Long free prosperous and independent citizens of the nearly 30 proudly sovereign nations that collectively make up the most powerful and productive civilization in world history, the majority of European peoples have in recent decades been victimized by the twin curses of a globalization that immensely enriches the elites while impoverishing everyone else, and the ideologically driven cult of climate change that arrogantly demanded total obeisance to a doctrine that was massively self-destructive economically and based on a breathtaking tissue of lies scientifically.
Today across the continent a growing number of political parties – derisively demonized as “populists” or worse “nationalist” – are in open revolt against the inept, corrupt, and anti-democratic bureaucracy in Brussels that has attempted to dictate every aspect of human life through a suffocating blanket of authoritarian regulations. Now this metastasizing uprising is no longer limited to political parties but includes an expanding number of national governments that have decisively refused to comply with policies emanating from the unrepentant globalist elites in Brussels.
The result has been to plunge the European Union into the most chaotic implosion of a supra- national system since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European puppet states in 1991. The central causes of this cascading calamity are the election of US President Donald Trump and a Republican congressional majority in 2024, and the colossal failure of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, begun under President Joe Biden's watch in February of 2022.
Trump has emerged as a geopolitically transformative force unlike any seen since the end of the Second World war. His administration has moved aggressively to reverse every major policy initiative launched by the Obama and Biden administrations. More importantly he has demonstrated to the world that the Green/ Globalist agenda that progressives everywhere had touted as an unstoppable juggernaut can be defeated by exposing its internal contradictions and disastrous impacts on the working class.
The extortionate demand of the historically corrupt (albeit PR savvy) Ukrainian government, enthusiastically supported by the Brussels elites—that all countries ignore the domestic needs of their struggling peoples while lavishing vast new financial subsidies to support a self-evidently unwinnable war years into the future– proved to be the pebble that loosed the avalanche of disaffected governments voting No.
Originally, the resistance to Brussels was limited to a handful of small East European countries – Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechia – that refused to be bullied. Then Socialist Spain flatly refused to increase its NATO contribution, citing its struggling economy as the reason. Then election victories by right-wing parties added Holland and Belgium to the naysayers.
Fragile coalition governments in France and Germany – previously bulwarks of EU stability – added to a sense of growing economic weakness and political instability. The final blow to the Ukraine financial subsidy came when Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni – the longest serving and most popular leader among major European nations – addressed her country's parliament in a speech headlined as “No More Money for Ukraine” in which she stated that “neither for NATO or the EU does our current Ukrainian policy meet any test of reasonableness.”
Given that the EU Constitution requires unanimous consent for any major initiative, continued efforts to garner support for the Ukraine subsidy are pure folly. The very contentiousness of the issue has become a wrecking ball that is tearing the EU apart. The highly-touted concept behind the ill-starred Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that founded the EU – “Ever Closer Union “ was patently unrealistic at the outset and today it is an embarrassment to even mention it.
Before Maastricht the European Economic Community (EEC) was a very viable successor to the original Common Market (1959) that built lasting peace between France and Germany and also a foundation for future European prosperity.
The visionary founders of the Common Market – President Charles de Gaulle of France (1890 - 1970) and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany (1876-1967) – understood that it must not exceed its mandate as an economic organization, or else it would risk unleashing the age-old animosity that brought catastrophic tragedy to Western Civilization in the 20th century.
Their less wise successors – e.g. Francois Mitterand of France and Helmut Kohl of Germany – thought they knew better and believed that through Maastricht they could ultimately create a European superstate that would rival economically, militarily, and politically those of Russia, China, and the United States.
That impossible dream has finally died amidst the killing fields of Ukraine. The butcher's bill to date? Over 1 million dead.
William Moloney studied history and politics at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. His articles have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Hill. The Washington Post, Washington Times. Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post and Human Events.