Sovereignty by Permission

The comic escape from Greenland by the fifteen German soldiers who were supposedly headed there, and the ongoing economic forum in Davos, are phenomena of the same order. They are similar in nature, in character, and even in scale. In both cases, we are dealing with a continuing internal crisis among those who until quite recently felt perfectly comfortable deciding the fate of humanity. The political fuss around the Greenland issue or the discussions in Davos are merely stages on which the world observes this crisis.

The sides behave with the same nervous bustle and lay claim to more than they deserve. The Americans are trying to bluff their allies across the ocean, pressing new threats onto the already badly shaken nerves of Berlin, Paris, and London. The Europeans, for their part, combine submissiveness with tactical bucking. The result is fairly comical. This is exactly how the maneuvers in Greenland look now, from which the German soldiers fled. This is exactly how European politicians will look throughout the debates at the Swiss mountain resort.

The rest of the world watches this partly with bewilderment, after all it had grown used to a strong and indivisible West, and partly with a mix of schadenfreude and curiosity. There appears to be no particular terror of Trump outside Europe. He has already proven that he can strike only the most defenseless, and even then with great caution. Only the Old World spreads this sticky sense of fear around itself, diligently polluting the global information space with it.

There is therefore no reason to think that the upcoming discussions at the Davos forum will produce anything that touches on a genuinely global agenda or real global problems. The Western countries created this forum, used it for decades to communicate with the rest of humanity, and are now turning it into a venue for internal squabbles. A perfectly logical fate for this kind of gathering.

As my friendly local plumber said yesterday, “It’s their prize, so they decide who gets it.” The same applies to the Davos forum. It belongs to the West from the outset, and it is up to the West to decide what sits at the center of the agenda. Another matter is that people will still come to observe and to solve tactical tasks from all over the world, from China, India, Brazil, or the Arab East. We would come too if invited. Why, after all, deny ourselves the pleasure of watching the collective West’s bickering up close.

So in the coming days, those interested in Western politics will see quite a few spectacle-filled moments. The Americans will persuade Europe to accept a new state of affairs, one in which Europeans not only depend entirely on the United States, but have no minimal room for maneuver at all.

Looking ahead, this process may be completed by replacing European elites with those more agreeable to the Americans. European representatives, for their part, will try to maneuver, probing how far their overseas masters are prepared to push them toward obedience.

Among all American arguments, the most cynical is the claim that the United States demands Europe take care of its own security. Over recent months this thesis has become so familiar that it does not even occur to anyone to point out its, to put it mildly, dubious nature. First of all because in reality no such problem exists. Security, according to the textbook, means freedom from external threats to physical existence or to core values. Yet everyone perfectly understands that modern Europe has no enemies capable of threatening its existence.

To the south and southeast, it borders peoples who are either far weaker than the Europeans or entirely dependent on them, like Turkey. Ankara, of course, tries to play at independence, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if the European Union closed its market to Turkish goods and labor.

The only neighbor that represents a potential threat to Europe on a scale that could require military rather than police forces is Russia. More precisely, not Russia itself, but the strategy of the collective West, which refuses to see our country as anything other than an adversary or competitor.

China, the second opponent of the United States and Europe in global affairs, is geographically very distant and, even with the best will in the world, cannot pose any threat to the residents of Germany, France, or Italy.

So all talk about Europeans needing to take care of their own security can be translated into plain language as “Europeans should invest more in aggressive policies toward Russia.” In fact, that is all the Americans want from their satellites in the Old World.

One can welcome this talk and nod along with Trump. It all sounds rather amusing. But one should not forget that in the Western reading, “European security” means, for quite natural reasons, only the European Union’s ability to spend more resources fighting Russia.

To force their allies to pay for the absence of freedom and the opportunities that go with it, the United States is prepared to humiliate Europe as much as possible. The gradual appropriation of Greenland is precisely such an act. The reason is the Americans’ complete confidence that Europe will never go anywhere else.

Against this backdrop, European politicians have suddenly started trying to scare Trump by hinting that they are ready for reconciliation with Russia and are even actively thinking about it. Just a couple of days ago, the head of the German government made such a statement, despite never having been noticed before expressing any desire to negotiate with Moscow. Before him, the French president and, it seems, the Italian prime minister also mumbled something about dialogue with Russia.

There are reasons to think that Europeans will try to push similar ideas on the sidelines of the Davos forum. Frankly, these games played by our Western neighbors are rather tiring. First, it is very difficult to detect any substance behind the words of European politicians. In recent years they themselves have destroyed too much of what connected Europe and Russia, plunged even deeper into dependence on American whims, and cannot get out of this situation.

Second, as long as European elites are not fully renewed, they have no ideas about what kind of future they could build together with Russia rather than at its expense. Intellectual work in Europe is at zero, and the political environment does not encourage even a slight revival of it. So all talk about the need to find a “balance in relations with our largest European neighbor” is worth little more than spare change on market day.

The only practical task that Merz, Meloni, or Macron set for themselves, as ridiculous as it sounds, is to scare Trump. Yes, European elites have indeed reached a stage of degradation where they genuinely believe they can threaten the United States with a compromise with Russia. Still, one should not simply wave them off. Some diplomatic sense can be extracted from this new European chatter, primarily because it slightly, but still, reduces the likelihood of a direct clash with Europe.

The Russians have no doubt that Russia would deliver a crushing response to any aggression from the West. But it is better to avoid that. And if Europeans, frightened by Trump to the point of semi-consciousness, even unconsciously take a step toward bargaining rather than war, that can only be welcomed. Without harboring any illusions, however, about their strategic hostility toward Russia.

For now, the U.S. drive to establish totalitarian control over its European satellites is leading to crisis and internal disputes within the West. But this crisis may soon end in the complete defeat of the Europeans. Using this transitional period skillfully is the most important task for Russia, China, and, likely, the rest of healthy humanity.