Europe Chooses War, But Why?

Leaders speak in uniform monotone; string-pullers invisible

• Germany amends constitution to splurge military spending

• Putin-Trump hold 2nd phone call about ceasefire

• Europe's leaders seek to make peace ‘inoperable’

• For whom do these tongue-tied and twisted leaders speak?

• Clearly not the people but the weapons makers and bankers

• The gambit: the Eurobomb, to be fired independently of U.S.

Related:
Why Europe Doesn't Want Peace - It forgets that it drew its civilisation from the East (Mar 01, 2025)
Orwellian Clichés & War As Peace - Who has an interest in conflict? (Mar 05, 2025)
All Smiles As EU Gears Up For War - Massive borrowing to fund rearmament (Mar 07, 2025)
Jokers In The Pact Threaten EU War Machine - Regrowth would make economic sense, if serious (Mar 09, 2025)

(1,800 words or about nine moments of your company).

French pacific nuclear test

Mar 20, 2025

I keep writing about layers of narrative. We have to get behind the spin, the rotary engine of the press that in its vortex leaves a cyclone of chaff.

Europe rearms. The markets are split. The defence sector is rallying; bonds are selling off, because €800 billion in borrowing to grow the arms industry will drive up interest rates, destroying jobs outside the weapons sector.

This is not new. The U.S. after WWII opted not to disarm, rather to increase its weapons industry, which is why it has been at war, somewhere, in almost every year since 1945. The U.S. is a war economy and the result is that other industries have outsourced and exiled themselves in search of cheaper costs abroad.

The paradox, that many wish to resolve, is how Europe can be de-industrialising in the name of Green energy and yet seek to become a military machine on the scale of the 1940s, let alone replace U.S. might in Europe.

Continental politicians, with a few exceptions, speak with one voice.

The Financial Times has said that France, the UK and Germany plan to make any agreement between Trump and Putin inoperable.

We are told we must go to war. Military spending will be the new welfare, “from the nipple to the bottle, never satisfied.” That is the message of Alabama Song.

“For if we don't find
The next whiskey bar
I tell you we must die”

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four it was Victory Gin, whose initial burning sensation gave way to a pall of relaxation.

Plentiful alcohol has been a tool of totalitarianism. High yielding, low quality grape varieties like Ugni Blanc, Tebbiano and Aligoté were pumped, proletarian-style, through the Russian Continuous Method to churn out endless sparkling wine, Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, or sekt.

Coming to you soon across Europe. Not because the Russians are going to colonise, but because European leaders seem hell-bent on creating communist austerity without the positives: the free education up to and including university, the health care, and the surviving cultural inheritance.

Dr Who?

Before we get to the grey nuts and bolts, imagine if squatters moved into your home, not only occupied the best rooms — did you watch Doctor Zhivago? — took your wages but sent you out to fight their tribal wars on the nearby corner.

The Western political establishment is doing something like that.

Despite the latest Putin and Trump telephone conversation, the European leadership, along with the Biden-Blinken stay behind army is trying to make permanent the war with Russia so that peace cannot derail their plans.

Cell warfare

A stay behind army is the name NATO gave to fascist forces that it embedded in Europe after WWII as military cells to be activated in the case of any future communist advance. The Ukrainian Nazis are one example.

However the Cold War distinction between fascists and communists has disappeared, along with the enemy NATO was established to fight.

What remains is a permanent state whose first loyalty is the preservation of its own bureaucratic power base, masking this desire with the slogans of old, while profiting its partners in the military industrial complex.

They claim Europe must defend democracy, while they annul elections in Romania.

Soft Cell

Germany's incoming chancellor Friedrick Merz von BlackRock looks like a walk-on cameo in the syth-pop band Soft Cell. He promised to stay within budget and guard the borders but promptly broke his word on both counts.

He is amending the constitution to boost military spending. The CDU/CSU and the SDP would lack the two-thirds majority in the new Bundestag which convenes on March 25, so they've rushed the change through.

The outgoing coalition on March 18 overturned the debt brake in Germany’s Basic Law since 2009 to create a €500 billion military fund. The Bundesrat, representing federal states, will vote on March 21.

What it means to you, is not what it means to me, he is saying.

Back in November 2023, the federal constitutional court ruled illegal the creation of special funds to get around budget limits. It stopped the coalition using €60 billion in Covid funds to plug a hole in accounts.

War and degrowth