Europe’s self-destruction

How should we make sense of Europe’s seemingly self-destructive posture? Four interrelated dimensions can help explain its leaders’ stance: psychological, political, strategic and transatlantic

This article was originally published in the April edition of the TI Observer, the magazine of the Beijing-based Taihe Institute.

---

For outsiders, European politics can be difficult to decipher these days — and nowhere is this more evident than in the continent’s response to the evolving situation in Ukraine. Since Donald Trump’s political resurgence and his initiative to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, European leaders have acted in ways that seem to defy the basic logic of international relations — particularly realism, which holds that states act primarily to advance their own strategic interests.

Rather than support diplomatic efforts to end the war, European leaders have appeared intent on derailing Trump’s peace overtures, undermining negotiations and prolonging the conflict. From the standpoint of Europe’s core interests, this is not just puzzling — it’s irrational. The war in Ukraine, better described as a NATO-Russia proxy conflict, has inflicted immense economic damage on European industries and households, while dramatically escalating security risks across the continent. One might argue, of course, that Europe’s involvement in the war was misguided from the start — the result of hubris and strategic miscalculation, including the erroneous belief that Russia would suffer swift economic collapse and military defeat.

However, whatever the rationale behind Europe’s initial response to the war, one might expect that, in light of its consequences, European leaders would eagerly seize any viable path toward peace — and with it, the chance to restore diplomatic ties and economic cooperation with Russia. Instead, they have responded with alarm to the “threat” of peace. Far from welcoming the opportunity, they have doubled down: pledging indefinite financial and military support to Ukraine, and announcing an unprecedented rearmament plan that suggests Europe is preparing for a long-term militarised standoff with Russia, even in the event of a negotiated settlement.

How should we make sense of this seemingly self-destructive posture? This behaviour may appear irrational when judged against the backdrop of Europe’s general or objective interests — but it becomes more intelligible when viewed through the lens of its leaders’ interests. Four interrelated dimensions can help explain their position: psychological, political, strategic and transatlantic.

From a psychological perspective, European leaders have become increasingly detached from reality. The widening gap between their initial expectations and the war’s actual trajectory has created a kind of cognitive dissonance, leading them to adopt ever more delusional narratives — including alarmist calls to prepare for an all-out war with Russia. This disconnect is not merely rhetorical; it reveals a deeper unease as their worldview collides with uncomfortable facts on the ground.

Psychology also offers insight into Europe’s reaction to Trump. To the extent that Washington has always viewed NATO as a way to ensure Europe’s strategic subordination, the president’s threat to reduce US commitments to the alliance could present an occasion for Europe to redefine itself as an autonomous actor. The problem is that Europe has been locked in a subordinate relationship to America for so long that now that Trump threatens to destabilise its historic security dependence, Europe is unable to seize this opportunity; instead, it is attempting to replicate the US’s aggressive foreign policy — to unconsciously “become” America.

This is why, after willingly sacrificing their own interests on the altar of US hegemony, they are now posturing as the last defenders of the very policies that rendered them irrelevant in the first place. This is less a display of real conviction than a psychological reflex — a feeble attempt to mask the humiliation of being exposed by their patron as mere vassals, a hollow charade of “autonomy”.

Beyond the psychological and symbolic, more pragmatic calculations are also at play. For the current generation of European leaders, admitting failure in Ukraine would amount to political suicide — especially given the immense economic costs borne by their own populations. The war has become a kind of existential justification for their rule. Without it, their failures would stand exposed. At a time when establishment parties are under growing pressure from “populist” movements and parties, this is a vulnerability they cannot afford. Ending the war would also require acknowledging that NATO’s disregard for Russian security concerns played a role in igniting the conflict — a move that would undermine the dominant narrative of Russian aggression and implicate Europe’s own strategic missteps.

Faced with these dilemmas, European leaders have chosen to entrench their position. The continuation of the conflict — and the maintenance of a hostile posture toward Russia — not only provides them with a short-term political lifeline, but also serves as a pretext to consolidate power at home, suppress dissent and pre-empt future political challenges. What may appear on the surface as strategic incoherence, reflects, on closer inspection, a desperate attempt to manage internal decay by projecting strength abroad.

