"The Rotting Cadaver of Europe:
Letter to a Borning Backwater"
by Fred Reed
"Dear Europeans,
In the international prints I see that you are outraged and upset and have your innards in an uproar because, in that Davos meeting where billionaires decide how to mismanage the world, Mr. Trump was all contemptuous of you and you can’t figure out why. Let me help you. He was contemptuous of you because you are contemptible. Embarrassingly so. Amusingly so. There. Is that better?
Yes, you who once ruled the world, since 1914 have been burrowing into minimal relevance with such success that you are now little more than a football fought over by Asia and the United States. This is an astonishment. You have a massive population by Western standards, though small potatoes by the reckoning of the big Asian powers. You are a major market, have considerable if fading technological strength, and superlative wines and cheeses. You have a major country, Germany, and, well, those noisy little northern ones, whose names I can never remember. Latisha, Lithography, and Epstein, or something like that. How can so much amount to so little?
Perhaps your most comic humiliation, among many candidates, was Ursula Borderline’s grotesque obeisance to President Trump a while back. Trump, sitting comfortably in his golf course in Scotland, whistles. Ursula, headmistress of the European nursery, comes running to lick Donald’s boots, galumphing along like an eager if dimwitted puppy. Yes, master, yes she says, I’ll do anything, sounding like a submissive in an S-and-M bar. She then hands over the European economy, not actually kneeling and proffering it on a silver tray, but close. Reports that she said “Arf arf” and waited for Trump to give her a doggy treat are probably exaggerated, though witnesses disagree on this.
I have wondered, Ursula, whether Mr. Trump shouldn’t invest in a line of flavored boot polish for European’s who visit the White House. It would be a form of hospitality. Plain old Shinola must have an unpleasant industrial taste. Perhaps the State Department could offer a menu, Roquefort for Macron, tomato sauce for the Italians, haggis for the Scottish, wrapped in disposable but comfortable knee pads. You Europeans after all are our valued allies, and deserving of comfort while groveling.
Europeasants are nothing if not entertaining. Your most profound lunge into subservience followed Biden’s blowing up of the Nordstream pipelines. It was a brilliant move by Washington and no doubt delicious for Uncle Joe, watching you squirming and gurgling, looking for someone, anyone to blame other than the Americans, whom you knew perfectly well to have done it. But…you didn’t dare say “Washington” as then you would have had to do something about it.
This was out of the question because you have feathers for balls. So you flapped your hands and made plaintive little squeaking noises while looking for a villain, any villain. But your proposed villains: First, the Russians did it. Sure, blew up their own pipeline that was earning them carloads of money. That was too silly even for the EU, which is saying something. Next it was the Ukrainians,. That didn’t work either. You would have had to punish them, send them to their room without dinner or something, instead of breastfeeding Kiev to keep the Ukies in your idiotic war. Finally it was three rogue freelance Ukrainians in a canoe!. Perfect! This amounted to no one did it. But don’t, for God’s sake, don’t ever say “the Americans.” Perish forbid.
Now, sovereignty. You don’t have any. No country can be sovereign when it has foreign military bases on its territory, one about every three feet. To keep the natives from getting restless, America calls you “allies” and avoids saying “occupation troops,” or “sepoys, “ but you know the truth, don’t you? Your armed forces depend on American weaponry, and spare parts and software updates and spy satellites and I don’t know what all, and a gringo general commands NATO. Your countries have the sovereignty of parking lots.
Why are you in this mess? Because Europe, except for Germany, is a collection of piddling little countries with delusions of relevance, disunited, led by feckless mediocrities better suited to managing shopping centers, and utterly dependent on the Great Father in Washington and with the aforementioned unusually placed feathers.
Yes, yes, I know it is embarrassing to be the wholly-owned subsidiary of a former colony, so you understandably pretend that America is your ally and not your owner. But it is. suppose that almost unimaginably, you grew a pair and told Washington to close its military bases …and it said, “No.” What then? Sovereignty. Oh yes. Sovereignty, Sovreignty to the left, sovereignty to the right, and not a drop to drink.
Face it: You have been snookered, played, suckered by experts. The world has three important powers, America, Russia, and China. The US has adroitly maneuvered you into regarding two of them as enemies so that, when Washington treats you like cheap hired help, you have nowhere to turn. By using NATO to goad Russia into a war, it cut you off, Germany most importantly, from trade with Russia, a major source of cheap energy, raw materials and market for industrial goods. Blowing up the Nordstreams crashed the German economy and made Berlin ever more dependent on expensive American natural gas. It was slick.
Now the US has you gabbling about “deterring China.” Deterring it from what? From selling you stuff at good prices? How many military bases does China have in Europe? Anywhere? You are so easy.
You have been Reverse Imperialized. America, once the property of European powers, now regards European countries as the geopolitical equivalents of charwomen, gardeners, and casual labor, doubtless meritorious in the eyes of God but needing to be kept in their place. China, also a former colony, could buy most of your countries to use as doorstops and your approximations of leaders don’t know whether to hiss and fizz at Beijing or hold out the begging bowl. India, formerly owned by England, begins to loom large as England declines. Oops. Before planting seeds, maybe it is a good idea to read the envelope they come in.
I hope this letter answers your questions. Fredon Everything is a column both benevolent and beneficent, overflowing with wisdom like a burst water-main, and replete with good will for all.
Sincerely,
Fred"
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