At the end of November, a draft proposal which sketched out a plan for an EU army entered the sphincter of the EU’s decision-making process, which, strangely didn’t cause much of a stir. Opaque and lacking concrete answers for major questions which have plagued the EU army idea for decades, the paper is both controversial and interesting.

Former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb believes that Brussels’ renewed enthusiasm for security is “timely, important and realistic. The U.S. is not going to back up European security forever.”

If this is an accurate appraisal of the situation, then one could attribute the move as one born from Biden’s Afghanistan blunder which angered many EU leaders. And yet, Stub’s follow-up comment is alarming as it outlines that there is a worrying level of universal paranoia which goes beyond merely rogue states (which the EU failed to influence in any way, regardless such as Syria).

He says that if Europe is to get serious about protecting itself “it needs to understand that the line between war and peace is blurred … soft power has been weaponized and become hard power. We see that with asylum-seekers being used as weapons. We see with information, trade, energy and vaccines being used as weapons.”

And so the EU feels that its under fire on all levels, from all sides and needs a quick fix. The recent events which have unfolded on the Belarus-Polish border, combined with Russia’s troop build-up and Ukraine’s panicky beliefs that Putin will invade, the EU sees itself as useless, ineffective and doesn’t see its relations with NATO as solid enough that the defence organisation can be put to any good use to calm the tensions. Much worse for the EU is when individual, old Europe countries step forward and offer to send troops to the region while Brussels frets over the implications of Georgia or Moldovia joining NATO one day. It’s very much about “be careful what you wish for” but in the case of the EU, its latest plan is really more of a political ruse to send a message to both EU member states and to NATO that “something has to be done” in Ukraine and Belarus to tip the scales away from Putin and more towards the West.

But it isn’t going to happen. NATO may well support Ukraine’s so-called sovereignty but it also provokes Putin towards a military option.

What may well emerge from the EU paper is that France takes the lead role for an informal EU army, with a few member states joining, perhaps even the UK, which will used to police the edge of Europe’s borders but not for anything remotely looking like a confrontation with Russia. The numbers are just not there and there is too much anxiety from some EU member states who fret that NATO will be side lined if such an organisation ever got off the ground while others are more gung-ho but no one has the faintest idea how this plan would be funded. The paper suggests bigger budget which gives the reader the confirmation that whoever wrote it, is living in cloud cuckoo land and doesn’t have a realistic grasp of the political dynamics on a member state level. No one wants to pay more money into the EU pot as this “we don’t know how to fix it but let’s try more money” typical Brussels way of thinking has lost its credibility.

Military spending on any level is hugely expensive. If the authors of such a paper haven’t worked out how to fund such a military outfit, let alone who would run it (not the EU itself), then we can assume that like a lot of papers which work their way through the debating chambers in the windowless corridors of the EU, there’s still a lot of work required to move beyond the ubiquitous agreement that everyone’s pissed off with Russia. But none of us have the first clue as to what to do about it. And even if the solution was a military one, how do you do that on a shoestring budget which just pays for the shiny business cards and the exclusive address in Brussels. If we look at the EU’s diplomatic corps – a farcical organisation which spends over a billion dollars a year funding over 120 “ambassadors” which fails stupendously to fly the EU flag around the world – then we have a clue as to what any such army might achieve. Expect much more chaff from the EU talk machine. But don’t hold your breath if you are expecting EU armbands on the arms of soldiers heading East. That’s just the stuff dreams are made of.

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.

Why is there a refugee-influx into Europe from nations to the south and east that have been invaded by the U.S. and its allies? Is that question stupid? Is the correct answer to it, actually, obvious?

The nations that the U.S. Government targets for “regime-change” have governments that are friendly toward one or more of the three governments that the U.S. Government especially wants to be regime-changed (overthrown and replaced — conquered): Russia, China, and Iran. So, America sanctions, and tries subversion or coups against, or even outright invades, countries that are friendly toward Russia, China, and/or Iran. These various types of U.S. aggressions — in order to further isolate Russia, China, and/or Iran — are the chief cause that produced most refugees into Europe. These refugees are escaping civil wars and foreign invasions that were stirred or perpetrated by the U.S. and its allies. For the most part, the refugees came from countries which have good relations with Russia, China, and/or Iran — America’s main targets to conquer — and had been attacked by America and its allies for that reason.

What is the likelihood that Russia, China, or Iran — the three main targeted nations that the U.S. Government has (ever since 1945) been trying to first isolate, by removing the target-country’s allies, and, then grab and control — will actually, themselves, invade Europe? Is that likelihood near zero? (What would any of them gain by even trying to invade Europe? Would they likely be stupid enough to want to do it?) Then why does Europe participate in America’s aggressions (sanctions, coups, and invasions)? These are aggressions that create problems even within Europe itself.

If Europe wants stability, then why is it allied with the chief cause of its own refugee-influx?

Indeed, why are Europeans spending trillions of euros to arm, and to train, for war? Against what likely enemies? Are there any? Is this really just a scam, for the armament-manufacturing corporations and their owners — the people who profit from wars? Is it, in other words, a waste, if not being even a theft (by way of political corruption and lobbying) — a theft from the public, by the stockholders in those manufacturers of bombs and other weapons of (in the modern age) mass-destruction?

Is Europe now merely the sop for the many aggressions by the U.S. Government and its allies? Do we really want to continue to be allied with America’s coups, sanctions, and invasions? What good has any of these U.S.-and-allied aggressions actually done, for Europe?

Just to cite one example of this: anyone who doesn’t already know about “The American Invasion of Syria” should see that excellent and entirely accurate recent (September 2nd) 14-minute video summarizing this decade-long ongoing U.S. invasion and military occupation (about which I have written many articles, such as here).

The latest example of America’s creation of refugees, who will increasingly be seeking to come into the EU, is Lebanon.

It’s one target-nation after another. It just doesn’t stop. NATO’s arms-manufacturers need target-nations for their weapons, in order to be able to sell these products to their governments. Other than maybe nuclear weapons, regular bombs and missiles are made in order to be used — they need excuses in order for their governments to purchase and stockpile their products. Every invasion and military occupation needs excuses, because it has no honest reasons. (Defense has reasons; aggression has only excuses.) Excuses are essential in the war-business (the invasion-business). (That’s why imperialistic nations’ ‘news’-media are constantly providing excuses, instead of authentic explanations like this article is providing. Explanations are anathema to imperialisms, because imperialisms are always based on lies. Imperialisms need lies.)

