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The elitist rulers of the European Union are proof of the time-honored adage that war and militarism are a convenient escape from internal problems.

And the European Union, as well as hangers-on like the doughty British, have an abundance of intrinsic, structural problems tantamount to a political meltdown.

Over decades, the 27-member European bloc has evolved into a centralized superstate structure in which policy decisions have become wholly decoupled from the democratic preferences of its 450 million citizens.

Our columnist, Ian Proud, in a recent article, explored how the EU has lost its way from its original vision as a friendly association of European neighbors to one of an unwieldy and unresponsive bureaucracy fixated on ideological conformity to its core.

As Ian Proud comments: “The sole raison d’être of the European Union today appears to seek the strategic defeat of a neighboring country – Russia – despite the enormous political and economic cost to European people who are denied a say through wall-to-wall propaganda.”

He adds this cautionary note: “Ever-greater centralization of powers in Europe will inevitably leave member states feeling disenfranchised by the removal of sovereignty and the attack on their identity. This will continue to drive political dissent and pressure for disintegration that we can already see in Germany, France, Hungary, and other places.”

Many other observers consider that the EU is heading towards a systemic collapse over the next few years owing to a combination of top-heavy concentrated political power, democratic deficit, economic malaise, and a hyper-militarized albeit ineffectual state.

In a desperate bid to offset its stagnating condition, the European bloc bureaucrats and political leaders (with a few honorable exceptions) are seeking their political survival by recklessly talking up fear of war with Russia. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president and daughter of a Nazi-affiliated German politician, wants the bloc to increase its total military budget to €800 billion. This militarism will deprive the civilian economy of essential resources and public services. The ulterior purpose is to try to boost the EU’s flagging industrial growth. Scapegoating Russia and talking up a looming war is a handy way to justify this insane militarism instead of dealing with the root causes of economic malaise, such as wasting billions on a proxy war in Ukraine and blowing up gas pipelines from Russia.

This week saw European military chiefs from some 30 nations meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels to solidify a so-called “Reassurance Force” for Ukraine.

Significantly, the Americans were absent. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also skipped attendance of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Ramstein, Germany, held on Friday.

While the Trump administration is prioritizing diplomacy with Russia to end the over three-year conflict in Ukraine, the Europeans seem desperate to undermine any peace initiative by talking up the “military defense” of Ukraine.

The Europeans are indulging in a chivalrous charade by portraying themselves as a “coalition of the willing” to bolster any peace deal that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may deliver.

Last week, British and French military brass met with Ukrainian counterparts in Kiev to discuss the deployment of troops purportedly to support an eventual peace deal. The Black Sea port city of Odessa was one location mooted for an Anglo-Franco contingency.

This is nothing but a cynical cover for preparing a NATO military intervention in Ukraine, which will inevitably trigger an escalation of the war to a critically dangerous international level. Russia has amply warned that European troops deployed in Ukraine even as so-called peacekeepers will be targeted as combatants. Thus, European colonel blimps doing the bidding of their equally blimpish politicians are gambling with a nuclear World War Three.

Rather than letting diplomacy take its course, the European leaders are determined to interfere and exacerbate the situation. All because of their craven desire to appear relevant and credible.

This is driven by several factors: as noted above, the internal political strains of the EU (and Britain), the apprehension of leaders over populist backlash against the centralized brain-dead structure, and the economic malaise of European members, in particular Germany.

Much of the crisis was self-inflicted by European politicians slavishly following the agenda of the Biden administration to incite a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia – with ruinous consequences.

Russia has all but won the war as the Kiev regime flounders from rampant corruption, repression and despotism under the puppet president Zelensky, as well as battlefield devastation in the east of the country. Russian forces are rolling up the NATO proxy army and laying waste to mountains of military weapons that the U.S. and Europe plowed into Ukraine.

The Trump administration has admitted the futility of the proxy war and is trying to shore up huge financial and military losses by engaging in long-overdue diplomacy with Russia. Not so the elitist Europeans who cannot afford to admit their criminal machinations in Ukraine. They are in denial.

They have to keep going to save their political skins and double down on their gambling largesse. How can they explain to European citizens that they have squandered €200 billion – probably more – in fueling a proxy war against Russia that has resulted in over one million Ukrainian soldiers dead and millions of refugees living off public funds?

European scoundrel politicians suffused with Russophobia are making their escape from accountability by hysterically portraying Russia as a threat to the rest of Europe.

They need to do this to justify their existence and their demand for militarizing the European economies by pushing a war agenda against Russia.

Hence, European states have taken to broadcasting warnings to their public to stock up on emergency supplies of food, medicines and other essential goods. The warnings are disconnected from reality and have an Orwellian character. Russia is not a threat to Europeans. Russia’s Putin has repeatedly dismissed such fears and shrill claims that Moscow is primed to attack NATO states. The fact is Russia engaged in a defensive action in Ukraine in February 2022 to counter a decades-long NATO offensive.

However, the telling of scare stories about Russian bogeymen is necessary to justify the militarization of the EU, which is, in turn, deemed necessary as a way for bankrupt political leaders to survive.

It is no doubt a factor in why the EU has recently taken the draconian measure to ban public access to Russian news media, including this online journal. European readers will have to use internet proxy servers if they want to stay informed with more accurate information and perspectives. So much for vaunted European “values” of free speech and independent news.

To be concise, European Union propaganda is a preposterous parody of a bygone Cold War era. It is riven with lies and untenable falsehoods, which this journal has helped to expose over recent years. See, for example, our archive of weekly editorials and the many issues that we have covered exposing EU, NATO, and U.S. lies. That’s why we are being banned.

British leader “Sir” Keir Starmer dressed up in military uniform on maneuvers with troops, vowing to “fight them on the (Black Sea) beaches” à la Winston Churchill, is a send-up of outdated British comedy. While France’s Emmanuel Macron pledging to “defend the rest of Europe” from “Russian aggression” with French nukes is the theater of the absurd.

European illusions are risible. Nevertheless, an armed fool is still a dangerous one.