NATO is a Farce, Part 2: The Puppet Parade

There is a transatlantic production line that churns out US puppets ready-made for holding office in Europe.

Note: this article is a follow-on to my early piece:

NATO is a dangerous farce — and we all know it

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Since the end of World War II, the US has created a veritable industry for producing pliable “leaders” and placing them in key NATO and other “ally” states in Europe.

Indeed, Vladimir Putin is fond of referring to America’s allies as “vassals” who are willing to prostrate themselves at the feet of the US hegemon.

In a 2017 interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone, Putin declared:

“Nowadays, NATO is a mere instrument of US foreign policy. It has no allies, it has only vassals. When a country becomes a NATO member, it is very hard for it to resist pressure from a big country … like the United States.”

Of course, Putin is being diplomatic when he ascribes to America’s European “partners” any sort of potential desire to “resist pressure” from Washington.

The fact is that for many European leaders, toeing the American line on all matters of foreign economic and military policy is not only acceptable, but axiomatic: they have been groomed by the US permanent state to always act in America’s interest — even if it clashes with the interests of their own people or their fellow Europeans.

Working through a phalanx of “non governmental organisations” such as think tanks, universities and foundations, “emerging leaders” in European government and civil society are schooled in how to promote America’s interests in their home country.

This specialised and often intensive training is done through “fellowships” and other programs designed to align the Europeans’ worldview with those of the American elites.

Here is what’s in this article:

1. Remaking Europe in America’s image — how Europeans, deprived of their own identity, were forced to choose to either be like the “good” Americans or doom themselves to succumb to the “evil” Russians

2. The Atlantic Council — how a NATO-inspired think tank drove European political thought

3. The Atlantic Treaty Association — “promoting Euro-Atlantic values and the importance of NATO in keeping peace and stability”

4. The German Marshall Fund — building on the massive pro-US propaganda machine that was the original Marshall Plan

5. Yale University — The School of the CIA — how a US university became a training ground for US intelligence assets and operatives in Europe

6. The National Endowment for Democracy — how a classic CIA cutout organisation shapes the politics in Europe using “civil society” as a cover

7. USAID — another CIA cutout for instigating regime change and recruiting European traitors

8. The Council on Foreign Relations — a shadowy transatlantic organisation that openly claims to bringdiplomats, high-level government officials, and academics together with lawyers, bankers, and industrialists to engineer government policy”

9. The Bilderberg Group — a transatlantic cabal of elites that meet once a year to drive the development of Europe and the world

10. The European Union is “an American project” — the EU was never a European idea; it was created under the aegis — and at times overt pressure — of theUnited States so that American leaders could more easily administer and control their European vassals

11. Puppet Parade: The European Commission — Ursula von der Leyen is an “American President” for Europe, and forces through US priorities with an increasingly imperial hand

12. Puppet Parade: the European traitors — how the so-called “leaders” of the various EU countries are betraying their own people

13. Why Ukraine is the ultimate betrayal — how the US and its EU operatives used Ukraine to destroy Europe — and why

14. How the EU f*cked themselves — the decline of Europe should not be seen as a self-inflicted tragedy; it was a tragedy inflicetd upon Europe from across the sea

Remaking Europe in America’s image

America’s enslavement of Europe is rooted in a set of core beliefs that grew out of the Cold War, focusing on the innate “evil” of the Soviet Union and the imminent and dire “existential threat” that the Russians posed — not just to Europe and the United States, but to Western civilisation itself.

NATO’s place in a bipolar world

In the aftermath of WWII, the collective west, led by the United Kingdom and Churchill, but supported by the “muscle” of the US war machine, imposed a manichaean choice on Western Europe: join us in a Cold War against the Soviet Union or be starved of all aid, access to loans, subsidies, and, of course, security.

NATO was the centrepiece, the cornerstone of this new western edifice. Its name was deceptively innocuous: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. What it was, however, was anything but peaceful. NATO was, and continues to be, an organisation primarily aimed at “keeping the Russian out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. So said Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO in 1949.

The first leaders of the European countries were people who had witnessed WWII, who were patriots, and who were struggling to piece their countries back together after having been destroyed by the war. In short, they were highly motivated to follow the US lead if it would get them access to the largesse of the US aid packages that could be used to rebuild their nations and feed their people.

The European leaders of the post-war period thus did not need to be propagandised in order to side with the Americans. The Soviet Union could offer little in terms of restorative aid, having suffered the ravages of war themselves. It was the Americans who were now seen as the colossus, the bountiful giant, untouched by the war, in sole possession of nuclear weapons, brimming with Hershey bars, wheat, grain, oil, machinery and other necessary resources that were now in desperately short supply across the Continent.