Right after World War II, the U.S. Government created the Marshall Plan to provide U.S. funding for post-War reconstruction in anti-Soviet European countries, and to build them up so as to cause millions of people in Soviet-controlled European countries to want to move westward into the U.S.-dominated bloc. This turned out to have been one of the most effective tools that the U.S. Government used against the Soviet Union. And, of course, in the benefited countries, it produced enormous goodwill towards the United States Government. That goodwill wasn’t able to be much diminished by America’s coups in Latin America installing some of the 20th-Century’s most barbaric dictators, such as in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and El Salvador. America’s invasion and occupation of Vietnam was, likewise, widely accepted, as if it were a necessity, which it wasn’t — but the propaganda for it was incessant; so, people thought that it was, somehow, necessary. (Propaganda works — and there was lots of it. For example, America’s National Public Radio, NPR, has even implied that the war in Syria was started by Russia, and they went so far as to publicize America’s OSCE’s scurrilous allegation that Russia bombs Syria in order to cause Syrian refugees to flow into Europe. But, actually, Russia’s forces came into Syria because Syria’s Government had requested them to, so as to help it overcome the U.S.-and-allied invasion.)

Whereas in WW II, Europe was at war against itself, because of the fascist imperialism of Germany under Hitler, how is NATO, today — after the 1991 end of the Soviet Union and of its Warsaw Pact against America’s NATO military alliance — anything but a relic that serves the interests only of the stockholders in America’s and Europe’s armaments-manufacturers? Is this just a racket, for them?

On 10 November 2016, Deutsche Welle headlined “Juncker calls for an EU army: Jean-Claude Juncker has insisted on closer military and security cooperation between EU member states. The EU Commission president insists the need for an European army is irrespective of Trump’s election victory.” It reported: “‘We have a lot to thank the Americans for… but they won’t look after Europe’s security for ever,’ Juncker said. ‘We have to do this ourselves, which is why we need a new approach to building a European security union with the end goal of establishing a European army.’” (But has there actually been even one single instance when, after WW II, the U.S. Government did “look after Europe’s security,” except in America’s — and its EU’s and other U.S. vassal-nations’ — mere propaganda-claims and fantasies? When did the U.S. last defend Europe against an invasion? What invasion? But America has gotten some EU nations into plenty of America’s wars, against nations that accept the present governments of Russia, China, and Iran. Therefore, that clause by Juncker (“Americans … won’t look after Europe’s security for ever”) was sheer poppycock, from a U.S. stooge.)

The same idea, that Juncker was putting forth there, of a “European army,” had originally been proposed on 13 March 1996, by French Prime Minister Alain Juppé (subsequently convicted of corruption); and, now, after yet another major military failure by the U.S. (in Afghanistan), it’s bound to be heard more often, but it is just a fall-back way of evading, not of addressing, the central defense-related questions for Europe and for Europeans, which are: (1) Is there actually an enemy; (2) If so, then who; and (3) What is “we” — is it only our country, or is it instead traditional Europe, or is it instead the EurAsian Continent — or, is it, instead, the U.N. and the transformation of it into the global federal government of independent states all under international law from and enforced by agencies (yet to be created) at and by the U.N.? My proposed answers to these three questions would be: (1) Yes; (2) America; and (3) short-term the EurAsian Continent, but long-term a reorganized U.N. (Such a reorganized U.N. would be a reorganization carrying-out FDR’s intention for the U.N. when he came up with the name for the “United Nations” on 28 April 1942, and when the “United Nations” formally adopted that name at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in the Fall of 1944, but before Harry S. Truman became U.S. President on 12 April 1945 and quickly ditched FDR’s plan that the U.N. become the global federal Government over all international relations, which global international Government would possess the juridical and military means to enforce its international laws. In other words: this reorganized U.N. would be FDR’s U.N., instead of  the one that exists today, which is Truman’s U.N. — which Truman’s Administration designed so as to allow continuation of imperialisms, barely better than Wilson’s League of Nations was, which FDR considered to have been a failure. FDR had been designing a U.N. that would outlaw any and all empires.)

Ever since that proclamation from the appointed — not democratically elected — chief executive officer (Juncker) of the U.S.-Government-created-and-controlled anti-Soviet and now anti-Russian European Union, the ‘debate’ in Europe about ‘defense’-spending, has instead focused on whether to boost America’s NATO or else to create some new (NATO-affiliated) “European army”; but, all the while, the fake assumption has been accepted as real, that Europeans are being threatened not by America, but instead by Russia, and/or by China, and/or by Iran (the three countries that post-WW-II America has been aiming to conquer).This misconception is very convenient for America’s billionaires, who own controlling interests in their firms such as Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil, which basically depend upon governments and their decisions and their ‘defense’-policies and spending.

America’s three main targeted countries — Russia, China, and Iran — have basically socialized their military manufacturers, instead of allowed them to become controlled by private investors and motivated by profits (such as in NATO countries). Unlike in the U.S. and its allied countries, those countries control their armaments-makers, instead of being controlled by their armaments-makers (such as in The West). For as long as Europe allies itself with America, instead of with countries — especially including Russia, China, and Iran — whose armaments-firms are controlled not by any private investors, but instead by those respective Governments, and not motivated by profits, but by each of those Governments’ authentic needs for its own effective self-defense, Europe will continue to be the sop for the many aggressions (including sanctions, etc.) by the U.S. Government and its allies, and will continue to draw refugees from countries that America (and its allies) attack. That can’t be a good future for Europeans.

The 21st Century is undergoing a switchover away from “the American Century” just past, now into the EurAsian Century, and Europeans will therefore be a part, of either the EurAsian rise, or else of the continuing American decline. Europeans are now in the driver’s seat, toward a marvelous future, or else toward a disastrous one (for Europe). Europeans will be the peoples who will mainly be making these choices, for the entire world. Europeans will decide which way the world will go — toward more of “forever war,” or else toward peace.

