Kieselguhr

The libertarian billionaires want to do to Europe and the United States just what the neoliberals did to Russia in the 1990s. They want to turn over all of the mass of government property—national parks, government real estate, government agencies—all of these, they want to turn over to the financial managers to turn into monopolies that can be financialized and create wealth in the form of stock market gains and bond market gains. That’s what the game is.

It’s not so much geopolitical antagonism towards Russia—that’s just the superficial wrapping. It’s about a political, anti-government, fascist ideology. That’s what I think we’re dealing with.

No, I see them going on together, using each other, shifting back and forth—whichever flies, whichever gets you the best polling results. Do you demonize Russia? Do you demonize your own government? Mix them up, add them together, link them.

But again, I say it for Europe: the strategy of Europe catching up with either the United States or Russia-China is not going to solve your problem. It’s just not. It’s going to cost you—the very turmoil, as Michael began today’s conversation—the very turmoil of the next three, four, or five years. As you move your resources away from everything you’ve been doing to building a defense establishment, it’s going to create all kinds of difficulties. They have to take those resources away from all of the things they need to be doing to try to catch up with the rest of the world.

The decline of Europe is a hundred years old. I don’t see this doing anything other than accelerating it even further.

Then we’re in full agreement. The Eurozone is a dead zone.

And let’s be clear—it is shooting itself in the foot. It is very busy shooting itself. Its notion—maybe this is a good way to end—you know, for 500 years, Europe could claim to be, and it did make the claim, that it was the center of the world. It was the Roman Empire, then the great medieval era, then the great colonial takeover of the whole rest of the world, organized in, by, and for Europe.

What we are watching is a late stage in the dismantling of the role in the world that Europe played. It is now less and less and less. And the lead is taken by England, which in a way is correct, because they took the lead the other way. They brought Europe forward—it went from a cold, wet offshore island of Europe to the Great British Empire. And now it’s on its way back to what it was, and the rest of Europe with it.

And all of these are ideologically mistaken notions of how in the world you’re going to cope with that decline, let alone reestablish a place. And maybe that’s the way empires always go. They rise, they are spectacular, they rule, and oh boy, do they look bad as they turn into the ruins that all of them before also ended up as.

Why not Europe too?

But we’re watching it.

The support of the welfare state? They don’t do it. They never have done it. It wouldn’t look genuine if they tried it now. So they’re going to go down that road.

And let me tell you why, in one last way of doing this, why this is crazy. They are going to be lined up against two major alternative powers—the United States on one hand and China-Russia combined on the other. Those two parts of the world are already many years ahead of Europe in the level of military technology, in the level of military production they can undertake, and they are working night and day in their struggle with each other to get even further ahead.

You know who’s far behind? The Europeans. And they’re not going to catch up. They don’t have the money for it. They don’t have the political support for it. This is a desperate way for a few leaders with a short future to try to hold on for as long as they can. That’s it.

That’s why I call it a Hail Mary pass. This is not thought through. This is desperate.

They came back—Starmer and Macron came back—and told the Germans that they got absolutely nothing in their visit to Mr. Trump. And Mr. Zelensky? Even less. In the days since the Zelensky visit, the United States has announced a reduction in the intelligence that they provide to Ukrainians. They’re leaving.

And if you think the Russians were able to win as much as they have when they were facing the combined U.S. and Europe, then what do you think is going to happen when it’s Europe all by itself? This is a joke. This is a desperate effort.

That’s why they have to resuscitate the danger that Russia will come. And they have to give it a five-year timeline—"It’s going to happen in five years." Normal human beings are able to understand that absolutely nobody knows what’s going to happen in five years. And never did.

Nobody understood where we would be now six months ago. So this notion—"we have to take away welfare from you in order to build up a military in a world where our two potential adversaries are light years ahead of us"—remember, Europe has not developed its own military for 50 years.

It is a trivial military. It’s got to start.

This is a joke.

The suspicion in Paris about what the Germans might be negotiating, and in both of those places what the British might be doing, and the Italians—oh my God—that's what makes Europe weak as a player. And the last thing blows my mind. "We are unified." Yeah, but the Russia you're thinking of opposing is now part of BRICS and has China as an ally. Are you kidding?

You really want to develop your military with the Americans hostile toward you on one side and the Russia-China BRICS on the other? You're crazy. This is the behavior and mentality of people who are desperate. And if they take their steps—which I think they will—because it will certainly please the people they've always pleased, the industrialists, the financiers, the people who run Europe, they are going to pay a price.

They cut the welfare that has been the uniform gift to the European masses for the last 75 years. You start really taking that away—I don’t mean nibbling, they've been nibbling—but I mean really taking it away, and you're going to see a swing to the far right and the far left that makes what you've already seen look like nothing in comparison.

Only desperate politicians, especially in the history of Europe, would do this. They really are seeing it, and you can see it—look in the eyes of von der Leyen or any of the others. You look closely, and you see desperation and anxiety. These are people heaving Hail Mary passes down the field.

According to public polling, Merz is taking over a government that is basically a continuation of the Scholz government, with Scholz's party as his partner, just as Merz was Scholz's partner before. This is the same old, same old. These are politicians whose entire political careers have been as junior partners—I'm being polite here; a synonym would be "lackey"—of the United States.

Now, they have discovered that the United States, their backer, their liaison, their supporter, is abandoning them. As a result, they are headed for political collapse. They have no support anymore—their own people don’t want them, and the United States is less and less interested.

Take the absurd visits of Macron and Starmer to Washington last week. They were spoken to as if they were visiting cousins who couldn’t be rescheduled for a later time. Everything they had hoped for was denied, culminating in the Zelensky theater at the end of the week. These were demonstrations of absurdity.

What we’re witnessing here is the behavior of desperate politicians—snatching those 300 billion from the Russians when every major financial advisor has told them the obvious: they will pay a long-term price. No shaky government in the world will ever leave its money in Europe again after seeing what the Europeans are prepared to do with it. This is a bigger blow to Europe's importance than anything related to Ukraine.

Why would you keep fighting a losing war? You have to be desperate to do that.