In short, joining NATO and cleaving to the Americans was a no brainer in the immediate aftermath of the war.

What was the actual Marshall Plan?

George Marshall’s speech to an audience at Harvard University in June of 1947 announced a plan that eventually made its way through the United States congress and took the form of the European Recovery Plan (ERP). On April 3, 1948, the plan was signed by President Harry Truman. The ERP distributed roughly thirteen billion dollars in aid to sixteen European countries over its four years of existence. The Economic Cooperation Agency (ECA) grew out of this program as the managerial arm of the ERP.

As the Austrian historian Andrea Komlosy writes:

The Marshall Plan and its counterpart, the embargo against Eastern Europe, were contributing to the rise of an Iron Curtain before the Soviet Bloc was enclosing itself with a metal fence. Marshall Plan aid for the West was inseparably linked with the embargo policy the United States exercised against the East. By connecting aid with trade embargo, the Marshall Plan was the instrument to make the recipient states follow the United States’ directions.

An analysis performed by the St. Louis Federal Reserve in 2021 argues that the Marshall Plan “May Not Have Been Key to Europe’s Reconstruction”:

…the Marshall Plan and IBRD lending played a smaller role in European reconstruction than what has been commonly believed. Instead, Europe was primarily responsible for rebuilding its own economy.

Indeed, it seems that the true purpose of the Marshall Plan was not one of reconstruction, but rather of RE-EDUCATION through propaganda and film.

A US study by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute called “MARSHALL PLAN FILMS AND AMERICANIZATION” explains:

The Marshall Plan launched a massive propaganda campaign in an attempt to reformat the ideals of Europeans. The Plan was ostensibly an attempt to combat Communism as well as to re-vamp the economy of Europe. However, the films presented American ideals as something to aspire to: not only in business, but also in living everyday life. By stressing consumption over conservation and massive production over craftsmanship, the films told Europeans what America thought was best for them, and what would be beneficial for their future. Marshall Planners effectively sought to make Europe into a new, more American, place to live.

And in this they succeeded spectacularly.

Marshall Plan propaganda posters [Source: apuntes.santanderlasalle.es]

How American propaganda changed history

The US propaganda effort to make Europeans love America was staggeringly successful. It wasn’t just that blue jeans and Coca-Cola became popular; Hollywood helped to literally change the perception of history in the minds of the Europeans.

[Source: Vox]

An example of this metamorphosis can be found in a series of surveys taken among French people. Just after the European fighting ended in May 1945, a poll by the survey group Ifop found that 57 percent of the French thought Moscow had contributed the most to the war effort, compared with just 20 percent who named the United States.

The French example is interesting because the Soviets didn’t play much of a role in France’s liberation, relative to the US and Britain. Nonetheless, most French were aware of the tremendous role the USSR played— and the huge sacrifices in lives they suffered.

By 1995 and 2004, however, the French had changed their minds, and were crediting the US as the biggest contributor to victory in Europe:

The results of the “Hollywood effect” and US propaganda over time — an erasing of the Russian role in WWII victory [Source: Olivier Berruyer / Les Crises]

The news outlet France24 credits this with US propaganda, primarily through movies and television.

“In 1945, the great ally was Stalin and the USSR — their role was absolutely clear for the French,” said Stephane Grimaldi, director of the Caen Memorial Museum for World War II in Normandy.

“But 50 years later, it’s the US that won, for the very simple reason that in the meantime we had the Cold War,” he said.

“The Cold War isolated the Russians, and it isolated the Russian story” of the war, Grimaldi said.

“Wie Gott in Frankreich” — an American in occupied Germany

I lived in Germany in the 1980’s, at the height of the Cold War. The US and the USSR were both massing troops, stationing intermediate range nuclear missiles, and readying for a hot war in Europe. West Germany was fully “Americanised”. An anti-war peace movement, spearheaded by the leftist German Green Party, did little to change the fact that the Germany was an occupied country.

As an American, I had an almost surreal license to live my life openly and easily as an American there. My US dollars were accepted as currency everywhere; English was a sort of lingua franca; my US driver’s license was valid not just for driving but also as a form of general ID. The massive US military bases were like small midwestern towns, complete with shopping malls, gas stations, bowling alleys, high schools with football teams and stadiums, even McDonald’s and Burger King restaurants.

Many servicemen chose to live off-base, in what was referred to simply as “living on the economy”. And why not? They could rent apartments, buy homes, cars and other property, and an American dollar was worth 4 Deutsche Mark, the rough equivalent of 4 Euros in today’s currency. Many GIs started businesses and even married German women, which only hurried the pace of Americanisation.

