Due to Washington’s Cold-War-style confrontational policy towards China there is now an ever-growing rift with U.S. allies in the European Union and Asia-Pacific.

This was evident from G20 and ASEAN discussions this week where numerous countries expressed deep misgivings about Washington’s relentless push for divisive relations with China.

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, while attending a G20 summit in Washington DC, told the New York Times of the stark difference emerging between the U.S. and the EU. “The United States wants to confront China. The European Union wants to engage China,” said Le Maire who added that the bloc needs to become more independent from American policy.

This call for European independence from Washington has been growing for some time. It reached more vocal levels during the presidency of Donald Trump owing to his hectoring style towards allies over NATO military spending and various alleged trade complaints. What has amplified these dissenting calls is the formation last month of the tripartite military pact between the U.S., Britain and Australia – known as AUKUS – which completely blindsided European allies. France was particularly aggrieved because it lost a submarine contract with Australia worth about €50 billion.

The new pact has been condemned by China as a provocative threat to security in the Asia-Pacific.

It’s not just about French national pride. The European Union counts China now as its biggest trading partner, having overtaken the United States. Germany’s export-led economy – the main driver of EU growth – is heavily dependent on China’s vast market.

It is becoming evident that Washington’s confrontational policy towards China – for example, the establishment of AUKUS – is detrimental to Europe’s strategic interests and trade with Asia. France takes over the rotating EU presidency soon and is showing that it will not indulge Washington’s divisive dynamic.

The same can be observed among Asian nations which are alarmed by Washington’s Cold War atavism.

Members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and others, have protested the way in which U.S. confrontational policy towards China is forcing them to choose sides between superpowers. The nations of Asia-Pacific have historic territorial disputes and other differences, but nevertheless there is a consensus that there must be cooperation and mutual development through dialogue and partnership.

It is notable how two of the three AUKUS members – the United States and Britain – are not geographically part of Asia-Pacific and yet these two powers have stoked much unrest since unveiling the military pact with Australia. Readers are recommended to check out this interview published by us on the subject this week with Professor Michael Brenner.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said last week that the Asian hemisphere wants peace and prosperity, and that nations do not want to be forced to take sides in any U.S.-China rivalry.

“We do not want to become an arena for proxy contests or even conflict,” he said.

Nations are well aware of the harmful impact of a previous Cold War. During the former Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union the stand-off was distorting normal development as well as increasing the risk of nuclear war. It seems incredible that in this day and age, there is still the shadow of Cold War looming over nations.

The main culprit for this pernicious polarity is the United States. Washington claims that it is not seeking a Cold War with China, yet it routinely incites provocations towards Beijing and casts international relations in a zero-sum manner. Washington tells other nations, in effect, that you are either with us or against us. This divisive policy is of course an essential element of American hegemonic ambitions.

The United States talks piously about upholding a “rules-based global order”. That is simply a euphemism for Washington’s decreed order according to its self-interests. What Washington always seeks is dominance over others. This is an indispensable function of U.S. global power.

In other words, mutualism, multilateralism, cooperation and co-development are anathema to U.S. global power. Cold Wars and confrontation are the essence of world relations, according to American designs for dominance. Lamentably, that ultimately means that world peace and security are in contradiction to Washington’s aims. That’s quite a damning revelation.

One salutary effect, however, is the growing realization among nations, especially among supposed allies of the United States, that their own self-interests are being sacrificed to placate Washington’s diktat.

How bitterly amusing that when Joe Biden was elected U.S. president he promised to bring allies together. The world is ineluctably diverging from the United States no matter who sits in the White House. And that’s because the world is finding that American power is the fundamental, irreconcilable problem.

By Prabir PURKAYASTHA

The Quadrilateral group’s leaders’ meeting in the White House on Sept. 24 appears to have shifted focus away from its original framing as a security dialogue among four countries: the United States, India, Japan and Australia.

Instead, the United States seems to be moving much closer to Australia as a strategic partner and providing it with nuclear-powered submarines.

Supplying Australia with U.S. nuclear submarines that use bomb-grade uranium can violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols. Considering that the United States wants Iran not to enrich uranium beyond 3.67 percent, this is blowing a big hole in its so-called rule-based international order — unless we all agree that the rule-based international order is essentially the United States and its allies making up all the rules.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had initiated the idea of the Quad in 2007 as a security dialogue. In the March 12 statement issued after the first formal meeting of the Quad countries, “security” was used in the sense of strategic security.

Before the recent meeting of the Quad, both the United States and the Indian sides denied that it was a military alliance, even though the Quad countries conduct joint naval exercises — the Malabar exercises — and have signed various military agreements. The Sept. 24 Quad joint statement focuses more on other “security” issues: health security, supply chain and cybersecurity.

Has India decided that it still needs to retain strategic autonomy even if it has serious differences with China on its northern borders and therefore stepped away from the Quad as an Asian NATO? Or has the United States itself downgraded the Quad now that Australia has joined its geostrategic game of containing China?

AUKUS

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on video with U.S. President Joe Biden during Sept. 15 announcement of the AUKUS pact. (C-Span clip)

Before the Quad meeting in Washington, the United States and the U.K. signed an agreement with Australia to supply eight nuclear submarines — the AUKUS agreement.

Earlier, the United States had transferred nuclear submarine technology to the U.K., and it may have some subcontracting role here. Nuclear submarines, unlike diesel-powered submarines, are not meant for defensive purposes. They are for force projection far away from home. Their ability to travel large distances and remain submerged for long periods makes them effective strike weapons against other countries.

The AUKUS agreement means that Australia is canceling its earlier French contract to supply 12 diesel-powered submarines. The French are livid that they, one of NATO’s lynchpins, have been treated this way with no consultation by the United States or Australia on the cancellation.

The U.S. administration has followed it up with “discreet disclosures” to the media and U.S. think tanks that the agreement to supply nuclear submarines also includes Australia providing naval and air bases to the United States. In other words, Australia is joining the United States and the U.K. in a military alliance in the “Indo-Pacific.”

Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron had been fully on board with the U.S. policy of containing China and participated in Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea.

France had even offered its Pacific Island colonies — and yes, France still has colonies — and its navy for the U.S. project of containing China in the Indo-Pacific.

France has two sets of island chains in the Pacific Ocean that the United Nations terms as non-self-governing territories — read colonies — giving France a vast exclusive economic zone, larger even than that of the United States.

The United States considers these islands less strategically valuable than Australia, which explains its willingness to face France’s anger. In the U.S. worldview, NATO and the Quad are both being downgraded for a new military strategy of a naval thrust against China.

Australia has very little manufacturing capacity. If the eight nuclear submarines are to be manufactured partially in Australia, the infrastructure required for manufacturing nuclear submarines and producing/handling of highly enriched uranium that the U.S. submarines use will probably require a minimum time of 20 years. That is the reason behind the talk of U.S. naval and air bases in Australia, with the United States providing the nuclear submarines and fighter-bomber aircraft either on lease, or simply locating them in Australia.

Maritime Powers

Ships from the navies of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan participate in Malabar exercises in the North Arabian Sea on Nov. 17, 2020. (U.S. Navy, Elliot Schaudt)

I have previously argued that the term Indo-Pacific may make sense to the United States, the U.K. or even Australia, which are essentially maritime nations.

The optics of three maritime powers, two of which are settler-colonial, while the other, the erstwhile largest colonial power, talking about a rule-based international order do not appeal to most of the world. Oceans are important to maritime powers, which have used naval dominance to create colonies. This was the basis of the dominance of British, French and later U.S. imperial powers. That is why they all have large aircraft carriers: they are naval powers that believe that the gunboat diplomacy through which they built their empires still works. The United States has 700-800 military bases spread worldwide; Russia has about 10; and China has only one base in Djibouti, Africa.

Behind the rhetoric about the Indo-Pacific and open seas is the U.S. play in Southeast Asia. Here, the talk of the Indo-Pacific has little resonance for most people. Its main interest is in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was spearheaded by the ASEAN countries. Even with the United States and India walking out of the RCEP negotiations, the 15-member trading bloc is the largest trading bloc in the world, with nearly 30 percent of the world’s GDP and population. Two of the Quad partners — Japan and Australia — are in the RCEP.

The U.S. strategic vision is to project its maritime power against China and contest for control over even Chinese waters and economic zones. This is the 2018 U.S. Pacific strategy doctrine that it has itself put forward, which it de-classified recently.

The doctrine states that the U.S. naval strategy is to deny China sustained air and sea dominance even inside the first island chain and dominate all domains outside the first island chain. For those interested in how the U.S. views the Quad and India’s role in it, this document is a good education.

