NATO is a Farce, Part 7: Europe's New Authoritarianism
The wave of militarism sweeping across Europe is not supported by the people, and only an authoritarian EU regime can make it happen.
Enforcing Militarism Through Authoritarianism
While NATO leaders are chomping at the bit to go to war with Russia, their constituents are far less enthusiastic.
A recent white paper from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) raises serious doubts about NATO’s capability to fight a protracted conventional conflict with Russia:
Any permutation of a serious Russia-NATO conflict that does not end quickly will become a clash of not just armies, but societies. This becomes a competition in resilience and preparedness, industrial capacity and supply chains, magazine depth, logistics, mass, resources, and especially the “will to fight.”
But the most pro-war leaders in Europe are proving to be EXTREMELY unpopular. Their respective parties were soundly defeated in the recent round of European parliamentary elections.
For example, the party of France’s Emmanuel was roundly defeated in the EU Parliament elections, prompting Macron to call for a snap election of the national assembly. The French President currently has an approval rating of only 36%.
Moreover, in those snap elections, Macron’s centrist/globalist neoliberal party came in a distant third behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left and Marine Le Pen’s far Right parties.
Macron, together with Estonia’s Kaja Kallas, represents an “Axis of War” within the EU, but Kallas is faring even worse then the French President in her own home country. She currently has an approval rating of only 16% among Estonian voters — the lowest rating of any PM since the poll began, and a poll in December showed that 71% of Estonians polled wanted her to resign.
Those voters will get their wish when Kallas ascends to her new (appointed) post as EU High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security in Brussels this summer.
Authoritarianism means “failing upward”
Indeed, the EU and its various internal and related globalist entities have provided many a “lifeline” to otherwise failing and unpopular European politicians.
It seems that if you are willing to ignore the will of your own constituents in order to promote the agenda of the globalist elite, there will always be a cushy international — or supranational — job waiting for you when you inevitably get turfed out by your angry voters.
Estonia’s Kaja Kallas is an example of this. Her approval rating in Estonia is now at a miserable 16% — the lowest rating ever recorded since the poll began. In December, 71% of Estonians polled wanted her to resign.
Her appointment to the European Commission will give those voters their wish.
Ursula von der Leyen is another egregious case in point. While she served as Germany’s Defence Minister, her office was ridden with scandals concerning mismanagement, corruption, misappropriation and other misdeeds.
When she was nominated to become President of the European Commission, the German SPD party presented the EU with a detailed paper showing Von der Leyen’s “policy and leadership failures as defence minister, highlighting a scandal over the awarding of contracts, her alienation of the army top brass and gaps in the military.”
There were no repercussions, no investigations, no actions at all. Von der Leyen became EC President anyway.
Scandal-ridden leadership
The Brussels Signal news outlet expressed what most European think of the process of choosing EU leadership. “Three top jobs, three scandals”, their headline screams. The article goes on to lament the lack of transparency and the sheer inevitability of the choices for the three most influential positions in the EU. It also covers the scandals that plague all three “top job” recipients.
“To little surprise, the leaders of the 27 Member States have decided Ursula von der Leyen will be the candidate for President of the European Commission, that António Costa will replace Charles Michel at the head of the Council and Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas will give up the role to take the reins as the EU’s foreign policy chief.”
Authoritarianism also means hypocrisy on display
Despite her dodgy background, Ursula von der Leyen is ever ready to take the high road of righteousness in the face of a perceived adversary.
When she addressed the European Parliament in 2022, she cast the conflict in Ukraine in sweeping, dramatic terms:
“This is about autocracy against democracy. And I stand here with the conviction that with courage and solidarity, Putin will fail and Europe will prevail,” she added, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.”
Some — like me — were quick to point out the cynical mendacity behind Von der Leyen’s remarks.
She is, after all, a President who is herself UNELECTED.
Indeed, ALL members of the European Commission, the EU’s ruling body, are unelected. Rather, they are appointed by the European Council, which is composed of the 27 heads of the various EU member states.
The myth of EU “democracy”
Von der Leyen personally works hard to perpetuate the MYTH that the European Commission is somehow “democratic”. Moreover, the mainstream media plays along, referring to her “making a bid” for the position and “kicking off her campaign” and so on, playing on the usual aspects of an actual electoral process.
As the date of her mandate’s renewal approached, VDL even produced campaign adverts that explained “why I am running”. This was supported by a — wholly superfluous — Google ad campaign buy of €70,000, which ran afoul of EU law and had to be pulled.
This Hanseatic huckster even put up a “Ursula 2004” campaign website:
BUT HERE’S THE THING: She is not really “running” for anything.
She is often touted as the “lead candidate” for the EC Presidency, the “candidate“’” of the European People’s Party (EPP), which is itself a fraud. It is not a true political party per se. Rather, it is an amalgam of centre-right groups, “the largest in the European Parliament, dominated by German Christian Democrats, with a fair smattering of Poles and Romanians”.
