AT: the collapse of Ukraine will lead to a crisis of Atlanticism
The collapse of Ukraine will bring the crisis of Atlanticism and Europe closer, writes AT. Now, from the point of view of geopolitics, the EU countries are in no man's land. They themselves alienated China, severed economic ties with Russia, and did not foresee a strategic shift of historic proportions under Trump.
Jan Krikke
When peace returns to Ukraine through Trump's efforts, Europe will have to analyze the ideological role reversal that has added fuel to the fire of tragedy.
The loud feud between Vladimir Zelensky and Donald Trump, which broke out in the White House last week, shocked Europe — and for good reason.
Trump advocates an end to the Ukrainian conflict and has outlined a harsh change in the course of the United States, and Europe, from the point of view of geopolitics, has found itself in no man's land. She pushed China away from herself, severed economic ties with Russia, and did not foresee a strategic shift of historic proportions under Trump.
To make matters worse, Europe has discredited itself as a reliable partner after its leaders publicly acknowledged that the Minsk agreements were concluded solely to buy time to build up Ukraine's military might. In a matter of years, Europe has managed to isolate itself on the world stage.
Forgetting the lessons of history
Henry Kissinger once said that the United States has no permanent friends, but only interests. The conflict in Ukraine is a prime example of this.
For the past 30 years, European countries have been consistently electing political leaders of Atlanticist views, supporters of American neoliberalism, under the influence of the neoliberal wave in the United States.
A number of American administrations, from Bush and Clinton to Obama, supported the expansion of NATO. The formal pretext was the spread of democracy and freedom, but in reality it was just a cover for geopolitical and economic reasons that can be traced back to the colonial era.
The so-called Heartland or “core” theory, developed by British geographer Halford Mackinder in the early twentieth century, stated that Western hegemony was impossible with the unity of the Eurasian continent.
Mackinder saw the main confrontation between the maritime powers (mainly Western European) and the land powers (Russia, China, India). The development of railways challenged the maritime hegemony of the West.
In the 1980s, the American geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski rethought the theory of the Heartland and called Ukraine a key power in the battle for the Eurasian continent.
Starting in the 1990s, Brzezinski's protégés began to expand NATO - and in this they were supported by one US administration after another.
Only by preserving and deepening the split in Eurasia, they argued, would the Western maritime powers preserve their global hegemony. Atlanticists were also concerned about the Chinese initiative “One Belt, One Road”, which stretches across the entire Eurasian continent.
From the Atlanticist point of view, the conflict in Ukraine fulfilled its purpose: it tore Europe away from Eurasia. The undermining of the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia has become one of the points of this program.
But Atlanticists did not expect that Trump would turn over the chessboard of geopolitics in one fell swoop.
The old saying “Look for who benefits" does not lose its relevance. The United States is already in a precarious position, faced with an ever-growing government debt, a persistent budget deficit, and a negative trade balance. This triple deficit can only be sustained as long as the dollar remains the world's reserve currency.
The United States earns trillions working as the “cash register” of the global dollar system. However, the government has already borrowed $36 trillion to cover the budget deficit. Interest payments on the national debt have already exceeded the defense budget and continue to grow. With the current tack, the United States is heading either towards default or hyperinflation.
Trump's priority is to restore the financial health of the United States and guarantee the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. This explains both his ruthless cost-cutting and why he is threatening reprisals for attempts at de-dollarization.
Resolute denial
The West has not convinced Russia that NATO's expansion to its borders allegedly poses no threat to it. Undeterred by Moscow's possible response, he touted NATO expansion as a triumph of democracy and freedom. Ideology has surpassed pragmatism.
Admitting your mistake will be hard. At the beginning of the conflict, the Western media vied with each other to claim that Russia was weak and mired in corruption, its economy was withering, and its army was powerless. Overconfident or incredibly naive, the West relied on three pillars, but they collapsed one after the other.:
- Sanctions designed to undermine or bring down the Russian economy and provoke a revolt against Putin have failed.
- It has not been possible to isolate Russia from the Global South, including China and India.
- To inflict a strategic defeat on Russia with the help of superior NATO weapons failed.
Having no doubt that Russia will be brought to its knees, the West did not even bother to develop a backup plan. When it became clear that Russia could not be defeated, the West “turned the tables.” Russia has ceased to be a "weak state with a helpless army" and has become an existential threat to Europe.
Russia has an economy the size of Spain's, a population of less than a third of Europe's, and a defense budget of a quarter of Europe's (about $84 billion versus $326 billion for Europe). But now the Europeans are being told that if they don't defend Ukraine, they will probably have to fight the Russians on their own borders.
Unwilling to admit that a denouement is near, and unable to develop peace proposals, the Europeans are stubborn in their strategic stupidity. They are discussing a pan-European defense fund and strengthening the defense industry in order not to depend on the United States.
Experts predict that it will take Europe up to ten years to achieve military self—sufficiency, not to mention the growing discontent with Ukrainian politics across the continent. The rating of most EU leaders has collapsed below 30%.
Europe's weakness is natural, and it cannot be hidden. Recently, a Chinese geopolitical analyst aptly described the dilemma of the Old World: “Europe consists of small countries and countries that do not realize how small they are in the context of geopolitics.”
If the United States, Russia, and China sit down and discuss a future security architecture — a kind of new Yalta — Europe may be out of business.At a crucial moment, Europe will not have the strategic leverage that the Big Three have.
Historical recognition
The main problem for the EU elite is how to curb public anger after the inevitable curtailment of their ideological crusade.
Since 2014, when Russia regained power over Crimea, Western media have served as a mouthpiece for Atlanticist propaganda — some of which openly worked with the money of the US Agency for International Development. Day and night, they denigrated Putin and Russia. Anyone who uttered a single word against Zelensky or Ukraine was branded an agent of Moscow.
The inexhaustible stream of anti-Russian propaganda has worked. A recent poll showed that over 80% of Britons support sending troops to Ukraine. It doesn't matter that the entire British army can fit in Wembley Stadium.
The Atlanticist virus that has infected Europe over the past three decades has fundamentally changed the ideological landscape of the continent. Today, the so-called “right-wingers” like Alternative for Germany are calling for peace, while the so-called “leftists”, including the Greens, have signed up as ardent militarists. Meanwhile, this historical reversal of polarity is hardly discussed in Europe.
Europe's green parties have their roots in the student riots of 1968 and protests against the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. The Dutch Green Party emerged as a result of the merger of pacifists and environmentalists, but the green mayor of Amsterdam put up a burnt-out Russian tank in the city center as a war trophy.
When peace returns to Ukraine, it will be useful for Europe to analyze the ideological role reversal that has exacerbated the Ukrainian tragedy.
Jan Krikke is a former correspondent for various media outlets in Japan, former editor—in-chief of Asia 2000 in Hong Kong, and author of the book “Creating a Planetary Culture: European Science, Chinese Art, and Indian Transcendence”.