A virtual Quadrilateral group summit with Australia, India and Japan at the White House on March 12. (White House, Adam Schultz)

As India found to its cost in Lakshadweep, the U.S. definition of the freedom of navigation does not square with India’s either. For all its talk about rule-based world order, the United States has not signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) either.The United States wants to use the disputes that Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have with China over the boundaries of their respective exclusive economic zones. While some of them may look to the United States for support against China, none of these Southeast Asian countries supports the U.S. interpretation of the Freedom of Navigation, under which it carries out its Freedom of Navigation Operations, or FONOPS.

So, when India and other partners of the United States sign on to Freedom of Navigation statements of the United States, they are signing on to the U.S. understanding of the freedom of navigation, which is at variance with theirs.

The 1973 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty created two classes of countries, ones that would be allowed to use a set of technologies that could lead to bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, and others that would be denied them.

There was, however, a submarine loophole in the NPT and its complementary IAEA Safeguards for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Under the NPT, non-nuclear-weapon-state parties must place all nuclear materials under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, except nuclear materials for nonexplosive military purposes.

No country until now has utilized this submarine loophole to withdraw weapon-grade uranium from safeguards. If this exception is utilized by Australia, how will the United States continue to argue against Iran’s right to enrich uranium, say for nuclear submarines, which is within its right to develop under the NPT?

India was never a signatory to the NPT, and therefore is a different case from that of Australia. If Australia, a signatory, is allowed to use the submarine loophole, what prevents other countries from doing so as well?

Australia did not have to travel this route if it wanted nuclear submarines. The French submarines that they were buying were originally nuclear submarines but using low-enriched uranium. It is the retrofitting of diesel engines that has created delays in their supplies to Australia. It appears that under the current Australian leadership of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia wants to flex its muscles in the neighborhood, therefore tying up with Big Brother, the United States.

For the United States, if Southeast Asia is the terrain of struggle against China, Australia is a very useful springboard. It also substantiates what has been apparent for some time now — that the Indo-Pacific is only cover for a geostrategic competition between the United States and China over Southeast Asia.

And unfortunately for the United States, East Asia and Southeast Asia have reciprocal economic interests that bring them closer to each other. And Australia, with its brutal settler-colonial past of genocide and neocolonial interventions in Southeast Asia, is not seen as a natural partner by countries there.

India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have lost the plot completely. Does it want strategic autonomy, as was its policy post-independence? Or does it want to tie itself to a waning imperial power, the United States? The first gave it respect well beyond its economic or military clout. The current path seems more and more a path toward losing its stature as an independent player.

consortiumnews.com

Two events have combined to make a major inflection point for Europe: The first was America’s abandonment of the Great Game ploy of attempting to keep the two Central Asian great land powers – Russia and China – divided and at odds with each other. This was the inexorable consequence to the US’ defeat in Afghanistan – and the loss of its last strategic foothold in Asia.

Washington’s response was a reversion to that old nineteenth century geo-political tactic of maritime containment of Asian land-power – through controlling the sea lanes. However America’s pivot to China as its primordial security interest has resulted in the North Atlantic becoming much less important to Washington – as the US security crux compacts down to ‘blocking’ China in the Pacific.

The Establishment-linked figure, George Friedman (of Stratfor fame), has outlined America’s new post-Afghan strategy on Polish TV. He said tartly: “When we looked for allies [for a maritime force in the Pacific] on which we could count – they were the British and the Australians. The French weren’t there”. Friedman suggested that the threat from Russia is more than a bit exaggerated, and implied that the North Atlantic NATO and Europe are not particularly relevant to the US in the new context of ‘China competition’. “We ask”, Friedman says, “what does NATO do for the problems the US has at this point?”. “This [the AUKUS] is the [alliance] that has existed since World War II. So naturally they [Australia] bought American submarines instead of French submarines: Life goes on”.

Friedman continued: “The NATO countries don’t have force enough to help us. It has been weakened by the Europeans. To have a military alliance, you have to have a military. The Europeans are not interested in spending the money”. “Europe”, he said, “has left us with no choice: It is not a case of the US adopting this strategy [AUKUS], it is the strategy of Europe. First, there is no Europe. There is a bunch of countries in Europe, pursuing their own interests. You can only be bilateral [perhaps working with Poland and Romania]. There is no ‘Europe’ to work with”.

A storm in a tea-cup? Possibly. But the French went apoplectic. Expressions such as ‘stab in the back’ and ‘betrayal’ were flung around. It was Europa scorned. She is bitter and angry. Biden has made a groveling apology to President Macron over cutting out France from the submarine contract, and Blinken has been in Paris smoothing feathers.

George Friedman’s blunt account of the ‘new strategy’ may not be Biden ‘speak’, but it is Military Industrial think-tank conceptualisation. How do we know that? Firstly, because Friedman is one of their spokesmen – but simply because… continuity. The incumbents of the White House come and go, but US security objectives do not alter so readily. When Trump was in the White House, his views on NATO were very similar to those just repeated by Friedman. Incumbents may change, but military think-tank perspectives evolve to a different and slower cycle.

The ‘multilateral dimension’ of relations with France would be viewed as a largely Biden preoccupation. Friedman expressed the continuity of a US slow-burn focus to seeing China as the threat to US primacy. NATO won’t disappear, but it will play a narrower role (especially in the wake of its’ Afghan débacle).

But the EU, Friedman has made ruthlessly clear, is not viewed by the US security élite as a serious global player – or really as much more than one ‘punter’, amongst others, buying at the US weapons supermarket. The submarine contract with Australia however, was a centrepiece to Paris’s strategy for European ‘strategic autonomy’. Macron believed France and the EU had established a position of lasting influence in the heart of the Indo-Pacific. Better still, it had out-manoeuvred Britain, and broken into the Anglophone world of the Five Eyes to become a privileged defence partner of Australia. Biden dissed that. And Commission President von der Leyen told CNN that there could not be “business as usual” after the EU was blindsided by AUKUS.

One factor for the UK being chosen as the ‘Indo-Pacific partner’ very probably was Trump’s successful suasion with ‘Bojo’ Johnson to abandon the Cameron-Osborne outreach to China; whereas the big three EU powers were perceived in the US security world as ambivalent towards China, at best. The UK really did cut links. The grease finally was Brexit, which opened the window for strategic options – which otherwise would have been impossible to the UK.

There may be a heavy price to pay though further down the line – the US security establishment are really pushing the Taiwan ‘envelope’ to the limit (possibly to weaken the CCP). It is extremely high risk. China may decide ‘enough is enough’, and crush the AUKUS maritime venture, which it can do.

The second ‘leg’ to this global inflection point – also triggered around the Afghan pivot into the Russo-Chines axis – was the SCO summit last month. A memorandum of understanding was approved that would tie together China’s Belt and Road Initiative to the Eurasian Economic Community, within the overall structure of the SCO, whilst adding a deeper military dimension to the expanded SCO structure.

Significantly, President Xi spoke separately to members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (of which China is not a part), to outline its prospective military integration too, into the SCO military structures. Iran was made a full member, and it and Pakistan (already a member), were elevated into prime Eurasian roles. In sum, all Eurasian integration paths combined into a new trade, resource – and military block. It represents an evolving big-power, security architecture covering some 57% of the world’s population.

Having lifted Iran into full membership – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt may also become SCO dialogue partners. This augurs well for a wider architecture that may subsume more of the Middle East. Already, Turkey after President Erdogan’s summit with President Putin at Sochi last week, gave clear indications of drifting towards Russia’s military complex – with major orders for Russian weaponry. Erdogan made clear in an interview with the US media that this included a further S400 air defence system, which almost certainly will result in American CAATSA sanctions on Turkey.

All of this faces the EU with a dilemma: Allies who cheered Biden’s ‘America is back’ slogan in January have found, eight months later, that ‘America First’ never went away. But rather, Biden paradoxically is delivering on the Trump agenda (continuity again!) – a truncated NATO (Trump mooted quitting it), and the possible US shunning of Germany as some candidate coalition partners edge toward exiting from the nuclear umbrella. The SPD still pays lip service to NATO, but the party is opposed to the 2% defence spending target (on which both Biden and Trump have insisted). Biden also delivered on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Europeans may feel betrayed (though when has US policy ever been other than ‘America First’? It’s just the pretence which is gone). European grander aspirations at the global plane have been rudely disparaged by Washington. The Russia-China axis is in the driving seat in Central Asia – with its influence seeping down to Turkey and into the Middle East. The latter commands the lions’ share of world minerals, population – and, in the CTSO sphere, has the region most hungry and ripe for economic development.

