The ‘EU-icide’: Emmanuel Todd asks if it’s suicide or homicide?

‘The Defeat of the West’ grasps Europe’s collapse is the historical drama of the 21st century

(This is the 4th part in a multipart series on Emmanuel Todd’s political it-book of the moment The Defeat of the West (La Defaite de l’Occident).)

Maybe Todd’s book is starting to be read in Ukraine?

Zelensky’s former advisor and presumed main challenger Oleksiy Arestovich is either reading Todd, or Todd just knows what he’s talking about when he wrote that Ukraine (and Europe) is committing suicide: Arestovich just said in an interview that, “Because we want to die, this is completely obvious. Everything we do shows that we want to die. This has a very obvious ending.” He gives Ukraine another 1.5 years, ideally, before fighting cannot be physically carried on anymore (in the West “forever war” is something which seems possible - when you aren’t the scene of any battle), partition and then the agony of the aftermath.

In Chapter 1, “Russian Stability”, Todd explained why Russia has thrived despite the Western imposition of Iran-level sanctions: essentially, Todd asserts, Western analysts didn’t want to admit that all the readily available data on Russia’s economy, society and leadership was as good as it obviously was. In order to follow the actual thread of the data and conclusions he presented, I suggested renaming Chapter 2 from “The Ukrainian Enigma” to the more honest “The Ukrainian Suicide”, and the article analysing that excellent chapter is found here. In Chapter 3 Todd turned to Eastern Europe and explained with one word the baffling and swift historical shift from a pro-socialist Bloc allied with Moscow into a Russophobic, liberal-loving, 2nd-class citizen of Western society: “inauthentic”. The article analysing that chapter is found here, and it’s worth reading because I think we often forget that no other global region has undergone as (counter-)revolutionary a change in the last 35 years. In Chapter 4 Todd asked “What is the West?” and I noted how his book changed from realism to moralism: per Todd, the West is not just “unstable” but “sick”, and he blames the decline of their clerics and intellectuals - the collapse of Protestantism and the creation of a mass minority of college-educated people who think a degree from Moneymaking U. makes them a brahmin and anyone else a Dalit.

Todd would have done better to not pull his punches and titled his 5th chapter thusly: “The assisted suicide of Europe”. Or he could have hit upon my new phrase - the “EU-icide” - to quickly describe the obvious failure of the pan-European project.

The death of Europe - from world dominator to defeated by Russia and an obvious American pawn - is the most under-reported (under-admitted?) political story of the 21st century, and it’s one of the reasons I’m using this book as a way to talk about it.

Simply go back to the heady days of 1999 - when the euro and Schengen visa went into effect, drastically reshaping European life and creating almost utopian expectations: who would have imagined that 25 years later Europe could be called “dead”, whether by murder or suicide?

Todd asserts some things we all know: the US is profiting from the Ukraine war; Europe is engaged in a self-destructive war which is profoundly against its own future and citizenry; the promise of an EU to rival China and the US has totally disappeared. What’s interesting is Todd’s noting that in just two years the war has totally shifted the balance of power from the decade-long Age of Austerity. He’s right that it’s not the same shot-callers in Europe:

“I have said: the Berlin-Paris axis has been supplanted by a London-Warsaw-Kiev axis piloted by Washington, reinforced by the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, who have become direct satellites of the White House or the Pentagon.”

Recall back to the policy dominance of the Berlin-Paris axis during the 2010s, and we see that this is a drastic shift. Indeed, the war has been a way for the US and UK to derail the guiding leadership of the top two national powers of the pan-European project. As neither the US nor even the UK, anymore, is part of the pan-European project - does this not constitute a self-inflicted defeat: a suicide?

Yet Todd ignores way too much the role of Brussels, as if the creation of a new layer of supranational government somehow has no role. His national-focused point of view is simply out of date and certainly won’t hold up in court - simply ask a European nation trying to exercise control over its budget, rails, skies, etc. So, we’ll have to add in Brussels to the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis he described. I note that he did not feel he had to justify the inclusion of Poland? However, belligerence is not necessarily power, and Brussels has far more levers and money they use to manipulate events in Ukraine than Warsaw. But Todd is right about the major shift in who is running the EU from the pre-Covid era.

How to begin an ‘EU-icide’? Start with sanctions, add in looking the other way on industrial sabotage

Europe’s effort in the war is certainly defined by its sanctions campaign. It was always a bad choice.

Iran had proved/is still proving - to anyone who cares to be honest - that Western sanctions fail.

