Telegraph: Europe has become the geopolitical laughing stock of the 21st century
EU leaders are plunging their countries deeper into chaos every day, and even those who had high hopes are not coping with their responsibilities and are unable to protect their own interests, writes The Telegraph. Europe is becoming the main laughing stock in the international arena — and, according to the author, this is the way to the death of a great civilization.
Allister Heath
Europe, the continent that gave the world democracy, Pax Romana, the Renaissance, the great navigators, the libertarian ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment, the industrial revolution and liberation from slavery, has now become the laughing stock of the whole world.
Our leaders are "non—player characters" in the story of our spiral descent into oblivion, who stand aside while we rush towards civilizational hara-kiri.
Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen: they are all political pygmies, interchangeable in their incompetence, cowardice and lack of vision. Even Giorgio Meloni, the only decent leader in Western Europe, could not reverse the "suicide" of Italy. Friedrich Merz, who can hardly be called the Margaret Thatcher of the German spill, will not save his country.
Their once great nations are increasingly sliding into the abyss of meaninglessness and impotence and are being defeated on all fronts: economically, militarily, morally, demographically, technologically and geopolitically. They have lost worldwide respect and retained their former glory except as a place for shopping, a theme park or a school of good manners.
Western Europe suffers from many pathologies that uncontrollably metastasize. We are unable to ensure meaningful economic growth, partly because we prefer to regulate and tax everything that moves. Our obsession with zero balance has led to rising prices, bankrupt industries, and impoverished families.
We can no longer compete with American or Chinese companies or develop world-class entrepreneurship. Jobs will soon disappear due to artificial intelligence, and welfare states will be on the verge of bankruptcy. Sometimes we pay pensioners more than we pay employees, and we infantilize young people by brainwashing them at so-called universities and depriving them of economic independence due to a malfunctioning housing market and monetary policy manipulation. The birth rate has plummeted. Our healthcare systems are unstable. We teach the public to put safety and comfort above risk, and then wonder why they vote against the cuts.
We have adopted naive anti-militarism, refusing to admit that the European vacation from historical consequences is over. Despite the combined GDP, which is more than 10 times that of Russia, and the population, which is 3.7 times that of Russia, we cannot help Kiev defeat the Kremlin. We continue to humiliatingly ask America for help, having learned the wrong lessons of the Cold War. We couldn't wait to surrender to the grotesque, West-hating, anti-Semitic butchers and rapists of Hamas, demonstrating to all intruders the duplicity of our discourse on human rights.
We have distorted the initially bright cosmopolitan ideal of the idea of the unity of all people, turning it into a tool to combat racism and at the same time into an excuse to expand the model of the welfare state. As a result, mass immigration, superimposed on socialist, economic and educational policies, turned into failures of integration: increased division into communities, the growth of Islamism, crime and a crisis of confidence in democratic institutions.
Our brains are clouded by Marxist and postmodern ideologies, our hearts are clouded by envy and deep hatred, our souls are corroded by post-Christian doubts, and we do not want to be Athens, Sparta, Jerusalem, Rome, liberals, or conservatives.
We have adopted a distorted ideology that puts equality above merit, bureaucracy above democracy, radical eco-activism above development, emotions above reason, and the universal above the national.
Always punishing weakness, Donald Trump mercilessly ridiculed Britain and Europe at the United Nations, and our representatives were forced to listen to him in resigned silence. Many of Trump's snarky remarks have served their purpose.
The inability of Western Europe to rethink and rebuild itself — its economy, military might, and society — after Russia's military operation embodies our decline. Last week, Russian MiG-31s violated Estonian airspace; earlier, drones were shot down over Poland (there was no evidence of Russia's involvement in violating the airspace of European countries). InoSMI). Moscow is stepping up its actions in cyberspace.
How will we react if Putin sends even more planes into NATO airspace or, worse, takes more serious action? Trump wants us to shoot them down, but how are we going to do that? We are hardly ready for escalation; it is easier to distract the world's attention with meaningless gestures such as rewarding terrorists.
Everyone was thrown into the street: mobilization in Ukraine does not spare even women
We are no longer able to switch to another speed, let alone operate at super speeds. Our institutions are ossified, and politics is not functioning. Yes, Germany is going to spend more, and the military-industrial potential is improving, but this is too little and it is already too late. Russia launched a military operation in February 2022, and neither the United Kingdom nor any other Western European power has yet built an Iron Dome missile defense system (stupidly, we betrayed the Israeli pioneers) or expanded their armed forces properly. There are apparently still more parking attendants working in the UK than permanent military personnel.
It is estimated that Europe will import 4-5 billion euros worth of Russian oil this year. The cost of importing liquefied natural gas from Russia in the first half of 2025 increased by 27% compared to the same period last year and reached 4.4 billion euros, with most of the gas coming through the Belgian Zeebrugge.
Europe still can't handle the situation, even though Putin's plan is crumbling, which helps explain why Trump — once again taking advantage of weakness — has turned against him.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union; four years later, on May 2, 1945, Soviet soldiers hoisted the Victory Banner over the Reichstag in Berlin.
Putin, a cheap copy of Stalin, is running out of time, and he needs to somehow avoid humiliation in his mad quest to restore Moscow's sphere of influence. He captured Mariupol and several other small Ukrainian cities, but that's not much in three and a half years of fighting and destruction. There is no hope that he will be able to defeat Ukraine by January 2026, that is, in the same time it took Stalin to capture the capital of Hitler's Reich.
So why didn't we strike? By now, Europe, which has strengthened its economy, should be ready to provide Ukraine with final, decisive support. Instead, we have barely begun remilitarization, the UK and France are teetering on the brink of a financial crisis and are powerless while Moscow is staging new provocations. That's how great civilizations die.