Throughout history, governments have often exaggerated, inflated or outright fabricated external threats for domestic political purposes — a strategy that serves multiple objectives, from uniting the population and silencing dissent to justifying increased military spending and expanding state power. This certainly applies to what we are currently witnessing in Europe. In economic terms, there is the hope that increased defence production may help revive Europe’s anaemic economies — a crude form of military Keynesianism. It’s hardly surprising, in this respect, that the country leading the remilitarisation charge is Germany, whose economy has been the hardest hit by the war in Ukraine.

Europe’s remilitarisation plans will no doubt be a boon to the continent’s military-industrial complex, which is already posting record gains, but they are unlikely to trickle down to ordinary Europeans, especially as more spending on defence will inevitably mean cutbacks in other areas, such as pensions, health and social security systems. Janan Ganesh, a columnist for the Financial Times, expressed the underlying logic: “Europe must trim its welfare state to build a warfare state”.

That said, while economic factors certainly play a role, the true objectives of Europe’s rearmament programme are arguably not economic — but political. Over the past 15 years, the European Union has evolved into an increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic edifice. Especially under von der Leyen, the European Commission has used crisis after crisis to increase its influence over areas of competence that had previously been considered the preserve of national governments — from financial budgets and health policy to foreign affairs and defence — at the expense of democratic control and accountability.

During the past three years, Europe has become increasingly militarised, as von der Leyen seized on the Ukraine crisis to place herself at the lead of the bloc’s response, effectively transforming the Commission, and the EU as a whole, into an extended arm of NATO. Now, under the guise of the “Russian threat”, von der Leyen intends to dramatically accelerate this process of centralisation of the bloc’s politics. She has already proposed, for instance, purchasing weapons collectively on behalf of EU member states — following the same “I buy, you pay” model used for the Covid-19 vaccine procurement. This would effectively give the Commission control over the entire military-industrial complex of EU countries — the latest in a long list of institutional coups spearheaded by Brussels.

This is about more than just ramping up the production of weapons. Brussels is pursuing a comprehensive, society-wide militarisation. This ambition is reflected in the increasingly strict enforcement of EU-NATO foreign policy — from the threats and pressure used to coerce unaligned leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Roberto Fico in Slovakia into compliance to the outright banning of political candidates who are critical of the EU and NATO, as witnessed in Romania.

In the years ahead, this militarised approach is set to become the dominant paradigm in Europe, as all spheres of life — political, economic, social, cultural and scientific — will be subordinated to the alleged goal of national, or rather supranational, security. This will be used to justify increasingly repressive and authoritarian policies, with the threat of “Russian interference” invoked as a catch-all pretext for everything from online censorship to the suspension of fundamental civil liberties — as well as, of course, the further centralisation and verticalisation of EU authority — especially given the inevitable backlash these policies are bound to generate. In other words, the “Russian threat” will serve as a last-ditch effort to save the EU project.

Lastly, there is the transatlantic dimension. It would be a mistake to view the current transatlantic rift solely through the lens of the diverging interests of the European and American leaderships. Beyond these differences, there may be deeper dynamics at play. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the Europeans may be, on some level, coordinating with the US Democratic establishment and the liberal-globalist faction of the US permanent state — the web of entrenched interests spanning the American bureaucracy, security state and military-industrial complex. These networks, which are still active despite Trump’s declared “war on the deep state”, have a shared interest in derailing peace talks and disrupting Trump’s presidency.

In other words, what on the surface appears to be a clash between Europe and the US may actually be, in a more fundamental sense, a struggle between different factions of the US empire — and, to a large degree, within the US establishment itself — waged through European proxies. After all, many of today’s European leaders have strong connections to these networks.

The US has, of course, a long history of political influence in Europe. Over the decades, it has built strong institutional ties with the state apparatuses of Western European countries, particularly among their defence and intelligence services. Additionally, the US establishment exercises considerable influence over European public discourse through mainstream English-language media outlets and think tanks. These think tanks, such as the German Marshall Fund, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council, help shape the political narratives that dominate European society — and indeed today are at the forefront of pushing the idea that “no agreement is better than a bad one”.