In short, as Americans, life in the Federal Republic was good. My German friends said we lived “like God in France” (wie Gott in Frankreich) — basically saying that we had “the life of Riley”.

“Peace — Freedom — Well-being” — German poster promoting the Marshall Plan [Source: vho.org]

“Winning hearts and minds”

Americans love talk about “winning the hearts and minds” of the peoples they seek to conquer and colonise. When you think about it, this is an intensely evil, imperial dictum that assumes that the people in question will have their sovereignty, their independence, their agency stolen from them, to be replaced by a blind love for all things American (the heart) and an unquestioning belief in the American worldview (the mind).

This diabolical, cynical catchphrase forms the cornerstone of the massive edifice of the American hegemon. It animates and informs the vast, globe-straddling network of governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), think tanks and other institutions whose job it is to establish, maintain, expand and defend the American Empire.

For the purposes of this article, however, I will leave aside such obvious tools of American power as the Trilateral Commission, WTO, IMF, World Bank and UN in order to concentrate on those entities that have specifically contributed to the US’s enslavement of Europe.

Maintaining a military alliance like NATO requires an intellectual and policy-driven argument for the existence of such an organisation. For NATO, such an argument was always a challenge. It was predicated in the early years (1949) on confronting the Soviet Union, which thus needed to be portrayed as an evil, existential threat by American propaganda (e.g., through the Marshall Plan).

NATO’s home page explains its mission:

NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

NATO’s own history story claims that “the Alliance’s creation was part of a broader effort to serve three purposes: deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration”.

This was what the first Secretary General Lord Ismay meant when he said NATO was formed to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down”.

In his pithy statement, Imsay addressed the military side of NATO’s mission, but what about the political side? How could the US use NATO to “encourage European political integration”?

To effect this sort of “integration” — or better put, “homogenisation” — NATO needed to develop its own mechanisms for promoting uniform, pro-Western (i.e., pro-US) political thought, political philosophy, political systems, networks, foundations and other NGOs — all of which were “singing from the same hymnal” and all of which shared the same pro-American world view.

In other words, NATO needed its own think tank: a sort of RAND Corporation that would serve to mould the minds of European leaders, to get them all thinking along the same, “pro-Western” line, accepting the same reality, adopting the same policies and programs. Enter The Atlantic Council.

The Atlantic Council

The Atlantic Council was formed in 1961, at the height of the Cold War. Its mission was simple: to fulfil the “political” aspect of NATO’s objectives.

This meant building on the Marshall Plan propaganda to actually promulgate pro-US and anti-Russian world views on an intellectual and pedagogical level; to provide “reasoned arguments” and “research” and “facts” to support the anodyne American binary philosophy of “us versus them”.

The AC think tank’s job was to explain WHY the Russians were so evil; to construct erudite arguments to explain why Russian leaders were all bent on “expansionism”.

In the Cold War, this meant stoking fear of the Soviet Union, the “Evil Empire” as Reagan called it, which — according to the Atlantic Council — was eager to swallow up the entire world.

After the fall of the USSR and the rise of Putin, this argument simply switched gears: it was no longer the “Soviet Empire” that we had to fear, it was Vladimir Putin’s desire to recreate the “Russian Empire”.

The leadership of the Atlantic Council is a rogue’s gallery of neocons who have previously served in the highest echelons of US government. Indeed, the Atlantic Council seems to be a place where US neocons can “hang out” in between their various stints in US government agencies.

A good example of this is James L. Jones, who was Chairman of the Atlantic Council from 2007 to 2009. Before joining the AC, Jones had been a General in the US Marine Corps and served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (the top NATO commander) until he left in 2006 to join the AC. When he left the Atlantic Council, it was to take a post as President Obama’s National Security Director.

The Millennium Leadership Program

In addition to the decidedly “security” oriented leadership, the Atlantic Council operates many “Fellowships” through their Millennium Leadership Program to train young leaders from around the world.

The Millennium Fellowship is “a year-long, high-impact leadership accelerator for rising leaders from around the world and across sectors”, according to the Council.

They boast that Fellows complete “a curriculum comprised of world-class leadership development resources and have access to the Atlantic Council’s geopolitical expertise, global networks, and international reach”.

In other words, they are introduced to other “leaders” and schooled in what the Atlantic Council wants them to think and do, and then returns them to their home country to execute on what they have been taught.

Past public-sector fellows have included ministers of finance, secretaries of foreign affairs, senior advisors to heads-of-state, military officers, and other leading public officials.

