Thanks Ian, very good read. The European Union should return to its roots as an economic union, restore some kind of relationship with Russia, and use Russian energy to rebuild their industries. I know that it won’t happen with the current leadership. It boggles the mind, but we’re seeing the same thing in the US. The Trump promises to end foreign adventures and focus on domestic affairs is crumbling under the influence of the military industrial complex and its allies.
Sharp piece, I’d add one structural wrinkle that accelerates the trend you describe which is Europe’s fiscal-industrial "trilemma". Governments are trying to do three expensive things at once. First, sustain support for Ukraine. Second, rebuild a de-industrialized energy base and third, cushion households from stagnant real incomes - all under hard constraints (Germany’s debt brake, France’s rising interest bill, the UK’s gilt sensitivity). When financing costs rise, “guns” crowd out both “butter” and the capex needed to re-shore industry. Voters aren’t just turning nationalist on identity. They’re prioritizing factories, grids, and wages over foreign commitments.
Two watchpoints that will signal how fast policy shifts:
1. Sovereign funding stress in the form of missed bond targets, emergency mini-budgets and clawbacks from social programs (rumblings of which we are seeing through recent announcements by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz).
2. Industrial indicators such as power-price volatility, announced plant closures/relocations and stalled hydrogen/SMR timelines.
If those worsen while Kiev seeks another major tranche in 2026, mainstream parties face a sharper correction not just at the ballot box but in coalition math and EU unanimity thereby making a negotiated end more politically inevitable even if leaders resist it in the short run.
This is really what's happening in France. I live there for 25 years now. (I'm Dutch) Your story is cristall clear. Thank you. You're so right but Macron really does not understand the people in the country. He is very narcissistic and can't see the truth that he's destroying the country. I think the French would be volunteer to pay a bit more taxes if it's coming back to the people. But it's not. 78% of the people stand behind Israël and Macron goes for a 2 state solution. 70% I'm, not sure, wants peace in Ukraïne and Russia. We don't see Putin as a threath here. The Olympics...my god what a disaster for Paris. Hotels, cafés, restaurants closed while not accessible for the security...Many went broke for the prestige of the Olympics.
"Democracy functions specifically to evict governments who aren’t delivering what their voters want."
That's the theory.
Then there's reality. Look at the state of France. They can't get rid of Macron. He's glued on.
I've lost faith in it.
If democracy is so great, why are the citizens of the democratic world in a permanent state of hating their own governments? Hate the left. Vote them out. Hate the right. Vote them out. Hate the centrists. Vote them out. Hate the left. Vote them out. Hate the right. Vote them out.
We're living in a never-ending cycle of misery and rancour and disenchantment and anger.
Democracy is a load of bollocks, isn't it, in reality. It only works in theory. Like communism.
Governments promise to do stuff, get elected with 40% approval. Soon they're on 14%.
The media is a conveyor belt of lies orchestrated by (foreign) oligarchs. How can any country claim to be a true democracy if its citizens are subjected to being systematically lied to on a daily basis? How can they vote based on rational judgments if they have no access to truth?
What use is democracy if you can vote for any candidate but they all report to the same boss?
Representative democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. Everyone in power claims to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
The technical term for this is a "beard". That is, a cover for the rulers to do what they want, even though the rulers themselves may be wildly unpopular. After all, your elected representatives approved this. If you don't like it, you can vote for a different carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet, so until then, shut up and fall in line!
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind.
Of course european political parties and politicians are unpopular. So what? What matters is that their orders are obeyed.
"Wait until next election!" we hear. Hell, electoral democracy was canceled in romania, france has banned the candidate most likely to upend the euroconsensus, and the german ban on the most popular party in germany is baked in the cake. This after germany and other european countries made freedom of speech, the press and association all conditional, all to barely a peep out of the eurosubjects, so I don't know who they think they are kidding.
Tomohawks on European soil aimed at Russia will not end well. These idiots have nothing to loose. Nationalism and digital ID / CBDC do not go together. Crisis is a permanent state nor (since Covid) so expect anything and prepare for the worst.
The only thing that puzzles me about the present situation in the EU/UK is the pig-headed refusal of those in power to see that the war in the Ukraine has been lost. Sure, it might mean that a lot of them will have to find honest work if they did recognise that, but the alternative is to have to do it anyway but with added reputation loss and possibly much worse.
For example, this piece of nostalgia:
"The ratification by the Russian State Duma of the agreement on military cooperation between Russia and Cuba can be viewed as Moscow’s timely response to Washington’s threats to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles for the benefit of the Kiev regime, Alexander Stepanov, military expert with the Institute of Law and National Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, told TASS."
And if they are really as pig-headed as they seem to be, this from former Swiss military Ralph Bosshard. :
"If the fundamentally superior West in terms of resources wants to march against [Russia], then we will destroy the parade base. And this will lead to massive attacks against any usable infrastructure in the Baltic republics and in eastern Poland, as is now being done in Ukraine.”
