Europe’s Ukraine strategy can be summed up as manifesting. The belief that mind can conquer matter is idealism at its most pathological. These people genuinely seem to think that chanting “values” louder will bend reality to their will. Like Instagram gurus insisting “visualize wealth and it shall be yours,” EU summits have devolved into groupthink seances where leaders recite mantras of Russian defeat and Ukrainian victory, as though repetition alone could conjure artillery shells or resurrect their gutted industries. This is magical thinking masquerading as policy. Even as factories shutter and energy prices eviscerate living standards, Europe clings to the delusion that their sanctions will magically cripple a resource-rich Russia now buoyed by China and the Global South. Yet, no amount of positive vibes can offset the laws of supply chains, demographics, or artillery parity. Russia, meanwhile, operates firmly in the realm of materialist thinking. They are methodically attriting the Ukrainian army, expanding industries, and adapting to sanctions. Europe’s tragedy isn’t just its refusal to accept defeat, but its quasi-religious insistence that reality must bend to its sermons. In the end, no amount of neoliberal manifesting can magic the material world away.
Bluster. They are trying to look decisive and like they have actual stances on anything that isn’t drip-fed them through Israeli and US lobbyists, and capital interests. They want to cover up the fact that they have eviscerated their democracies, plundered their public sectors with generations of austerity, effectively banned any type of opposition to neoliberalism and determined to not act against Israel regardless of how profane the human cost of their crimes. These are not people with vision and purpose. They are circling the drain and trying to not raise any alarm that their whole society is circling with them. Whatever awaits Europe, it is not going to be a world power, let’s be clear. Without colonies Europe has nothing. Which is whatever. The west is dying and it’s about time.
The symptoms of a society in perpetual defeat, retreat and misery.
My guess is they need to fund big armies to suppress the periphery of their empire in the long term. It’s not so much Russia threatening to expand. Ukraine is written down as a loss unofficially.
But now why would poor nations stay members of the EU when they are going to get drained of assets and economically exploited? They are at risk of leaving and trading with nations that have more economic activity.
The imperialists use the military when the economy is going terribly. The biggest demand for tanks is intimidating your civilians rolling around your own urban areas. The political puppets need military forces to strong arm their people.
Personally, I don’t even think it’s that sophisticated. The EU is basically just going to make a slush fund for military spending, that they plan to fund by cutting social services. A bunch of people are going to make money hand over fist in the process. We already saw this play out just recently with the EU plan to acquire 1.5 million artillery shells. A bunch of money was poured into that with a lot of fanfare, and in the end they managed to cobble up around a third of that as I recall. I expect that the new scheme to militarize Europe will play out exactly the same way.
For generations they’ve coasted on the rhetoric of moral superiority while riding the US’ imperial coattails. The EU as an institution was designed for and has always lived under this junior partner arrangement. I shouldn’t be surprised if they’ve lost the institutional knowledge for a broad swath of sovereign state skills. And the states are semi-devolved under a suprastate that itself was never designed to be a fully independent, sovereign player on the world stage.
And at the same time they’re not actually aware of this fact. The leadership in EU and UK genuinely seems to think they can just go it on their own, and they don’t need the US for anything. Like if they just keep chanting their slogans long enough, everything will magically work out in the end.