Since its inception in 2015, the Millennium Leadership Program has given away hundreds of these Fellowships, at the rate of 35 each year. The European recipient list is not surprising. Turkey, which has the largest military in NATO, also has the highest number of Fellowships (37). Germany, Europe’s (erstwhile) economic powerhouse, was second with 33, and the UK third with 26, followed by France (19), Italy and Poland (12 each). The other European countries had between 5 and 9.

Not surprisingly, Ukraine has received at least one Fellowship award every year since 2016.

Getting them when they’re young

“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life”. So pronounced the headstrong protagonist in the classic book, The Prime of Miss Jean Broadie.

The Atlantic Council appears to adhere to the same credo. They are already working on the next generation of “global leaders” through their Young Global Professionals Program:

Consistent with our mission of “shaping the global future together,” the Atlantic Council’s Young Global Professionals Program serves as a cornerstone of our vision to create a more free, secure, and prosperous world by shaping the next generation of global leaders.

“We’re different than most think tank teams, and we like it that way!” Exclaims the program’s home page. “The Council is building a movement and we hope you’ll be a part of it”.

“Shaping the next generation of global leaders”.

“Building a movement”.

Could they be any more clear?

Shiny happy Young Global Professionals at the Atlantic Council — all saying “cheese” in unison. [Source: Atlantic Council]

The Atlantic Treaty Association

According to its website, the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) is an international association “with the aim of promoting Euro-Atlantic values and the importance of NATO in keeping peace and stability”.

ATA was founded in 1954 to create better connections and promote a transatlantic bond among its members. The “ATA network” is comprised of associations, non-governmental national councils and committees from 37 countries. While it is inextricably tied to NATO, the ATA goes beyond the simple military aspect.

Like the Atlantic Council, ATA is also deeply involved in shaping the hearts and minds of Europe’s “emerging leaders”. One of ATA’s prime activities is focused on the the Youth Atlantic Treaty Association (YATA), which they say is tasked with “preparing the new generation of Atlanticist leaders to face the challenges and threats of the present and future security scenario”.

YATA organizes seminars, training courses and study visits, as an effective way to strengthen the skills, expertise and sense of identity of the new generation of Atlanticist leaders.

Theyt are not even subtle about what they are doing.

The German Marshall Fund

The Atlantic Council is not the only entity offering intensive training programs to “develop” European leaders. The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is another DC-based American public policy think tank that “seeks to promote cooperation and understanding between North America and the European Union”, according to Wikipedia.

The fund was founded in 1972 with a gift from the West German government on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. In fact, the German Foreign Office (Auswertiges Amt) is one of the top five critical donors to the fund, giving over $1 million each year. The other top donors include USAID (aka CIA) and the European Commission.

GMF says it “contributes research and analysis on transatlantic and global issues” and “provides exchange opportunities for emerging American and European leaders”.

The fund also claims one its goals is to “support initiatives that can strengthen democracies” (i.e., make them more like the USA). Like the Atlantic Council, GMF focuses on policy and leadership, but also has an interest in what it calls “civil society”.

The GMF is a launching point for “transatlanticists” — i.e., powerful functionaries and politicians who effect policy on either side of the Atlantic. Like most other DC think tanks, the GMF serves as an entry point (and revolving door) for ambitious intellectuals to get high powered jobs in government.

For example, the current US Ambassador to NATO is a woman named Julianne Smith, who worked as a program manager at the German Marshall Fund from 2000 to 2003 before going on to become a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She then leapt into “public service” as the director of European and NATO policy at the United States Department of Defense in the Obama Administration, where she eventually ended up as National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden.

Another example is Mark Leonard, currently Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He also got his start at the GMF. He worked at the fund under a Fellowship.

TILN — Promoting Transatlantic Wokeness

The GMF operates several “leadership” programs, including the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network (TILN). The TILN is “a highly innovative transatlantic network of young diverse elected leaders”, according to its home page. In this network, civil society and business leaders “collaborate, peer mentor and educate each other in the work of advancing inclusive policies and strengthening social cohesion”.

The TILN network has more than 200 alumni advancing to higher office including the European Parliament and US Congress, among other roles.

In other words, as workers on either of the Atlantic face increasingly difficult economic lives, the leaders in both continents can promote policies that divide and distract the people.

Yale University — The School of the CIA

As I mentioned above, the CIA plays a role in the German Marshall Fund by supporting its activities and Fellowship programs. But the CIA has its own Fellowships, and its own “leadership program” at Yale University.

Firstly, it should be noted that Yale University has long been a fertile recruiting ground for the CIA, the most famous example of which was President George H.W. Bush. But he is one of many — in fact, the famed “Skull and Bones” secret society was a ready made pipeline feeding highly educated and highly dedicated spooks into the clandestine services.