Certainly, the present EU must be replaced, and NATO must end. Europeans must be freed from their chains to their enemy, so that Europe can improve, instead of decline. Continued alliance with what has now long (especially after the Soviet Union’s 1991 break-up and end) been actually Europe’s chief (if not only) real enemy, is no constructive way forward, for anyone except America’s billionaires.

NOTE: “Europe” here has been referring to all of Europe except Europe’s largest country, which is Russia. According to even the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia, in its article “European Russia”, “European Russia is home to 80% or 4/5th of Russia’s total population. It covers an area of over 3,995,200 square kilometres (1,542,600 sq mi), with a population of 113 million — making Russia the largest and most populous country in Europe.” (It has by far the largest land-area of any country in the entire world.) The total land-area of Russia is 6,599,921 square miles, so that 77% of Russia is in Asia. Anyway, the total land-area of Europe is 3,931,000 square miles, so that the non-Russian part of Europe is 61% of Europe. (Russia is 39% of Europe.) Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe, at 232,951 square miles, which is 15% as large as is European Russia. All of non-Russian Europe is 2,388,400 square miles (1.55 times the size of European Russia); so, all of Russia is 2.76 times as large as is all of non-Russian Europe. (This is why one of Hitler’s two objectives — the other being to exterminate all Jews — was to enslave all Slavs and use Russia’s vast sparsely populated territory as “Lebensraum” for “Aryans” to occupy and reproduce-in so as to become sent out and take over the entire planet.) Consequently, for the EU not to include Russia is for the EU to be blatantly a vassal-nation, or collection of vassal-nations (such as Jean-Claude Juncker represented), in America’s empire. The EU is a U.S.-created stooge operation, which must be replaced, if there is to be any realistic hope for Europeans, in the future. Russia is more of Europe than is any other country; so, for the EU to exclude it is scandalous and based only on American-sponsored lies.

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(Click on the image to enlarge)

Ukrainian President Zelensky captured headlines once again with his reminder to the Washington Post and to the world that his country will never be a part of NATO. At least this much is what one can only infer from what was actually quite the complaint. The U.S. still won’t grant a membership path to Ukraine despite all it has sacrificed to be in the club. Washington says ‘no’, regardless of the many creative ways Ukraine tilts at windmills.

The latest rejection from Biden came with the reprimand that Ukraine still has too much corruption, and a highly insulted Zelensky deflected this, refraining from raising Biden’s personal role in Ukrainian corruption. Zelensky claims that not allowing Ukraine into NATO was a sign of Russia’s growing relative influence, a fair point and probably accurate. Of course for Russia’s influence to grow only at minimum requires the inverse corollary; that NATO’s influence is shrinking.

The antics in Ukraine with NATO are part of a broader pattern of events, no less recent, where the alliance exhibits an odd behavior with Turkey as well. It’s impossible to mention this without adding the collapse of the Afghan mission, and why the sudden pivot to Brazil can only be understood in this light.

These connected cases are all strong indicators of the decline and subsequent reorientation of NATO. The real ties that bind NATO aren’t ideological, but geopolitical. Behind geopolitical commitments lay economic entanglements.

Zelensky’s situation is very frustrating indeed. It was just in October 2019 that Jens Stoltenberg made a very well publicized visit to Ukraine, and addressed the Verkhovna Rada declaring, “As a sovereign nation, Ukraine has the right to choose its own security arrangements. NATO’s door remains open,”., only to hedge that by saying, “No outside country has the right to veto. The time of spheres of influence is over,” explaining that only NATO countries and applicants can decide on NATO membership. The problem is that NATO countries – at least the U.S. and likely Germany – do not want the Ukraine liability in the alliance.

And this is because the time of spheres of influence – through multipolarity – has returned.

North Atlantic or Latin America?

Courting Brazil is reflective of the U.S. re-orienting its hegemony and ‘right-sizing’ its military operations and supply-line security for the new reality. This case by itself may misrepresent that NATO is broadening its power projection in the world. We are in a period of disentangling from distant commitments where supply-line security cannot be guaranteed any longer, and so the U.S. moves to increase its hegemony in Latin America.

Global finance capital is entirely tangled up, a strength that also comes with grave liabilities, and the entanglements connect China to Europe in ways that work against U.S. hegemonic interest in Latin America.

While the U.S. ultimately wants to exclude European industrial concerns from Latin America, it must play at introducing NATO into Latin America so that European industrialists don’t push for an EU policy on Latin America that favors China over the U.S..

The particular offer to Brazil to join NATO from the U.S. through National Security advisor Jake Sullivan was conditioned on dumping China’s Huawei. This would be connected to a broader agenda against BRICS. When Trump promoted the idea in 2019, it was met with predictable ridicule in American press. Now that the same is promoted by the Biden administration, it receives due respect. As an aside, it’s interesting to see another case in point of the foreign policy of the Trump administration carrying forward into the “Biden administration”.

IMAGE: Brazilian Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto (L) and U.S. National Security advisor Jake Sullivan meet in Brasilia on August 5, 2021. (Photo by Reuters)

And this is why Trump was right when he said that NATO was obsolete, a statement that horrified the Deep State and the entire globalist banking and intelligence apparatus that supports it.

In that sense also, we may instead be seeing the transformation of NATO into something like a PATO, a Pan-American Treaty Organization. All of this points to a U.S. strategy of realizing its place as a very strong continental power upon the Americas within the framework of a multipolar world. It signifies that at the very least, the U.S. is hedging its bets on being a unipolar power of a single world order.

Turkey – Who needs enemies when you have friends like NATO?

None of the NATO armies have directly confronted Russia with live fire in a real operation except Turkey. NATO aspirant Ukraine for its part has, at least quite arguably so in the Donbas, so the message being sent from the U.S. is surely strange.

Turkey is undoubtedly the NATO member that isn’t. In the course of nearly escalating from a dog fight over the skies of northern Syria, that saw the downing of a Russian jet in 2015 and public uproar in Russia, Turkey stood at the precipice of a major armed conflict. The world waited to see if Turkey would try to petition NATO for a decisive action on Russia. But then cooler heads prevailed, and facts came to light that raised questions about the Turkish pilot’s relationship with Gulen. Was there a plot to draw Turkey and Russia into an armed conflict?