The point here however, is the EU’s ‘DNA’. The EU was a project originally midwifed by the CIA, and is by treaty, tied to the security interests of NATO (i.e. the US). From the outset, the EU was constellated as the soft-power arm of the Washington Consensus, and the Euro deliberately was made outlier to the dollar sphere, to preclude competition with it (in line with the Washington Consensus doctrine). In 2002, an EU functionary (Robert Cooper) could envisage Europe as a new ‘liberal imperialism’. The ‘new’ was that Europe eschewed hard military power, in favour of the ‘soft’ power of its ‘vision’. Of course, Cooper’s assertion of the need for a ‘new kind of imperialism’ was not as ‘cuddly’ liberal – as presented. He advocated for ‘a new age of empire’, in which Western powers no longer would have to follow international law in their dealings with ‘old fashioned’ states; could use military force independently of the United Nations; and impose protectorates to replace regimes which ‘misgovern’.

This may have sounded quite laudable to the Euro-élites initially, but this soft-power European Leviathan was wholly underpinned by the unstated – but essential – assumption that America ‘had Europe’s back’. The first intimation of the collapse of this necessary pillar was Trump who spoke of Europe as a ‘rival’. Now the US flight from Kabul, and the AUKUS deal, hatched behind Europe’s back, unmissably reveals that the US does not at all have Europe’s back.

This is no semantic point. It is central to the EU concept. As just one example: when Mario Draghi was recently parachuted onto Italy as PM, he wagged his finger at the assembled Italian political parties: “Italy would be pro-European and North Atlanticist too”, he instructed them. This no longer makes sense in the light of recent events. So what is Europe? What does it mean to be ‘European’? All that needs to be thought through.

Europe today is caught between a rock and a hard place. Does it possess the energy (and the humility) to look itself in the mirror, and re-position itself diplomatically? It would require altering its address to both Russia and China, in the light of a Realpolitik analysis of its interests and capabilities.

Pax Americana was always a minor character in a zombie apocalypse flick.

Pax Americana is actually The Eternal Return of the Living Dead. “Pax” was never in order; War Inc. rules. The end of WWII led directly to the Cold War. The unipolar moment was an arc from the First Gulf War to the bombing of Yugoslavia. 9/11 launched the Global War on Terror (GWOT), renamed Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) by Team Obama. We are now entering Cold War 2.0 against China.

What former CIA analyst Ray McGovern memorably describes as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) never did “Pax”. They do War, in unison, like The Knights Who Say “Ni!” – minus the comic flair.

Take this Knight for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the heart of the establishment matrix. CFR specializes in Kissingerian Divide and Rule. Now that applies, in spades, to the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Knights overwhelmingly state the obvious: “Chinese power must be contained”. They sell the current, serial imperial debacle as “grand strategic moves”, in a quirky, lost in translation mixed salad of Gramsci and Lampedusa: a “new order” (engineered by the Empire) is being born via “everything must change so everything may remain the same” – privileging the Empire.

Other Knights even propose the ludicrous notion that the current POTUS, an actual zombie remote-controlled by a teleprompter, is capable of conceiving a “foreign policy for the middle class” , as if the MICIMATT would ever approve a scheme to “advance prosperity in the free world as a whole”. The “free world” has just been stunned by the “prosperity” offered to Afghanistan during 20 “bombing to democracy” years.

And then there are British Knights, who at least should have known their Monty Python by heart, carping about illiberalism and the “regimes created by Xi and Putin” , which will “crumble” and be succeeded by “anarchy and new despotisms.” Same old Anglo haughtiness mixed with piercing ignorance. Oh, those Asiatic “tyrannies” threatening the White Man’s civilizational drive.

We all live in an Aussie submarine

Now it’s all about AUKUS – actually U SUK A. Until recently, only the P5 – the five permanent UNSC members – possessed nuclear-powered submarines. India joined the club, and later rather than sooner, Australia.

Every major player knows the next American war will not be about remote Pacific islands. Taiwan, though, is a completely different ball game. U SUK A is mostly about Taiwan.

U SUK A was finalized at the G7 summit in Carbis Bay last June. That was an Anglo Boys Club affair, discussed exclusively by the Biden-BoJo-Morrison troika – and duly excluding Japan, even as Tokyo all but drew a samurai sword yelling its intent of supporting Taiwan.

The problem is there have been no leaks of the fine print contained in U SUK A. Only spin. Yet it’s already clear that U SUK A goes way beyond building Aussie nuclear subs. Canberra will also have access to Tomahawks, Hornets and even become part of American hypersonic missile research.

But then, in a slip, Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton gave away the game: U SUK A will allow the upgrading of “the infrastructure in Perth, that will be necessary for the operation of these submarines. I expect we will see…lease arrangements or greater joint operations between our navies in the future.”

Translation: Perth will be a forward base for nuclear-powered and nuclear weapon-carrying American subs.

Why U SUK A now? Let’s go back to WWII – and the same old cartoonish geopolitics of benign Anglo maritime island powers pitted against the “evil” Eurasian heartland.

WWII was the solution to simultaneously prevent Germany from dominating the Atlantic and Japan from dominating the Asia-Pacific (by the way, that’s the correct terminology: “Indo-Pacific” is Empire-speak).

Germany-Japan was all about an alliance that would be predominant across the Eurasian heartland. Now, the Empire of Chaos is being slowly but surely expelled from the Eurasian heartland – this time by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Those with technical knowledge across the Beltway – not, not the Knights – are aware the US is not a match for hypersonic Russia. Yet the Americans believe they can make life unbearable for Beijing. The US establishment will allow China to control the Western Pacific over their dead bodies. Enter the instrumentalization of Australia.

A big question is what will be the new role of the Five Eyes. With U SUK A, the Anglo Club has already stepped beyond mere intel sharing and spying on communications. This is a military pact between Three Eyes.

Depending on the composition of its new government, Germany could become a Sixth Eye – yet in a subordinate role. With U SUK A, NATO as a whole, fresh from its spectacular Afghan debacle, becomes little else than a semi-relevant vassal. This is all about maritime power.

U SUK A in effect is a Quad Plus, with India and Japan, the Fifth Columnist Asians, only allowed to play the role of, once again, mere vassals.

War before 2040

Not surprisingly, the first, concise technical and strategic assessment of U SUK A is Russian, written by Alexander Timokhin and published in Vzglyad, closely linked to GRU intelligence. Here, provided by John Helmer, is an essential English translation.

The key points:

– the extra subs will create a serious, additional threat; “the problem of combating enemy submarine forces will become quite acute for China.”

– Geographically, “Australia can completely block the connection between China and the Indian Ocean.”

– Australia will meet the deadlines only if it lays “more submarines a year than the Americans.”

– It is “possible to quickly make Australia a country with a submarine fleet.” These “gigantic investments and sharp political turns are not carried out just like that. The hegemony of the Anglo-Saxons in the world is seriously shaken.”

And that brings us to the inevitable conclusion: “It is worth recognizing that the world is on the verge of war.”

Even before the Vzglyad strategic assessment, I had submitted the ravings of yet another Beltway Knight – widely praised as a sage – to an old school, dissident Deep State intel analyst. His assessment was merciless.

He wrote me, “the geopolitical logic is that the China-Russia alliance was determined to be against US interests, much as the Mao-Stalin alliance. SEATO and NATO are being replicated. The treaty between England, Australia and the US is part of the Pacific rebalancing, or a new SEATO. NATO is part of the offset against Russia-China in Europe.”

On what might lie ahead, he noted that “the coup against the US, Australia, England and NATO would be a French-Russian alliance to break up NATO and isolate Germany. Russia has unsuccessfully approached Germany, and now may approach France. The loss of France would effectively end NATO.”

He sees U SUK A all dressed up with nowhere to go: “As it stands now, China is in command of the Pacific and Australia and Britain mean nothing. Russia can overrun NATO in two weeks, our adversaries’ hypersonic missiles can destroy all NATO airfields within five to ten minutes and the battle for Europe would be over.”

He’s adamant that “the US cannot project power into the Pacific. Chinese submarine missiles would finish off the US fleet in short order. The Australian submarine issue is really irrelevant; if the CIA had an organization that was worth anything they would know that our adversaries already can spot and destroy our nuclear submarines without the slightest difficulty. The entire US Navy is obsolete and defenseless against Russian missiles.”

And it gets worse – at least for the cheerleading Knights: “The F-35 is obsolete. The Air Force is largely worthless, as Russian and Chinese missiles can finish off their airfields or aircraft carriers in short order. The woke US Army is more worthless than the French Army with their Maginot Line. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are paid less than 200k a year, and are second or third rate talent. The US is a sinking ship.”

Assuming that’s really the case, the – nuclear – war against China in the Western Pacific, projected in the Beltway to happen in the second half of the 2030s, would be over even before it started. Taiwan may even be part of China by then – an offshoot of Beijing always proposing economic exchanges to all, while Washington always “proposes” war.