[Source: CT Insider]

Undergraduate Career Services Director Philip Jones told The Yale News in 2004 just how close the ties between Yale and the CIA were:

CIA recruiters are frequently on campus, conducting interviews through UCS and the School of Management. Information sessions and panels with CIA recruiters are widely attended, generating audiences that range between 70 and 80 students, he said.

Of the many Yalies who express interest in working for the CIA each year, Jones said the agency typically hires several. And while it is true that other elite institutions, such as Harvard and Princeton, have sent numerous graduates into the ranks of the CIA, Yale’s impact on the agency is unparalleled.

The Jackson School of Global Affairs

A primary breeding ground for CIA spymasters is Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. In December 2021, as the situation in Ukraine worsened, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell gave Jackson Institute students an “inside look” at the intelligence agency. As the Yale News reported at the time:

It was a master class in assessing global power dynamics and threats for a cohort of students who are poised to become leaders in grappling with these issues.

Yale’s “World Fellows” Program

Yale also has a “Fellowship” program for grooming transatlantic leaders. The Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program takes non-American “leaders and innovators” and inculcates in them American values and aims to “make the world a better place”.

The program’s website says the Program “provides World Fellows the opportunity to expand their vision, learn from each other, and grow personally and professionally”. And like all the other US-based “fellowship” programs, the goals of the program focus largely on networking — so that these “fellows” can function as effective transatlanticists and CIA catspaws when they get back to their own country:

Fellows expand their global network by connecting with World Fellows in their cohort and with other Fellows spread throughout the world. Yale’s campus also provides countless opportunities to connect with faculty and students over shared professional and academic interests.

The Program was started in 2002, in the wake of (or perhaps in response to) the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, Yale has pumped out around 100 European World Fellows, including 11 to Germany, 9 to France, and a whopping 33 to the United Kingdom.

I guess this could be where Bond first met Felix Leiter?

Yale has also sent five Fellows each to Poland and Ukraine, three to Georgia, and even one to Belarus. But perhaps the Program’s most famous alumni is from Russia: Alexey Navalny.

Navalny was, at one time, the West’s candidate to lead the new Russia once Putin had been removed.Now he is a widely known CIA asset with no following in Russia at all. [Source: Yale]

Navalny is a cause célèbre among the Western intelligentsia. Hailed as “Russia’s True Leader” by The New York Times, Navalny has been groomed to become the person to replace Vladimir Putin once the latter has been removed from power. He is hailed in the West as Putin’s greatest political opponent despite a national approval rating of only 9%, and his party losing every election they run in.

In fact, the largest opponents to Putin and his United Russia Party are Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party (still the second largest political party in Russia) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the the Liberal Democratic Party (number three).

The National Endowment for Democracy

One of the largest producers of pro-American leaders in Europe is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — informally known to foreign policy professionals around the world as “the second CIA”.

NED was created in 1983, in the wake of the many scandals surrounding CIA covert ops in Latin America (the so-called “Dirty Wars”). It was ostensibly created as a non-profit-making organisation to promote human rights and democracy.

However, in 1991 NED’s first president, the historian Allen Weinstein, confessed to The Washington Post: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.

Like USAID, NED is deeply involved in regime change and the so-called “colour revolutions” that the US and its UK allies have engineered in the former Soviet bloc countries in eastern and central Europe.

And, like so many other American imperial organisations, NED could not wait to start its own international “Fellowship” program as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program

The NED’s Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program is yet another way to get up-and-coming “leaders” from Europe to undergo intensive brainwashing in the USA, with an aim of co-opting both Western Europe and the former Soviet territories.

Named in honor of two of NED’s principal founders, former president Ronald Reagan and the late congressman Dante Fascell, the program has hosted more than 360 fellows from nearly 100 countries since its founding in 2001.

It is interesting, however, that of those 100 countries, the only European participants come from the former Soviet bloc (and the UK, of course, because you know — MI6):

Countries i green have received NED Fellowships — and “Color Revolutions” [Source: Infogram and NED]

USAID

The US Agency for International Development is another CIA “cutout” entity that is used by the US neocons to foment regime change and otherwise “steer” the course of society in targeted foreign countries, shepherding them into the US hegemonic corral of international and transatlantic organisations and power structures.

USAID has Missions, offices, or programs in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

In short, wherever there was a “color revolution”, USAID was on the ground.

The agency’s impact on Europe and European political society — especially in the former Soviet bloc — cannot be overstated:

From 24 original [European] partner countries…22 have joined the World Trade Organization, 11 have acceded to the EU, and 12 have joined NATO…With stronger economies, USAID transition countries increased their U.S. imports from only $2 billion in 1995 to more than $10 billion annually in 2015.

