How the West was lost

A conversation about the disaster that is the European project, US domination of geopolitics, the West’s destruction of Ukraine, and much more!

The other day I had a great free-wheeling discussion with Steven D. Grumbine on the Real Progressives’ Macro ‘n Chill podcast. We spoke about everything: the EU’s role in constraining democracy in Europe, the US role in European geopolitics, the importance of economic and industrial sovereignty, the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, the petrodollar system, the West’s destruction of Ukraine, the MMT community’s reluctance to speak out on geopolitics, and much more!

You may listen to the whole conversation here:

Here’s the transcript of an excerpt from out talk:

I’ve been wondering [about Europe’s subordinate relationship to the US] for many years, but especially over the past two years. What we’ve seen in Europe has been astonishing. The complete vassalisation of Europe, its subordination to America’s geopolitical strategy and interests, is nothing short of suicidal.

You know, when it comes to Ukraine, there’s a case to be made for the fact that in the short term, at least, America is benefiting, in many ways, from this conflict —a conflict that, in my opinion, the US deliberately stoked. That’s my reading of the entire history leading up to Russia’s invasion.

It is that America deliberately wanted a war in Ukraine, it wanted to destabilise Ukraine, hoping to get Russia to invade, in order to create the situation that we have seen unfolding over the past two years. Because it knew that it had a lot to benefit from that, at least in the short term.

The long-term geopolitical implications will be a disaster for America too. But this has to do with the short sightedness of the US imperial machinery and its various appendages. In the short term, however, there’s no doubt that America has benefited from this conflict, in economic terms, by selling its own liquefied natural gas to Europe in place of Russian gas, at much higher prices than what Europe was paying for Russian gas. It benefited in military terms, in the sense of boosting its own military-industrial complex, one of the main aims of any war fought by America.

But it’s also succeeded in essentially revamping NATO. People were starting to question reasons for its existence. It resuscitated NATO up from the ashes, allowing the US to re-establish this military hegemony over Europe, to the extent that NATO is not an alliance among equals, it’s a tool that the US has always used to control Europe.

And of course, this has geopolitical ramifications, and that is that America, thanks to this conflict, has unquestionably reasserted its dominance over Europe. This came at the cost of weakening Europe economically, politically, geopolitically — this was an explicit aim of this war, in my opinion.

It’s been “mission accomplished” for America in this respect. It’s been an incredibly successful plan. And I think this has to do with the fact that US geostrategists and military planners, they understand that America’s hegemony is weakening at the global level. This is why they’re stoking all these conflicts, pretty much on every continent on the planet.

It’s a way of slowing down this geopolitical transition that they understand is inevitable, to some extent. They’re trying to slow it down, they may hope of stopping it, but they realise that it’s happening. And in this context, re-establishing your control over the vassals is absolutely fundamental. America’s control over much of the world is severely weakened — not just in terms of soft power, but also in terms of its “hard” economic, financial, and military ability to impose its will upon most of humanity.

This has been the case throughout most of the post-war era, but it’s a thing of the past. America essentially exerts that kind of hard influence only over its client states. So essentially, Europe, the European Union more specifically, and a few countries in Asia: New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Japan. That’s pretty much it.

This is what the American empire has reduced to. And in this context, re-establishing your utmost control and dominance over the subordinate states is absolutely fundamental. And that has been achieved when it comes to Europe. So a success for America.

Why did European countries go along with a plan that clearly goes against Europe’s interests in every respect? Again, it’s been disastrous in strictly economic terms, decoupling Europe from Russian gas to some extent. Not entirely, because we can’t afford to do that. So that’s one of the paradoxes of this war — while we’re, essentially, pushing toward or inching towards nuclear war with Russia, we’re continuing to buy gas from Russia, because we know that we can’t entirely decouple from Russian gas for now.

But nonetheless, the beginning of this decoupling has had disastrous effects on Europe. It’s sent energy prices through the roof, resulting in millions of people falling into poverty. The continent's manufacturing and industry base has been very severely affected. In strictly economic terms, this war has been an absolute disaster. And again, not just for ordinary working class people — although they were obviously the most affected, as is always the case in every war — but also industry, look at Germany.

You mentioned the fact that Germany, the country that’s been probably most affected by this war, is also one of the countries that’s most gung-ho about, now, waging all-out war on Russia. How do you explain that?

But all countries have been terribly affected by this conflict, in economic terms, and in geopolitical terms. I mean, Europe was already a geopolitical midget before this conflict. It was already living in the shadow of the United States and very much, kind of, shadowing America’s policies and America’s strategy. But over the years, as we saw during the Iraq war, there were attempts by European countries to develop a slightly more autonomous position.

When it comes to Ukraine, we’ve seen a complete subordination of Europe to the strategy pursued by the US through NATO — again, a US-controlled organisation. So, even in geopolitical terms, it’s been a disaster. You could say the same about Gaza. Europe’s, or better the EU’s, stance on Gaza has been just as disgusting as America’s position on Gaza: i.e., almost unconditional, diplomatic, political, economic and military support for Israel and its genocide, including by providing weapons to Israel. Germany is the second provider of weapons, after the US, to Israel. And of course, this has had a tremendous impact in the global South, which already didn’t have a very good opinion of Europe for obvious historical reasons but now is really shunning Europe in a very deep, profound way, which will have massive implications for the future.