One thing though will never change: The Knights Who Say “Ni!” singin’ the praise of Pax Americana to the utter indifference of the unruly plebs.

What should replace the EU is a result from the reasons why it needs to be replaced. It results from the EU’s history, and this will be explained here:

As will be documented below, the EU was created by the U.S. and UK Governments after World War II in order to carry out the plan that Cecil Rhodes had conceived of in 1877 for the UK, first, to retake (by means of U.S.-based agents) the U.S., and, then, for the joint UK-U.S. empire to take over the entire world, starting with Europe. Ultimately, Russia, which was and is, by far, the world’s largest country, was the largest and main target. After WWII, the Rhodesists’ plan to take over the world was to produce both the NATO military alliance and the EU diplomatic alliance, in order to cement Rhodesist control over Europe, so that then the Soviet Union (originally Russia) could ultimately become conquered. But it needed to start with that UK/U.S., Rhodesist, “Special Relationship” bonding between UK and U.S. (which was never publicly even so much as just mentioned until Churchill finally announced the “Special Relationship” in a speech in the approving presence of U.S. President Truman on 5 March 1946) aimed at conquering the Soviet Union. (All of this will be documented by means of the links that are provided here.)

However, the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and ended its Warsaw Pact military alliance, and also ended its communism, at that time; and, so, the anti-Soviet ‘justifications’ for continuing both NATO and the EU were now gone. Despite that, both NATO and the EU continued, since then, but instead as anti-Russian, no longer as anti-communist, and the publics in the Rhodesist-controlled countries didn’t even blink an eye about this nor even notice it, but just went on spending, via their taxes, trillions of dollars for weaponry (etc.) that now had no non-imperialistic purpose remaining. The actual goal of the Rhodesists is — and has been — global conquest, and anti-communism had actually been only the excuse for the Cold War. So, new excuses now had to be invented, for the still-ongoing U.S.-and-allied invasions and military occupations. On 24 February 1990, U.S. President G.H.W. Bush secretly started informing America’s foreign allies about this fact — that, though the Soviet Union would soon end, and its communism would soon end, and its Warsaw Pact military alliance that had been organized by the USSR in response to America’s NATO military alliance, would all end very soon, the Cold War itself would secretly continue on the side of the U.S. and its allies, until the entire world will be controlled by the U.S. Government. It was now clear, that the actual goal had been global conquest, all along. The cat was out of the bag on this fact (because the Soviet Union and its communism were now gone), but the ‘news’-media didn’t notice that America now had a runaway military, and the public also didn’t notice it — perhaps largely because the ‘news’-media (which, for an example, reported during 2002 and 2003 ceaselessly about such fictions as “Saddam’s WMD”) ignored the crucial realities (such as their never reporting that G.H.W. Bush had given this instruction to Helmut Kohl on 24 February 1990), and acting as if they were owned by the very same people who own firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE, which need to grow arms-production in order to be able to grow, at all. Everything fit together, into this systemic reality of a runaway, cancerous, U.S. military that’s controlled by its weapons-makers, which control the Government, though the public don’t even know about what actually controls ‘their’ Government. (And this is supposed to be a ‘democracy’? Is that a democracy?)

All of the U.S.-allied leaders accepted this, because they all had already been conquered and occupied by the U.S. (working in conjunction with UK). But this was the time — starting on 24 February 1990 — when the ‘allied’ (actually vassal) leaders began to learn the fact, of their being (and having been) stooges, in the U.S. empire (actually the UK-U.S. empire). This was the time when any remaining ones who still believed that they were free countries inside an actual alliance, became disillusioned, and they had to recognize that they were actually regimes within the U.S. (but actually UK-U.S.) empire.

Then, finally, when Barack Obama was the U.S. President, he was able to announce, publicly, on 28 May 2014, in front of graduating cadets at America’s West Point military academy (no less), “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” meaning that all other nations are “dispensable” (and could therefore become targets invaded by them, as military officers in the world’s only indispensable nation). That’s the core belief of any imperial country, in relation to its colonies, to keep those vassal-regimes under control. For example, Hitler was an imperialist, and he treated his colonies this way, just as England did and does. Perhaps France’s Emmanuel Macron had not actually faced the fact of what that statement (often repeated) by Obama had meant, until seven years later, on 15 September 2021, the UK-U.S. regime stabbed France in the back by grabbing and trashing France’s signed $60 billion contract to build, for Australia, 12 submarines, and replacing that signed contract with the September 15th AUKUS submarine-construction deal.

Certainly, Australia’s Prime Minister didn’t want to be ousted by a Rhodesist coup like the only prior Australian PM had been who had tried to break Australia’s particpation in the Rhodesist ‘alliance’ was tossed aside, and this current Australian PM, Scott Morrison, announced on September 15th that, instead of that contract going with France, Australia was now reaffirming (as he had to do) its alliances with U.S. and UK by agreeing with UK/U.S. to build 12 nuclear-powered submarines for $90 billion, which would be made in Adelaide, but really in either America or Britain. (An excellent analysis of “The Fallout From The AUKUS Deal” also appeared on September 20th, at the anonymously written “MoA” blog.)

And, as for France, Mr. Macron does, after all, accept being merely a stooge within a foreign-controlled empire, instead of the leader of an independent, free (meaning not foreign-controlled), country. Biden privately promised Macron, on September 22nd, that America will protect France — maybe like America ‘protected’ its stooges in Vietnam, and in Afghanistan — but who knows whether some sort of private bribe was also offered, which type of offer the U.S. regime does fulfill on. However, Macron had actually been hoping that the EU would back France against the UK/U.S. on AUKUS, and the EU turned him down, which probably clinched, for Macron, his decision on the 22nd, for France to cave on AUKUS — not to try to overturn it. (Macron did obtain from Biden an acceptance of a “European Army” that will be “complementary to NATO” — a proposal which had been introduced in 1996 by then-French
Prime Minister Alain Juppé, because it would be a boon to France’s billionaires, since France has the EU’s main weapons-manufacturerers. However, that would not eliminate America’s control over Europe. It would be a hollow change. It would not free Europeans from UK/U.S. control. Only ending NATO would do that.)

The EU, like NATO, is a crucial tool of (UK/)U.S. power. The Rhodesists had, ever since the end of World War II in 1945, aimed to control Europe not only militarily (through their creation of NATO) but also diplomatically, through, ultimately, a European Union, which became created by the CIA. The details are supplied in an exhaustive 1,000-page biography of Jean Monnet by Éric Roussel, which was published only in France in 1996, and which seems to have been successfully suppressed. It has never been translated, and has no reviews even at America’s Amazon, and only 4 reviews at Amazon in France. However, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of UK’s Telegraph newspaper has provided some of the core information from it. Furthermore, Richard J. Aldrich’s 2003 The Hidden Hand also provides key details, such as by Aldrich’s saying, on page 366, about the American Committee for a United Europe:

ACUE, more than any other American front organization of the Cold War, was a direct creature of the leading lights of the CIA. Indeed, it was so replete with famous CIA figures that its ‘front’ was very thin. Its early years seemed to have formed something of a laboratory for figures such as [Bill] Donovan, [Allen] Dulles, [Walter] Bedell Smith and [Tom] Braden, before they moved on to other projects in the mid-1950s. Over its first three years of operations, 1949-51, ACUE received $384,650, the majority being dispersed to Europe. This was a large sum, but from 1952 ACUE began to spend such sums annually. The total budget for the period 1949-60 amounted to approximately $4 million. As the quantity of money flowing across the Atlantic began to increase, ACUE opened a local Paris office to monitor more closely groups that had received grants. By 1956, the flood of increased funding was prompting fears among the Directors of ACUE that its work would be publicly exposed. …

The emerging European Economic Community (EEC) and the growing Western intelligence community overlapped to a considerable degree. This is underlined by the creation of the Bilderberg Group, an informal and secretive transatlantic council of key decision-makers [representatives of the billionaires who controlled U.S. and U.S.-allied international corporations]. Bilderberg was founded by Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1952 in response to the rise of anti-Americanism in Europe. … Retinger secured support from Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller and Walter Bedell Smith. The formation of the American wing of Bilderberg was entrusted to Eisenhower’s psychological warfare chief, C.D. Jackson, and the funding for the first meeting, held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Holland in 1954, was provided by the CIA.