Consider the meaning through this whole ordeal wherein we have a Turkey that now is a NATO member on paper only. Recall that after the conclusion of the Russia-Turkey row, the U.S. backed a failed coup in 2016 operationalizing its Gulen assets in the military to overthrow Turkey’s elected government. And it backed this coup in the middle of a Turkish military campaign against Syria, a campaign which the Obama administration had itself coordinated and urged Turkey to become involved in.

IMAGE: The aftermath of the failed U.S. backed Turkish coup in 2016 saw tens of thousands of soldiers detained

This is all very bad optics indeed, and a sign that NATO doesn’t create a reliable defense partnership. NATO stubbornly insists on sending all the wrong messages at all the wrong times, as if being able to get away with such antics might itself be a sign of stability and power.

Ukraine commits ritual seppuku to satiate the gods of NATO, but still no NATO membership. Turkey makes a high risk gambit which could have seen Kurdish dreams of a state realized, simply to satisfy the U.S. mandate to destroy the Syrian state. In response, the U.S. thanks Turkey by trying to overthrow the Turkish president. NATO seems to no longer be able to support or guarantee a new member-state like Ukraine, and more, can’t even manage to retain its current roster (Turkey) if it involves actual conflicts involving Russia, NATO’s raison d’être.

 A Fading Memory of a Bygone Era

A few short decades ago NATO suddenly metastasized into a former set of Warsaw countries in 1999. So what has changed? The world has changed, everything has changed. NATO’s strategists can see that any genuine security investment into Ukraine would be lost and even handed over to the Russian Federation in the forty-eight hours or so it would take for Moscow to complete a military occupation of Kiev. This isn’t to say that Moscow prefers this option, but sufficed to say, militaries do exist for reasons.

The overnight collapse of the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan has consumed the public’s imaginations for the past week, but how this reflects the general decline and incoherence of NATO is the broader and more interesting story. To wit, this recent geopolitical and military defeat handed to NATO – which was a part of the occupation under the rubric of the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Operation Resolute Support – is only the most recent chapter reflective of its general period of decline.

NATO’s dance with Ukraine, Brazil, and member state Turkey, indicate that the project has run out of gas. So as NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan were ultimately and decisively ended by the eighty-thousand strong force of Taliban, who are now reestablishing their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it becomes impossible not to connect this to what appear as endemic problems underlying the entire framework of NATO.

IMAGE: Jens Stoltenberg meets in Ukraine with Volodymyr Zelensky on October 30th, 2019

NATO once had a mission and once told a story. That story was important for the public to understand. It was a clear story of good versus evil, of freedom versus dictatorship, of democracy versus communism. In short, it was the narrative of the Cold War reified into a military alliance.

Naturally, once the USSR and the Warsaw Pact collapsed thirty years ago, one would have thought that the OSCE and similar, could have evolved into security treaty organization including both western European states and the former Soviet bloc countries.

But one would only think such a thing if one had believed that the Trans-Atlantic frustration with Russia was primarily driven by a crusade against communism.

The EU Army: The U.S. Views the EU as a Potential Threat

Trump’s declaration that NATO is obsolete was likely not just a reference to its inability to counter terrorism as he later amended, but rather a more overt declaration that the economic underpinnings of NATO – Trans-Atlantic banking – had come to an end. This is because that point much aligns with his ‘trade war’ against Germany and the EU by extension.

NATO and the EU are two quite distinct phenomenon, and while interdependence engendered mutual success in the post-war era, the period we have entered bears a different logic all together.

The one country’s leadership that has stood up and said, “come extract our resources, come take our labor supply, come IMF and lend to us, come America and put your bases on our soil,” has been the Ukrainian. Odd then that Ukraine finds itself out of luck with NATO and, quite separately, the EU.

The U.S. has typically incorporated EU states into NATO, which had long painted the illusion that the EU was fundamentally a NATO friendly project in its rationale and long-term goal. Rather, it’s better conceived as a touch-and-go series of negotiations between ‘frenemies’. Post-war Europe has sought to develop enough capital and technique through decades of rebuilding and later expansion into the regions first prospected by the German Third Reich, but until recently could only do so with the U.S.’ approval and supporot.

The words of NATO’s first Secretary General Lord Ismay are probably more to the point, when he said the NATO mission was to “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.

But what if Germany no longer wants to be kept down?

While much of Europe’s financial concerns are tied up with a banking conglomeration which blurs national barriers even at the Trans-Atlantic level, the industrial concerns and, in plain terms, the physical economy of Europe is viewed as a competitor economy to the U.S.’. As all economic facts of life, they have profoundly political corollaries.

The EU’s premier states, Germany and France, have for the last five years quite audibly pronounced the need for an EU army. The Obama era response is that one already exists, called NATO. The Trump era attitude seemed warmer to the idea, even if superficially concealed with the language of NATO states paying more of ‘their share’ even if the New York Times put words in his mouth that may have been, in a strange twist, closer to the truth. Biden now appears to have inherited whatever Trump was able to establish. Whether the U.S. would just allow a parallel establishment which excludes it, to rise up, is a good question. So far, they have done little to counter it besides creating some information war confusion on the status of the question.

There is a precedence for a European defense organization, in fact it precedes NATO. Known then as the Western Union Defense Organisation (WUDO), this was the core of modern NATO sans the U.S.

The U.S. will continue to be a top-level regional hegemon, if it can better orient its productive and financial vectors. It also would need to invest in infrastructure and reduce the austerity imposed on its working class. We should expect to see the U.S. continue to downsize its commitments outside of the Americas, and we expect to see the U.S. increase its efforts to reintroduce a Monroe Doctrine 2.0 inside the Americas.

The most serious statement made by a NATO leader came from Macron claiming that NATO was experiencing a “brain death”, prompting Trump to claim that “the French economy is in ruins” and describing Macron’s words as “very nasty”. Erdogan, not to be outdone, offered his own assessment of Macron’s own “brain death”.

The often incoherent and incomprehensible behavior of Erdogan, Macron and Trump stems from being compelled to dialogue with Putin in virtue of Russia’s role in regard to international treaties on nuclear weapons as well as its role in Syria, Libya and Iran together with its relations with the EU and the Franco-German axis.

NATO members’ schizophrenia lies in the inability of countries like the United States, Turkey and France to advance a truly multipolar foreign policy, where the pragmatic realism of some leaders obliges them to engage with Moscow even as they simultaneously make belligerent declarations against it in support of Eastern European countries.