Iraq had actually proved the same thing (though with many magnitudes of success less) but this memory was largely wiped away in the West via their successful removal of Saddam Hussein. In the past two years I have done scores of economic-related reports in France and the US (on their shared problems of inflation, recession, stagflation, inequality, etc.) and I have made sure to always include “their failed sanctions campaign against Russia” as a key reason for their latest proof of domestic economic calamity. Yet how often have you seen that honest truth in Western reporting? I add this because it will be amusing to be reminded of it should anyone read this in, say, 10 years time: Much of the US mainstream media’s economic discussion instead has been centred around the idea that the average person is simply too dumb to understand how good the economy actually is!

Todd recalls the promises of Macron’s long-time finance minster Bruno Le Maire on March 1, 2022 - that Western sanctions would easily and efficiently destroy the Russian economy. Obviously, he was totally wrong. Todd not only admits this but is honest about the ramifications.

“The worst thing is not so much that they failed, but that our leaders were unable to foresee that, far from stopping the war, they would actually make it global. [...] The sanctions were therefore in themselves the end of Europe. But Europe's leaders also had excellent reasons for killing off the Union.”

The sanctions (an act of war) have not only not killed off Russia, but instead killed off the EU, says Todd, who insists that this returns us to his thesis of suicide. Todd also relates how international sanctions necessarily required dragooning the participation of the rest of the world - not only did they balk at participating, but it obviously did recklessly explode the scope of the conflict and make diplomacy almost impossible.

Todd amusingly relates his consternation that the journalists of Le Monde spend so much time tracking the diminishing activities of French companies in Russia like the retailer Auchan, yet they couldn’t care less about how Norway has opportunistically soared to almost entirely replace the European gas needs Russia’s Gazprom supplied before 2022. Is there a story here, perhaps? Indeed there was, and Todd accepts the reporting of Seymour Hersh, who detailed how the US and Norway conspired in November 2022 to blow up the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline - because it is “the only plausible story”.

“Our press sometimes gives the impression that the destruction of the French economy, more so than the destruction of the Russian economy, is their objective. We think of a child, crazy with rage, who destroys their own toys; the expression ‘economic nihilism’ comes to mind.”

Todd keeps returning to “nihilism” as an explanation for the West’s policy choices, and I will continue to reject it as insufficient political science, but I must agree that I have no idea what on earth my French journalistic colleagues are thinking? Europe’s acceptance of the destruction of Nord Stream 2 is many things - greatly destructive to the well-being of the average European household, treasonous, lower than submissiveness, pathetic, requires the maintenance of massive amounts of cognitive dissonance, and many more - and all of them are bad.

Quite simply: who benefits from the sidelining of the Berlin-Paris axis except for those at the top of Western liberal capitalism, whose home is in the Empire State (New York) and the Pentagon? This is the “assisted” Todd’s chapter title refers to, but Todd’s refusal to use a Marxist class warfare angle means that he doesn’t realise that Europe’s journalists, politicians and oligarchs are all willing to kill Europe because they are profiting from the hit job as part of the Western 1%.

Returning to Norway, Todd reminds how easy it is for the US is to separate and woo them: Norway refuses to be a member of the EU (and thus no euro either); was a founding member of NATO; the militaries of the two countries have had a long cooperation; in WWII they sent their entire fleet to the British to fight the Germans. I would add that there’s almost more Norwegian-Americans (4.5-5 million) than Norwegians (5.4 million). The war on Russia has undoubtedly allowed Norway and the US to make the EU their gas energy hostage/customer - European journalists don’t have to be at Seymour Hersh’s level to see there’s a more weighty story here than L’Oreal selling makeup to Russian teenagers.

Liberalism doesn’t want broad success, just 1% success. Thus the EU had to fail

Admit it: we all thought the EU - a liberal project - was going to usher in the most spectacularly happy bloc in the world. But have we learned nothing about liberalism - when did they ever achieve anything even close to this?

When Todd writes about Germany’s “prodigious submission” in accepting the destruction of Nord Stream 2 his failure to examine things from a class perspective causes him to assert that they deserve a national humiliation when it is only the German elites who should feel humiliated. The average German surely feels in their bones that the Nord Stream 2 was a humiliation imposed by their traitorous leaders, if only when they look at their home energy bills? Anyway, the leaders do not feel humiliated because - as I wrote - they expect to profit from it as members of the Western 1%.

