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Europe in Panic Over US Strategy for Stability With Russia
13–17 minutes
Alastair Crooke on the Trump administration’s most recent National Security
Strategy, which critiques U.S. pursuit of global primacy as a failure.
U.S. President Donald during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
in The Hague in June. (Martijn Beekman/NATO/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Alastair Crooke
Conflicts Forum
A National Security Strategy (NSS) is produced periodically by U.S.
administrations (President Donald Trump authored one during his first term).
Mostly these documents lay out an idealised version of an administration’s
foreign and security policy, and do not have great practical import — because
of what is left out — i.e. entrenched U.S. political and economic interests;
the deep foreign policy consensus overseen by the curator class of the deep
security state; and the policies espoused by the mega donor collective.
Nonetheless, this recently-released NSS reads rather differently by putting a
distinctive “America First” gloss to U.S. foreign policy, eschewing global
hegemony, “domination” and ideological crusades, in favour of pragmatic,
transactional realism focused on protecting core national interests — homeland
security, economic prosperity, and regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
The U.S. thus will “no longer prop up the entire world order like ‘Atlas’ and
expects Europe to shoulder more of its own defence burdens,” the NSS says.
It critiques the U.S.’ earlier pursuit of global primacy as “a failure” that
ended up weakening America — and situates Trump’s policy as a “necessary
correction” to the earlier stance. It therefore accepts the tilt towards a
multipolar world.
Two key foreign policy aims are nuanced rather than radically recast:
First, China is downgraded from “primary threat” and “pacing threat” to
economic competitor (Taiwan is treated as an instrument of deterrence).
In respect to Russia, it says:
“It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious
cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies,
prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish
strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities
reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state”.
The document does not mention “strategic peace” with Russia, but only a
“cessation of hostilities,” i.e. a ceasefire. The careful choice of language
used may signal that Trump does not intend a full settlement with Russia on its
security concerns, but only a truce, a “cessation of hostilities.”
It terms European relations with Russia as “deeply attenuated”:
“The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who
hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority
governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress
opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not
translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’
subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the
United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if
they are trapped in political crisis.”
Essentially, Ukraine is pushed on the Europeans as their responsibility from
now on. More generally, Allies are expected to foot the bills — as the U.S.
builds at home.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
during a meeting with Trump at the White House on Aug. 18. (NATO/Flickr/CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0)
One of the biggest NSS shifts is that America is defined now as a fortified
hemisphere power in place of a global hegemon:
“We want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or
ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want
to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we
will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”
In terms of military presence, the Strategy states that this entails “a
readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our
Hemisphere.”
Perhaps the most meaningful aspect — in terms of practical impact — is the
reference to “ending NATO as an ever-expanding alliance,” and to Europe, which
is critiqued in the most astringent terms.
The NSS is highly critical of Europe’s economic stagnation, its demographic
decline, the loss of sovereignty to EU institutions and its “civilizational
erasure”:
“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational
self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” it
says.
The document declares the liberal/technocratic elites of the EU and many member
states to be a threat to Europe’s future, regional stability — and to American
interests. It makes it clear that supporting the Patriotic Right in Europe, and
“cultivating resistance” to Europe’s current trajectory are in the American
interest.
It calls out population replacement (immigration) as the gravest long-term
threat to Europe and American interests, openly questioning whether some
European nations will remain reliable allies given their current trajectory.
The transatlantic relationship therefore remains in place but is no longer the
centrepiece of U.S. foreign policy.
The European Elite’s Panic
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on March 24, 2022, during a
session that MPs used to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine, urge further
sanctions on Moscow and “protect the European economy.” (European Parliament,
Flickr, CC-BY-4.0)
European leaders, including former Swedish PM Carl Bildt, said the NSS
reference to Europe was “to the Right of the extreme Right.” In the U.S.,
Democrats, such as Rep. Jason Crow, deemed it “catastrophic” for alliances,
i.e. for NATO.
To understand fully the panicked outcry issuing forth from Europe, a little
context is required.
Liberal-woke identity politics allowed no “otherness,” no difference of opinion.
Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin (long cited by
the Washington Post as their “Republican columnist” for “balance”), writing in
September 2022, rejected the very notion of an argument having “sides” since
any contrary argument imputed a rationality to conservatives:
“We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We
have to level them — because if there are survivors, if there are people who
weather this storm, they will do it again … The Kabuki dance in which Trump,
his defenders and his supporters are treated as rational (clever even!) comes
from a media establishment that refuses to discard … this false equivalence.”
And then-President Joe Biden, in a speech that same month, said pretty much the
same as Rubin.
In a set-up bathed eerily in red and black light, at the historic Independence
Hall, Biden unequivocally extended the threats from abroad to warn against the
threat of a different terror, closer to home — from “Donald Trump and the MAGA
Republicans,” who he said, “represent an extremism that threatens the very
foundations of our republic.”
Biden delivers remarks on the soul of the nation in September 2022 at
Independence Square in Philadelphia. (White House, Adam Schultz)
The core precept to this apocalyptic message duly crept across the Atlantic to
capture and convert the Brussels’ leadership class. This should not be
surprising: The EU’s regulation-based internal market was precisely intended to
replace all political “contention” with Tech-Managerialism. The Euro-élites
were in desperate need of a Values System to fill the EU identity lacuna.
