Europeans: Want Leaders Who Obey You and Not the US Government? Abolish the Welfare State

An independent foreign policy requires soldiers, not social workers.

Many Europeans nowadays complain that their governments are slavishly obedient to the Americans. As the Biden junta adopts one reckless policy after another — both at home and abroad — they can count on most European governments following their example and their instructions.

Throughout the Cold War, the Europeans (especially the British) saw their role as loyal but critical advisors to the Americans, supporting US foreign policy but moderating occasional unwise actions which might tempt the Americans.  But now European governments eerily resemble the old puppet governments of Eastern European satellite states, kowtowing to the United States as some of them once kowtowed to the Soviet Union. 

Whether it is Covid “vaccines”, open borders, forever wars, inflationary economic policies, deindustrialization, bankrupting family farms, or the rest, if the Americans sneeze Europeans catch cold. Moreover, these policies can be far more destructive to European societies than to the United States itself. Witness the deindustrialization of Europe’s most important economy: Germany.

The reason is simple: The US provides Europe’s military defense. If you want to have an independent foreign policy, you must have a strong and independent military.  Without a viable military you cannot have your own foreign policy and therefore your own sovereign state. 

Many Europeans complain that their national sovereignties are undermined from within by the European Union (EU) and through immigration.  But their sovereignty is equally undermined from without by NATO, which dictates their foreign policy. The Europeans depend for their defense on the Americans, so when it comes to international affairs the Americans “call the shots.”  Here the American Empire shows its subtlety: It did not actively conquer Europe militarily, but it has in effect passively conquered it (also militarily), by providing protection.

The problem will not be solved by creating a “European” army. This goal has eluded the EU from the start, because Europeans do not want to surrender their foreign policies to Brussels, which is what would happen. So instead they surrender it to Washington.

And why can’t European countries maintain their own independent militaries?  The culprit is the welfare state.  Europeans prefer to spend their money on cushy welfare services. Europeans cannot wholly blame their governments for their sycophancy therefore; it is what much of the European population wants and expects.

This involves more than an economic trade-off. It represents a fundamental shift in the primary purpose of government itself: defending the realm versus caring for children, the elderly, the indigent, the infirm, all of us. A country with an army is a patriarchy, with strong men and women who respect them.  A country with a welfare state is a matriarchy, with domineering women and weak men whom the women despise. 

The choice is ours.

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If you want to read more analysis of this kind, you can find it in my new book, Who Lost America? Why the United States Went "Communist” — and What to Do about It. You can order it from Amazon.

Stephen Baskerville is Professor of Politics at the Collegium Intermarium in Warsaw.  All his books and recent articles are available at www.StephenBaskerville.com.