Europe’s Eclipse of Intelligence – Submission
The European ruling class has entered into a kind of slave relationship to the US master; but a meek and lazy slave to a sometimes hesitant, but always callous and deceitful master.
Next in Europe’s Eclipse of Intelligence, it is necessary to look at the relationship that is strongly influencing the strategic, political and economic direction of Europe today in a negative way; namely its subservience to the United States. Today, Europe’s relationship with the USA is one of submission – no other word is possible. As journalist Thomas Fazi wrote recently:
“Europe is today more politically, economically and militarily vassalised to Washington — and therefore weaker and less autonomous — than at any point since the Second World War.”
This description may seem exaggerated to some, because most Western MSM do not talk this way, or at all. Yet, the facts speak for themselves, even though this development has been progressive.
The Foundation of Today’s Domination
The United States played a decisive role in supporting and encouraging European integration after WWII. Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, prominent contributors to the European project, were themselves closely aligned with Washington’s vision of a Western bloc firmly anchored to US leadership. For the US, it was always less about fostering a strong and independent Europe than about creating a stable, cooperative - but submissive - partner, bound economically and politically to American interests.
Culturally, Hollywood played a key role in cementing the surprisingly naïve perception on the Old Continent of “America” as good, sincere and even altruistic - despite massive US violations of international law in South America and despicable war crimes in South East Asia.
Even contemporary art was used by Washington to counteract the spread of Communist ideas in Western Europe, alongside criminal methods, such as terrorist acts perpetrated by “stay behind networks”, such as the now infamous operation Gladio.
This influence has shaped all social and political life in Western Europe, to the point where today’s European leaders have never known any other relationship with the US than one perceived as “fatherly benevolence”. This cultural conditioning made possible the smooth growth, over the decades, of an ever-larger political and economic asymmetry between Europe and the United States, which was facilitated by Europe’s increasingly socialist policies. Indeed, this deep cultural indoctrination helps to explain the very timid reactions from the European political class even as the US grip over Europe has tightened.
The US Grip Tightens
For several decades after WWII, Europe’s relationship with the US was arguably not so harmful to European economic interests, or at least what harm existed was to a large extent compensated by the benefit of living under Uncle Sam’s protective (nuclear) umbrella during the Cold War. At least Western Europeans enjoyed that legendary “pax americana”.
Though there was never any doubt about US strategic power over Europe during the Cold War, there was still a certain level of autonomy for Europeans with respect to the creation of European institutions and domestic policies. Strong and competent European leaders like Helmut Schmidt, Charles de Gaulle, or Olof Palme, could drive quite independent policies, sometimes even in direct – and dangerous - opposition to the will of Washington.
But what was initially a kind of deference and respect, turned progressively into subservience, as the US’s unipolar power moment peaked. The catastrophic and unnecessary Yugoslav wars could certainly have been avoided if the Europeans had kept their past clout. Yet, as late as 2003, France and Germany could still oppose the US invasion of Iraq, though Uncle Sam was seriously displeased. That was the last time.
US Spying and Full Spectrum Surveillance
Considering the WikiLeaks revelations, Edward Snowden’s leaks, FOI requests in the US, and public testimonies from European politicians and business leaders, it is clear that the US domination of Europe has become much more serious today than during the 1990s.
The US has conducted (and continues to conduct) massive surveillance of EU companies, often giving them a competitive edge. European citizens’ data is shared with the US and accessible to US intelligence services: the US Cloud Act has been confirmed publicly as overriding with impunity EU’s data protection law (GDPR).
Washington has been engaging in what MEPs have called “blanket mass surveillance” of EU companies and citizens. The US has used both agents and electronic surveillance, to spy on political deliberations at EU level and at national governments. Only timid complaints were heard from the Europeans. Hardware and software backdoors have been purposefully installed on US products: the NSA has been “covertly implanting interception tools in US servers heading overseas hardware like routers, servers”, which make up the bulk of the global digital infrastructure.
Washington’s Economic Blackmail
European companies are regularly fined enormous sums of money by the US government when their investments “conflict” with US geostrategic objectives.
The US Justice Department has weaponized the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for decades, using it against European companies, outrageously claiming extraterritoriality of US law. This has further reduced the competitiveness of European companies in international markets. In one example, in true mafia style, Washington used the FCPA to have a French energy executive arrested and held in a maximum-security prison in order to force the sale of a strategic enterprise.
Furthermore, the US has been using the dollar’s reserve currency status for years to create gargantuan subsidies of large swaths of its digital and energy transition industries that the EU cannot hope to match. It has used the Inflation Reduction Act and other massive credits to strategic industries, like AI, thereby eating into European market share, innovation and competitiveness. Hardly a peep has been heard from Europe.
Lately, the US has gone even further than was imagined possible, by (likely) blowing up the North Stream II gas pipeline connecting Germany and Russia, the largest industrial sabotage in the history of Europe. Since then, the US government has pressed the Europeans to abandon their remaining purchases of Russian oil and gas, in favor of far more expensive imports from the US, thereby fast destroying what remains of Europe’s serious industrial production, in particular in Germany.
As Kissinger famously quipped, it “‘It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
European Leaders Don’t Even Care
Over ten years ago, many MEPs strongly advised that “Europe should develop its own clouds and IT solutions, including cybersecurity and encryption technologies, to ensure a high level of data protection.” Nothing much has been done since then, with American tech companies maintaining an iron grip on market share in key areas concerning would-be European sovereignty. Only recently have voices become a bit louder and some actions taken towards independence from the USA. But this is only since Trump’s arrival in the White House, which betrays a lack of understanding of the underlying bipartisan US policy of hegemony.
