping and the threats over Greenland, I got the impression that EU and European leaders were acting out of fear more than usual.
Also, NATO has acted as a source for potential big, prestiguous jobs for our ambitious leadership. Making them nice and amenable to US suggestions. As Mark Rutte has embarrassingly shown.
Esptein Effect the stick, (e.g. NATO) international elite jobs the carrot.
“Kobybko points out that Europe has now woken up to the fact that it now captive to the US, and is unwilling to do what it needs to do to retain some room of maneuver, which is to mend fences with Russia and resume energy purchases. But he greatly misreads how the US came to dominate Europe. Europe was physically devastated at the end of World War II. The US represented 50% of world GDP. It set up international institutions like the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank that even BRICS wants to preserve. So US domination of Europe was a long-standing status quo.
A, and arguably the key mechanism for the US preserving its influence long after its sell-by date was NATO. Even though legally it is a weak alliance, it functioned in a much more influential manner due to the US having bases and troops all over Europe and most important, bearing the financial burden of European defense. That enabled European nations to fund more generous social welfare systems than they likely would have otherwise. As far as I can tell, the only European leader who pushed back in a fundamental way against this relationship was de Gaulle, who among other things was a moving force in France being the only European state to build nuclear weapons.”
Nah, it started after the end of the Cold War, this subjugation.
During the Cold War, Western Europe had big standing armies – but they also had genereous social safety nets, so it is not true that Europe prefered one over the other in time, or not necessarily. It was more like lulled that it doesn’t need that much of a military.
And this was true, because Russia was not, and it is not a threat.
Until 2003 and the Iraq War, Europe still had a semi-independent and reasonable political class, but after the Iraq War political fiasco, the US has invested untold billions in turning Europe over, by hook or by crook. And EU and integration was one of the ways to do it. Varufakis keeps claiming that it was the US that pushed for the creation of EU.
And then the cultivation of all those Russophobes at all levels in EU, with UK playing prima viola in this orchestra the US was setting up. And with the war in Ukraine, EU is scared to shits, as a fake reason for deeper integration, cutting in the social safety net, and militarization for profits.
I guess we’ll see, if the screw gest tighter, who is ultimately more revolutionary, Americans or Europeans. I want to see for once American farmers assaulting Washington DC with their farm equipment and manure spreading machines…