Europe Is a Terrified Child
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
davekeating.substack.comOtherstory
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European PoliticsNatoUs-EU Relations
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European Politics
Nato
Us-EU Relations
The article 'Europe Is a Terrified Child' argues that Europe is subservient to the US, sparking a discussion on the nature of EU-US relations and Europe's autonomy.
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Then we completely missed the tech revolutions of the past 10-15 years; we let ourselves be recolonised by giant American companies spreading American culture; finally we let the US decide our international politics, from Eastern Europe and Russia, to the Middle East, Iran, and China.
This has been of course also enabled by extraordinarily weak leaders that probably have been supported by the US because of their weakness. And here we are: with a war on our doorstep that cripples our economy, paralysed in front of the Gaza genocide, and having renounced closer commercial ties with China. Completely incapable of upholding our values and even our laws.
Nonetheless it was a vassal, starting with WWI and solidifying post WWII. Never mind the political subserviency: Europe also has increasingly shed its cultural identity.
The reason the "invasion of Iraq in 2003 was met with fierce opposition in Europe" was two-fold: because Europe still had some remnants of real old-time leftists past 1991, but also because the US liberals were also against Bush and "Bush's war", and the European establishment's sentiment of being the "more civilised alternative to the US" was about them not being like the "rednecks" and "religious zealots", but more like the more refined US liberal elites. Still modelled after the US, then, and following its voice.
I'd add another one: the total incompetence of the European national leaders (France, Germany, UK, etc) compared to their predecessors (and I'm not even talking someone like de Gaulle. Even Mitternad or Chirac are like ubermench compared to the post 2010 monkeys. And UK and Germany are probably even worse, and the EU (Von der Leyen and co) still worse.