USAID Democracy Fellows

This program, according to USAID, “engages committed professionals at all levels who will advance democracy building, good governance, and human rights promotion around the world”.

By concentrating on “education and training”, the USAID Fellows program prepares transatlanticist shock troops to sally forth and spread “democracy” — i.e., Americanism — in their home countries in Europe and Eurasia.

The Ford Foundation and other CIA “funding covers”

As Professor James Petras writes:

The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source.

In fact, Petras notes, a US Congressional investigation in 1976 revealed that nearly 50% of the 700 grants in the field of international activities by the principal foundations were funded by the CIA.

In Germany, the CIA-Ford Foundation alliance served to create a massive propaganda and sabotage operation in West Berlin in the 1950's.

In fact, the Ford-CIA connectionwas so blatant that India’s intel services have put the foundation “under the surveillance of intelligence agencies”.

Aside from leveraging or co-opting existing NGOs, however, the US and British intelligence services were not shy about creating their own organisations to control the political development of the transatlantic alliance members in Europe.

The Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is actually a network of organisations working in concert to promote Anglo-American hegemony. According to Wikipedia, this network was born in 1919, in the wake of the first World War, when “a small group of British and American diplomats and scholars” met at the Hotel Majestic in Paris.

They decided to create an Anglo-American organisation called “The Institute of International Affairs”, which would have offices in London and New York. Ultimately, the British and American delegates formed separate institutes, with the British developing the Royal Institute of International Affairs (known as Chatham House) in London.

This cabal decided to create “an organisation that brought diplomats, high-level government officials, and academics together with lawyers, bankers, and industrialists to engineer government policy”.

In 1921 they incorporated into the Council on Foreign Relations.

Following World War II, the CFR expanded its European operations beyond the UK’s Chatham House. In 1955, The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) was formed in Bonn, the capitol of West Germany, no doubt because Germany (West and East) played such a pivotal role in the Cold War.

The European Council on Foreign Relations was formed in 2007, in the midst of the CIA-backed “color revolutions” that were sweeping across the former Soviet states. The ECFR now has headquarters in seven different EU countries. Its Director is a man named Mark Leonard, a British national who was a protege of Tony Blair and a former “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum. Leonard also spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In short, he is a perfect transatlanticist.

In fact, the entire directorial staff of the ECFR is made up of American and European transatlanticists. The ECFR Council, chaired by the renowned globalist Carl Bildt, has grown from 50 founding members in 2007 to over 330 members from across Europe, all strategically placed to promulgate the American agenda and ensure that US interests supersede in all cases those of their own country and those of Europeans in general.

The Bilderberg Group

The “Bilderbergers” are an elite group of 100 to 150 people who, many claim, decide the fate of the world. The group is named for a modest hotel in The Netherlands where this shadowy transatlantic enclave first met in 1954.

According to Wikipedia, the Bilderberg Group was started by several elite, influential people — many stemming from European nobility — who were “concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting Atlanticism — better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues”.

Indeed, the list of the Chairmen of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group is comprised of Counts, Viscounts, Barons, etc.

The group meets every year at a secretive location. Enterprising reporters, however, are usually able to suss out where the meetings are taken place In 2023, for example, the Gray Zone reported on the Bilderberg meeting in Lisbon, which featured Henry Kissinger as well as Ukrainian diplomats as participants. The US National Security Advisor and other top Biden Administration officials were also in attendance.

While it is sometimes described as “a Cold War throwback”, the Bilderberg Group still serves to link and unite transatlantic interests in the form of market control and manipulation, lobbying and political machinations, and they are often seen to be in control of global resources in general.

Bilderberg operates under the Chatham House Rule, named for the UK version of the Council of Foreign Relations, This rule allows those who attend the meetings to use the information they glean but not to disclose who said what, according to Bilderberg’s website.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, left, a participant in the 69th Bilderberg conference in Lisbon, shakes hands with his Portuguese counterpart, João Gomes Cravinho. [Source: The Guardian | Photo: Carlos Costa/AFP/Getty Images]

The European Union is “an American project”

According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the World Economy Editor of UK-based The Daily Telegraph, “the European Union always was a CIA project”.

“It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations”.

Indeed, “declassified documents from the State Department archives showing that US intelligence funded the European movement secretly for decades”

The key CIA front was the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE), Evans-Pritchard explains. The group was founded in 1948 by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the Central Inteligence Agency. The ACUE board included Walter Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles, both CIA directors in the 1950s, and a large contingent of ex-OSS officials who moved in and out of the CIA. One declassified document shows that the ACUE provided 53.5 per cent of the European movement’s funds in 1958.