Furthermore, Todd’s failure to examine the “EU-icide” through a Marxist lens means he doesn’t understand that putting brakes on national development is the goal of the 1%, monarchy and the elite since time immemorial and a repeated, detested feature of Liberal Democracy since 1848. Remember that in 1848 the slogan was “Work, bread or lead”, but Liberal Democracy shuttered the National Workshops dedicated to society-improving public works after just a few months, sparking the June Days massacre. Liberal elites don’t want the masses empowered, educated, healthy, moral, strong, etc. In human history the only political concept which has held the development of the average person as its goal is socialism - liberalism holds only the “person” up to esteem (i.e. individualism), and that person is a CEO/noble/rich person/comprador/sellout/etc. This is why Todd is repeatedly “fascinated” by the question as to why Western Europe would join this war - it’s because he sees no class struggle issues at play.

Regardless, here is a stunning passage from Todd which is a cultural treason against his class, and kudos to him for that:

“Why did Europe, the continent of peace, become technically involved in what historians of the future will regard as a war of aggression? An aggression, it's true, of a singular kind: we're not sending weapons, we're simply providing material and money, sacrificing the Ukrainian population, whether military or civilian. In the preceding chapter I discussed a zero state of religion. What comes to mind here is the hypothesis of zero morality, generated in Western Europe by the extinction of zombie collective beliefs. In the end, Neo-Kantian peace seems far removed from Kant's morality.

Europe, however, did not plunge into this war in spite of these unbelievable absurdities by chance, by stupidity, by accident. Something drove it. It's not all America's fault. That something is its own implosion. The European Project is dead. A sense of sociological and historical emptiness has overtaken our elites and middle classes. In this context, the Russian attack on Ukraine was almost a godsend. The media editorialists made no secret of the fact: Putin's ‘special military operation’ was giving new meaning to the construction of Europe; the EU needed an external enemy to bind itself together and move forward.”

A stunning passage for a native European, one full of hard truths, the stripping away propagandistic and nonsensical public claims, and grassroots honesty (although “continent of peace” appears as more of Todd’s usual total blind spot for the socialist analysis of the role of imperialism).

It should be clear why I was told by a Frenchman in high finance the “Nobody likes Emmanuel Todd” - imagine what the rabid Europhile Emmanuel Macron thinks of such a passage? You simply don’t see counter-arguments like Todd has in his book anywhere in the Western mainstream: ideas like that Russia was responding to nearly a decade of fighting in the Donbass which had produced 15,000 deaths, that Russia has no capacity nor desire to invade the rest of Europe, that the EU has been a disaster since the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 and thus needs a scapegoat, that liberalism requires constant war and scapegoating to deflect from its failure for the broad masses, etc.

Perhaps because Todd is not a socialist he cannot see what he is describing here is the political-moral void which is liberalism - that eager accommodator of monarchs, fascists, Nazis, robber barons, the greedy and the violent - and that the pan-European project is the apex of liberalism’s desires:

“The fundamental misconception of the Maastrichtians (and anti-Maastrichtians too, for that matter) was that Europe would lead to the overcoming of the nation through the creation of a higher-order entity, albeit a multi-post-national one, but one that would have substance. Neither the one nor the other understood in time that the deep sociological driving force behind the project was the spontaneous dissolution of nations, into the void described by Peter Mair and others, and that the Europe of the euro could only be a squared-off version of what nations themselves had become: atomized aggregates of apathetic citizens and irresponsible elites. An immense atomized aggregate.”

Truth and overdramatics coexist here, but the undeniable realisation is that Europe was supposed to be better than this.

But Todd writes as if apathy and atomisation was a forgone conclusion: why was this set in stone in 1999? Had there not been so many economic and democratic problems from the Great Financial Crisis until Covid then such atomisation, anomie and anti-EU feeling would have not occurred to the extent that they did. It’s not as if Todd is a die-hard anti-liberalist - a socialist - who could have predicted all this, due to the moral and reactionary “void” which is liberalism.

He continues:

“The first European nihilism took the form of the negation of peoples and nations and, incidentally, the dismantling of peripheral industrial apparatus by the euro. And all this to build a political object that did not exist, and could not exist.”

Todd is insisting on a nationalist-centred view of the world, but the primary problem for the 99% in Europe is not the smothering out of their national identities - it is the undeniable economic and democratic failure. Europeans did not imagine the rolling back of the mere gains of Social Democracy offered after WWII - it expected the pan-European project would increase these gains. This rolling back of Social Democracy to Liberalism as the true goal of the pan-European project is precisely what some still do not understand. The pan-European project was expected to be somewhat Social Democratic - it is pure Liberalism instead (don’t let it off the hook by calling it “neoliberalism”), and thus the “void”, the protests, the Yellow Vests, the economic failure, the atomisation, the anomie, etc.