Funds for these CIA operations came not only from the U.S. Treasury but from private sources, America’s super-rich (who control their corporations such as General Dynamics and ExxonMobil); and, also from organized gangsters, as was revealed in the 1998 classic by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. This off-the-books private CIA funding comes from narcotics kingpins throughout the world, as protection-money, which is essential to keep them in business. Both the official billionaires and the gangsters get their money’s-worth from it, but America’s public, the taxpayers, lose enormously, because it increases the corruptness of our Government (and not only increases the problems from people who need to steal in order to buy the drugs to which those addicts are addicted). The CIA was created soon after WWII, while U.S. President Truman unknowingly was installing Rhodesists in key national security positions and reorganizing the U.S. Government so that the Soviet Union could be conquered — which he decided, on 25 July 1945, had to be done.

So, the EU was financially fueled from all of these sources, and, basically, was a bribing-operation (to end up getting the ‘right’ people into the EU’s Parliament, etc.), in addition to be receiving funds from what might be considered idealistic philanthropic donors (because the dream of a united Europe had long preceded the grubby version of it that the CIA created for Europeans).

The EU was a Cold War operation, from its very start. It remains that to the present day.

Pritchard issued two important articles about this, the first being his 19 September 2000 “Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs”:

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement. … One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington’s main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.

The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement’s funds.

The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel, received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly reprimanded.

The leaders of the European Movement — Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak — were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE’s funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.

Then, on 27 April 2016, he bannered “The European Union always was a CIA project, as Brexiteers discover” and reported:

It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. … The US has relied on the EU ever since as the anchor to American regional interests alongside NATO. … It is odd that this magisterial 1000-page study found only a French-language publisher. [Roussel’s Jean Monnet. The French Wikipedia’s article on Roussel says “En 1995, il écrit une biographie consacrée à Jean Monnet2 qui reçoit le prix de l’Essai de l’Académie française, le prix Guizot, et le prix européen de l’histoire.” Despite all of those awards, the work is little-known, even in France.] Nor are many aware of declassified documents from the State Department archives showing that US intelligence funded the European movement secretly for decades, and worked aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into the project. …

[The CIA] treated some of the EU’s ‘founding fathers’ as hired hands, and actively prevented them finding alternative funding that would have broken reliance on Washington. … The American ‘deep state’ was in up to its neck. …

Since that newspaper (like all major news-media in the U.S. and in its vassal-nations are) is both neoliberal and neoconservative (meaning U.S.-imperialistic), Pritchard approved of all this. He did it by saying: “There is nothing particularly wicked about this. The US acted astutely in the context of the Cold War. The political reconstruction of Europe was a roaring success.”

However, obviously, no authentic democracy can exist in a nation that’s governed by means of deceiving its public; nor can any democracy be an empire, neither the imperialistic nation itself, nor one of its vassal-nations, because that is merely a “Deep State” rule, behind the scenes, by its billionaires — it’s an aristocracy, and not a democracy, which reigns there. Though all of the country’s major news-media will support the aristocracy — since they’ll all be owned by the aristocracy — anyone who calls it a ‘democracy’ is transparently either a fool or a liar, because such a nation is the exact opposite of a democracy: it is instead an aristocracy, which rules there.

Crucial WWII history is necessary in order to understand relations between the UK-U.S. bloc and Europe during the post-WWII years:

Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa”, to capture the Soviet Union, started on 22 June 1941, which was even before the U.S. entered WWII; and from that time till War’s-end on 8 May 1945, more than 58% of German divisions (peaking at 86% in late 1942) were engaged in that effort — against that one nation. By War’s-end, around 90% of the remaining German divisions were in the Soviet Union. It would be reasonable to say that the Soviet Union won the Allies’ war against Hitler. (Certainly the USSR received the brunt of the Nazis’ damages, though Truman excluded it from the Marshall Plan — because that Plan was intended as a powerful weapon against the USSR) The Marshall Plan wasn’t only aimed at rebuilding America’s European allies, but it was — and this was even more important in the eyes of America’s aristocracy — aimed against Russia by excluding all assistance to any of the nations that had suffered the worst losses from Hitler’s onslaughts: Russia and its allies. The aim was to make Russia’s allies envy and want to become part of the ‘capitalist’ nations to their west — the allies of America. It was to help build the American empire, which Rhodes had planned back in 1877 and would be largely (and entirely secretly) run from the City of London.

In fact, there is even some reliable information regarding how consciously Britain’s Deep State were manipulating the Truman Administration. It’s in this passage from the Rhodesist CIA’s own retired Miles Copeland’s 1969 book, The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics, opening Chapter 2:

On a cold and rainy February afternoon in 1947 [21 February 1947], one year before the Games Center was established, First Secretary H. M. Sichel of the British Embassy in Washington telephoned Loy Henderson, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and African Affairs. He had two messages from the Foreign Office which were “rather important.” They were of a sort that normally should be delivered by the British Ambassador direct to the Secretary of State, George Marshall, but since General Marshall had already left the office for the weekend perhaps, Sichel suggested he could drop off the notes, have a “brief” chat about them, and allow Mr. Henderson a weekend of reflection on them before briefing the Secretary prior to meeting the British Ambassador on Monday morning.

Sichel arrived as State Department employees, after a comparatively dull week, were donning their raincoats and galoshes to take off for an indoor weekend. Loy Henderson, who habitually worked until eight or nine o’clock even on Fridays, had sent off all his secretaries and was alone in the office. The scene was the one of utter calm that skillful dramatists often establish to provide the psychological setting for a shattering announcement.

The announcement, which Mr. Sichel delivered in the course of his “brief chat,” was certainly shattering. The two messages were official notification that the Pax Britannica, which had kept order in much of the world for over a century, was at an end. Specifically, His Majesty’s Government could no longer afford the $50,000,000 or so that was required to support the resistance of the Greek and Turkish Governments to Communist aggression either, as in the first case, by guerrilla warfare or, in the second, by direct military action of the Soviet Union. Either the United States Government would fill the gap, or it would go unfilled — or it would be left to the Russians. Mr. Henderson, whose considerable diplomatic experience included assignments in Moscow and other capitals in the Soviet orbit, didn’t need a weekend of reflection to realize that more than Greece and Turkey was at stake. The vacuum of which these two countries were a part extended throughout all of southern Europe that was not already behind the Iron Curtain, and through North Africa and the Middle East. With the British announcement, delivered so calmly by Mr. Sichel, the United States was given the choice of becoming an active world power — an “on-the-ground” world power, as a lecturer at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute was later to put it — or seeing the Soviets become a more menacing feature of world politics than Nazi Germany could ever have been.

Truman himself was an extremely receptive sucker for the idea that the Rhodesist Churchill and others were pumping to him that if the U.S. wouldn’t conquer the Soviet Union, then the Soviet Union would conquer the United States. This is how the Cold War was started, by agents for the owners of corporations such as Lockheed and BAE — the Deep State — the Rhodesists.

When FDR was America’s President, Churchill and the other Rhodesists couldn’t get to first base in their efforts to fool FDR that the Soviet Union (at that time, Stalin) had designs on conquering America, but Truman immediately believed their pitches about the necessity to conquer the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union was actually the main country that had defeated Hitler. Instead of being Europe’s enemy, Stalin had actually been Europe’s main liberator. Fascism is not communism, despite the billionaires’ lies to the exact contrary. As Strategic Culture pointed out on 6 June 2020 (entirely accurately), “The Battle of Moscow [2 October 1941 to 7 January 1942] was the first strategic defeat of the German army on the ground during World War II. Moscow became the first capital city in continental Europe not to be captured as a result of German offensive. … The main reason for the Soviet victory [the first decisive victory in WWII, the second one being the 5 July 1943 to 23 August 1943 Battle of Kursk, which actually doomed Hitler] was the valiance and sacrifice of the Red Army, which lost 937,000 [soldiers] defending Moscow.”

Near the beginning of FDR’s lengthy fireside chat to the nation on 28 April 1942, he said: “On the European front the most important development of the past year has been without question the crushing counteroffensive on the part of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German Army. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies — troops, planes, tanks, and guns — than all the other United Nations put together.” (NOTE: He was already using the phrase “United Nations” with the objective in mind for all of the world’s nations to view themselves as having been saved by the U.N. that FDR was intending ultimately to replace all empires and to be the sole source of international laws.) Near the War’s end, on 19 September 1944 (while FDR was still alive and so Churchill was preparing for a post-War that wouldn’t be controlled by the Rhodesists), Churchill telegrammed to Stalin “that it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine and is at the present moment holding by far the larger portion of the enemy on its front.”

As the History Channel’s article “Operation Barbarossa” summed-up: “On 22 June 1941, German forces began their invasion of the Soviet Union, … the most powerful invasion force in history, … 80% of the German army … [plus] 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops. … By the time Germany officially surrendered to the Allies on 8 May 1945, 80% of its casualties during WW2 had come on the Eastern Front [the Soviet Union].” Wikipedia’s “Operation Barbarossa” said “The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of the Third Reich.” However, on 8 May 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted “On May 8, 1945, America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis! America’s spirit will always win. In the end, that’s what happens.” So goes the myth, but certainly not the history.