The Telegraph article details how European integration was never really a European movement. Indeed, the Franco-German reconciliation which would lead by stages to the European Community was imposed by the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson at a meeting in CIA headquarters, where the US threatened to withold Marshall Fund monies if the French did not make nice with the Germans.

“It all began in Washington,” said the chief of staff to French foreign minister Robert Schumann, whose famous Schumann Declaration led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950.

The European Union was an American project, but the US needed to have a way to control the EU like it controlled its other vassal “allies” in Asia and Latin America. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger allegedly once asked: “who do I call if I want to call Europe?”.

The answer became the European Commission and its President.

Puppet Parade: The European Commission

The European Commission is an unelected body of technocratic functionaries who serve as the tyrannical satraps of the United States. When the US says “jump”, the EC asks “how high”?

The anti-Russian sanctions are a good example. Von der Leyen wasted no time in forcing the EU member states to adopt the most draconian sanctions against Russia when the US asked her to.

This she did despite the fact that Russia was the EU’s largest trading partner and supplier of 40% of the EU’s energy.

It is no secret that von der Leyen, who is also known simply as “VDL”, is a US agent pursuing American interests. In fact, POLITICO described her in a profile piece as “Europe’s American president”.

“European Commission chief’s top-down approach has endeared her to Washington but alienated colleagues in Brussels”.

[Source: POLITICO, Octtober 2022 | Illustration by Lucas Peverill]

According to POLITICO, von der Leyen is leading a massive move within the European Commission towards a more “top-down”, powerful executive that mirrors the increasingly imperial US presidency.

In many ways, von der Leyen displays a U.S.-presidential style understanding of executive power. The Commission has been assuming more authority within the EU for some time. Under von der Leyen, this process has accelerated — with the Commission taking a lead role in big changes of direction, such as the issuance of common EU debt, the joint procurement of COVID vaccines and the introduction of Russia sanctions.

Von der Leyen is a perfect transatlanticist. Her mother’s family hails in part for Charleston, South Carolina, and she studied at the London School of Economics. Her formative years (“the first 13 years of her life”) were spent at the European School in Brussels, where she was infused with Transatlanticism. The school’s alumni include the likes of Boris Johnson and Mark Leonard (of ECFR fame).

Puppet Parade: the European traitors

Serving under, and sometimes alongside, the European Commission in the promulgation of US global interests in Europe are various so-called “leaders” in the various EU member states who are never tired of placing America’s global hegemonic interests above those of their own citizens.

Firstly, there should be no doubt that the leaders of NATO’s eastern flank, the so-called “Bucharest Nine”, are ready to sacrifice their populations in pursuit of US hegemony — not least because they all harbour deeply entrenched anti-Russian hatred and paranoia.

Led by bloodthirsty war hags like SannaMarin and Kaja Kallas, these 9 eastern European states are eager to go to all-out war with Russia, and are more than willing to bend the knee to Washington if it will allow them to hurl insults (ands maybe a few drones) at the Russian Bear.

I have covered this rabid warmongering NATO faction in this article:

NATO is a dangerous farce — and we all know it

But when we discuss the “Puppet Parade” it is more impoortant to talk about the WESTERN European members of the EU and NATO, who have been brainwashed and instructed from birth not just to love all things American, but to sugjugate the wishes of their constituents, their countrymen, and their nation to the exigencies of American Empire.

These Western Europeans are, in fact TRAITORS.

Baerbock the bomb-thrower

The most bombastic of these Western European traitors is Germany’s Annalena Baerbock, the country’s Foreign Minister, who on several occasions has expressed her intent to support Ukraine to the bitter end — even if her own constituents are against it.

Speaking at the NED (CIA) sponsored “Forum 2000” event last year, Baerbock laid down a marker:

“We stand with Ukraine as long as they need us”, Baerbock emphasised, adding, “If I give the promise to people in Ukraine, ‘We stand with you as long as you need us’, then I want to deliver, no matter what my German voters think, but I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine”.

[Source: Geopolitical Economy]

Habeck the sellout

German Economic Minister Robert Habeck is another traitor to Germany. Habeck has been a strong supporter of sanctions and seems dedicated to destroying the German economy for which he is responsible through his zealous fealty to US global strategy.

[Source: Reuters]

Habeck, like his fellow traitor Baerbock, is a favourite among the Washington transatlantic crowd. Indeed, Habeck was the first German cabinet member to visit the United States since Scholz’s election, where he was “welcomed with open arms”, according to Der Spiegel.