But as the Financial Times explained, the idea of her being a party candidate is a total FARCE:
“Despite being the EPP’s figurehead, she’s not on the ballot. Her campaign will begin on June 10 with the lobbying of leaders and MEPs. They, not ordinary voters, have the power to grant her a second term.The “lead candidate” principle was introduced in 2014 in an attempt to lend credibility to the idea that voters have a role in choosing the commission.”
In short, she will be appointed by a bunch of politicians, and her appointment will be rubber-stamped by another bunch of politicians in the European Parliament.
Her website, her campaign ads, are all just propaganda, to imply that she, like Biden, Macron or Putin, is a President popularly elected by “the people” — when in fact she is a simple autocratic stooge who pursues an agenda set by the Western “powers that be”.
The people of the European Union have no input as to who their “President” will be.
As mentioned above, when I wrote my second instalment in this NATO series (“NATO is a Farce, Part 2: The Puppet Parade”), Ursula von der Leyen provided me with the perfect and most potent example of the despicable, incompetent and traitorous European leaders who are willing to lead their fellow Europeans down the road to perdition in return for being an unelected but “player” in the US’s transatlantic power game.
As POLITICO reported, some national leaders like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni are speaking out against this autocratic process:
“There are those who argue that citizens are not wise enough to take certain decisions and that oligarchy is the only acceptable form of democracy, but I disagree,” Meloni said as she addressed the Italian parliament on June 26.
Meloni was speaking one day after six EU leaders from centrist parties announced that Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen, Portugal’s António Costa, and Estonia’s Kaja Kallas should get the most senior positions at the European Commission, European Council and foreign policy service, respectively.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is also opposed to the “selection” process used to select the most important leaders of the European Union.
He criticised the coalition formed by the largest political groupings — the European People’s Party, Social Democrats, and Liberals — for appointing EU leadership, calling it “a coalition of lies and deception”.
“This is a blatant power grab, and we have no reason to support such an abuse of power,” PM Orbán said.
The COVID response tore the mask off the EC
Despite their pitiful attempts to trick EU citizens into thinking that the European Union government is somehow “democratic”, more and more people are realising how autocratic and authoritarian it is. Nowhere was this more evident than how the bloc dealt with the COVID pandemic.
Aided by highly advanced national health care systems, the EU was able to quickly and decisively mandate and deliver the vaccines, as well as impose “digital IDs” and “vaccine passports”.
It was Big Brother on steroids, truly Orwellian. But the COVID pandemic allowed the EU to flex its authoritarian muscles and develop new mechanisms of imposing control over a multinational, multi-ethnic, multilingual population of 450 million people.
The next objective: defeat Russia at any cost
The militaristic authoritarianism emerging in the European Union is being put to a test in the case of the Ukraine conflict and the greater “war” between NATO and Russia.
In this arena, there is no doubt that the European Union is “feeling its oats”, and seems ever more prepared to go its own way. Nowhere is that newfound drive for independence more obvious than when it comes to Ukraine.
For the United States, as I have described above, the conflict in Ukraine is NOT an existential one — in fact, the comments coming out of Washington are becoming more and more gloomy, as US officials seem to have come to terms with the fact that Ukraine simply cannot win the war against a fully mobilised Russian Federation. Even the British have come around to the notion that Ukraine is going to lose.
Despite public comments, the US Administration has told its allies privately that Ukraine will never join NATO.
According to a RAND Corporation report, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley first briefed President Joe Biden on Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine in October 2021.
Milley reportedly kept a list of “U.S. interests and strategic objectives” in the crisis: “№1” was “Don’t have a kinetic conflict between the US military and NATO with Russia.” The second, closely related, was “contain war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine”.
Although the US has invested billions in the war, and has repeatedly crossed its own red lines in terms of the weapons systems it supplies to Kiev, the Americans remain committed to following Milley’s two primary objectives.
But increasingly it appears that the US objectives of “containing” the conflict are simply not acceptable to the European war-hawks.
For European leaders, Russia poses an existential threat that must be soundly defeated, and Ukraine is a sacred bastion of democracy that must be saved “at all costs”, while Putin is an imperialistic megalomaniac who represents the reincarnation of both Hitler and Stalin combined.
“Ukraine cannot lose, Putin cannot win”
For Europeans like Kallas, Von der Leyen, Borrell, Baerbock and Macron, the line has been drawn: Ukraine cannot be allowed to lose, and Putin cannot be allowed to “get away with it”.
These warmongering Europeans seem to really believe that (a) Russia is the USSR, and (b) Putin really will march to the English Channel if he is “allowed to win” in Ukraine.
Indeed, if one is to believe the rhetoric coming out of Brussels as well as many EU capitols, the only acceptable outcome will be a complete Ukrainian victory and an utterly defeated — if not dead — Vladimir Putin.
“Everything is on the table”
“We are not ruling out different things,” Kaja Kallas told POLITICO in February. “Because all the countries have understood that we have to do everything so that Ukraine wins and Russia loses this war.”
It now seems obvious that the Europeans are working on a different scenarios to make that happen, plans that may well “force” the US to abandon its strategic objectives and accept a widening of the war across the European continent.
