How America controls Europe

Plus: The Bank of England's class war against workers

Hi everyone, I’ve got two new pieces fresh from the oven. In my first article, “How America control Europe”, published in Compact, I reflect on Western Europe’s transformation into an American protectorate administered from Brussels — and how this explains the masochistic policies pursued by the EU vis-à-vis Russia-Ukraine, and its glaring silence over America’s (glaringly obvious) role in the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. Here’s an excerpt:

Perhaps more surprisingly, another institution through which the United States exercises its influence over Western Europe is the European Union. This is the result of long-standing institutional linkages developed out of Washington’s long-standing support for the cause of European integration—which derived from the assumption that exercising control over a single supranational “government” would be easier than dealing with dozens of national governments.

The Brussels bubble’s greater reliance on English-language media is another factor accounting for why the European Commission and the rest of the EU establishment has always tended to be even more aligned with the United States than national governments. This alignment has become embarrassingly apparent under the presidency of Ursula von der Leyen, who was approvingly dubbed “Europe’s American president” by Politico late last year. Over the years, von der Leyen has worked tirelessly to keep Brussels committed to Washington’s hawkish stance toward Russia and China.

The “mutually reinforcing roles” (in the words of the January 2023 EU-NATO joint declaration) of NATO and the European Union are particularly evident in the case of eurozone countries. By ceding their currency-issuing powers to the European Central Bank, euro area nations have put themselves in a position where they have little choice but to go along with policies dictated by the European Union, which has shown no qualms about engaging in financial and monetary blackmail to force governments to adhere to its agenda. Those same pressures could easily be applied to any eurozone country that attempted to defy NATO policy on Ukraine. It is no coincidence that the only EU and NATO member country that has dared to defy those institutions’ policies is Hungary, which maintains its own currency.

You can read the piece here.

Meanwhile, for UnHerd, I’ve written about the Bank of England’s latest interest rate rise and why it has little to do with “fighting inflation” — and much to do with crushing workers by crashing the economy. Here’s an excerpt:

It seems almost inevitable that the Bank of England’s recent decision to raise interest rates for the 13th consecutive time since the end of 2021 will push the UK economy into recession by the end of the year. Simply put, raising interest rates means that homeowners have to devote a bigger chunk of their disposable incomes (as much as 20%, according to estimates) to paying back their mortgages, potentially pushing 1.2 million households into insolvency. Renters, too, are likely to see their payments increase as buy-to-let landlords pass on higher mortgage repayments. Meanwhile, businesses will fail, workers will be laid off, and, with less money being channelled into the economy, the latter will ground to a halt.

What’s worse, this catastrophic scenario isn’t the result of the Bank’s economists not realising the consequences of their actions; among Britain’s policymaking elite, it’s the desired outcome. As J.P. Morgan’s Karen Ward, who is also an external adviser to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, said: “The difficulty for the Bank of England is they have to create a recession. They have to create uncertainty and frailty.” Asked if he agreed with the idea of the central bank doing whatever was needed to bring down inflation, even if that could cause a recession, Hunt himself responded in the affirmative.

In this, however, he was merely channelling Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, who said: “We’re not desiring a recession. But we will do what is necessary to bring inflation down to target” — even if that means causing a recession. Rishi Sunak has also expressed unwavering support for the Bank’s work, though no-one is more explicit than the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf, who went so far as to call for an engineered recession: “The question is not whether there will be a recession; it is rather whether there needs to be one, if the spiral is to be halted. The plausible view is that the answer to the latter part of this question is ‘yes’.”

If the idea of wealthy politicians, journalists and bankers (Bailey earns $575,000 a year) casually talking about the need to plunge millions of people into poverty makes your blood boil, good for you: you’re still human. But there is, of course, a logic to their madness.

Keep reading here.

I hope you enjoy the articles and I’m always happy to receive feedback — or even fierce criticism!

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Best regards,

Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

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