He added:
". . . count on the use of 200 to 250 nuclear warheads in a war, if the West should really send itself to match its superior resources against Russia."
'When he explained this to a Swiss government politician, she "did not like to hear it". But that is his assessment of the situation. If NATO attacks as a whole, the war will be nuclear from the beginning'
Nonsense. They don't have the capability any more, and what capability they do have they are saving for Chinese target practice. The US is now reduced to threatening first Venezuela and now Nigeria - countries they think (mistakenly) that they can defeat, but soon even the Malvinas will be too much for them. Ansar Allah showed how easily they can be 'trumped'.
Yeah. And we've been hearing that baseless assertion from you for what seems years now too. Their escalation is based on bluster and arrogance. - not real ability any more. As I said, and as you avoided noteing, Ansar Allah showed them up for the impotent empty-vessels that they are.
Not really. Ansar Allah sank zero USN ships. Basically the war wasn't worth it for the Americans.
Anyway, as long as the wishful thinking crowd keep up the wishful thinking, I'll have to keep writing. Or the resistance or whatever you want to call it get its act together.
You are determined not to see reality. Ansar Allah is still firing missiles into Israel, and the US failed to stop them. Instead they had to withdraw their carrier force, losing two planes in the process, one supposedly to 'friendly fire' and the other in a desperate attempt to avoid a Houthi missile which they were unable to shoot down. Ansar Allah also shot down 15 or so very expensive Reaper drones. That is what made it 'not worth it' for the US.
If as you say, the US basically wasn't really interested, the fact that they spent a lot of money and effort sending two or three successive carrier groups in a failed attempt to silence the Yemenis seems to be a strange way of signalling this
These people know very well what their priorities SHOULD be, they just refuse to recognize the validity of any of them. Everyone in the world with a sob story and an accent, and every nonsensical ruinous globalist scheme, comes before doing anything that would help France's people.
This is conscious and deliberate, neither accidental nor incidental.
Thanks Ian, very good read. The European Union should return to its roots as an economic union, restore some kind of relationship with Russia, and use Russian energy to rebuild their industries. I know that it won’t happen with the current leadership. It boggles the mind, but we’re seeing the same thing in the US. The Trump promises to end foreign adventures and focus on domestic affairs is crumbling under the influence of the military industrial complex and its allies.
Europe won't and Trump will do no such thing.
Sharp piece, I’d add one structural wrinkle that accelerates the trend you describe which is Europe’s fiscal-industrial "trilemma". Governments are trying to do three expensive things at once. First, sustain support for Ukraine. Second, rebuild a de-industrialized energy base and third, cushion households from stagnant real incomes - all under hard constraints (Germany’s debt brake, France’s rising interest bill, the UK’s gilt sensitivity). When financing costs rise, “guns” crowd out both “butter” and the capex needed to re-shore industry. Voters aren’t just turning nationalist on identity. They’re prioritizing factories, grids, and wages over foreign commitments.
Two watchpoints that will signal how fast policy shifts:
1. Sovereign funding stress in the form of missed bond targets, emergency mini-budgets and clawbacks from social programs (rumblings of which we are seeing through recent announcements by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz).
2. Industrial indicators such as power-price volatility, announced plant closures/relocations and stalled hydrogen/SMR timelines.
If those worsen while Kiev seeks another major tranche in 2026, mainstream parties face a sharper correction not just at the ballot box but in coalition math and EU unanimity thereby making a negotiated end more politically inevitable even if leaders resist it in the short run.
This is really what's happening in France. I live there for 25 years now. (I'm Dutch) Your story is cristall clear. Thank you. You're so right but Macron really does not understand the people in the country. He is very narcissistic and can't see the truth that he's destroying the country. I think the French would be volunteer to pay a bit more taxes if it's coming back to the people. But it's not. 78% of the people stand behind Israël and Macron goes for a 2 state solution. 70% I'm, not sure, wants peace in Ukraïne and Russia. We don't see Putin as a threath here. The Olympics...my god what a disaster for Paris. Hotels, cafés, restaurants closed while not accessible for the security...Many went broke for the prestige of the Olympics.
"Democracy functions specifically to evict governments who aren’t delivering what their voters want."
That's the theory.
Then there's reality. Look at the state of France. They can't get rid of Macron. He's glued on.
I've lost faith in it.
If democracy is so great, why are the citizens of the democratic world in a permanent state of hating their own governments? Hate the left. Vote them out. Hate the right. Vote them out. Hate the centrists. Vote them out. Hate the left. Vote them out. Hate the right. Vote them out.
We're living in a never-ending cycle of misery and rancour and disenchantment and anger.
Democracy is a load of bollocks, isn't it, in reality. It only works in theory. Like communism.