Fast-tracking Ukraine into the European Union
One possible EU plan seems to be based on bringing Ukraine into the European Union as quickly as possible. In an unprecedented move, the EU started accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova on June 25, 2024, just a little over 2 years after having asked to join.
This is in stark contrast with Balkan states like North Macedonia, a NATO member who had to wait 18 years to start such talks.
It is unknown how long the accession talks will last, but the fact that Ukraine is already in the process, despite the ongoing conflict with Russia, is significant — and unprecedented.
It also gives the control of Ukraine’s Western integration completely to Brussels, bypassing Washington.
The purpose is clear: PROVOKE RUSSIA.
Of course, there are other factors in play as well. Now that Ukraine has a direct relationship with the EU, a case for direct military intervention in the Russia-Ukraine conflict under the auspices of the European Union (and not NATO) could more easily be made.
Internal mechanisms are already in place. Ukraine’s delegation was led in Luxembourg by the country’s “Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration”, Olha Stefanishyna. That such an office, and such a title, even exist belies an already accelerated pace of European integration for Ukraine.
Are the Europeans stupid? Or just crazy?
I ask this question in all seriousness, as I myself honestly do not know the answer.
In my article, “How the West Descended Into Idiocy”, I chose “stupid”. I posited that the Western elites were “high on their own supply” and were suffering from ignorance and stupidity by actually believing their own propaganda.
How the West Descended Into Idiocy
In their propaganda war with Russia, the US and its allies have been getting high on their own supply — and its killing…euroyankeeblog.medium.com
But that was a year ago, before we knew that Russia was provoked by NATO expansion, that the war actually started in 2014, that the West had deliberately sabotaged the Minsk Accords, and that, far from taking over all of Ukraine, Putin wanted to make peace from the very beginning.
It was before we saw Zelensky cancel elections and ban even more opposition parties.
Knowing what we do now, how can any sane person hold these extremely aggressive, warlike views that the Europeans do?
Cognitive dissonance
As I explained in my post last year, people who demonise Putin and Russia suffer from cognitive dissonance. Specifically, their Russophobia is irrational because it rests on two fundamental, but also fundamentally incompatible, precepts:
First, Russia is a globe-straddling superpower that is poised to roll across Europe like the Mongol hordes, sweeping all armies and peoples before it. Ukraine is just the beginning. Putin is a modern day Hitler who is somehow also a modern day Peter the Great and/or Stalin and hell-bent on reconstituting the Russian Empire and/or the Soviet Union.
Second, Russia is a socioeconomically retarded backwater, a third world country with no modern industrial or technological capacity, a country running out of everything, with incompetent leadership and cowardly soldiers who run away at the first sign of a fight, and Russia is nothing but “a gas station masquerading as a country”, as John McCain said, and Putin is “a petty thug”, a weak leader who can only make life difficult for his immediate neighbors, as Barack Obama said. Russia cannot even win in Ukraine.
These two diametrically opposed views of Russia are necessary for the warmongering Neocons in the West — including those in Europe — to build and sustain a conflict designed to “strategically defeat” Russia and overthrow Vladimir Putin.
Just look at Ursula von der Leyen. In late 2022 she claimed the Russian economy was “in tatters” and that Russians were “forced to take chips out of washing machines” to use in their tanks and weapons.
Ands yet now she claims that this “tattered economy” poses an existential threat to Europe?
The same with Kallas and her fellow warmongers. Do they not KNOW about Putin’s peace efforts and the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in Istanbul in 2022?
Do they not KNOW about the Istanbul Communique, outlining the very reasonable, pro-Ukrainian peace terms — which has even been published by The New York Times?
Do they not KNOW that those efforts were deliberately sabotaged not by Putin but by Boris Johnson and the US?
Do they not KNOW that the Russian incursion in 2022, was NOT unprovoked, but rather deliberately provoked and precipitated by the West?
Do they not KNOW that Victoria Nuland and the US State Department organised a violent coup d’état in Kiev in order to install a pro-Western, virulently anti-Russian puppet regime?
Surely these high ranking EU officials must have access to intelligence services who know what really happened, who know what the true situation is.
So why do they make Ukraine into such a “do or die” proposition? Why is this conflict “existential”?
Why do they need to lionise and praise an utterly corrupt and criminal — even autocratic — Ukrainian regime as a “shining democracy”?
What’s in it for THEM?
The answer is — as with so many wars — FINANCIAL GAIN.
The European Union wants to create not just a political supranational structure, but also a financial one. Brussels wants to be able to tax and raise revenue directly, without relying on contributions, funding or support from the individual EU member states — or the United States, for that matter.
NEXT UP: NATO is a Farce, Part 8: Europe Gets its Own Military Industrial Complex
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Great post, but seriously, who did not know since 2014 that the US had staged a coup in Ukraine? This was not exactly a secret. Every leftist in the US knew that. We had photos of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar in Ukraine posing with the Azov Battalion. We had the leak of the Victoria Nuland conversation revealing the coup many years ago.