Let’s blame Germany. Let’s even get personal - and their family, too

My German readers - I’m sorry it has to be this way.

But who defeated the French Revolution? Who insisted on wiping out Napoleon, republicanism, the Paris Commune? Were the values of World War I and II worth dying for? Who recently insisted on “fiscal responsibility” - only after bad North European bank loans were made whole - and austerity? Todd doesn’t get into all this like I have but he does provide interesting insights as to why Germany is suiciding themselves and EU-iciding the rest of the continent.

In a section titled “Germany: machine-society” (“L’Allemagne, société-machine") Todd asserts that the US didn’t realise what a giant “gift of History” they gave West Germany by allowing it to merge with East Germany, and that the Ukraine war is a essentially a way to roll back the massive industrial and economic competitor they inadvertently created.

His conception of Germany as a machine is a cliche, but his thinking does make sense: “This has taken a singular form here: the obsession with economic efficiency for its own sake. It's as if, bereft of conscience, German society had become a production machine. An ideology offers individuals a common destiny. Nothing of the sort here.”

Todd is referring to, I assume, the decade of austerity imposed on smaller nations as a way to neoliberally loot them, but he doesn’t make any specific mention of this disastrous, destructive, European-solidarity destroying failure of an economic policy.

Todd’s constant insistence on using anthropological explanations instead of even mentioning Marxist ones leads to absurdities like his guess as to why the Hartz reforms of 2003-5 were implemented in Germany: “I would tend to think that the authoritarian and inegalitarian values of the nuclear/primogeniture family (“la famille souche”) were the driving force behind these reforms.”

The gutting of worker rights in order to keep Germany’s industrial edge over the rest of the continent is not a question of family structure. The labor code roll back fought so publicly for so many years in France, and which was imposed in other countries as part of “austerity measures”, was based on these inequality-generating reforms which Germany first adopted as a way to give their industrialists an advantage and to terminate any East German-immigrant notions of labor power. Now that the rest of the EU is on the Hartz reforms Germany is stagnating economically, predictably. It hoped to get a new edge by importing so many educated Syrians, but their plan to add in all these desperate workers to keep native worker demands low and profits high has crumbled under their energy/inflation/sanction suicide.

Todd’s emphasis on la famille souche is so unique it has its own French Wikipedia page to explain it. In short, he says that the single-heir family model - like primogeniture, the European feudal rule by which a household’s inheritance passes to the eldest son - creates it’s own type of society. Above all in 2024 it creates unhappy bosses - such as today’s Germany.

Todd asserts that in individualist countries like England, the US or central France being the boss is a pinnacle achievement; in a community family country like Russia or China authoritarianism is tempered by egalitarianism; in souche cultures, where the fundamental values are authority (of father over sons) and inequality (among brothers) authority becomes the mere right to dominate over others. However, in souche cultures today - like Germany or Japan - the traditional heads of the family have lost their authority. Per Todd, Germany peaked with Kaiser Wilhelm II. The souche model ultimately cannot handle power appropriately, and even turns megalomaniacal when it loses contact with geopolitical reality - think of “Deutschland uber alles”.

That is all interesting and there’s some sociological-psychological truths behind it, but should we really accept this explanation instead of a Marxist one? Or even a realpolitik one, like the one he cites from Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard:

“…the strategic problem that the fall of communism posed for Washington was that the American presence on the European continent or Asia was no longer justified. Eurasia could have thus unified itself, marginalising America. For Washington’s strategists a Russian-German alliance appears like a total nightmare. From this perspective, the behavior of Germany, the new great economic power of the continent, which was simultaneously increasing its military dependence on the USA and its energy dependence on Russia, was typical of a machine society.”

That all makes sense until “was typical of…”, but that’s where Todd leaves his section on Germany. Perhaps he is talking about a country which lacks morality, feeling and diplomacy, and thus they have painted themselves into a corner via a worldview that is totally mechanical? Very psychological….

As I’ve written in previous chapters: this is very French of Todd, and it’s hit or miss - to make hypotheses about the inner lives of people and nations in order to explain current events. Todd on the geopolitical ramifications of the tortured leaders of today’s souche households:

“The war in Ukraine, however, made us suddenly observe the contrary: a resignation, a refusal to even influence events. German elites have renounced, it seems, to defend the immediate interests of their country, one after the other: economic and energy interests in the case of relations with Russia. But the Germans are also on the brink of ruining their relations with China, however essential they are for their economy. We have the impression of observing in action - in inaction, mostly - the ruling class of a dwarf, secondary stock society that refuses autonomy and aspires to submission.”