Russia is central to the Middle East thanks to the triple role played in Syria. It carries out peace-keeping operations in the north-east of the country, effectively cooperating with Erdogan’s Turkey; the anti-terrorist operations continue in Idlib, alongside the legitimate government of Damascus, with the airspace well guarded against French, Israeli or American efforts to hobble the movements of the Syrian Arab Army. The leaders of France, Turkey and the US, in spite of having differing aims and objectives from those of Moscow, have no choice but to enter into dialogue with Putin in order to avoid any dangerous confrontations in an already complex and volatile region.

NATO has no chance of playing a leading role in this context, which is why the US and Israel dreamed of creating a Middle Eastern NATO consisting of Washington’s closest allies in the region, to be used use cannon fodder against Iran and her allies in the region. Once this goal failed, the original NATO continued to lose importance and significance in the region and beyond.

NATO’s official statements therefore increasingly carry less and less weight and significance, as the leaders of the alliance’s main members then proceed to advance diverging or opposing policies and actions.

The last, desperate attempt by Brussels to try and revitalize NATO was to propose to wield the alliance against the People’s Republic of China and its Belt and Road Initiative, even making an awkward attempt to involve Russia, in the hopes of driving a wedge between the two Eurasian giants, just as the Power of Siberia pipeline, one of the most important energy projects in the world, guaranteeing China’s LNG supply from Russia, comes into operation.

Western elites are well aware that the unification of the military, economic and political aspirations of Moscow and Beijing, with the possible future addition of the Franco-German axis, would spell the end of Washington’s hegemonic aspirations.

NATO is now old hat, having become of no strategic significance and no longer able to affect the global geopolitical balance. The real reason why NATO continues to exist is so that the Euro-Atlantic military-industrial complexes can continue to feed off the teat of the public purse; that and the need to keep European countries under Washington’s political and military tutelage.

The Franco-German proposal to create a European army can therefore be seen as an attempt to come out from under Washington’s heel in order to advance an independent, clearly defined military role that recognizes the multipolar era win which we live.

Moreover, Moscow and Beijing have been able to surpass NATO in such areas as hypersonic weapons, air defense, and new weapons systems for nuclear deterrence precisely because they do not suffer from the same types of corruption in their procurement and manufacturing processes as well as from the need to constantly feed an insatiable military-industrial complex, including the pressure to award contracts to American over European manufacturers.

NATO’s loss of credibility is symbolic of the change in the world order, where the West no longer has any option other than to acknowledge today’s multipolar reality.

NATO will only continue to further delegitimize its global role as long as it continues to try to undermine Moscow and Beijing’s expansion, inadvertently pushing allies like Turkey to question their own future within the Atlantic alliance.

Oh to be Emmanuel Macron. The French president appears to be on the edge of some kind of meltdown, following his fatuous comment about NATO being “brain dead”. And glancing at the slow growth in the EU – which is hitting Germany for the first time, as well as of course France – you can see how Macron is starting to panic.

He recently warned in an interview with the Economist that America was turning its back on Europe and that he had no confidence in NATO anymore. Was this a dig at Trump or more specifically a vitriolic outburst at Trump’s policy towards Iran, which in a matter of weeks will turn to the EU for cash hand outs and support, as it pulls out all together from the infamous JCPOA, otherwise known as the Iran Deal?

Macron’s big ideas about the EU being a big player are not really working out. Perhaps it is his main idea of him being the big player in a bigger EU which is the real issue though as his attempts to run the EU (in his role as French president) are floundering; few doubt that in five years time, when the EU in Brussels needs a new Council and Commission president, that his name will be on the list and he will break the old unwritten rule that no ‘giant’ of the EU can have a president in Brussels.

Well, not since Jacques Delors, anyway.

The EU is not working. Its economy is hitting new lows, which is even affecting non-eurozone countries like Sweden, and Britain’s more joined up departure will be one more unedifying message to its members: time for a rethink of the project.

The problem is that the ‘rethink’ idea will be as divisive as ever. In one camp, Macron and his pro federalist buddies in Brussels who are addicted to the EU udder tend to think dramatically, rather than rationally when thinking of ‘reforming’ the EU project. ‘Reform’ for them means taking more power in an anti-democratic fashion and then hope that, say a new EU army (from larger national EU defence budgets), bigger EU grants towards research (to compete with the US), minimal wages across 27 member states and, most radically, overhauling the Schengen Agreement with a new, single asylum policy, will all collectively muster greater political support.

Moderates across Europe though – perhaps what he might call ‘Eurosceptics’ – might argue that in such a crisis that the EU is in, that a decaling and downgrading of the projects ambitions might be a way to re-connect with EU voters.

I once asked European Commission president, Romano Prodi in 2002, what his chief task was in office. “To reconnect with voters” he answered confidently.

The smug smile soon vanished from his cherub like face when I replied “but surely that would suggest that once the EU was connected with them?”.

The tantrum that Macron is having presently with NATO is part of a bigger picture of the EU in decline. For EU countries to oblige Trump by agreeing to the 2% of GDP to be put aside on defence spending is an abhorrent attack on Macron and his vision of a new EU. Macron wants bigger defence spending to boost the EU project’s failing political support. But even this logic is flawed. Voters have been in steady decline for the EU project for at least the last three EU elections and a larger populist block in the European parliament is a clear testament to that.

Superpowers act. Pseudo super powers talk and hope their carefully-crafted press releases make an impact. The heart of the matter of this recent attack on NATO is how US policy targeted at Iran is failing. But that failure can be weathered by the US, as superpowers, by definition, look to others to shoulder the burden of their errors. And it is to the EU, where Trump looks for that action. It will be the EU which will pay the greatest price for Iran to make its next move in the coming days and pull itself further away from its obligations under the so-called Iran deal.

The problem with Macron is that he is so entrenched in his ultra conservative neo conservative past. Even in his letter published earlier this year in the Guardian he talks of a new EU looking more to Africa for future investment, perhaps a glimpse of Conrad like old values of France and its colonial legacy. Contrasted to the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg who has a more modern, realistic view of France and old Europe.

