Vijay Prashad on NATO and Europe

This is an absolutely brilliant 45-minute video: as history lesson, as political analysis, as military analysis. Many, many more people should be watching this.

In particular, the two sections comprising about 18 minutes and starting at 15:35, called “EU’s militarisation & Russia’s plans” and “EU’s fiscal discipline” are brilliant and are well-worth listening to in their entirety.

Vijay Prashad – The Collapse of NATO and Europe's Dilemma by acTVism Munich (YouTube)

At 04:56,

“Vijay PrashadTrump interestingly said, ‘look, this is not a prestige issue for us in the United States. We don’t care about winning or losing. We’re going to cut a deal, get out of this. It’s too expensive. There are no U.S. interests at stake now.‘

“For the Europeans, actually, they know, I mean Frederick Merz, the new chancellor of Germany is not a stupid man, okay? He knows that Vladimir Putin isn’t planning to send tanks into Berlin. The Soviets did that already: that was to liberate Germany from the Nazis. Very unlikely that they’re going to send Russian tanks into [Germany],

“Frederick Merz knows that, for the Europeans, Ukraine has become a prestige issue, much more than a security question. They cannot afford to lose. Trump says, ‘I don’t care about the prestige United States is the greatest country in the world. We can destroy anybody. We don’t have any problems here. We are not embarrassed by this. We’re going to cut a deal, save lives.‘”

At 07:28,

“It’s a prestige issue; this is not a security issue. These people are intelligent. They’re not stupid.”

At 08:59,

“This whole episode, since vice president JD Vance’s comments at the Munich security conference, this whole episode demonstrates, in a sense, Europe’s utter subordination to the United States. There is really no NATO. NATO is being shown, in this period, as effectively a shell company owned by the United States. If the US is not in the game, the Europeans can’t act.

“There was a study done that showed that Germany has basically just a few days of fighting ability against an adversary like the Russians—if they had to fight the Ukraine war, just a few days. France doesn’t even have that. They have a nuclear umbrella but they don’t have the conventional ability. Which working-class German—precarious German—is going to go and fight in Ukraine? Who in Britain and France? They’re not going to fight there.

“It’s a curious class substitution that’s happening. The Ukrainian middle class is fleeing as refugees to Western Europe and now they are expecting working-class Western Europeans to go and fight their battle.”

At 11:58,

“The populations want the war to end. So, a democratic question is, let’s listen to people. End the war. Thirdly, this war is expensive and increasing military spending is nuts. In Britain, Rachel Reeves has said they’re going to cut welfare. Why? Because she said, ‘we have to make the tough choices.’

“Every time they say, ‘we have to make the tough choices’ and whether you say this in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, whatever language they are lying to you.

“It’s not a tough choice. It’s an easy choice. Because when they say we got to make the tough choices, they make the same choice, which is, ‘let’s screw the poor to increase the military spending.‘ So that’s also going to be hurtful for the reasons why the war should end.

“For most of Europe, there’s no security challenge. The people don’t want it. The inflation has to be brought down. Because this is ridiculous. It’s just painful for the population.”