To bolster his case against souche societies Todd could have brought up the Plaza Accords of 1985, which saw Japan’s elites trade their country’s string of incredible economic success for what’s now year 34 of their “Lost Decades”. Of course, the Plaza Accord only makes logical sense for Japan when we realise it was the expression of their elites going over from a “mixed economy” to liberalism: their 1% has profited handsomely since 1985 - it’s the Japanese 99% who have lost over a generation.

Todd gives other reasons for this “refusal to grow up”: an old society (average age of 46 in Germany), a guilty conscience, a desire to be perceived as one of the good people (thus supporting smaller Ukraine). “But the real reason, in my opinion, is deeper and systemic. The difficulty of being a boss in a souche system is aggravated in Germany today because of the absence of a national conscience, and therefore a guiding principle of action. Anxious, the souche leader becomes passive.”

Yes, primogeniture would be against Islamic law and Chinese custom, so it is indeed a terrible and curious system, but the problem is not the souche family style but actually the “absence of a national conscience”.

What’s never said in the West - but which is said constantly in Iran - is that the government actually does play a role in shaping the nation’s conscience. I hold this truth to be so obvious that I’m not going to explain further, and instead note that the pan-European project - which most definitely did originally make promises of not just material but moral progress - has produced an absence of morality, and that the root of this project is liberalist morality.

America is a coercive empire? Might there even be class issues at play? Todd turns socialist?

Anyone who has read me knows the emphasis I place on the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, so I was glad to see Todd correctly describe that the treaty’s annulation of the anti-Maastricht Treaty votes by France and the Netherlands in 2005 led to the development of oligarchy:

“It’s an important shift: in two countries with a democratic and liberal tradition the people no longer count, not simply due the fault of the ‘elites’ but because, rendered anomic (In sociology, “anomie” is a social condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards or guidance for individuals to follow) by a zero religious and zero ideological state, no collective action can mobilise them.”

Wait - what on earth is he talking about - no mobilisation?

There were constant mass protests across Europe against the forced passage of the Lisbon Treaty, and for the entire decade of 2009-19, and culminating with the once-in-a-century bloody repression of the Yellow Vests every Saturday for six months. Every spring and almost every single autumn during this era saw huge anti-establishment, anti-government and anti-EU protests across the continent. Indeed, Brexit doesn’t make sense if we don’t remember that in 2016 Britain looked across the Channel and saw a pan-European project mired in constant social battle over economic, democratic and cultural issues, and thought: not for us.

Is Todd saying that France has been rendered anomic now, in 2024? Post-Covid there has been a plummeting in social engagement, sadly, but Todd still dismisses this decade of real, European Street, most decided anti-anomie. If anomie has arisen it is precisely because of the oligarchical refusal to allow public opinion to affect public policy and the mass repression of mobilisation.

Todd is only correct if he’s criticising Europe’s lack of armed revolution in response to the clear establishment of oligarchy, but of course he’s not a socialist, much less a revolutionary socialist!

He continues: “Shortly after, the crisis of 2007-8 created the appearance of a new hierarchy of states: Germany on top, France as its lieutenant, others at different levels and Greece on the bottom. We can denounce the disappearance of equality between nations, and the liberty of the peoples of these nations, but we might as well celebrate the emergence, around 2013, of a continent that was certainly oligarchic, but which was pursuing an autonomous oligarchic path. The war in Ukraine, just 10 years later, has suddenly revealed that no one in Europe had autonomous thought or action. […] A radical hypothesis may explain this robotisation. Europe, simultaneously oligarchic and anomic, has been caught up and invaded by the subterranean mechanisms of financial globalisation - which is not a blind, impersonal force, but a phenomenon directed and controlled by the USA.”

Well… obviously. Many would have started here, but let’s recall that Todd is writing to a clueless Western mainstream class - he had to work his way to this conclusion.

And let’s not forget that in the pan-European project Todd can only pine for the good old days of when they were “pursuing an autonomous oligarchic path”!

It’s great that Todd has come around on the socialist idea that capitalism is oligarchical collusion and imperialism, but he should have noted that all oligarchies strive to stimulate anomie - only socialism provides direction for mass society.

