The public spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump at the White House last week sent shockwaves through Europe, and rightly so.
With Trump advocating for an end to the Ukraine war and signaling a hard shift in US policy, Europe finds itself caught in a geopolitical non-man’s land. It alienated China, severed economic ties with Russia and failed to anticipate Trump’s historic strategic shift.
Making matters worse, Europe disqualified itself as a reliable interlocutor after EU leaders publically admitted that the Minsk negotiations were used to buy time for Ukraine’s military buildup. In a few short years, Europe managed to isolate itself on the world stage.
Forgetting history
Henry Kissinger once said that the US has no permanent friends, only interests. The war in Ukraine is a case in point.
Starting about 30 years ago, most European countries, influenced by a neoliberal wave in the US, elected a slew of Atlanticist-minded political leaders who agreed with US neoliberal policies.
Consecutive US administrations, including Bush, Clinton and Obama, supported NATO expansion. The pretext was the spread of democracy and freedom, which obscured the geopolitical and economic reasons that can be traced to the colonial era.
The Heartland Theory, developed by British geographer Halford Mackinder in the early 20th century, argued that Western hegemony relied on a divided Eurasian continent.
Mackinder addressed the battle as one between emerging maritime powers (mostly Western European) and land-based powers (Russia, China, India). The development of railroads challenged the maritime hegemonic power of the West.
In the 1980s, American geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski updated the Heartland Theory and identified Ukraine as the pivotal nation in the battle for the Eurasian continent.
NATO’s expansion since the 1990s was orchestrated by Brzezinski’s proteges, and championed by successive US administrations.
Only by keeping the Eurasian continent divided, the reasoning was, could the maritime powers of the West remain global hegemony. China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which stretches across the Eurasian continent, also concerned the Atlanticists.
From an Atlanticist perspective, the Ukraine war accomplished its mission: cutting Europe off from the Eurasian continent. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline connecting Russia and Europe was part of the program.
But the Atlanticists could not have foreseen that Trump would so drastically change the strategic chess board.
The old adage “Follow the money” still holds true. The US is facing a growing and unsustainable national debt, a perennial budget deficit and ever-growing trade deficits. These triple deficits can only be sustained as long as the dollar is the world’s reserve currency.
The US earns trillions as the “toll booth” of the global dollar system. However, the US government has now borrowed US$36 trillion to cover its budget deficits. Interest payments on the national debt are larger than the defense budget, and rising. On the current trajectory, the US is heading for default or hyperinflation.
Trump’s priority is restoring the fiscal health of the US, and to make sure the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. It explains both his ruthless cost-cutting and why he threatens sanctions on countries that try to de-dollarize.
Deep Denial
The West was never able to convince Russia that NATO expansion to the Russian border was no threat to it. Unconcerned about the possible Russian reaction, they framed NATO expansion as an exercise of democracy and freedom. Ideology trumped pragmatism.
But the climb down will be painful. Early on in the war, Western media depicted Russia as weak and corrupt, with a dying economy and an inefficient military. Overly confident or historically naive, the West relied on three pillars that crumbled one after another:
– Sanctions to weaken or collapse the Russian economy and cause an uprising against Putin failed
– Isolating Russia from the Global South, including China and India, failed
– Inflicting strategic defeat on Russia with superior NATO weapons failed
Convinced that Russia could be brought to its knees, the West did not bother to formulate a backup plan. When it became clear Russia was not to be defeated, the West flipped the script. Russia was no longer a weak state with an impotent military, it was an existential threat to Europe.
Russia has an economy the size of Spain, less than one-third of the European population, and a quarter of the European defense budget (about $84 billion vs Europe’s $326 billion). But Europeans are now told that if they don’t defend Ukraine, they may have to fight the Russians at their own borders.
Fully in denial that the end game has begun and incapable of offering peace proposals, the Europeans are doubling down on their strategic folly. They are discussing a collective European defense fund, and building up a defense industry that does not rely on the US.
Experts predict that it could take ten years for Europe to reach military self-sufficiency, not to mention that a growing number of countries in Europe are expressing dissatisfaction with the Ukraine policy. Most EU leaders have approval ratings of under 30%.
Europe’s weakness is intrinsic and can’t be papered over. A Chinese geopolitical analyst recently described the dilemma: “Europe consists of small countries and countries that don’t realize they are small (in the context of geopolitics).”
Should the US, Russia, and China discuss a postwar architecture – a Yalta II – Europe may find itself relegated to the sidelines. When the chips are down, Europe lacks the strategic leverage that can be yielded by the “Big Three.”
Historic climb-down
The biggest challenge for the EU elite is to manage public opinion during the unavoidable climb-down from their ideological crusade.
Since 2014, when Russia regained control of Crimea, the Western media has served as the propaganda arm of the Atlanticists, some sponsored by USAID. They demonized Putin and Russia 24/7. Anyone uttering a word of critique of Zelensky or Ukraine was depicted as a Russian asset.
The non-stop barrage of anti-Russian propaganda was highly effective. A recent poll in Britain indicated 80+% in favor of boots on the ground in Ukraine. Never mind that the entire British army would fit in Wembley Stadium.
The Atlanticist virus that infected Europe in the past three decades has transformed the ideological landscape. Today, the proverbial right, like the AfD in Germany, calls for peace, while the proverbial left, including the “Greens”, are the cheerleaders for continuing the war. This historic role reversal is hardly discussed in Europe.
Europe’s Green Parties have roots in the student uprisings of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war protests in the early 1970s. The Dutch Green Party resulted from the merger of pacifists and environmentalists, yet the “Green” major of Amsterdam displayed a burned-out Russian tank in the center of Amsterdam as a war trophy.
When peace returns to Ukraine, Europe would do well to analyze the ideological role reversal that contributed to the Ukraine tragedy.