Here is how the Rhodesist-controlled EU thanks Russia for that: by blaming Russia, right along with Nazi Germany, as having been their enemy during WWII. The U.S.-regime-created EU’s European Parliament voted 19 September 2019, by 535 to 66, for a resolution condemning both Hitler and Stalin as having started World War II, which is a lie — and an especially outrageous one, considering that the Soviet Union did more than any other country to defeat Hitler and to enable all of those countries to not now be controlled by a Nazi regime. (Shortly after that article, another article, by Max Parry, independently came to the same conclusion: the EU is fascist.) This Big-Lie Resolution said that

whereas it has become commonplace for Russia to deny responsibility and blame hostilities on the West in its official rhetoric, creating a reliable propaganda base upon which it can rely to justify its disregard of international law and continue its aggression against Eastern Partnership countries; [the EU]

1. Stresses that the Second World War, the most devastating war in Europe’s history, was caused by the notorious Nazi-Soviet Treaty of Non-Aggression of 23 August 1939, also called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, which allowed two totalitarian regimes that shared the goal of world conquest to divide Europe into two zones of influence.

The actual history is: Stalin had been begging the UK to ally with the Soviet Union to defeat Hitler; and, after being snubbed each time, joined with Hitler in order to prevent an expected invasion by Hitler against the Soviet Union. It was an act of desperation by Stalin, which was forced upon him by the UK. And, now, the U.S. and its allies rewrite ‘history’ to make the Soviet Union their enemy during WWII, instead of their savior — as they actually were.

On 25 June 2021, Politico headlined “Summit exposes stark clash of EU views on Russia” and described the central fissure as being between a Russia-hating bloc comprised of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and supported by the United States, versus a neutralist bloc that consisted of France and Germany. (To the latter group — though not mentioned in that article — might also be added Italy and Austria, plus Switzerland if it were to be included as being a part of Europe, which it is.)

The neutralist bloc in Europe do not want to be targets of Russian missiles if the U.S. decides to launch, or to support, a blitz invasion against Russia, as a means to achieve the victory that Hitler had attempted but failed to achieve in 1941. The likeliest way that Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, could actually become invaded by Russia would be only if those countries are part of the U.S. alliance, as they presently are. But that is their business, and their choice, to be allied with the Russia-hating United States and having U.S. missiles on the very borders of Russia and serving as the launch-grounds for America’s (fronting UK’s) intended blitz-invasion first-strike. But, as member-nations of the EU, this endangers all Europeans — not only their own nation.

Consequently, what should replace the EU is its splitting up into a pro-WW-III bloc headed by the U.S. (actually the UK) and with its European vassal-nations being Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia; and, opposite that, on the neutralist side, an anti-WW-III bloc, which would consist of France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and, perhaps, also of a few other current EU-member nations such as Spain, Portugal, and Denmark.

Continuation of the U.S.-dominated EU is leading to Europe’s becoming the main battleground for WWIII, just as it had been for WWI, and for WWII. Only, instead of it being against Germany, it would be against Russia (and perhaps also against China).

A neutralist EU, which would probably need to expel its current committedly U.S.-vassal nations, would be able to thrive and have peaceful relationships with Russia, China, and almost all the rest of EurAsia, excepting perhaps only Japan. By contrast, continuation of the existing EU (being actually run from London and Washington, as it is) will be toxic to all Europeans. This is especially true because, one way or another, the (UK-)U.S. empire is ending. Either the nations that are in the EU will be a part of the growing EurAsian future, or else, they will be the main battleground for WWIII. It’s their choice, which to be.

The elections this year in the possibly neutralist EU nations such as Germany and France will be crucially important in determining whether Europe will again be the battleground for a world war. If they break away from their current vassalage to the (Rhodesist) Deep State of UK and U.S., the chances of avoiding a WW 3 will become greatly increased.

Europe’s enemies aren’t Russia and China, but UK and U.S. However, polls show that only very few Europeans recognize this fact — the vast majority of Europeans have been fooled by the U.S.-and-allied (Rhodesist) Deep State and its ‘news’-media. So, the prospects for Europe currently look bad. Decades of (Rhodesist) indoctrination (including lots of misleading ‘news’-reports) have established, in Europe, deep-seated prejudices against both Russia and China, and the idea that an alliance with America protects them against Russia (instead of making them actually prime targets of Russian missiles). The belief that today’s America protects Europe, instead of being Europe’s top (if not only) enemy, is stupid, but propaganda (lying) succeeds, and few people in the public ask the basic questions that expose the frauds of the Rhodesists. Propaganda requires its victims to not examine on their own, and that’s unfortunately the way most people are. However, any reader who clicks onto a link in the present article if a given allegation appears to be questionable, will see the evidence, and can judge it oneself. Then, a reader can make an informed judgment, not merely a judgment that’s on the basis of the overwhelming propaganda (which is Rhodesist).

PS: On September 23rd, Alexander Mercouris, whom I consider to be the most trustworthy of all journalists at analyzing international diplomacy, headlined “AUKUS Debacle: US Apologies to France in Biden-Macron Call, Greenlights EU Army, Johnson Frozen Out”, and presented a powerful case that the AUKUS deal had been conceived by Boris Johnson, was then stupidly accepted by Joe Biden, and then became obligatorily accepted by Scott Morrison. If that analysis is true, then the initiative here wasn’t American but instead British, which would fit perfectly with Rhodes’s plan, that whereas America would be supplying the muscle in this global-imperial scheme, the brains (such as they are) behind it would be in Britain. U.S. fronts for UK. It’s still the British Empire. Rhodes’s scheme has been stunningly successful.

The declaration of a new military alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States – AUKUS – is a declaration of war intent towards China. The touchstone that is the tell of this aggression is the supply of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia by the U.S. and Britain.

Only a few days after announcing this new Indo-Pacific military alliance, U.S. President Joe Biden was this week addressing the UN General Assembly issuing a solemn appeal, among other things, to “save the planet” from adverse climate change. The complacency and hypocritical double-think are astounding. Biden is afforded a platform and respect at a forum originally founded on preventing aggression and war – only days after he unveiled a provocative war plan against China along with Britain and Australia.

The supply of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia is a categorically offensive move. Such vessels have a greater patrol range compared with conventional submarines and they are intended to allow Australian naval forces to sneak up on China. They can also be feasibly equipped with nuclear missiles despite official denials of this being an option. Australia is a non-nuclear state with obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is therefore the party changing its status by violation of treaty obligations, not China.

In acquiring nuclear-powered submarines from the U.S. and Britain, Australia has cancelled an existing €56 billion contract with France to supply diesel-electric vessels. That decision has enraged Paris which denounced it as a “stab in the back” by allies. But what is more important about the decision is not the bickering and sordid stealing of lucrative business by one ally from another. The move from conventional submarine design to U.S. nuclear power is the key to understanding how grave the war agenda has become.

The AUKUS pact unveiled by Biden on September 15 in a joint virtual press conference with the British and Australian prime ministers did not mention China specifically. But that omission is more of the stealth that underpins the sinister new alliance. Nonetheless, Beijing was quick to condemn it as a provocation that would destabilize the Pacific region. China also warned that it would henceforth target Australia with nuclear weapons as a result of its military pact with the U.S. and Britain.

What is inescapably shaping up is a war footing by the United States, Britain and Australia towards China. Contemptibly, however, the Anglo-American leaders are playing down the criminal agenda, instead cynically claiming that the AUKUS pact is not a threat to anyone. Australian premier Scott Morrison even had the gall to say he was “open” to talks with China following the news of AUKUS and the nuclear submarines.

The Western mainstream media are also complicit in criminal complacency. Not one outlet has questioned or criticized the rationale for such a provocative military pact. The media parroted the unsubstantiated narrative that China represents a “growing threat” and “therefore” must be challenged. There is no explanation about how exactly China is supposed to be threatening global security. It is couched in vague terms such as that nation’s “expanding influence” or “footprint”. This false premise of posing a threat is adopted as if a fact that is then used to justify what is an unprecedented plan of aggression by the United States, Britain and Australia – the very type of aggression that the United Nations was established in 1945 to outlaw after the barbarity of the Second World War.

Michael Brenner, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Pittsburgh University, is scathing of the Western duplicity and complacency.

He comments: “Once again, an American president is lying to us about a grave matter of war and peace. Biden’s team is bent on a confrontation with China that runs a heavy risk of war. And let’s make no bones about it, the war will be nuclear. We are the victims of a cascade of lies and deceit. The New York Times and other mainstream media are co-conspirators. Has anyone explained why the U.S. sees war with China as almost inevitable? Are we offered contrary views? No. We are marching in lockstep toward Armageddon.”