“I strongly welcome efforts to strengthen European defence… But the EU cannot defend Europe” he said recently at an event celebrating 70 years of NATO’s existence. “This is partly about military might. After Brexit, 80% of NATO’s defence expenditure will come from non-EU allies.’

That must have hurt Macron. But if the EU can’t even defend itself, it is ‘brain dead’ to think of any plans to expand itself and its powers?

Macron, whose political ambition is suffused with reviving France as a global power, appears to be exploiting tensions in the transatlantic alliance in order to push his pet plan for creating a European Army.

With Britain leaving the European Union, the French president sees an opportunity for France becoming the lead power in Europe. His call for Europe to regain “military sovereignty” is aimed at enhancing French power as the top European military force.

In an interview with the London-based Economist, Macron said: “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” He went on to claim that the United States is relinquishing commitment to the alliance; that the US is “turning its back on us”; and that European states must therefore “wake up” to “be in control of our destiny”.

His comments drew swift rebuke from the US and other NATO members. German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed Macron’s words, saying they were “drastic”. She asserted that NATO was the “cornerstone of security” for Germany.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, while visiting Germany this week, said that NATO was “critically important” as ever and he reaffirmed America’s military commitment to Germany, where there are over 38,000 US troops based.

NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who spoke alongside Merkel in Berlin, also rejected Macron’s apparent disparagement of the alliance’s present status.

Given that leaders of NATO’s 29 member states are due to gather in London on December 3-4 to mark the 70th anniversary of the military bloc’s foundation in 1949, Macron’s interview comes at an awkward time. There is a sneaking suggestion the French leader deliberately aimed his media comments to spark controversy in his favor.

At a superficial level, Macron may appear to be making a valid point. Yes, it is true that US President Donald Trump has continually lambasted European members of NATO for what he derides as their lack of military spending. Trump has warned about withdrawing US support for NATO. This is typical “transactional” Trump taking the hump about perceived petty cost-sharing and his relentless griping about America being “ripped off”.

In spite of Trump’s harrumphing, there is no sign that “the US is turning its back” on NATO or Europe, as Macron claims. On the contrary, Washington is investing more troops, tanks and warplanes on European territory, especially in the Baltic states close to Russia’s border.

Trump may threaten to walk away from NATO in Europe, but the US political and military establishment know full well that is an idle threat. America’s geopolitical power relies on the transatlantic bond to Europe which is afforded by NATO – its intrinsic founding purpose. NATO is essential to Washington’s hegemony over Europe and in particular for the prevention of any convergence between Europe and Russia as strategic partners. Rhetoric about “defending Europe” from alleged Soviet and later Russian aggression is simply a pretext for American dominance over European politics.

Macron is thus being melodramatic in his death-knell pronouncements for NATO. When he says, “we are currently experiencing the brain death of NATO”, he is inferring a demise in American leadership. The supposed demise is only superficial due to Trump’s tetchy rhetoric. In every fundamental way, the NATO alliance and Washington’s strategic dependence on it as a structure for projecting American power over Europe is as paramount as ever.

It is telling that Macron cites the purported US troop pullout from Syria last month as evidence for his depiction of a waning NATO. Macron is aggrieved that France and other European states were not consulted by the American move “to abandon Kurdish allies”.

But those comments reveal Macron disingenuously “protesting too much”. When were European states ever consulted by their American NATO paymaster?

Washington has launched countless military invasions of foreign countries over the decades with hardly a call in advance for Europe’s “consultation”. It is the servile function of European members of NATO to simply follow orders and row in behind American troops on Washington’s imperialist conquests in order to give US criminality a veneer of “multilateralism” and “legitimacy”.

Therefore for Macron to bemoan NATO as a “current experience” of brain-death is an exaggeration. It has always been brain-dead as far as European consultation or independence goes. Europe habitually serves as a zombie pandering to Washington’s imperialist demands.

Witness how the European powers have slavishly deferred to the “Washington consensus” on socially disastrous neoliberal economic policy; or Washington’s catastrophic wars in the Middle East and Central Asia which have generated a migration crisis for European societies.

Witness too how European states have meekly, even keenly, gone along with Washington’s policy of hostility towards Russia and the self-harming economic sanctions imposed on Moscow.

Admittedly, Macron, in his interview this week, said that a more independent Europe should seek dialogue and partnership with Russia. That is to be welcomed. But Macron’s chances of achieving that are remote when the fact is Europe is so dominated by Washington.

Macron’s attempt at stirring controversy over NATO and Washington’s relations with Europe is a jejune self-serving bid by the French president to assert himself and France as the pivotal European power.

That’s no doubt why Germany’s Merkel reacted quickly with reproach. After all, Berlin has shown a newfound desire to increase its national military power. This week defense minister Annegret Kamp-Karrenbauer called for more “proactive deployment” internationally of the Bundeswehr in order to secure Germany’s “strategic interests”.

Merkel has previously joined Macron in endorsing a European Army. She too has complained about the US no longer being reliable as a protector. Such comments by Merkel, Macron and other European politicians betray their misplaced understanding about the nature of American power and its core relation to Europe. Calls for a European Army are not about rejecting the militarism of NATO in principle, but rather about France and Germany reviving their own national militaristic power.

This week, however, the Neo-Napoleonic Macron went too far in his quest for renaissance of French global power. Exaggeration, pseudo criticism of America and NATO, were really all about aggrandizing French power by way of creating a new role of military supervisor of Europe. And Auntie Angela was compelled to slap down the naughty little French boy. Because Berlin has designs of its own.

Europe wants its own Army

Cutting through a lot of intentionally confusing messaging, is that France and Germany are just fine with any end to NATO because it helps justify the coming European Army – one that they want, and believe they need anyhow. It only happens to be part of the same reality that US hegemony, and its ability to finance NATO in turn, are coming to an end. In sounding more like a radical post-structuralist international relations theorist than a fiscally conservative leader of a capitalist democracy, Macron shocked the world when he stated in no uncertain terms that this period we are in marks the end of ‘Western Hegemony’.

The real facts of motives behind big changes have an odd way of ultimately making themselves known for what they are at the end of the day. Often these are cloaked in the underlying framework of the politics of the time. Revealing these in the case of France and NATO can show some top-level word salad at play: justify independence not on the basis that being controlled isn’t fair, but rather that those doing the controlling aren’t doing it well enough and don’t seem committed to it as much as they ought to be. Macron is doing this very well, and mirrors Trump’s own discursive games.

