Europe’s Ahab Moment
Europe's geopolitical unraveling is accelerating. The sclerotic continent is decaying ever faster culturally, intellectually and morally—all while yelling "values" from the top of the Brussels asylum.
At this point, the collective anti-Russian war obsession the European continent finds itself in resembles more and more the fatal passions of Captain Ahab—the man who lost everything in pursuit of his sanguine mania for slaughtering that white whale. It should be clear by now that the Russian Moby Dick is no catch the Europeans will ever manage to make (they tried 3 times the last 200 years). On the contrary, the very weapons they are deploying against it are once again dragging Europe ever deeper into its demise.
This is more or less the gist of a discussion I recently had with my two colleagues, the former British diplomat Ian Proud, and peace researcher Dr. Jan Oberg on the Neutrality Studies YouTube channel.
The Suicide Pact of Militarism
At the core of our discussion centered around Europe’s aggressive march toward militarization. Dr. Oberg underscored the absurdity of tying military spending to GDP, suggesting that even economic decline becomes a justification for war. The EU’s planned €800 billion defense fund, to be borrowed collectively, is a fiscal time bomb—one that will saddle future generations while bolstering a war that Europe has already lost. Oberg calls it “absurd theater,” noting that even in countries like Sweden and Denmark, once thought to be bastions of peace, militarism has become bipartisan orthodoxy.
Ian Proud adds that Europe’s leadership suffers from a terminal case of intellectual paralysis. While Donald Trump flirts with peace deals, EU elites cling to a static posture toward Ukraine, unchanged since 2014. There’s a collective refusal to admit failure, even as Ukraine loses ground and public enthusiasm wanes. This is not strategy, but the refusal to deal with reality. And it’s highly dangerous.
The Empire with No Clothes
But, let’s focus more closely on the European Union’s structural failings. Far from being a peace project, Oberg pointed out that the EU was never designed to foster peace. Its only moment of diplomatic unity—the premature recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in 1992—triggered the Bosnian War. The EU has always been more comfortable acting as a geopolitical wrecking ball than a bridge-builder.
The West’s narrative dominance, which allowed it to gloss over atrocities in Congo, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Gaza, is also collapsing. Oberg and Proud, agreed that what once passed for diplomacy has become pure militarism in disguise. Foreign ministries no longer advocate peace—they merely parrot defense policy. The word “peace” itself has become taboo in politics, journalism, and academia alike.
What’s more, the EU’s bureaucratic centralization has become a form of internal colonization. Countries like Hungary, Slovakia, and even the UK (before Brexit) have begun resisting what he describes as an undemocratic supranational empire. The erosion of national sovereignty, he argues, is feeding both popular discontent and strategic incoherence.
Despite the bleak outlook, there might be reason for hope in the rise of multipolarity. China, in particular, is a rational counterweight to Western decline. China’s long-term vision and its commitment to international law contrast sharply with the West’s kakistocratic leadership (the rule by the worst and least competent). Even the Trump administration’s belligerence may ironically accelerate Europe’s detachment from the United States, forcing a long-overdue strategic recalibration.
Intellectually Dead
Still, the prospects for a peaceful transition are grim. Let’s face it. Europe is intellectually dead. It has lost its realism, its creativity, and most dangerously, its sense of a positive and peaceful future. Without a radical cultural and strategic shift, it will not only be impossible to overcome its current geopolitical irrelevance, Europe will most likely get mentally and institutionally caught in this deadly passion for re-militarisation. Europe’s demise is not inevitable, but it is currently accelerating. Only by abandoning the illusions of dominance and rediscovering diplomacy, pluralism, and peaceful visions can it hope to avoid the Ahabian catastrophe ahead.
The problem is NOT that Europe is intellectually dead.
In fact the overall intellectual level of analysis and understanding of the world witnin Europe is actually leaps and bounds ahead of anything you can find in the US.
This Neutrality Studies publication is one example, but there are many others based in Europe like his. Given the comparatively HUGE level of funding in academics and research in the US, one would think such analysis is common everywhere in the US. But you would hadly find such there at all.
So its not an intellectual decay in Europe.
What's going on in Europe is, in my view, that in Europe, both EU-level and national level political institutions are captured by what are very clear US puppets. Von Der Leyen, Starmer, Stoltenberg, Rutte, Kallas etc. These are intellectual midgets, hand picked by the neocon faction of the US oligarchy. Handpicked precicely for that quality being dillgent "prison guards" of Europe: intellectual midgets who will do what they are told without question. But they are not representative
Similarly the entire major media and social across Europe are captured and subjected what studies show are censorship of thought, censoship of facts (e.g genocide and terror acts by "allies") and manipulative mis-framing. Its at these three levels (top level politics, mainstream media and social media) that the intellectiual level in Europe has gone to zero.
But at the grass roots levels in academia and in independent media, it seems to me Europe remains alive and vibrant, on a level that the US does not have at all. What passes for progressive thinking in the US is still very limited.
And many of the average people in Europe undertstand something is off, is not right. That they are being lied to.
But Europe actuallly has much better prospects for regenerating out of the current mess, because of that difference - the intellectual leadership is there, its alive, its not stunted by centuries of US style brainwashing from birth.
But: even in Europe among the masses in the middle are afraid to speak up - in this world of social media mentality, its "haram" in the west now for those who need to accepted to speak uncomfortable truths among themselves.
The task still remains for this vibrant grassroots intellectual leader in Europe to break the bubble of gaslighting that is going on above in the captuured institutions. But its possible, in Europe. All the pieces are here - they FAKE, PUPPETS above need to be named and shamed by the intellectuals, so that the masses in Europe can feel more comfortable to speak the truth to each other. This is how the spell can be broeken
That strong level of potential change in Europe, is not the case in the US where they have at least a full generation (20 years+) of intellectual growth needed, so things will get worse there before they get better.
"Goddess Europa getting caught in her own weaponry...."
There is another painting of Europa: "The Rape of Europa" (by Titian)
https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/10978
If I was Titian, now, and should have to paint Europa, I would paint somewhere central on the canvas the secretary of the North Atlantic Armed Forces group as the rapist, and those who are meant with "Brussels" today, around the act of raping, and applauding.