Brenner points to a prominent report in the New York Times on September 17 – two days after the AUKUS debut – which he says is a typical propaganda piece to conceal the danger and criminality of the U.S. war plan against China.

The NY Times’ report purports to explain the switch to nuclear-powered submarines as being the initiative of the Australian government. The impression given is that Canberra wanted to obtain this technology instead of the French conventional design because the former is “quieter”, has a longer range and is harder to detect. And, it is implied, it was only the Americans and British who could provide the superior alternative. It is almost made out by the NY Times that the Biden administration, along with London’s assistance, was doing Australia a favor to help it extricate from contractual obligations to inferior French subs.

But as Brenner points out, France had originally offered Australia the nuclear design. “France’s own submarines are nuclear powered whose performance is on a par with American submarines,” he notes. It was Australia that originally went for the conventional option in order to save money. If Canberra somehow deemed a new strategic need for nuclear design, then the easiest and least expensive option would have been for France to supply the nuclear-powered subs to Australia, not ditching the existing contract and going ahead with a new deal with the United States and Britain. In other words, economically and logistically, the AUKUS supply arrangement does not make sense for Australia. So what’s really going on?

Here’s where the NY Times’ report let slip the real story. It refers to how the “Biden administration began engaging Australia and Britain seriously about its emerging strategy to counter China” in the lead up to sabotaging the French submarine contract.

The report adds: “And it was a sign that as Mr Biden begins to execute what the Obama administration, 12 years ago, called the ‘pivot to Asia’, there is the risk of stepping on political land mines as old, traditional allies in Europe feel left behind.”

It was therefore not Australia’s initiative to drop the French contract or to go nuclear. It was the Biden administration.

The objective is to subordinate Australia and Britain more tightly under Washington’s command for its war plan against China. Cutting the French out of the mix makes the line of command more direct for Washington. That’s what makes the U.S. war plan with its AUKUS surrogates all the more deliberate and imminent. And criminal.

The Gallic gall erupting between France and the United States, Britain and Australia has overshadowed the new military alliance that U.S. President Joe Biden announced last week for the Indo-Pacific region.

That alliance was supposed to signal a U.S.-led initiative to challenge China. But the strategic move is turning out rather stupid and shortsighted as it has backfired to slam a hole in Washington’s alliance with France and wider NATO partnerships.

French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered the recall of ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia in a sign of the intense anger in Paris over the newly unveiled alliance known as AUKUS – standing for Australia, United Kingdom and the United States. The return of French envoys from these allied nations has never happened before.

What’s at stake is a €56 billion contract to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia by France that was first signed in 2016. That deal has been scrapped and replaced by a contract with the U.S. and Britain to supply Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines. The French subs that were on order were diesel-electric powered.

That’s a huge loss in financial revenue for France as well as a hammer blow to French naval jobs and ancillary industries. But what’s more damaging is the stealth and a palpable sense of betrayal. The French were evidently hoodwinked by the Americans, British and Australians over the whole backroom deal.

France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian did not beat around the bush to express the rage being felt in Paris at the highest level. “I am outraged… this is a stab in the back,” he fumed to French media on news of the new Anglo-American military alliance in the Indo-Pacific and the consequent cancellation of the French sub contract.

“There has been duplicity, contempt and lies – you cannot play that way in an alliance,” he added referring to the NATO military organization of which France is a prominent member.

Apart from the recall of its ambassadors, France has also cancelled a scheduled summit in London this week between French and British defense ministers.

Sir Peter Ricketts, a former British national security advisor and past ambassador to France, said the growing row was “just the tip of the iceberg”. He said it was much worse than when France fell foul of the United States and Britain back in 2003 over the Iraq War.

Ricketts told the BBC as quoted by The Guardian: “This is far more than just a diplomatic spat… this puts a big rift down the middle of the NATO alliance.”

What is particularly galling for the French is that the new U.S. alliance with Britain and Australia was obviously under private discussion for several months to the exclusion of Paris and other NATO members. The French only found out about the pact when it was announced on September 15 in a joint virtual press conference between Biden and his British and Australian counterparts, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison.

When Biden made his first overseas trip as president in June this year to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, and later to meet other NATO leaders in Belgium, there was no mention of the AUKUS plan. Biden even held a bilateral and apparently cordial meeting with Macron in Cornwall without any hint of the new alliance under formation nor the impending impact on the French submarine contract. More bitterly in hindsight, Biden also held a closed meeting with Johnson and Morrison during the G7 summit even though Australia is not a member of the forum. They must have discussed AUKUS in secret. No wonder the French are aggrieved by the contempt shown.

But it’s not only France that is stunned by the Anglo-American skullduggery. The other European NATO allies were also left in the dark.

Last week, European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell presented a new EU strategic vision for the Indo-Pacific region the day after the AUKUS alliance was announced. Borrell had metaphorical egg dripping off his face when he answered media questions about the U.S., UK, Australia initiative. “We were not informed, we were not aware… we regret not having been informed.”

The brutal irony is that Biden came to the White House promising that he would repair transatlantic partnerships with Europe and NATO which had been ravaged by Donald Trump and his browbeating over alleged lack of military spending by allies. When Biden visited England and Belgium in June it was something of a love-in with European leaders who swooned over his vows of “America is back”.

After Biden’s unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan last month when European NATO partners were not consulted and their apprehensions were brushed aside, now we see Biden poking France in the eye and kicking it in the coffers with €56 billion pain.

“Political trust has been shattered,” said Frederic Grare of the European Council for Foreign Affairs as quoted by the Euronews outlet.

But the whole sordid betrayal and bickering have more than money and loss of trust involved – far-reaching though that those issues are.

Washington’s willingness to supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia with British collaboration shows that the United States is moving ahead with a more reckless offensive policy towards China. Biden is explicitly declaring a strategic move to confront China more openly and provocatively, ramping up the hostility of previous administrations under Trump and Obama.

Beijing condemned the new AUKUS alliance as a harbinger of more “Cold War”, saying that it would bring insecurity to the region and lead to a new arms race. That may be an understatement as the Anglo-American alliance spells move to a war footing.

China warned that despite Australia’s insipid assurances to the contrary, the nuclear-powered submarines could be armed with nuclear missiles in the future. Beijing said Australia would be targeted for a nuclear strike in the event of any future war with the United States.

Biden’s strategic move to engage with Britain and Australia in order to threaten China is proving to be a loose cannon in relations with France and other European NATO allies. That speaks of Washington’s desperation to confront China. 

The surprise announcement of the new AUKUS alliance has predictably provoked an outcry from the European side of NATO, in particular France whose $90B plans with Australia were nixed without forewarning or mutual agreement. The entire fiasco only pushed the realization of a European continental army further along its path, a path that is all but inevitable and can only be either slowed or hurried by world events and political pressures.

As we wrote towards the end of August in ‘NATO’s Obsolescence’, the NATO alliance is coming undone and what we are seeing internationally is the rise of multipolarity. Distinct from the yearnings of idealists, multipolarity does not necessitate, (nor does it exclude), that the rising global blocs operate in some symphonic harmony towards global peace. But there is a kernel of truth: because it implies a change away from often violent attempts to build a one-world system based on the wildest fantasies of the Western banking establishment (popularly referred to as the ‘New World Order’), it creates an opportunity for harmony, as multipolarity rests upon spheres of influence and mutual recognition of sovereign hegemony.

AUKUS represents the failure of the Trans-Atlantic order rising after WWII (and emboldened by the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact) to transform into this ‘New World Order’ in the sense of a unipolar American century. But the solidifying of the U.S., UK, and Australia into something like AUKUS is also an entirely coherent development of the Five Eyes (UKUSA/FVEY) into something more.

East Room of the White House, September 15, 2021, in Washington, D.C. President Biden delivered his remarks to present “AUKUS,”.WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

It further underscores how much Biden’s foreign policy sits in line with Trump’s. AUKUS tends to confirm that for reasons still not entirely known (but which engender fantastical theories), Trump’s foreign policy on EU, China, and Five Eyes carries on into the Biden administration.

Not everyone is on board. The intelligence relationship already existing between A5 countries known as the Five Eyes has been challenged by the push to be decisive on China where previously it was clearer on the USSR – something where regarding China, New Zealand and Canada have decided to take a more nuanced and balanced approach.

In short, we see Obama allies Trudeau and Ardern push-back against the Biden administration’s move to forge AUKUS. Ardern went so far as to say that Australian nuclear subs per the AUKUS alliance, will not be allowed in New Zealand’s waters. Recall that Chinese naval vessels have been allowed to dock in New Zealand’s waters as recently as 2019. As far as Trudeau appears to be positioned, Canada’s Global News reported, “Brett Bruen, a consultant and former U.S. diplomat, told The Canadian Press that Canada may want to keep its distance from the pact to avoid aggravating existing tensions with China.”

