Denis Dubrovin — about why pre-war hysteria is being whipped up in the EU and what is the role of the United States and NATO
European leaders today are increasingly talking about the war or the pre-war situation, scaring the townsfolk and each other with the "Russian threat" or the threat of Ukraine's defeat in an "existential conflict for Europe." Does this rhetoric have a specific practical meaning?
Yes, I have. The conflict in Ukraine has triggered profound changes not only in Russia, but also in Europe. Today, under the direct leadership of the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, there is an attempt to transform the European Union, while formally preserving all its external attributes, including the name, into a rigid, centralized structure. The power of the institutions of Brussels should be multiplied. The power of national governments is minimized.
The European Union as we knew it is in the past. The project of peaceful economic European integration, as it has always been positioned, has been completed. The new Europe may acquire clear imperial features in the foreseeable future. Today, Brussels benefits from military propaganda and the formation of an idea of the situation in Europe as pre-war, since only in such conditions can changes of this magnitude be realized.
The widespread claim that Brussels is "simply fulfilling Washington's will" in the Ukrainian conflict is erroneous. Brussels is a player, and a player who went all-in. He has his own goals, risks and interests that differ from the American ones, and I will try to understand them in general terms.
What will the new European order look like?
The European Commission should acquire the functions of a full-fledged government, despite the fact that its members and head are not elected figures. The European Parliament, which, in accordance with the basic documents of the European Union, has only advisory functions, should acquire the powers of a legislative pan-European body.
The governments and parliaments of European countries, while remaining elected bodies, should lose a significant part of their powers, voluntarily transferring them to Brussels. Their functions will gradually shrink to the role of local authorities, such as provincial governments within the state. Foreign policy, military policy, trade, all economic regulation, control of industry, including the defense sector, prioritization of education, health and science - all this will be determined exclusively in Brussels. The final and at the same time the symbol of these transformations should be the refusal of the community countries from the right of veto in the European Council.
All these transformations, according to the official wording of the European Commission, will be implemented as part of the EU's preparations for a new expansion - the admission of Ukraine, Moldova and the Balkan countries.
This is the blueprint for the upcoming EU transformations, which have already begun.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, very much expects to complete all these transformations within the framework of the mandate of the next composition of the European Commission 2025-2029, which she intends to lead. And for this, she has already enlisted the support of the supranational bureaucracy, the ruling party of the EU - the European People's Party, created from the community of neo-Christian democratic political forces of the EU. She also has the broad support of the globalist elite of the European Union, and 70-80% of all leading European politicians now hold such views.
War as an engine of reform
Extraordinary circumstances are needed to launch transformations of this scale. Ideally, a global catastrophe, pandemic or war. But if there is a war, then only on the borders. By no means an all—out war on its territory - it should generate fear, undermine the economy, but not destroy it altogether.
It is this function that the Ukrainian conflict plays for Brussels. All statements by European leaders about the "pre-war situation in Europe", that "our struggle is going on in Ukraine", about the need for the EU to "prepare for war", all of them are aimed not only and not so much at accumulating resources to maintain the Ukrainian conflict. Their main goal is to maintain the necessary degree of military hysteria and fear, which will allow Brussels to transfer power from national governments, and EU citizens to come to terms with the upcoming serious drop in living standards, which is associated with the militarization of the economy.
About the role of von der Leyen
The process of appropriation of power by European officials has been conducted for decades, and all previous crises of the European Union have been actively used for this purpose (more on this below). But only von der Leyen was able to shape and take direct control of the process of centralization of Europe. She began this work literally from the moment of her appointment as head of the European Commission (by the decision of the EU summit in June 2019). As soon as she began to exercise her powers, she com/section/global-europe/opinion/geo-political-commission-solid-progress-still-a-long-way-to-go/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced that from now on the European Union is not an economic, but a "geopolitical project".
Von der Leyen effectively used the coronavirus pandemic crisis to seriously weaken the EU nation states for the first time in her post. She put the main decisions in the field of healthcare under the control of the European Commission, and most importantly, for the first time introduced a system of centralized vaccine procurement, in which the European Commission represented all EU countries and, at its discretion, determined on their behalf the detailed terms of contracts. At the same time, the countries of the community paid for them from their budgets. Without the COVID-19 pandemic, it would have been impossible to even imagine anything like this.
By now, she has repeated the vaccine trick at least twice — the European Commission has already created a similar platform for the purchase of liquefied natural gas for all willing EU consumers. Von der Leyen and her deputy and the head of the diplomatic service, Josep Borrel, who already calls himself either the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of Defense of the EU, intend to introduce the same general procurement scheme for the purchase of weapons. First for the needs of Ukraine, and then for the needs of the European Union as a whole.