Occupiers aren’t doing their job – the End of Trilateralism

Imagine if you will a French argument against the Nazi occupation not because it placed Germany in control of France’s fate, but rather on the basis that the Wehrmacht was decreasing its troop presence in France, or conversely appeared to be wavering on the Eastern Front, and as a consequence France was worried about Germany’s commitment to the Reich. This is, in short, what Macron is arguing today regarding the US and NATO.

Imagine likewise, that the Wehrmacht said it was considering abandoning its occupation of France not because it had to move resources to the Eastern Front, but because France wasn’t giving enough to the war effort. This is the crux of Trump’s argument for public consumption.

Under any other prior historical iterations, the US’s moves to reduce its NATO commitments to Western Europe would be hailed by progressives in the Democratic Party in the US as a step in the right direction. Yet now in this exciting time, one in which the US Empire is down-sizing and adjusting itself to its real force potential, progressives in the US are making geopolitical realism into a partisan issue: since the most obvious or observable stage is happening under a nominally conservative, Republican administration, it must therefore be a Democratic Party talking point to oppose this in principle.

The matter is of course deeper than this, and the Democratic Party’s investment in the trilateralism (US + EU + Japan) of Rockefeller and Brzezinski has been at odds with the unilateralism of the neoconservatives. We will recall when President George W Bush attacked Iraq, it came not long after moves by the Iraqi government to do their oil dealings in Euros. The Europe-wide hatred for Bush’s war on Iraq seemed to the politically naïve as an expression of social-democratic pacifism, but in reality was an expression of Europe’s sovereign financial interests versus dollar hegemony. These questions really have not gone away.

When NATO came onto the stage, it was couched in terms of protecting Western Europe from the growth of the Soviet sphere of influence which the latter had won from its victory over Germany in WWII.

The idea that NATO was not a collaborative and mutual effort of freely-acting European states in defense of market freedoms and Western values, but instead more like a US led and sustained military occupation in Western Europe, in the past could be criticized as either Communist or even neo-Nazi propaganda. Against this view the entire media-academic industry was mobilized, assuring the public that all the European countries of NATO were members of their own accord and will: an outgrowth of the democratic mandate from the peoples of the member states, arrived at through fair parliamentary processes.

Macron still needs to make everyone look good

All this places Macron in an odd position. NATO is the military component of economic Atlanticism, but this transatlantic relationship experienced a major breach of trust in the years following the US market crash in 2007. This was because US based banks and government colluded to deceitfully push a significant portion of its liabilities onto the EU all the while claiming these were investments – who in turn placed an undue burden in PIIGS countries, in particular Greece. This all in turn has fueled a marked increase in Eurosceptic and ‘exit’ movements across the beleaguered EU.

Then on top of that, the Trump administration makes the EU’s commitment to NATO a cornerstone of his Europe policy, along with a brewing trade war. These two are intimately connected.

And so Macron’s apparent lamentations over the ‘brain death’ of NATO is quite revealing. In this, he refers to truths that everyone knew, but couldn’t say: “NATO is essentially a military occupying force against European sovereignty – for the EU to be a geostrategic entity, it must be in control of its own military forces”. This sounds like it could have been said by de Gaulle, even Pétain, and while the notion easily fits with Marine Le Pen’s platform, the reality of France forces Macron to hold it.

Europe’s not in love with Atlanticism

The problem is that even though transatlantic financial dealings have increasingly less to offer the EU, the US side of this equation needs to maintain the relationship and all the appearances and structures that go along with it, in order to leverage itself in any future potential dealings. In short, one way that the US believes it can hold onto things longer, or decrease the tempo at which they’re losing them, is by keeping up appearances. And these appearances are more than just superficial – they are real existing financial obligations which in all reality do not work well for European institutions.

Macron has iterated the call for an EU army a number of times. But his statements in the economist represent a skillful if distorted way to couch the EU’s real situation within the accepted discourse of our time: Atlanticism is good. This mirrors Trump’s method and reasoning – and to be clear, it is not certain that Trump is very much committed to trans-Atlanticism, at least not in its present iteration.

Back in August, speaking on how isolating Russia is a mistake, Macron explained that “Western hegemony” is over. This leave us an interesting formula: Western hegemony is over, European regional hegemony must begin. This implies that Western hegemony had always meant Europe plus the US together. Without the US, there is no Western hegemony.

Trump’s calls that EU countries increase its funding of NATO on the rationale that Europe isn’t doing their share, could only have been to provoke a reaction from Europe to speak its own truth – ‘we don’t like NATO either’ – and to justify the US’s own eventual reorganization or dismantling of NATO. Like Imperial Japan told its puppet-state Manchukuo: it’s only natural that you should pay for the cost of your own occupation.

If NATO member states no longer want to pay for their own occupation, then they will no longer get to enjoy it.

Macron masters Trump’s Discursive Trap

Macron, likewise, plays a similar game – and his discourse is aimed at being acceptable to multiple audiences, who themselves have greatly divergent interests and positions.

The realists in the US, of which Trump is the most evident representative, know that the US simply cannot afford to continue with its NATO obligations. Underneath this is the fact that the US cannot offer Europe better deals than it can get elsewhere. The days of forcing Europe to work through the US through various ways, wherein using the US dollar as the primary transaction currency and the global reserve currency in the past meant that the US was middle-in to every deal. Those days are just about over. Rather than disclose that all this is about decreasing US influence, power, and wealth on the global scene, it is more prudent to make this about fairness – that the EU isn’t doing its part.

And to wit, as we have said, for Macron’s part of the dance – he knows he needs to keep the trans-Atlanticists happy, they still exert tremendous political control in Brussels and are interwoven into Europe’s financial sector – the most important sector in capitalist Europe. There can be no doubt: Macron was the banking establishment’s choice against Le Pen. The question as to whether he was some Manchurian candidate from beyond the financial sector’s grasp, or whether there is some pro-European sovereigntist faction within the European side of this transatlantic financial sector, is a fascinating question for later investigation. But sufficed to say, those transatlantic deals aren’t the best deals, but these institutions are using whatever influence and capital they still have to force a political position. Macron, nominally, wants to keep them happy.