The solution, however, was at hand [as Biden spoke in Warsaw on the first
anniversary of the war in Ukraine on Feb. 21, 2023]:
“Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed.
Autocrats only understand one word: ‘No.’ ‘No.’ ‘No.’ (Applause.). ‘No, you
will not take my country.’ ‘No, you will not take my freedom.’ ‘No, you will
not take my future … A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able
to ease [erase] the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down
the will of the free. And Ukraine — Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.
Never. (Applause)
Stand with us. We will stand with you. Let us move forward … with an
abiding commitment to be allies not of darkness, but of light. Not of
oppression, but of liberation. Not of captivity, but, yes, of freedom.”
Biden’s later speech in Warsaw — complete with lighting effects and a dramatic
backdrop reminiscent of his Liberty Hall speech — sought to portray the
domestic MAGA opposition as a grave security threat to America and leant on
radical Manichaeism to depict — this time — Russia (Russia being the external
counterpoint to the related U.S. MAGA threat). This was his framing to the epic
battle between the forces of light and of darkness that needed to be fought
endlessly and won crushingly.
Biden delivers remarks on Feb. 21, 2023, at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. (White
House/Adam Schultz)
Once again, Biden was trying to cement America’s deep-seated missionary ethos
as the “City on the Hill” a beacon to the world — to a “forever” cosmic war
against Russian “evil.” He hoped to tie the American ruling class to the
metaphysical struggle for the “light.”
David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise and a New York Times columnist,
admits that initially he was taken by this liberal ideology, but later admitted
this was a big mistake:
“Whatever you want to call them [the liberals] have coalesced into an
insular, intermarrying Brahmin élite that dominates culture, media, education
and tech.”
He acknowledges:
“I didn’t anticipate how aggressively … we would seek to impose élite
values through speech and thought codes. I underestimated the way the creative
class would successfully raise barriers around itself to protect its economic
privilege … And I underestimated our intolerance of ideological diversity.”
Put plainly, this thought-code precisely gave the Euro-élites their shiny new
cult of absolute purity and stainless virtue — filling for the EU its all too
evident identity-gap lacuna. It resulted in the summoning of a vanguard whose
proselytizing fury is to be focused on “the Other.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in her “State of
the Union” address to the European Parliament in 2022, echoed Biden almost
exactly:
“We should not lose sight of the way foreign autocrats are targeting our
own countries. Foreign entities are funding institutes that undermine our
values. Their disinformation is spreading from the internet to the halls of our
universities … These lies are toxic for our democracies. Think about this: We
introduced legislation to screen foreign direct investment for security
concerns. If we do that for our economy, shouldn’t we do the same for ‘our
values’? We need to better shield ourselves from malign interference … We will
not allow any autocracy’s Trojan horses to attack ‘our democracies’ from
within’.”
Despite the cleaving together of the American “Bobos” with the EU liberal
warriors, many around the world nonetheless were astonished at the sheer
alacrity by which the leadership in Brussels embraced the Biden line advocating
for a long war against Russia — a compliance that appeared so clearly to run
contrary to European economic interests and social stability.
Simply put, it was a war of choice that seemed to be rooted ultimately in
radical Manicheanism.
NATO ‘Transmitting Democracy’
Then German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock holding a press conference with
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, D.C., Jan. 5, 2022.
(State Department/Ron Przysucha)
The initial formation of NATO in 1949 was generally opposed by the European
Left due to its explicit anti-communist stance. However, with NATO’s bombing of
Belgrade in 1999, the military alliance metamorphosed for some on the broader
Left (including social democrats and liberals) as an instrument for liberal
transmission and consolidation of “our democracy” (this was Biden’s language at
the time).
The fusion of the EU leadership to NATO and with the Biden project was
complete. Germany’s foreign minister at the time, Annalena Baerbock — every bit
as intent on “ruining Russia”as Biden — in an address in New York in August
2022, sketched out a vision of a world dominated by the U.S. and Germany.
In 1989, President George Bush famously offered Germany a “partnership in
leadership,” Baerbock claimed. But at the time, Germany had been too busy with
reunification to accept the offer. Today, she said, things had changed
fundamentally: “Now the moment has come when we have to create it: A joint
partnership in leadership.”
Harking on the “leadership partnership” being understood in military terms, she
said:
“In Germany, we have abandoned the long-held German belief in ‘change
through trade’ … our goal is to further strengthen the European pillar of NATO
… and the EU must become a Union capable of dealing with the United States on
an equal footing: in a leadership partnership.”
Thus, the European élite’s outcry at the NSS’ devastating critique of Europe is
not just that of America very obviously turning its back on an European ruling
class who had dropped all to fawn on America. The NSS castigates their
subversion of democracy — and even questions whether they will be suitable as
allies for the future.
NATO is now declared to be not forever.
The European ruling strata now stand isolated, widely unpopular and bereft.
Alastair Crooke is director and founder of Conflicts Forum, based in Beirut. He
was formerly advisor on Middle East issues to Javier Solana, the EU foreign
policy chief.
This article is from Conflict Forum’s Substack.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect
those of Consortium News.
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https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/08/europe-in-panic-over-us-strategy-for-stability-with-russia/
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