“Welcomed with open arms” — Robert Habeck is the darling of the DC elites [Source: Der Spiegel | Photo: Foto: Britta Pedersen / dpa]

It is no wonder that the Americans greeted Habeck so warmly, he had, after all, succeeded in opening up a huge new market to their expensive LNG (liquid natural gas), which, thanks to Habeck’s sanctions, Germans were forced to buy at FOUR TIMES THE PRICE of cheap Russian gas.

The US is giving Europe a taste of “freedom”, American style [Source: Deutsche Welle]

Scholz the bootlicker

The greatest bootlicking lackey of the US in Europe today is undoubtedly German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Scholz has proven himself to be a spineless weakling, unable to even rein in his warmongering Foreign Minister, let alone stand up to the US.

His FM Annalena Baerbock is a globalist who has espoused very strong “transatlanticist” views. This includes the need to keep the USA on top by isolating Russia and preventing Germany from relying too much on cheap Russian gas. As she left for a trip to Washington, she pronounced her fealty to the US point of view:

“The strength of the trans-Atlantic alliance is not measured in tanks and missiles but first and foremost in the way we act in concert when it matters — when basic norms of international law have to be defended and we have to stand up for our common values,” she said.

Two days later, when Scholz met with Biden, the two of them gave a joint press conference, where Biden said this:

“If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the … border of Ukraine again, then there will be … no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it,” Biden said. Asked how, given the project is in German control, Biden said: “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

Scholz, who was standing just a few feet away, said, in English: “We are closest allies and working intensely together”, he declared. “We’re absolutely united and we will not take different steps. We will do the same steps”.

Whether Scholz caved of his own accord, or whether his Foreign Minister had succeeded in pre-empting the discussion and foreclosing on any protest, the deal was struck: on Biden’s orders, and with Scholz’s acquiescence, Nord Stream would be “ended” and Germany would become a de-industrialised wasteland as a result.

Why Ukraine is the ultimate betrayal

For years, the EU has been led by people who were unwilling to oppose any sort of US criminality — even when it affected their own country’s well being. Despite some tepid resistance from France and Germany, EU NATO members ended up supporting Bush’s illegal war in Iraq, and supported the unfounded and illegal “good” war in Afghanistan.

EU traitors were always willing to step over themselves trying to prove their fealty, like the vassal lords of old who were eager to show their fealty to their king on the field of battle.

Ukraine, however, has raised this evil obeisance to an obscene level.

Aside from ruining their economies with absurd “boomerang” Russian sanctions cooked up by the idiots in Washington, these EU traitors have also agreed to provide an unlimited flow of weapons to Ukraine, thereby ensuring that they will remain completely in thrall to the US military industrial complex for years to come.

For example: every F-16 supplied to Ukraine by the Netherlands or Poland will mean a shiny new (and useless) F-35 that the country will need to buy from the US — at 3x the price.

These traitorous leaders are bent on hollowing out their own economies and emptying their own treasuries in order to enrich American arms manufacturers.

How the EU f*cked themselves

Face it, folks, Europe as a society, as an idea, as a continent, as a homeland, is disappearing. The migration crisis, the infusion of woke culture and its illiberally forced dominance over traditional European values, is destroying Europe on one side.

These traitorous US puppets are facilitating Europe’s demise by effecting massive transfers of wealth and economic resources from Europe to the USA.

In my article, “How America is WINNING in Ukraine”, I explain how the Ukraine war has served as the final straw, the ultimate catalyst for the destruction of what was an increasingly powerful European Union.

The point of this article is that the US is winning because it is inflicting a deadly strategic and existential defeat on a global economic adversary: the European Union.

Douglas Murray, in his bestselling book The Strange Death of Europe, argues that Europe is committing suicide through unlimited immigration policy, woke culture initiatives and other self-inflicted “cultural” decisions.

I argue that Europe’s now seemingly irrevocable decline is not a case of suicide — it is a case of murder, committed by the United States.

For example, the migrant problem is one that is in large part due to US foreign policy, comprised of regime change wars and wars of opportunity which invariably lead to wrecked economies, destroyed communities, and forced migration.

Secondly, America’s insistence that Europe bankrupt itself through useless weapons purchases and vastly increased military spending — combined with boomeranging anti-Russian sanctions — will ensure that no money is available for social programs and services.

In short, the US-loving European leaders are finally getting what they wanted: Europe is quickly becoming like the United States — in all the worst ways possible.

#End.

ADDITIONAL READING:

NATO is a dangerous farce — and we all know it

How America is WINNING in Ukraine

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