Recently, an analyst explained that there is worrying lack of patriotism in Europe, to the benefit of US firms. He wrote from personal experience:
“We’re essentially witnessing a “colonization of the minds” whereby Europe has structurally internalized its technological inferiority, celebrated American startups while dismissed its own homegrown companies.”
This has gone so far that French public administrations have actually preferred having US companies dealing with EU citizens data over existing homegrown competitors. If this is the dire situation in France, for whom De Gaulle’s staunch independence is still a memory for some, one can imagine the situation elsewhere…
Further, in a much-seen French Senate audition from 2023, François Fillon, former Prime Minister of France, explained that French MPs had received especially cyber-protected smartphones from the French security services.
But they had not used them because they considered them cumbersome and inconvenient: this is the lack of seriousness with which European politicians see information security, in particular when the risk comes mainly from the US “friend”. “[Fillon] himself hardly secured his exchanges with Nicolas Sarkozy, then president”. It must have been child’s play for the NSA to hack into the phones of European leaders. They don’t even care.
It’s obvious from the following examples, that it is no exaggeration to speak of European vassal states to the US, paying tribute as vassals do. The latest batch of European leaders seem desperate to please the US Administration and do its bidding at every turn, however damaging to their own images, and worse, to their societies that their actions will prove to be.
The European ruling minorities and, it must be said, a large part of its ruled majorities, have entered into a kind of slave relationship to the US master. But it is not the kind of busy and hard-working Hegelian Slave, making efforts to get recognition from his Master, but a meek and lazy slave, declining in health and capabilities, accepting ever more abuse for every year that passes, from a sometimes hesitant but always callous and deceitful master, with only whispers of protestation being heard.
This subservience is a state of affairs that impacts Europe’s populations severely, of course. But it impacts also the entire world. Because Europe used to have a somewhat tempering effect on USA’s drive for global hegemony. Since 2003 however, this counterbalancing influence, from the only ones who could rein in Washington’s delirious war-mongering, is gone. On the contrary, this strategy is now cheered on by Europe as the European puppies align with Uncle Sam, in order to try to rule the world vicariously, as a “subimperial power” to use the term coined by Clinton Fernandes.
“I Want to Break Free”?
With the multipolar world arriving fast, despite US aggressive attempts by all means to prevent this inevitable development, there is a golden opportunity for the Europeans leaders to finally cast off the American yoke that is now really weighing on their soft necks. But are they taking this opportunity? No, on the contrary: they are now doing their utmost to keep the US presence on the Old Continent. They are even being “more royalist that the king”, as the French say, at least with respect to the Ukraine crisis. As journalist Thomas Fazi wrote with keen insight:
“The problem is that Europe has been locked in a subordinate relationship to America for so long that now that Trump threatens to destabilize its historic security dependence, Europe is unable to seize this opportunity; instead, it is attempting to replicate the US’s aggressive foreign policy — to unconsciously “become” America.”
This is a sign of complete and utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy – indeed, an “eclipse of intelligence” - among the financial, political and intellectual so-called “elite” of Europe, in particular in light of the genocide that the US actively supports in Palestine. A Circulation of Elites is well overdue and has only been prevented by the current European ruling minority’s use of the most desperate methods, such as election meddling, coercion and media control.
A new mindset is clearly needed urgently among Europeans of all kinds, in order to realize a necessary revival, economically, technically, culturally. The Europeans can and must increase the political pressure on the corrupt and hapless minority currently ruling Europe. But, this European ruling class alone must one day decide to say “NO” to Uncle Sam. Yet, they are so psychologically dominated by the US and are often but a shadow of their political forebears. Only a well-merited economic and political crisis, on either or both sides of the Atlantic, could force these European slaves to rebel.
EU cannot help USA restrain China (that struggle is over), nor does EU have excess natural resources to sell USA, nor will EU cooperate in USA exploitation of Africa and South America without asking for a fair percentage of the profits. So what good is EU to USA? It's not a true ally, it doesn't pay enough to qualify as exploited vassal, it lacks enough resources to be colonized? That's means EU is a potentially dangerous competitor. As such, rational thing for USA is to cooperate with Russia to weaken EU, without allowing Russia to control EU, while incentivizing EU industry to move to USA. If EU resists, USA can arrange with Russia to not merely weaken EU, not destroy it entirely. EU has no choice but to do whatever USA wants. EU has always had a gun pointed at its head: Trump just makes this more visible. (I'm using EU to mean all of Europe west of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine,because those three are European).
I agree with Andreen’s thesis that Europe has long surrendered its independence to Washington, and what we see today is not strength but an accelerating collapse of political and strategic coherence. The “eclipse of intelligence” is evident in the way European elites parrot US rhetoric even when American policies openly damage European sovereignty and industry.
The recent Copenhagen meetings on defense where EU leaders discussed projects like a European Air Defense Shield, “Drone Wall,” and even steps toward an EU Army only highlight this crisis. Far from showing strength, the push for military integration exposes deep contradictions. Europe lacks the demographics, economic vitality and political unity to sustain such ambitions. Worse, any “EU Army” would still depend on US technology, intelligence and logistics, reinforcing rather than reducing American dominance.
In reality, these efforts reflect desperation. By layering new defense structures on top of fragile foundations, Brussels risks widening internal divisions and hastening the EU’s disintegration. The Copenhagen agenda is not evidence of a rising Europe, but of a collapsing one scrambling to reinvent itself while shackled to Washington’s will.