Its origins lie in the Cold War, with the US actively promoting European integration as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. In other words, the EU, especially through its earlier iterations, has always been wedded to Atlanticism, and this has only intensified post-Cold War. This is why the EU’s technocratic establishment — specifically the European Commission — has historically been more aligned with America than European national governments. Ursula von der Leyen, dubbed “Europe’s American president”, is a prime example of this alignment, working tirelessly to maintain the EU’s commitment to America’s hawkish geopolitical strategy, particularly regarding Russia and Ukraine.

A key tool in this alliance has always been NATO, which today plays a key role in countering Trump’s efforts to shift the US approach towards Russia. In this context, Europe’s stance, though ostensibly aimed at Trump, stems from the recognition that elements within the US ruling class strongly oppose Trump’s overtures to Putin, harbour deep animosity toward Russia and view the President’s threats to disengage from NATO and undermine other pillars of the post-war order as a strategic challenge to the systems that have upheld American hegemony for decades.

This connection could possibly explain the “irrational” policies of certain European leaders, at least from the perspective of Europe’s objective interests — first, their blind support of the US-led proxy war in Ukraine, and now their insistence on continuing the war at all costs. According to this telling, the objectives of the transatlantic establishment appear quite clear: to demonise Trump, portraying him as a “Putin appeaser”; and to stoke European anxieties over their military vulnerability, including by inflating the Russian threat, in order to push the public into accepting increased defence spending and the continuation of the war for as long as possible.

Neither side in this transatlantic civil war truly has Europe’s interests at heart. The Trumpian faction deems Europe as an economic rival, with Trump himself repeatedly criticising the EU, calling it an “atrocity” designed to “screw” America — and is now considering imposing hefty tariffs on Europe. On the other hand, the liberal-globalist faction views Europe as a critical front in the proxy war against Russia.

In this context, a scenario in which Europeans prolong the war in Ukraine — at least in the short term — could be seen as a compromise between the two factions. The US can extricate itself from the Ukrainian quagmire while pursuing rapprochement with Russia and shifting its focus to China and the Asia-Pacific, all while placing the blame for the failure to achieve peace squarely on Zelensky and the Europeans.

Meanwhile, Europe’s continued involvement in the war ensures its ongoing economic and geopolitical separation from Russia, and reinforces its continued economic dependence on the US — especially in the context of its defence spending hike, much of which would flow to the US military-industrial complex. At the same time, the European representatives of the liberal-globalist establishment would continue to use the Russian threat to entrench their power. Overall, this arrangement could be seen as acceptable by both sides. In other words, as the geopolitical researcher Brian Berletic has suggested, what is often presented in the media as an unprecedented “transatlantic rift” may, in fact, be more of a “division of labour” in which the Europeans maintain the pressure on Russia while the US turns its attention to China.

What emerges from this analysis is a picture of a European political class gripped by a profound crisis of legitimacy, trapped between external pressures and internal decay. Far from acting in the rational, strategic interests of their nations, Europe’s leaders appear increasingly beholden to transatlantic power structures, domestic political imperatives and psychological reflexes shaped by decades of dependency and denial. Their response to the Ukraine war — and to Trump’s renewed presence on the global stage — reflects less a coherent geopolitical strategy than a frantic attempt to preserve a crumbling order by any means necessary.

In this context, Europe’s actions are not simply misguided; they are symptomatic of a deeper dysfunction at the heart of the EU project itself. The militarisation of society, the erosion of democratic norms, the consolidation of technocratic power and the suppression of dissent are not temporary wartime measures — they are the contours of a new political paradigm, one born of fear, dependency and institutional inertia. Cloaked in the language of security and values, Europe’s leaders are not defending the continent — they are entrenching its subordination, both to Washington’s fading hegemony and to their own failing regimes.

---

Putting out high-quality journalism requires constant research, most of which goes unpaid, so if you appreciate my writing please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you haven’t already. Aside from a fuzzy feeling inside of you, you’ll get access to exclusive articles and commentary.

Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)