Europe, Ukraine and the United States. The rearmament of Europe

By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Every rational person on the planet cannot help but applaud Trump’s decision to end the conflict in Ukraine and hope that it will indeed lead to the cessation of a war that has caused terrifying destruction in this country, as well as significant damage to Europe. This conflict has exposed all of us to the serious risk of a European or even global nuclear war and has caused enormous ecological devastation. A conflict that could have been avoided if regions predominantly inhabited by ethnic Russian populations had not been included in an independent Ukraine, back in 1991, if the CIA-backed coup in Kyiv in 2014 had not occurred, if the regime that took power there had not taken measures against Russian and Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine, if the Minsk agreements had been implemented, and if NATO had not continuously sought to expand, aiming to conquer the entire world and install nuclear weapons just seven minutes away from the Kremlin.

The Defeat of the West

In essence, what Trump did was acknowledge that the West has been defeated and that any insistence on unattainable goals in Ukraine harms his focus on the confrontation with China, as well as the efforts of his mentor, the Prime Minister of Israel, to swallow the entire Middle East, if possible. Moreover, the prolongation of the conflict and sanctions multiplies the incentives for anti-Western alliances, the move away from the dollar, and so on.

The West was defeated in Ukraine in the sense that it could not achieve its goals, which were the overthrow of the Putin regime, the transformation of Russia into a “banana republic” far worse than it was under Yeltsin, and its dismemberment (as explicitly pursued by US strategist Zbignew Brzezinski in his book The Grand Chessboard, back in 1997). 
 
We explained in our articles, from the very beginning of the war, in March 2022, that these goals were unattainable, that Russia cannot be defeated militarily, and that even if the West came close to achieving such a thing, we would face most probably a nuclear response from Moscow. This was indeed considered as a possibility, according to reliable sources, in the fall of 2022. 
 
We wrote also about all that in an international appeal to stop the bloodshed, an appeal we signed along with a number of intellectuals from Europe and around the world in the summer of 2022, when no one dared to open their mouth and speak anything against NATO https://www.defenddemocracy.press/stop-the-war-stop-the-sanctions-and-do-it-now/.
It took another two and a half years for Rationalism to defeat Irrationalism and for Peace to defeat War. And the cost will be enormous because, instead of the democratic or “Gaullist-type” forces in the West and the so-called Left rising up against the war, they chose, with various excuses, to cling to the arrogant dreams of global US and Western imperialism, obeying the orders of Washington hawks and acting against vital European interests.
 
They continue to say unacceptable and dangerous nonsense on the issue of Ukraine, without explaining exactly what they propose and what should be done. Do they want the war to continue until all Ukrainians are killed? Are they not bothered by the possibility of nuclear war?

And this is happening because, deep down, almost all Western elites, even many who consider themselves left-wing, believe that they belong to a superior “civilized” race destined to rule humanity and entrusted with a special role on Earth, a role that Muslims, Blacks, Chinese, Russians, and other “inferior races” certainly cannot play.

The result is a great historical necessity, i.e the need to stop this conflict between Russia and Ukraine and, indirectly, between nuclear powers, has ended up being expressed by the US Far Right, and humanity will likely pay a very high price for this. We already have serious examples of this with the new American President’s provocative disdain for any notion of international law, his threats against the Palestinians, Greenland, Canada, Panama, and even the Earth’s climate, and the alarming similarities that the Russian Foreign Minister himself noted between the slogan “America First” and Hitler’s slogan “Germany Above All.” But also, with the willingness to cut all social spending if possible and even stop collecting scientific data on atmospheric pollution, lest his billionaire friends be inconvenienced. The final result will be a much harsher, more dangerous, and destructive capitalism and imperialism. The hope of some and the fear of others that he will dismantle NATO can only be considered a joke, destined to shock Europeans and to confuse everybody. 

Europe in Shock

Having been deeply involved, at the behest of Washington, in a completely destructive policy, European political leaders, with very few exceptions, find it extremely difficult to abandon it, rightly perceiving that it would be political suicide for them. In France, there is suddenly an almost warlike atmosphere that combines the ridiculous with the dangerous, with President Macron seemingly ready to launch a campaign to save Ukraine! Macron is in a “war frenzy”. 

France, or rather its elites, believe it embodies a special mission since the time of the French Revolution. And indeed, France has played a huge role in European history and culture, although in military matters, I don’t recall it winning any battles after Austerlitz. France wanted to imagine that it is doing the same today, fulfilling its historical mission by supposedly showing solidarity with the Ukrainians facing the barbaric Russians. In reality, what it actually did, however, was to destroy the Ukrainians on behalf of the extrremist imperialist policies of the United States and the CIA hawks. The France of Sarkozy, Hollande, and Macron has nothing to do with the France of de Gaulle, nor even with the France of Chirac and Villepin. Since the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, its role in the destruction of Libya and its return to NATO, France ended a wretched colony of America following obediently Zionist policies.  The abrupt change in American policy risks now exposing the French elite and proving that they are almost nothing in international relations. That is why they are reacting with hysteria and panic.

We hope, however, that the opponents of peace are not in a position to undermine Trump’s policy because if his effort to stop the war here fails, the risk of a nuclear conflagration will increase. We hope that all these stories of Macron will prove to be nothing more than frivolous nonsense incapable of being realized, yet another proof of the infantile level of political thought among today’s European leaders.

Rearming Europe

But even if this catastrophe is avoided, a new one is being prepared. The European Union is preparing to destroy what remains of the European social state, the greatest social achievement of humanity, along with its Soviet counterpart, to halt any effort to address pollution, and to destroy the EU’s rudimentary cohesion policies in order to rearm massively, possibly with nuclear weapons, based on the ridiculous propagandistic claim that Russia, the same Russia that dissolved the Warsaw Pact and the USSR, constitutes a military threat and is preparing to invade Moldova, Romania, and then all the rest.

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Instead of seeking a drastic reduction of conventional and nuclear weapons in Europe, as agreed 35 years ago, so that the vast funds could be directed to the enormous social, developmental, and ecological needs, instead of immediately lifting sanctions on Russia and starting to import cheaper and more environmentally friendly Russian natural gas (compared to American LNG), the incoherent and warmongering leadership of the EU is oriented towards a monstrous increase in military spending to “appease” the savage new President of the United States. If it does so, the most likely result is to accelerate the economic crisis that already threatens Europe.

In other words, it negates the very reasons for which the peoples of Europe supported the unification project.

Europe does not need more weapons.  It needs more social and ecological spending, more public investments, investments in infrastructure that will be threatened with complete collapse due to climate change, etc., etc. They need a bold, radical reform of the Union itself and a complete and radical turn from the policy of militarism and imperialism, which the EU follows in both Ukraine and Palestine, to a policy of peace. Europe must be transformed from a lackey of the Americans into a beacon of peace and culture in a “multipolar” world, following in the footsteps of Charles de Gaulle, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, and Andreas Papandreou.

For now, it is moving in the opposite direction.