European Vassal States' Self-Destruction Endangers the Entire World

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

14 Oct 2026

🖨️ Print Article

CNN

European puppet states have undermined themselves and their peoples' needs at the behest of the U.S. Now, that subservience may lead to war.

“Washington will move to crush, or at least seriously disrupt, Russia under its ‘sanctions as war by other means’ machine, by targeting its energy exports, while simultaneously boosting the foreign markets for U.S. natural gas.” - Glen Ford, 2014

Always prescient, the late Glen Ford got to the heart of the beginnings of the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia that has played out in Ukraine ever since the U.S. backed coup committed there in 2014. Barack Obama was in office when right wing Ukrainians overthrew the elected government in Kiev. He then dragged his feet on implementing the Minsk Agreements, which were meant to bring about a peaceful resolution to that Western-instigated crisis when Russia came to the aid of the Donbas region. Since that time, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the agreement was never meant to be enacted because NATO members wanted to give Ukraine a chance to arm itself against Russia.

Obama was president then, but as with all other foreign policy initiatives, there is continuity of agenda from administration to administration. The anti-Russia project didn’t begin with him. It began with NATO expansion spearheaded by Bill Clinton in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Every president since that time has gone down the same path of chipping away at Russia’s influence covertly and overtly, withdrawing from nuclear treaties, and undermining Russian-allied states such as Syria, which fell to Western-backed jihadists in 2024 after a 13-year-long effort.

Despite claims of being a Russian dupe, the first Donald Trump administration vigorously backed the Ukraine project and while Obama would not directly send weapons, Trump did just that in 2017. Joe Biden claimed that the 2022 U.S. sanctions he imposed would destroy Russia’s economy when he said, “. . . the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble.” Not only is the ruble not “rubble,” but U.S. puppet states have paid an economic price and now threaten international war because of their slavish devotion to Washington.

President Emmanuel Macron in France endlessly warns about Russian threats against all of Europe, and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, and others do as well. Interestingly, both Macron and Merz have approval ratings below 20%. Macron will not be running in the French presidential elections to be held in 2027 and Merz may soon be out of office himself.

The explanation for their unpopularity is not complicated. European states are in dire straits economically in part because Joe Biden succeeded in cutting off their supply of Russian gas. In 2022, Biden joined Germany’s then chancellor Olaf Scholz at a Washington press conference and pledged to stop the Nord Stream II pipeline, which was under construction and which would have sent gas from Russia to Germany. Scholz said nothing when Biden emphasized that there would be no Nord Stream II. "I promise you, we'll be able to do it."

Europe and Germany especially have deindustrialized after the NordStream II pipeline was blown up in 2022. There will soon be a show trial in Germany where a Ukrainian is charged with that crime. Of course, the words of Biden and other officials in his administration and common sense point to the U.S. being the culprit in the attack. In spite of a convincing report from Seymour Hersh, which showed how that deed was done, the corporate media in the U.S. and European governments have been silent about how countries thought to be allies were sabotaged along with the Russians.

Germany is rearming and preparing to reinstitute a military draft. Donald Trump has insisted that NATO members spend 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on military spending. The only way to meet that figure is to impose austerity on their people and the result is protest in France and other countries.

Of course, the ruling classes are not standing by silently. The appeals to worsen austerity are constant, with the Wall Street Journal falsely proclaiming, “The Welfare State is Crushing Britain.” Britain’s welfare state was crushed long ago but is still being whittled away little by little in order to justify military expenditures.

Europeans are joined at the hip with the U.S. and no one should be fooled by the occasional public spat as with protests over Trump’s agreement to temporarily ease sanctions and allow Russian diesel fuel to be sold in the U.S. Trump is desperate to ease the markets, even a little, before the November mid-term elections. Voters who supported him in the past may not do so again because his attack on Iran has increased fuel prices. His domestic concerns have not altered relationships with the rest of NATO, nor should they fool anyone into thinking that he is in any way “Putin’s puppet.”

While Trump comes up with a deal to allow small amounts of diesel to the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) works closely with the Ukrainians to determine where and how their drone strikes against Russia will be carried out. European nations, occupied by the U.S. since 1945, are engaging in dangerous rhetoric as Russia’s defeat of Ukrainian forces draws near. Their leaders try to outdo one another in calling for war against Russia by threatening its outpost in Kaliningrad, which, despite being wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, far from the rest of Russia, is as much a part of that country as Alaska and Hawaii are to the United States. There are nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, but that has not stopped NATO members from making very public threats against that territory.

NATO’s top commander, U.S. general Alexus Grynkewish, claims that the rest of NATO can fight Russia without U.S. help. No one who is knowledgeable about military capabilities believes that assertion to be true, but it is meant to escalate tensions, and such claims have indeed done that. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of his country’s resolve after a United Nations meeting with his German counterpart.

"It is Europe that is preparing for war with us. They constantly reiterate that, by 2030 at the latest, we, the Europeans, must be ready for war. You know, this could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they are currently investing huge amounts of money in the production of weapons. And at some point, some adventurer, and there are many of them in these elites, will say, 'Guys, we've accumulated so much, what do we do with it?.... Oh, we promised to attack Russia.' In that case, if they attack us, because we are not going to....stand idly by...."

For good measure, Lavrov added. "It will be a completely different war, and it will be short."

It is no exaggeration to say that the entire world is on the brink of a catastrophic war because of the U.S. desire for hegemony. Europe never recovered from World War II, as it has been occupied by the United States for more than 80 years. Even those originally in the Soviet sphere are now U.S. puppets with troops deployed in Poland and other Eastern European countries.

Europeans have given up economic and military security to the United States and now engage in reckless behavior in order to please the man whom the NATO Secretary General referred to as “daddy.” That person could be named Obama or Biden or Trump or a player to be named later, but the U.S. has hollowed out Europe into a shell of poverty, subservience, and belligerence. If their people claim to believe in democracy, they must act and keep dangerous people out of power. Although the same can be said of the people in this country too.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.