Western mainstream media has been crying hoarse about Ukraine’s battles against Russian forces, how President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is teaching Russians a bloody lesson, and how the Ukrainian counteroffensive is going to snatch Crimea (base of Russia’s Baltic Fleet for decades) from Russia. Somehow Indian mainstream media also mirrors American propaganda.
Ironically, no one talks of the real picture: European leaders and Zelenskyy geopolitically prostituting for the US 1, America’s imperialist designs behind the Ukraine war 2, Ukrainian counteroffensive getting blunted 3, and Zelenskyy’s readiness to bomb own (Ukrainian) infrastructure, including the Dam on Dnipro river in Kherson region 4.
Amid the Western propaganda about Russia’s war on Ukraine, which actually is the US war on Russia using Ukraine as the proxy, not many would have noticed the masterstroke America’s Joe Biden Administration has achieved silently with the Eurozone (consisting of 20 countries that use Euro as currency) officially entering recession after two consecutive quarters of economic contraction 5. It needs no intelligence to decipher that the US war on Russia in Ukraine and US sanctions (particularly on Russian energy exports) has brought the Eurozone to this state, which may be just the beginning.
The real reason why the Biden Administration is doing this is directly connected with the US plan of imperialism which sees no friends – everyone other than America is classified “foe”. Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinsky (1966-68 to Lyndon Johnson and 1977-1981 to Jimmy Carter) wrote in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ published in 1997 6 that the landmass of Eurasia (Europe + Asia) is the centre of global power and the US should craft a Eurasian geo-strategy to ensure that no Eurasian challenger should emerge that can dominate Eurasia and thus challenge America’s pre-eminence.
But America did have such a strategy in place decades before Brezinsky propounded his thesis7. Expanding NATO and concurrently not permitting European security structure to come up was part of this strategy. Zelenskyy’s desperation can be gauged from the fact that in the first six days of the counteroffensive, Ukrainian armed forces have already suffered, 3,715 killed as per Russian news agency TASS, although Zelenskyy will not admit this.
Why would the US then bother about global adverse effects of the war in Ukraine? Energy and food shortages, broken supply chains, human misery, poverty, hunger and starvation deaths in third world countries, what to talk of recession in the Eurozone – all while America continues to wage wars with 800 bases across the planet? And, this is also when the US arms and energy companies are raking in billions, including selling gas to European countries five times the price they were getting from Russia.
America’s attack on Eurasia was perhaps why Britain chose BREXIT but it can hardly deny that the US war against Russia in Ukraine has contributed to its economic woes. Yet, the British Prime Minister has pledged deeper ties with the US and is going much beyond his predecessors in arming Ukraine with Leopard tanks, ‘Storm Shadow’ long-range missiles, and will probably become Washington’s conduit for supplying F-16 fighter jets to Zelenskyy.
It is not that European leaders are not aware of their economic predicament but they refuse to think rationally, place themselves before their public and lack the spine to stand up to the US. However, German Chancellor Olof Scholz led an economic delegation to Beijing, which was followed by French President Emmanuel Macron leading a delegation of more than 50 CEOs to China, also accompanied by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission; both seeking stronger economic ties with Beijing and China’s support against Russia in the Ukraine war.
China’s Prime Minister Li Qiang is now scheduled to visit Berlin and Paris to attend a conference on June 22 titled ‘A New World Financial Pact’ for supporting poor countries – the brainchild of Emmanuel Macron. Apparently, ‘some’ understanding is dawning in Europe that following the US blindly would be committing hara-kiri, and wisdom lies in balancing relations with both America and China. In fact, American businessmen have understood the need to continue and further develop economic relations with China in the face of anti-China rhetoric by the Biden Administration and America’s sanctions regime.
Despite the increased acrimony between the US and China at the political level, several American CEOs continue to visit China. Most prominent was the recent visit by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors. Musk had more top-level Chinese meetings in two days than most Biden Administration officials have had in months. He also met China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang while China has once again refused any dialogue with US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin. The Chinese foreign ministry quoted Musk saying that he was willing to expand business in China and opposed the decoupling of the US and the Chinese economies, and Musk described the world’s two largest economies as “conjoined twins”.
Other American business heads who have visited China since March 2023 include the CEOs of JP Morgan, Starbucks, General Motors and Apple. Speaking in Shanghai, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, called for “real engagement” between the US and China. Morgan and Musk were in China at the same time. CEOs of Mercedes, Siemens and German firms BASF, Volkswagen and BMW have all vowed to continue investing in China; defying calls from the Olof Scholz government to shift out of China 8 and are seeking separation of business interests from political concerns.
Arno Antlitz, chief financial officer of Volkswagen who is also the chief operating officer since September 2022, recently said, “We won’t give up on China.” China is Germany’s biggest trading partner, with total trade last year of nearly €300 billion ($323 billion). China is also a critical supplier of parts and materials as well as an important buyer of goods for German companies. BASF is investing around $10 billion in a chemical plant in Zhanjiang on China’s southern coast.
Behind the blind allegiance of European leaders to the US is not only their personal ambition over their public. A very major reason is America’s deliberate Nazification of Europe over the past several decades 9 in pursuit of its imperial dream. It is not just the mixing of blood by Hitler’s occupational forces in European countries but the US gave former Third Reich officers, including some charged with grave war-crime charges, appointments in the NATO hierarchy. The downside is the Nazi-like behaviour of leaders and officials like Olof Scholz, Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and even Victoria Nuland, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, leaving aside the extreme case of Zelenskyy.
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is lecturing Brazilians regarding caring more about the price of “rice and beans” than supporting NATO’s proxy war against Russia. She obviously cannot think about the German public, having been afflicted with the Nazi virus released by the US. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wants NATO troops in his country even before Sweden is admitted to NATO. Finland would probably want the same. And the Biden Administration bent upon spreading the Nazi pandemic without bothering about Europe.
Presently, Washington is preparing to roll out the reddest of carpets for the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi commencing June 21. Biden would probably greet Modi with the tightest of hugs although he may not rush across the carpet as he did for Zelenskyy. But India would do well to recall Henry Kissinger’s quip that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” But much before Kissinger, Harry Truman as a senator in 1940 said, “If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible.” American policy is to use and throw nations.
Finally, this being the manner how the US is dealing with Europe as part of subjugating Eurasia, what is in store for Asia and India? The Biden Administration obviously wants India to fight China the way Zelenskyy is fighting Russia, especially with Pentagon freaking out about a potential war with China, given China ‘demonstrating’ its policy of shock and awe.10
-The writer is an Indian Army veteran. Views expressed are personal.