The ugly economic details of AUKUS have left France and NATO countries with the realization that the U.S. has sent a much larger signal than that particularly problematic $90B detail would indicate. The U.S. under Trump had been shifting its strategic emphasis away from realistically deflecting a Russian military intervention into Western Europe as NATO existed originally to do. Rhetoric and a few additionally planned exercises aside, this has not changed under the Biden administration. Trump’s efforts to push forward on burden shifting from the U.S. to NATO members in Europe in the form of a 2% of GDP commitment on military spending is not one that Biden will roll back, despite his administration’s formal commitment to rebuild U.S.-EU strategic commitments apparently undermined by the 45^th presidential administration. These developments, and more, have left France and Germany certain that an EU Army is a realistic security solution in the face of an unreliable U.S.

The Coming EU Army

When the UK left the EU on January 31^st 2020 it removed a major obstacle to the building a continental army for Europe. Revealingly, the political forces campaigning on behalf of Brexit argued that the future of the EU would work against the special relationship that the UK has with the U.S. But why should this be the case, when the EU and U.S. are staunch allies, and since NATO is the child of this alliance?

© Flickr / Rock Cohen

The answer to that question subverts expectations, and this is what makes it so worthy of our attention. The inclusion of the UK in the EU has always been a source and reflection of conflict between the UK and the continent. The persistence of the pound sterling and its precise position to the later development of the Euro, probably made Brexit a rather positive outcome for Europeanists among the long-term EU strategists at the very top, despite the entire Brussels bureaucracy and the EU media structure batting for Atlanticism through public declarations and electoral interference. After all, like any organization of scale, there are competing visions and competing commitments. The best way to change the alignment of these is to change the facts on the ground and the departure of the UK from the EU was a monumental one

So many things then become possible with the UK out of the EU, like an EU Army.

Yet if NATO represents the keystone for security in Europe, then what need is there for an EU Army? The answer to this one is not pretty, because it directly confronts the definition of ‘security’, and more decidedly poses the question: Whose security does NATO actually represent?

Indeed, the Euroscepticism which understandably had become the majority view in Britain by 2016, was not only opposed to the balance of matters effecting the UK the EU as it existed, but also the direction of things to come and the moves to further centralize and empower the Brussels bureaucracy in ways unacceptable.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Eurosceptics oppose the further centralization of the EU as it would give rise to an EU Army, and would either be a ‘final blow’ to the sovereignty of European states or act as a rapid catalyst towards the same.

The debate over the utility and necessity of a European Army is a difficult one to follow, because there is one side – the EU Army side – which really can’t say the quiet part out loud.

And the quiet part is that NATO in Europe functions more like an occupying force that relies on indigenous enforcers, its command structure being effectively a comprador one. Because of that, the EU Army side of this debate has had to make specious claims that it would work in tandem with NATO, would not replace NATO, and would even strengthen NATO. All of these are ridiculous when unpacked, but as necessary to say as Biden’s anachronistic and demonstrably false statements that the U.S. holds NATO Article 5 as a “sacred commitment”. Turkish forces fighting U.S. advisors embedded with the U.S.-backed YPG would be surprised to hear that Article 5 was still relevant. As with the case of the Greece-Turkey strategic stand-off, the question arises again.

When Merkel blasted Obama’s NSA in 2013 for spying on Germany, the quiet part was audible. But it would have been untoward to have publicly teased out the logical deduction any reasonable person would make from this.

And this in itself represents a self-consciousness of the weaker and more difficult to articulate position. Not because the logic can’t be made clearer, but because the truth of it all – that multipolarity means that the EU and U.S. may not have the same strategic interests – threatens the entire post-WWII order of things.

The pretext of course for the need for NATO is the existence of a Russian Federation existing as a single geopolitical entity, and not as an additional dozen states carved out of Russia’s existing oblasts, which is the openly professed fantasy of NATO’s media-intelligence wing, the Atlantic Council. Prizes have been awarded by Atlantic Council-supported ACTR to university students who developed schemes, maps, and socio-economy and political data towards the division of Russia into ten or so more states.

But even as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg bemoaned on June 15 of this year that the NATO-Russia relationship, “is at its lowest point since the Cold War, and Moscow’s aggressive actions are a threat to our security.“, this is pure theatrics. It would be surprising if any leader of a European state believed this was really the case, knowing instead that the present state of EU-RF relations is the consequence of hyperventilating problems into existence.

For many decades, the encroachment of the EU and NATO into Central and Eastern Europe were seen as one and the same. But in reality, NATO represented itself as the military enforcer of Trans-Atlanticism and trilateralism in Europe. This meant that an expanding EU was permissible within the strict rubric of also being advantageous to Trans-Atlantic banking in the form of the IMF, which acts like a tax or tithing upon European capital paid towards the City of London and Wall Street and ensuring that the Eurodollar – one of the parents of today’s EURO – was reliant on the Petrodollar as the reserve currency.

Conclusion

While France cries foul in defense of its own arms industry, certainly the brains behind Macron sees the rise of AUKUS as both a tremendous opportunity and pretext to justify the Franco-German agenda already in play.

Liberal-idealist opposition to the creation of an EU Army seems to stem from some alternate reality where each European state doesn’t already possess an armed force. They argue as if foreign aggression upon the EU will be invited and not, as logic would inform us, be discouraged by the existence of a coherent and singular command structure such as the EU Army presents. There is a failure to understand that a disunited Europe invites any number of great powers to be able to play divide and conquer in and between European states, to the detriment of all European states.

The primary and sacrosanct raison d’etre for the EU in the first place is to avoid the sorts of wars between European states which twice destroyed Europe in the 20^th century, which led to the strategic advantage of the U.S. as a global hegemon.

To wit, E.H Carr’s work exposed that for nearly three hundred years (writing from the 1940’s), the foreign policy of England (in its various iterations) was to divide continental European power by pursuing policies which created conflicts between Germany and France. Likewise, we see no small role in the financial schemes of the U.S. and England that led to both European conflicts in the 20^th century.

And so in looking at costs, of course always left out is the ‘cost of not’. The focus on costs of such a European Army fails to understand the relationship that the EU is in today with regard to the U.S. dollar. The EU must frame its expenditures in budgetary terms precisely because of the Atlanticist financial scheme, where the U.S. can create money at whim but the EU must operate within the rubric of monetary scarcity.

So in thinking that the U.S. is presently paying for European security, what is ignored is a macroscopic view which accounts for opportunity cost, profit sharing, and liabilities that arise. The U.S. role in European security, as we have said, is to secure U.S. interests in Europe.

Euroscepticism, a genus with numerous species, opposes the rise of an EU Army as mentioned, but not only in the UK. Across the EU, the thinking and rationale is – at face value – the same. But beneath the surface, as E.H Carr would likely agree, is a quite opposite dynamic.

Nationalist Euroscepticism has been the most potent force, with other species whose skepticism is rooted in other matters often tagging along. The critical point here is that the more radical the nationalist Euroscepticism, the more likely it is that skeptic views positively a confederal type arrangement between European states on the basis of identity and shared history. They often paint their own alternate solution wherein European states are in some kind of organization that rings nearly identical to the EU itself, (“a single Europe of a hundred banners”), with some notable exceptions such as the financial structures in the EU in the form of the Troika.

And that is the solution: the rise of an EU Army would also be able to support financial independence of the EU from the U.S.-UK financial grip. A truly sovereign EU would also have sovereign financial institutions, which today it lacks. And it is precisely the contemporary financial arrangement that inspires nationalist-driven Euroscepticism. It is only this that could make the EU into the kind of confederation that nationalist Eurosceptics would find acceptable, even desirable.

AUKUS likewise is based on a common historical relationship to Britain, and while oceans still separate the member states, the alliance represents a turn to doctrines descended from spheres of influence as opposed to the universalist values schema which defined the now failed gambit to realize Trans-Atlanticism into a permanent unipolarity.

Both AUKUS and the rise of an EU Army are manifestations of a growing multipolarity, and could be critical to stability and a decrease in the hostilities presently driven by the global ambitions of Atlanticism. While AUKUS formally exists to counter China, it does so on the basis of shared history and spheres of influence. That means that the logic of containing China within such a framework also contains AUKUS. Civilizational spheres such as an Anglo-sphere, or a Eurosphere, or like China (which by itself is a civilization) all set clear borders of legitimacy. This is entirely at odds with the disastrous attempt to build a single world order on the basis of abstract and universal values, dictated from an imperial center.