And so why did European elites go along with this? That’s the million dollar question. I think, very briefly, that there are historical reasons. European elites have always been very tightly controlled by America. America has been very effective at building its cultural, economic and political influence over Europe since the post-war period, including through outright military control.

Let’s not forget that we speak of America as an ally, but America has also been militarily occupying a number of countries in Europe since the Second World War, primarily Germany and Italy, the losers of that war — which, right after the war, signed secret bilateral agreements with America which are still classified to this day. But we can imagine what’s written in there. So, this has never been a relation between equals.

And so America has been very good at creating a European elite that automatically thinks in transatlantic terms. And so you’ve got soft power, the way that America influences Europe through its English language media, which most people — especially in Brussels — rely on, rather than their national media, rather than French, German or Dutch media or whatever. Also through very influential, very well endowed transatlantic think tanks, which have a very big influence on European policymakers.

Moreover, they’ve developed, of course, very deep ties with the European deep states, through building linkages between the American national security establishment and the various European national security and intelligence establishments. American business, of course, is very, very, powerful in Europe. We completely depend on your big tech.

So, there are a number of reasons why the European elites have developed this vassalised mindset over the years. Of course, over the past two years, we’ve seen that on steroids. Partly that has to do with, I think, a very clear message that the US sent to its “allies” at the start of the war, with the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

It’s a very important pipeline that Germany spent years developing, bringing gas from Russia to Germany. We know that that pipeline was bombed in September of 2022, so a few months after the beginning of the Russian invasion. All the evidence points to the US having had an indirect or direct role in the bombing of that pipeline.

Even though initially, everyone pointed the finger at Russia, Russia had absolutely no reason to do it, and now that’s been acknowledged even by the investigators that have been looking into this. But the truth is that everyone knows in Europe that America had something to do with it. Which is why the whole thing has been put to silence. It’s as if it never happened. There’s been a conspiracy of silence in the media. The rule is you don’t talk about Nord Stream.

The official investigations, there were three of them — a Swedish, a Danish and a German investigation — the Swedish and Danish investigation have already been wound up, without them revealing anything about what they found. So again, you wonder why, you wonder what they found during this investigation. So, I think it’s quite clear that the US played a role in this. And I think that was a message to its European allies: “Look, we’re not, fucking around anymore, we’re not messing around anymore. You’ve got to get on board with us. Otherwise, you’re going to see the wrong end of US imperial power”.

I think that definitely played a role in getting the German elites in line. But in getting everyone else in line as well. So again, you know many, many reasons why Europe is doing this to itself. I would add just one last factor, which is the role of the European Union itself, and this relates to what I was saying, earlier. Among Europhiles, especially progressive left-wing Europhiles, there’s always been this narrative of “yeah, the European Union might have some problems, but ultimately it’s what we need to develop a counterbalance to American power”.

And so this idea that the European Union will help us become more independent from America. This has always been a big selling point of progressive Europhilia. But in fact, that was always an illusion. There’s a reason that the US actively supported the creation of these supranational structures, because it knew that it had an interest in creating a kind of European central “government”. Of course, we know the European Union is not an actual state, but let’s say creating a quasi-government at the European people unaccountable to the people but accountable to the masters in Washington. And I think this has been particularly apparent over the past five years during the presidency of [Ursula] von der Leyen, who’s been dubbed the European American president, because of the extent to which she has gone to bring Europe in line with whatever happens to be America’s geopolitical strategy — in Ukraine, vis-à-vis China, and now in Gaza.

And so, what we see is that the European Union has played a pivotal role in aligning Europe to the US. So, far from being this institution that was going to give us independence from America, it’s been, in fact, used as a way to keep Europe subordinated to America’s overarching strategy. And relating to what I was saying earlier, I was mentioning the way in which the EU supranational structures have always used their power to impose a certain economic agenda on countries.

What we’re seeing now, because of this effective blending between the EU and NATO — i.e., the NATO-isation of the European Union — what we have is a situation that’s even more dangerous because the European Union can use its tools of financial-monetary blackmail, not just to keep government in line when it comes to economic policy, but also to keep them in line when it comes to foreign policy.

I mentioned France earlier: one of the things that the euro elites don’t like about Le Pen isn’t just that she’s “far right”, but that she has a much more cautious approach to the Ukraine issues. So, we can imagine that if she were ever to get into power, they would use those tools of financial-monetary blackmail not just to keep her in line when it comes to economic policy, but also to keep her in line when it comes to Ukraine. “Either you keep supporting the NATO strategy in Ukraine, or you are going to pay the consequences”. And, of course, they did the same with Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy — this supposedly far-right fascist that was going to plunge Italy back into a fascist dystopia. In fact, what we’ve seen is Meloni essentially aligning herself, on all the major economic and foreign policy issues, with the EU and NATO.

And that's because the European Union “holds her by her hair”, so to speak. And so we’re seeing the European Union evolving into an even more dangerous and frightening organization than it used to be, because now it can use those tools to essentially ensure the governments peddle America’s crazy geopolitical strategy, not just in Ukraine, but elsewhere as well.

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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)