Todd certainly sees the collusion of modern capitalism as a more recent development than, say, Marx, who chronicled it in the industrial era. Todd goes into the negative role of the dollar since the end of the gold standard, and then also the Anglo-American system of tax havens. Here he makes his book’s first mention of Marx: in an ironic reference as to how this latter development has put Switzerland on the back foot, which is thus a victory for Anglo-American financial capitalism. “The reader of Marx and Lenin, who thinks in terms of socially organised groups and state instruments, will see things a little differently.”

That sentence is revealing because Todd apparently does not define Marxism by any of it’s three most important aspects - the class struggle, the redistribution of wealth, the necessity of helping everyone reach their individual potential - but seemingly as an ideology of tribalism (“organised groups”) and state domination (“state instruments”). This is simply not the case, but instead corresponds to the typical view of a right-wing Westerner.

Todd notes how in the digital era the US now watches everybody, and he hypothesizes that they have illicit control - to some degree - of European oligarchs, probably. However, what really matters is that European elites know they are being watched and yet they have done nothing to stop these well-known invasions of privacy and publicised cases of spying on your allies. Instead, they strive to stay on good terms with their US overlords - but this is basic comprador behavior and not suicide.

“After reading (Glenn) Greenwald’s book, we realize that the American empire is not an abstraction, and that it is not just the result of the will of consenting democrats: it is based on very concrete mechanisms for monitoring individuals. [...] Western Europe is a second Latin America, where American domination, though on the wane, is much older.”

Well, good to know that the American empire stopped being an abstraction roughly around the time of the 2013 Edward Snowden revelations! It is in his realisation that Europe is now a colony of the US that Todd - for the first time in this book - sounds rather oblivious and not worth my efforts.

He correctly adds that, crucially, this is “…with the difference that the intelligentsia of the left has remained independent of the United States in Latin America, which is not the case in Europe.” My reporting on Mexico’s leftist sweep earlier this week certainly keeps this wonderful trend going.

Todd asserts that the watertight grip of the US is revealed in its 100% rate of obedience, and that a totalitarian ambiance reigns in Europe’s upper spheres. The former is certainly clear, but it makes far more sense as class self-interest rather than Todd’s preferred explanation of suicide, no?

Todd concludes this chapter with a section that cites a seeming paradox: “The decline of America, but it’s growing grip on Europe”.

He starts with another paradox, and I cite it because Todd seems to see the digital age as heralding a new form of capitalism. We see this false assertion often, and it is usually foolishly given the name “globalism”. As if the East India Company was not global enough, nor rapaciously capitalist enough?! The economic swindles of capitalism and the political swindles of liberalism did not change their aim nor methods nor their morals simply by going from horsepower to electric power to digital power.

But I am relaying what Todd says, and he believes that the internet, which was supposed to be a tool of liberty has instead become a tool which has greatly reinforced American control over their European compradors: “The upper classes of the oligarchic Europe under construction have been seduced by financial globalization and trapped by universal data registration.”

Todd ends by noting that the rest of the world can see what Europeans cannot: the power of the US is regressing, and quickly:

“But this is because, as the American system shrinks throughout the world, it weighs more and more heavily on its original protectorates, which remain its ultimate bastions of power. Here we are beyond the Brzezinski doctrine - in fact, below it. It's no longer a question of the United States dominating the world. It's control of Europe and Far East Asia that has become vital, because in its current weakened state, the USA needs its industrial capacities.”

In this chapter Todd has tried to explain the pan-European project’s “suicide-by-awful-liberal policies” while never understanding that liberal policies are always awful precisely because that’s how their neo-aristocracy stays in power: via war, demonisation, fostering anomie, underdevelopment of the masses, etc.

This is absolutely certain: should Europe decouple from America - becoming truly independent - the heavy influence of the United States on global affairs would immediately collapse. The 1% - the “oligarchs” created by the pan-European project - don’t want this, as it risks their profits and stature, even if the European masses believed this is what “united Europe” meant in 1999: a stronger, not weaker Europe.

What Todd has understood, however, is that the atrocious fostering of conflict in Ukraine - and the refusal of diplomacy - has laid even more naked the right-wing, anti-Social Democratic nature of this version of a pan-European project. This failure is the biggest political story of the 21st century, I insist, but it is not suicidal - because the European 1% has only grown stronger in their inequality and their unmerited privilege - it is homicidal.

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Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland, Tunisia and elsewhere. His latest book is France's Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West's Best Values. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese. Any reposting or republication of any of these articles is approved and appreciated. He tweets at @RaminMazaheri2 and writes at substack.com/@raminmazaheri