Governments promise to do stuff, get elected with 40% approval. Soon they're on 14%.
The media is a conveyor belt of lies orchestrated by (foreign) oligarchs. How can any country claim to be a true democracy if its citizens are subjected to being systematically lied to on a daily basis? How can they vote based on rational judgments if they have no access to truth?
What use is democracy if you can vote for any candidate but they all report to the same boss?
Representative democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. Everyone in power claims to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
The technical term for this is a "beard". That is, a cover for the rulers to do what they want, even though the rulers themselves may be wildly unpopular. After all, your elected representatives approved this. If you don't like it, you can vote for a different carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet, so until then, shut up and fall in line!
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind.
No.its not. Europe is a continent. You mean the artificial euro federal supra state.
Of course european political parties and politicians are unpopular. So what? What matters is that their orders are obeyed.
"Wait until next election!" we hear. Hell, electoral democracy was canceled in romania, france has banned the candidate most likely to upend the euroconsensus, and the german ban on the most popular party in germany is baked in the cake. This after germany and other european countries made freedom of speech, the press and association all conditional, all to barely a peep out of the eurosubjects, so I don't know who they think they are kidding.
Tomohawks on European soil aimed at Russia will not end well. These idiots have nothing to loose. Nationalism and digital ID / CBDC do not go together. Crisis is a permanent state nor (since Covid) so expect anything and prepare for the worst.
The only thing that puzzles me about the present situation in the EU/UK is the pig-headed refusal of those in power to see that the war in the Ukraine has been lost. Sure, it might mean that a lot of them will have to find honest work if they did recognise that, but the alternative is to have to do it anyway but with added reputation loss and possibly much worse.
For example, this piece of nostalgia:
"The ratification by the Russian State Duma of the agreement on military cooperation between Russia and Cuba can be viewed as Moscow’s timely response to Washington’s threats to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles for the benefit of the Kiev regime, Alexander Stepanov, military expert with the Institute of Law and National Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, told TASS."
https://en.interaffairs.ru/article/an-agreement-on-russian-military-cooperation-with-cuba/
And if they are really as pig-headed as they seem to be, this from former Swiss military Ralph Bosshard. :
"If the fundamentally superior West in terms of resources wants to march against [Russia], then we will destroy the parade base. And this will lead to massive attacks against any usable infrastructure in the Baltic republics and in eastern Poland, as is now being done in Ukraine.”
He added:
". . . count on the use of 200 to 250 nuclear warheads in a war, if the West should really send itself to match its superior resources against Russia."
'When he explained this to a Swiss government politician, she "did not like to hear it". But that is his assessment of the situation. If NATO attacks as a whole, the war will be nuclear from the beginning'
https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=140354
Because the plan in Ukraine ever always only was for the Americans to ride to the rescue once more.
This plan is proceeding apace.
Nonsense. They don't have the capability any more, and what capability they do have they are saving for Chinese target practice. The US is now reduced to threatening first Venezuela and now Nigeria - countries they think (mistakenly) that they can defeat, but soon even the Malvinas will be too much for them. Ansar Allah showed how easily they can be 'trumped'.
We've been hearing that one for years now, even as the US keeps escalating.
Yeah. And we've been hearing that baseless assertion from you for what seems years now too. Their escalation is based on bluster and arrogance. - not real ability any more. As I said, and as you avoided noteing, Ansar Allah showed them up for the impotent empty-vessels that they are.
Not really. Ansar Allah sank zero USN ships. Basically the war wasn't worth it for the Americans.
Anyway, as long as the wishful thinking crowd keep up the wishful thinking, I'll have to keep writing. Or the resistance or whatever you want to call it get its act together.
You are determined not to see reality. Ansar Allah is still firing missiles into Israel, and the US failed to stop them. Instead they had to withdraw their carrier force, losing two planes in the process, one supposedly to 'friendly fire' and the other in a desperate attempt to avoid a Houthi missile which they were unable to shoot down. Ansar Allah also shot down 15 or so very expensive Reaper drones. That is what made it 'not worth it' for the US.
If as you say, the US basically wasn't really interested, the fact that they spent a lot of money and effort sending two or three successive carrier groups in a failed attempt to silence the Yemenis seems to be a strange way of signalling this
Thanks for your great work!
We've shared this link on 'The Stacks'
https://askeptic.substack.com/p/the-stacks
Too any Melonis positioned there to look like real oposition until they grab power and then
the globes is pinched and then we see the wolf under the sheep skin,
Your Patagonian-Spanish follower
These people know very well what their priorities SHOULD be, they just refuse to recognize the validity of any of them. Everyone in the world with a sob story and an accent, and every nonsensical ruinous globalist scheme, comes before doing anything that would help France's people.
This is conscious and deliberate, neither accidental nor incidental.
Oops, thanks!