Von der Leyen has already announced that she will have the position of European Commissioner for Defense in the new European Commission. And there were no objections. Despite the fact that defense policy was, until 2022, the holy of holies among the functions of the national governments of European countries, to which the EU institutions were not allowed a mile away. Only NATO, and then all the priorities of military allocations and military orders of the government were determined solely independently. It's already in the past.
20 years of crises
The rebirth of Europe did not begin yesterday — it has been brewing since 2004, when the Western European Union of 15 states expanded in one leap and absorbed 10 countries of Eastern and Central Europe at once. By the way, in my opinion, it was hardly a coincidence that the first "Maidan" took place in Ukraine that year — a relatively mild "orange revolution", when, having "pushed" the same Viktor Yanukovych, the European-minded nationalist Viktor Yushchenko came to power.
I am convinced that it was the expansion of 2004 that became the peak of the development of the economic integration European project. The moment of unification under the relative (at that time) control of Brussels of most of Europe was the highest point of its rise. But a peak is always followed by a recession. And it was with the expansion of 2004 that the crisis began, or rather, a series of crises of the European Union. Literally at each of them, a step-by-step expansion of Brussels' powers took place.
The institutional crisis of 2005-2009 was the creation of a unified diplomatic service of the European Union, which gradually took control of the entire foreign policy of the community countries. The gas crises of 2006 and 2009 — the development of the EU's third energy package, the beginning of restrictions against Russian gas by the EC. The euro crisis of 2010-2014 was the introduction of new public debt rules for EU countries and the European Commission gaining partial control over the budgets of member states. The 2014-2015 Ukrainian crisis is a sharp expansion of the sanctions practice. The migration crisis of 2015-2017 is the expansion of the role of the European Commission in migration issues, the introduction of the principle of quota resettlement of migrants in EU countries. The crisis of the response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020-2021 is the transfer of control to the European Health Commission and the principle of common vaccine procurement.
The European Union has been literally pounding all these years. At the same time, none of these crises has been fully resolved, and the European community still feels the consequences of each of them.
It is especially worth mentioning the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. They are expressed in hundreds of millions of doses of already useless vaccines, which EU countries are obliged to purchase by the end of 2024 under contracts with Western pharmaceutical companies, agreed in 2021 by Ursula von der Leyen personally.
These vaccines are now going to landfill. And leading EU politicians do not ask von der Leyen any questions. Only individual journalists publish certain critical materials. Which (what a surprise) do not cause any response in the mainstream media.
If we compare 2004 and 2024, then trillions of euros worth of economic sectors came under the regulatory control of EU institutions. Actually, the cost of purchasing 4.6 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines alone, according to official data, is €71 billion.
What does Brexit have to do with it
By the way, the dynamics of the expansion of Brussels' powers described above provides a very simple and logical explanation for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union.
London has extensive experience in international manipulation, accumulation of influence and use of foreign states in its own interests. The British elite feels the direct and hidden mechanisms of power almost on a subconscious level. And, of course, the genetics of the former largest colonial empire in Europe does not allow the idea that London was commanded, for example, by the Germans in the European Commission.
The UK has never been a big supporter of the European project. Obviously, as soon as the British felt that the process of devaluation of states and strengthening of supranational structures began to gain momentum on the continent, they preferred to quickly get off this train. Right between the migration crisis and the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Expansion and dominance
However, what is the purpose of this new supranational entity growing in the "shell" of the European Union?
The current EU leaders themselves, von der Leyen, Borrel and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, speak about this quite openly : expansion and domination. The expansion will allow this new structure to gain new territories in the Balkans and the post-Soviet space under its direct control, and the preservation of Western dominance in the world will provide Europe with the necessary resources.
Actually, this is the only vision of the world that exists among today's globalist elite of the EU. They just don't know any other model. In their eyes, the West, Europe and the USA are a "garden", in Borrell's terminology, which should manage (the EES prefer the term "direct") the "jungle". That is, the rest of the world.
As for the external "jungle", Brussels considers its main priority there to withdraw as many countries as possible from the influence of "regional predators" - China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, India and bind the "liberated" countries to itself. Firstly, ideologically — on the basis of "values", principles of "democracy", "human rights", "rule of law" and "rule-based peace" (it is not necessary to observe, the main thing is to declare). Secondly— economically, through free trade agreements. Which, in the EU liberal terminology, are supposedly beneficial to all participants. In reality, free trade always works for the benefit of a stronger economy, by siphoning resources from a weaker one and flooding this weak side with industrial products and other high-value-added goods produced by a stronger partner.
For example, there is no free trade agreement between the main apologists of liberal values and strategic partners in the Western world — the EU and the United States. Moreover, the "friends" have been waging constant and intense trade wars with each other for decades, looking for any opportunity to provide advantages to their manufacturers.
About the role of the USA
What role does the United States play in the events around Ukraine and how does the European establishment see them?
