Europe Goes Gentle Into the Good Night

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Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet, opened his most famous poem thusly:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Europe is alone. And it’s her fault. She bought everything the Biden-Harris administration offered her: hook, line, and sinker. It’s embarrassing that the “adults in the room” in the EU, supposedly so schooled in diplomacy, carried down from Castlereagh, Metternich, and Tallyrand, could find themselves at the kids’ table in the corner.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love living here. But the ruling class might be the worst feature of the continent. And it’s not like I haven’t mentioned it before. The sheer stupidity of Europe’s expansionist fantasies is breathtaking.

But let me not make the mistake of being vague. Let’s walk through how Europe wound up in this pickle of its own making, leaving it alone on the world stage and at the risk of becoming merely Asia’s western peninsula.

America’s Vassal

Americans must understand one thing about the conclusion of World War II: not a single American factory was destroyed. Europe? On fire. Asia? Destroyed. My great-uncle (maternal grandmother’s brother) was at Pearl Harbor when it happened and never spoke about it. It was a tragedy, without a doubt. But also 2,500 miles from the California coast. Once you understand the importance of America’s economy remaining intact, the rest becomes easy.

Post-1945

So, America did the smart thing and created the Marshall Plan in 1948 to get its trade partners on their feet. But Europeans took this for a grant, not a judicious use of money.

Belgian economic historian Herman Van der Wee concludes the Marshall Plan was a “great success:”

It gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity, and the facilitating of intra-European trade.

Of course, it was a great success for the Europeans. Western Europe’s post-war economies had surpassed their pre-war sizes by 1951.

However, for America, the plan was all about America and its future. The long name of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, which created the Marshall Plan, was “An act to promote world peace and the general welfare, national interest, and foreign policy of the United States through economic, financial, and other measures necessary to the maintenance of conditions abroad in which free institutions may survive and consistent with the maintenance of the strength and stability of the United States.”

Europe isn’t even mentioned. America needed to rehabilitate its trading partners, and this was the way she decided to do it.

No Defense

While Europeans obnoxiously boast about their “free” healthcare systems and “nearly free” universities, America has been paying for Europe’s defense. Of course, Europe could afford its defense, but instead, she decided to believe in the fairy tale known as “the end of history” and build out vast welfare states that its countries could no longer afford.

The United States funds 70% of NATO’s expenditures and makes all the big decisions, while Europe consoles itself by saying it has “input” into those decisions. It does not. The U.S. can and will do what it wants to while Europe watches. This is why Europe doesn’t have a seat at the table in Riyadh, where the Saudis are intermediating a meeting between the U.S. and Russia.

Now, the Eurotrash mouthpiece FT has sounded the alarm:

None of that is inherently bad: Europe should stand on its own. But if Europe doesn’t have the money to fund NATO, how will it gather the money, resources, or military to back itself up?

Russia’s Persecutor

What’s worse is that Europe, against all common sense, followed the U.S. neocons into hell over Ukraine. Victoria Nuland and her husband, Robert Kagan, are disaffected Ukrainian Americans who funneled American resources into their grievance project. Joke Biden was too happy to follow because of how dirty his family’s hands are.

Unfortunately, the Europeans and the British (the Brits have an irrational hatred of Russia) are now on the hook after Americans got bored of supporting a country with zero strategic relevance to the vast majority of Americans.

America (and/or her confederates) blew up the Nordstream pipeline to ensure Germany couldn’t back out. Then, Europe was forced to buy American LNG at four times the cost of cheap pipelined Russian gas. Europe also enacted more than a dozen sanctions packages against the Russians and helped the Yanks throw Russia out of SWIFT, the financial messaging system. This only hurt Europe, not the Russians.

So you can imagine how shocked, surprised, and angry the Europeans were when JD Vance told them they weren’t holding up their end of the Western bargain, no matter how truthful his speech was.

The Only Two Things Russia Wants

Russia has enough land. Its dirt is the most valuable on earth, with a natural resource value of $75 trillion. Europe’s land is resource-poor. There’s no reason for Europe to think Russia will invade.

Russia wants the following:

1. Warm water ports to increase trade
2. A seat at the big table of nations, which it deserves

One of the reasons this is so hard for Europe to give is that countries in the EU, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, simply won’t allow it. And the EU is like any other empire: it wants to expand its territory.

Lying About The Minsk Agreements

Russia has good reason not to trust the Europeans. As recently as the start of the war in 2022, both Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande admitted the Minsk Agreements were not a tool for peace, but a stalling tactic to help Ukraine build up its military.

In a 2022 interview, Angela Merkel acknowledged that the Minsk Agreements were intended to buy time for Ukraine to strengthen its military defenses rather than to reach a lasting peace with Russia. François Hollande later confirmed Merkel’s remarks, saying the agreements gave Ukraine time to prepare for a potential conflict.

Putin was surprised and disappointed at these admissions, viewing them as the smoking gun of Western deception.

Now, the Russians will make the Europeans pay dearly for a deal. But not all Europeans…

How Orban Got It Right

Tucker Carlson again interviewed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the World Governments Summit in Dubai a few days ago. After Carlson mentioned how Orban was arrested in the 1980s for protesting Russia’s occupation of Hungary, Orban said this (bolds mine, with minor grammatical corrections for ease of reading):

I decided when I came back to power in 2010, I made a deal with Russian President Putin that whatever was the history between the two nations, let it to the historians to discuss it, and we should find a reasonable cooperation and do it economically as much as we can. And we did, and it worked. It was good. You know Russians always kept their word when we agreed on anything with Putin. That was done on my side as well.

So, therefore, my attitude to the Russians is not as negative and crazy as many of the Western leaders at this moment. My position on this war between Ukraine and Russia always said that guys, don’t forget that this war is not about Ukraine; don’t make that mistake. The strategic reason for this war is called the enlargement of NATO. So the question is whether we would like to enlarge NATO or not if you would like to enlarge NATO. The Russians will never accept it, whether you like it or not. You know they will not let us move closer to their borders. But this is the main issue: the enlargement of NATO.

Orban has repeatedly proven his way is the best way to deal with Russia.

Wrap Up

Europe has at least taken the first step: recognizing it has a problem. That problem is a lack of power. The EU fantasy of “soft power” has just been proven to be an illusion.

It’s about ten years too late to start fixing it but better late than never.

In truth, Europe has abundant talent, know-how, and spirit. It must abandon its socialist past and embrace the iterative trial-and-error of entrepreneurial capitalism. Once the incentives are aligned, the outcomes will follow.

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