Thus Macron’s ‘warnings’ and ‘lamentations’ that the US under Trump has abandoned its NATO commitments in controlling Europe’s military are anything but. These ‘lamentations’ will serve a perfect pretext for France and Germany to work together to organize a Europe-wide military force. In reality, this has been brewing for many years under the rubric of NATO command. In essence, all the structures are there, it is only necessary to remove US command from the structure and change some patches and flags.

In speaking to the Economist regarding NATO’s Article V provision (in which NATO members must rally on the side of a NATO state if it is attacks and invokes the article), Macron seems to imply, in some twisted and round-about – really convoluted way – that he questions the US’s commitment to NATO because of the way it abandoned its allies, the Kurds. This is doubly odd – the adventure in Syria was not a NATO operation, and it is Turkey, the force attacking Kurdish separatists in Syria, that is the NATO ally. Turkey is NATO’s second largest army after the US.

Macron isn’t wrong then to imply – what is NATO without the US and Turkey? It is the European Army. This is the view which both France and Germany enter into the December meeting with.

So while Trump hides that the US simply can’t afford its empire anymore by blaming Europe for not doing its share, Macron hides that Europe’s been pushing for its own army for years before Trump assumed office. Indeed, the EU’s CSDP, known also as the European Defense Union, has been around in in developing form since 1999, the same year the currency was launched. This has been a part of the plan, it would seem, for quite some time.

Macron and Trump can’t be faulted for the word salad they are serving: it’s only a reflection of what’s acceptable in our day. The US president and European leadership appear to agree that NATO’s days are over. It seems the transatlantic financial institutions are the primary team expressing deep concern of this, and are looking to slow the process down by reversing the most overt policies of Trump by ousting him from the White House in 2020. Doing so could drag the process out for another decade, but doing so would be more painful and costly for everyone in avoiding the inevitable.

Take this report from Bloomberg that US imports of crude oil from Russia are set to triple this year compared with last year. If we use 2017 as a base figure, then US imports of Russian oil are in line for a ten-fold increase. Why? Because the Trump administration has slapped sanctions on its erstwhile chief supplier, Venezuela, supposedly in a “smart” strategy to force regime change against President Nicolas Maduro by making the South American country “cry Uncle”.

Right, so then to make up for the resulting shortfall to US oil refineries keeping the US economy running, Washington is having to call up alternative sources like Russia. But hold on a minute. Russia is supposed to be a “bad guy”. The US has imposed sanctions on Moscow for allegedly destabilizing Ukraine, annexing Crimea and meddling in American elections. Some of these US sanctions have even targeted Russian oil companies presumably to “teach Moscow a lesson”. Yet, here’s Washington buying up Russian oil like there’s no tomorrow. A likely ten-fold increase over a two-year period, all because Trump has a fixation about forcing illegal regime change in Venezuela, an ally of Russia. And remember this is the same US which is threatening to impose sanctions on Europe over the Nord Stream II project with Russia amid Washington’s accusations that the Europeans will be dependent on Russia for energy. Say what?

Then there’s China. Here’s another case of aiming the gun at the barn door and blasting yourself in the foot. Trump’s “genius” trade war with America’s biggest source of exports is, at it turns out, hitting US consumers and producers hardest. Tariffs imposed on Chinese goods to force Beijing to submit to Washington’s demands for “fairness” are rebounding with higher consumer prices in US retail stores like Walmart. American farmers are finding that their orders for soybean and other products to China are being slashed by Beijing in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs. Low-income Americans and farmers are supposed to be Trump’s voter base for his reelection bid in 2020.

Nike, the iconic American sportswear brand, is “crying Uncle” over Trump’s trade war with China. The firm is reportedly among 170 shoemakers whose production lines based in China are being clobbered by Trump’s tariffs on Chinese exports. Nike is pleading for Trump to exempt it and other US suppliers from his “smart” tariffs.

The Trump administration is banning Chinese telecoms giant Huawei over “national security” concerns, which is just a cover for strong-arming out of the marketplace because supposedly “free market” America can’t compete on market principles. Trump is having to reverse the ban after finding that a lot of US consumers actually use Huawei and are pissed off. Also, quite a few American technology producers are suppliers to Huawei for its phone products. Trump’s gung-ho policy against the Chinese firm is backfiring on American consumers and producers alike.

In a globally integrated world of supply chains and consumer markets, it is nonsensical and self-defeating for the Trump administration to think that it can simply shut China out from US trade. With an annual trade deficit with China of $350 billion, the US economy depends on Chinese exports for its existence. Cutting off China as Trump is doing is tantamount to cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Let’s look at Europe. The Trump administration is bullying the Europeans over a number of issues. Continually griping that they are not spending enough on the NATO military alliance, Trump has ended up forcing the Europeans to consider setting up their own European Army. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are among those leaders who are pushing the rest of Europe to take care of its own defenses independent from the US. If NATO becomes shelved then that’s a crucial pillar gone for American influence over European geopolitics.

Trump’s insufferable browbeating over NATO is only one issue among many. Like China, he wants to slap tariffs on European exports because the Europeans are also accused of being “not fair” to “benign” ever-so “righteous America”. Eh?

The European Union is threatened with US sanctions over doing business with Iran. Business the EU is entitled to do because they are upholding the 2015 international nuclear accord that they signed up to, along with Russia, China – and the US. Only the Trump administration unilaterally decided last year to trash the UN-backed accord, accusing Iran of bad faith against all evidence to the contrary.

So, the US pulls out of its international commitments and expects everyone else to do too, under pain of imposing sanctions. Having not been able to gets its bullying way over Iran, it looks like the US is now resorting to gunboat diplomacy by sending naval carriers and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf. Huffing and puffing, the petulant American bully seems willing to start World War III in order to get its way come hell or high water – and to hell with the planet.

The contradictions of a would-be hegemon stem from its winner-take-all capitalist ideology. The US presumes to be a unipower in its own delusions, when in reality it is living in a multipolar world where all sides must live in mutual respect and inter-dependence. Until the Americans realize this reality, their hegemonic rulers will continue to shoot their country in the foot. At some point it won’t have a leg to stand on, if, that is, the delusional would-be tyrant doesn’t destroy the planet first.