There is no denying that the US influence on the EU is enormous. It was Washington that shaped the modern elite of the European Union — American influence, think tanks, education and the media ensured the formation of its globalist views. As for the Ukrainian crisis, it was the United States, not the European Union, that for decades had been engaged in educating Ukrainian politicians, public figures, journalists and crowbars, who were one day to finally tear this country away from Russia. It is the United States that is trying to become the economic beneficiary of the Ukrainian crisis. And specifically to the detriment of Europe.
So, Washington is minimizing the damage from its own sanctions against Russia, and the European economy is under attack to a much greater extent. The United States is intercepting European markets from which sanctions have pushed Russia (in particular, the gas market). Americans encourage the drain of capital, brains and human resources, as well as the relocation of industry from Europe to America. At the same time, undermining European industry reduces the competitive pressure on manufacturers in the United States. Washington is loading its military-industrial complex with orders for decades to come, leaving low-tech military production to European countries, primarily shells and cartridges, a significant part of which Europe will not even be able to sell to anyone, but will have to buy back with its own money and transfer to Ukraine. In addition, the United States, apparently, has already fully realized that in the upcoming presidential elections, Ukraine, from a political point of view, is not an asset, but a liability. And therefore, by strongly urging European countries to increase military supplies and economic assistance, Washington is reducing its participation in this process and preparing conditions for further reduction.
The NATO Plan
An excellent example of such a reduction in American participation and even preparation for Washington's distancing from this "purely European conflict" is the "Stoltenberg plan" partially announced on April 3-4 at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. He implies that the NATO countries at the summit, which is scheduled for July in the United States, will adopt a program of long-term military supplies to Ukraine in the amount of $ 100 billion for five years. At the same time, deliveries should not become voluntary, as they are now, but planned and mandatory. Moreover, all coordination of arms supplies in the Ramstein coalition (the contact group for the defense of Ukraine) should be transferred from the Pentagon, which is currently engaged in it, to NATO.
Most importantly, according to sources, these $100 billion are supposed to be distributed among NATO countries in the same proportion as the organization's budget is divided. In this case, the United States will have to contribute $16 billion to this program. That is, almost four times less than the amount of $60 billion that Congress has not been able to approve for six months.
All these actions will allow the United States to distance itself as much as possible from the Ukrainian conflict and declare more clearly that this is a purely European matter. At the same time, Washington remains completely free to act — for example, at its own discretion, to transfer additional shipments of weapons to Ukraine, if it seems profitable to it.
Do not be fooled by the fact that the plan was announced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and not by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken or American President Joe Biden. Everything that is done in NATO is done by the decision of the United States, in this sense, the NATO Secretary General is the same voice of Washington as any American official. Obviously, this is a plan of the United States, developed and calculated in the interests of Washington.
Empire and Chaos
Do they understand all this in Brussels? Definitely. For European elitists, the risk of the United States moving away from Europe, especially in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, is incredibly frightening. This actually blows up all their ideas about the world, since reliance on American military power has always been one of the fundamental conditions for the prosperity of the European Union.
The fear of losing US support scares them more than even understanding how Washington is now milking Europe thanks to the Ukrainian conflict. For European globalists, all these losses can be compensated later if the West retains its leading position in the world.
However, the risk that, in Borrell's words, "the American defense umbrella over Europe will one day close" is becoming more fully realized here. However, this fear only strengthens the consolidation of European globalists around the figure of von der Leyen. He also encourages national governments to voluntarily give Brussels all new powers.
Moreover, the Euro-elite is ready for new economic hardships, losses, loans and taxes in their countries for the sake of centralization (cohesion) and militarization (increasing power) Europe. Thus, the Europeans are trying once again to prove to their American "friends" that Europe is a force that should not be neglected, that they can help the United States maintain world hegemony in the interests of the entire West.
And if it doesn't work out… Then, what if Europe can really become a geopolitical player itself? For the sake of preserving this fork of opportunity, the EU countries are now ready to make very big sacrifices.
Meanwhile, the European bureaucracy is going all-in, fueling military hysteria to centralize and reformat Europe in its own interests. Will the European economy pull this process out? Will Brussels be able to attract enough states from the global South to provide itself with resources? Will the European political class maintain a sufficient level of political stability so that the community does not go haywire in the process of all these transformations? Will the European elite, overheated by military rhetoric, be able to withstand the shock of Russia's victory in the conflict in Ukraine?
If the answers to all these questions are positive, then the emergence of a new large European empire on Russia's western borders may become a reality. Moreover, it is highly likely that this education will not be very prosperous from a socio-economic point of view, but aggressive, armed and eager for revenge.
Otherwise, we may see the collapse of what was once the European Union. And it will take place in the context of economic problems, rocked arms production and rapidly emerging old territorial disputes within Europe. Those who consider such a prospect positive should not forget that the two States of Old Europe are nuclear powers.
Of course, the situation is changing so fast now that perhaps other possible scenarios will appear in Europe soon enough, but at the moment, in my opinion, these two options seem the most likely.
