It’s with a very heavy heart that I watch Europe imitate the militarism of the United States, moving massive resources from human and environmental needs to weapons, celebrating proposals from good liberal civic groups to steal money from Russia and dump it into more weapons, cutting deals to have the ingredients for more weapons dug out of your soil by a distant empire that routinely spits on your head, moving nuclear weapons around and across borders like toys, discarding the rule of law and a vision of a survivable future.
I used to think of Europe with admiration. Now I see it as employing a century-out-of-date handbook for how to stand up to the U.S. bully through mirroring the bully’s behavior. Of course you should feel ashamed that you have allowed the U.S. government to push you around, to blow up your “energy” (Earth-destroying) infrastructure — and, instead of outmaneuvering all the empires and shifting to green sources of power, you’ve screamed “Thank you, sir! May I have another?” Of course you should be sorry for having played along with all the lies, for having pretended all the bases and missiles and NATO memberships were harmless, for having treated so many treaties as mere means of tricking the stupid Russians rather than as legal commitments. Of course you should want to transform into something other than the place that, when the U.S. threatens to steal Greenland, screams “Help! Help! Putin is coming!”
But you should look to what is best in Europe, and not to what is worst in Washington. You were supposed to be the place that had learned something, that would never tolerate genocidal behaviors again, not the place that would bow and scrape to obtain bit roles in advancing the murder of every inhabitant of Gaza. You were supposed to be the place that had suffered war directly, unlike the United States, and therefore knew enough to not create more wars, not the place that shouted hysterically about the danger of peace in Ukraine. You were supposed to be the place that, no matter how many Hollywood movies you saw, would still know that it had been Russia and not Tom Hanks who had saved your fascist derrieres from yourselves. You were supposed to be investing in human and environmental concerns rather than organized mass murder — achieving so much nicer and longer lives than U.S. militarists, not because the U.S. was funding your sadism for you, but because you knew better. You were supposed to have treated U.S. racism and bigotry with such scorn for so long, not because you had never seen anyone who didn’t look like you, but because you weren’t a bunch of easily manipulated idiots. You were supposed to have come together into one union, not in order to better export violence but in order to promote peace.
It seems you want to prove that positive vision wrong on all points.
But turn off your televisions for a minute and come over here and have a look at what you’re asking for. Are you ready for no decent schools, no affordable houses, no right to a union, no vacation or sick leave, no retirement, crap environmental protections, journalism an object in museums, more simultaneous wars than anyone can count in places virtually no one can find on a map, and a gang of sociopathic imbeciles stepping over the bodies of the unhoused to get at their cars and planes and yachts piled with more wealth than all of your past kings and emperors combined ever imagined? You think you’re ready. You think you’re already there because you’ve inched in the direction of this nightmare and can’t imagine it getting worse. So, don’t imagine it. Come here and see it.
Snap out of your dream! Imitating NATO while keeping NATO is just the worst of both worlds. You’re just going to be an even more obedient sidekick to an even more arrogant abuser. You have a better path available. You could very easily be the model for the world in wise investment, in supporting the rule of law, in resolving conflict, in unarmed civilian defense and demilitarization, in serious pursuit of a future without a nuclear winter or a complete collapse of ecosystems. Russia is not inevitably hostile or benevolent. Euro-Russian relations depend on the behavior, not only of Russia, but also of Europe. If you pursue peace and cooperation wisely, you are likely to succeed. If you do not, you are guaranteed to fail.
Why should I expect such amazing behavior from you, when your history is as checkered and bloody as anyone else’s, maybe more, and the glowing vision of you was never completely real? I demand the same behavior of Washington and everywhere else, of course. I demand it of Russia. I demand it of China. Thus far, none of them listen much. The trick might be getting a bunch of places to listen at once. And you could be the key to that. If you would pull your head out of the Pentagon’s assignment desk and breathe clean air for a moment.
