As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin speak about ending the Ukraine war on Tuesday, European leaders are talking war and only their citizens can stop them, says Edward Lozansky.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets French President Emmanuel Macron for a bilateral meeting at the Elysee, Aug. 8, 2024 in Paris. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street/Wikimedia Commons)
By Edward Lozansky
in Mosco
Special to Consortium News
For the record, it was the U.S., from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, that provoked the Ukrainian tragedy. And now it is the Europeans who can stop it.
NATO’s Eastern expansion led to the bloodiest military conflict in Europe since the Second World War, one that could lead to a Third.
Donald Trump in his first term tried to exit this crisis, only to be subjected to the Russiagate “scandal” and two unsuccessful impeachment efforts led the bipartisan U.S. War Party.
Eventually, they succeeded and took back power, facilitating Joe Biden’s 2020 victory with various manipulations, including producing a letter signed by 51 top, retired U.S. intelligence officers falsely blaming Russia for the criminal contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop that included his father’s involvement.
In the history books, the name Antony Blinken should be mentioned as an éminence grise behind arranging that letter and other Democratic party foreign policy machinations.
Trump’s 2024 landslide victory — despite more than 100 lawsuits, thirty-four felony convictions, charges of fraud, election subversion and obstruction that could have gotten him 187 years in jail, plus two attempts on his life — looks like destiny decreed that he would end the Ukraine war (while allowing more chaos in the Middle East.)
Trump’s election appeared to show that Americans, in growing numbers, understand the dangers of the country’s endless wars to preserve its global hegemony, including over Ukraine. That one was designed not to maintain a non-existent democracy in one of the most corrupt European countries, but to inflict a strategic defeat on nuclear-armed Russia.
One should add that we are talking about a Russia that, since the late 1980s, has desired full integration with the West, only to be unceremoniously rebuffed.
With Trump’s overtures for peace, the leadership of the European Union has seized the war button from Washington and is frantically pushing it to keep the conflict going.
The head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, Bruno Kahl, has stated straightforwardly that “if the war in Ukraine lasted another five years, it would be safer for Europe.”
This demonstrates the pitiful stage European democracy has sunk to, including trying to prevent victories of political parties and candidates who disagree with the war agenda, such as in Romania.
Next to French President Emmanuel Macron, with a 75 percent disapproval rating, is another war advocate, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with 66 percent disapproving. Both could be overshadowed by Germany’s war activist Friedrich Merz, the chancellor-in-waiting, who has a massive plan to borrow hundreds of billions of euros for rearmament, declaring that “Germany is back and is making its great contribution to the defense of freedom and peace in Europe.”
His plan still needs changes to the German constitution and the Bundestag’s approval. If ultimately passed, it will mark a historic reversal from decades of fiscal and militarist restraint after Germany’s World War II defeat.
In essence, it would be part of another geopolitical reversal happening now, namely, the transition of the Yalta, U.S.-British-U.S.S.R. anti-Nazi Germany alliance into the Brussels, British-EU-Ukraine anti-Russia alliance with alarming, potential consequences in a nuclear age.
Macron, the current self-proclaimed EU war leader, obviously knows that during World War II, after the Battle of France in 1940, a Nazi collaborationist regime, Vichy France, fought against and ultimately lost to the Allied forces.
He may also know that the French Charlemagne Brigade, the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne, fought against Soviet forces, participating in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. It was among the last Axis forces to surrender.
As for the U.S. role now, one cannot be sure. Trump says he wants the U.S. to stay above the fray and be a peacemaker. But the U.S. bipartisan war party is still mighty, even among Republicans.
And who knows what will happen in four years if the planned EU war machine is actually strong enough to act on its own.
Survival can come about if Europeans, who see where this is headed, take democracy seriously again and wrest it from the hands of the militarists driving Europe – and perhaps the world – towards disaster.
Edward Lozansky is president and founder of the American University in Moscow and the U.S.-Russia Forum. He is also a professor at the Moscow State and National Research Nuclear Universities.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The only war Europe is likely to get is a civil one! When its citizens rise up against the mad neocons currently in power.
France has plenty of experience in this area, so we(!) are all expecting it to lead the way and show the other European countries how to do it.
The leaders are banker’s pawns. They think everything is about money. And they may be right, generally, and the “scare hell out of the people” caper may work yet again.
Or maybe a mistake will be made, and someone or many someones may die, and tit for tat may expand until nukes start flying.
So, a lot of money stolen from the people with a chance that we all might die … and Europeans still think they live n democracies …
One wonders how willing the US might be to fight Russia to the last Englishman.
An excellent article but hélas so true. Today the French government will issue a “what to do in case of war” booklet. This is totally insane. But I think it is much more about finance than tanks. The Eurocrats want to circumvent the debt ceiling and issue bonds. However if France is destroyed, those who are guilty are THE MEDIA. They have constantly misreported and twisted facts to suit the narrative. Will somebody please rerun “The Day After”?
The whole of europe is suffering from “russiaphobia’:
xxxx//www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/10/11/sweden-updates-a-cold-war-era-booklet-with-nuclear-attack-advice
I don’t think Russia is suffering from Russiaphobia, and most of its citizens are Europeans living in Europe..
Meanwhile, at home, its up to America’s citizens too.
America now has a President in open defiance of laws, Constitution and Judges. A President who openly says that the law and Constitution is whatever they say it is, and that nobody is allowed to oppose the President in the state of war and emergency that he has declared.
What will America’s citizens do in response to the declaration that their beloved democracy is dead?
The photograph of the two main characters in the European play for power, passing through the gates of the Elysée Palace shows, in reality, how small and insignificant they actually are, as leaders, for a future Europe, if there is to be one.
Hitler wasn’t perticularly tall, but his leadership was far from insignificant for Europe or the rest of the world. Napoleon was even shorter.
‘The times they are a-changed’ is what the present is.
Yeah, these two characters will be significant for the world, they too will go down in infamy, becoming widely known for something extremely bad or shameful, resulting in their lasting negative reputation.
Of course, this is one persons opinion.
The idea, however, is not to conflate semaphore directly with metaphor!
Good article but it contains what seems to be a widespread exaggeration of Trump’s support. I have noticed this also in UK reporting of the election result.
“Trumps 2024 landslide victory…”
In the electoral college, Trump won by 312 to 226.
In the popular vote, he won by 49.8% to 48.3%. That is a smaller percentage of the vote and a smaller margin of victory than Jimmy Carter achieved in his narrow 1976 win.
As in 2016, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania proved crucial. If they had voted the other way, Trump would have lost by 268-270 electoral college votes.
His margin of victory was:
Wisconsin 0.9%, Michigan 1.4%, Pennsylvania 1.8% (44 electoral college votes in total)
If Biden had announced at the outset that he would not seek a second term, then it is not inconceivable that Trump would have been defeated although he would have claimed to have won.
Sources: CNN and Wikipedia
CNN and Wikipedia sources are thrustfully exaggerated
What exactly is exaggerated in Tony’s comment?
it seems he greatly exaggerated trumps margin of victory. that is if you look at popular vote and not the silly electoral count. that being said i do thoroughly with the major theme of the article- a lot of european leadership is obsessively russophobic and overly inclined to war.