European Futures: More Militarism, Increased Dependency on the US

Jens Stoltenberg shares his opinions of what Mr. Trump's election portends, and while his grip on reality and truth is, well, tenuous, the implications are clearly spelled out

To follow-up on yesterday’s musings, here’s my translation of a few words uttered by Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg, formerly serving as premier US lapdog (NATO Secretary-General) and now begging to be relevant once more.

What Now, Europe?

As always, translation, emphases, [and snark] mine.

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Jens Stoltenberg: Norway and Europe Should do More for Their Own Security

He was NATO’s secretary-general when Trump threatened to withdraw the co-operation. Jens Stoltenberg believes Trump had good points.

By Marita E. Valvik and Ingrid Borvik, Aftenposten, 6 Nov. 2024 [source]

‘The way to go is to sit down with the incoming president and discuss solutions’, the former NATO Secretary General told Aftenposten:

It’s much better to engage and work with the Americans—even in areas where there are differing views.

He is confident that his successor, Mark Rutte, will succeed.

‘I'm absolutely certain that Rutte will handle this brilliantly’, Jens Stoltenberg told Aftenposten [I remain a wee bit more reserved here, if only because there’s one US muppet speaking about another].

[Aftenposten] Should Norway and Europe make themselves less dependent on the US? [oh, that’s the 64,000 dollar question here, isn’t it? Doesn’t it appear at least a wee bit…well, strange, I think, that this is the question that is asked every four years for as long as I can think?]

Norway and Europe should do more for their own security, both militarily and economically. Norway should not reduce its co-operation with the US. [to people with more than one working brain cell, these two statements are…not quite unproblematic]

According to Stoltenberg, these are two different things [it means that Norway shall continue as the US’s ‘fifth column’ within ‘Europe’ no matter what]:

European allies must invest more in NATO. The EU cannot take over NATO’s role [well…isn’t this swell? The EU isn’t NATO—but it has it’s own SOFA, mutual assistance clause, which also includes military help for member-states, and it has no supreme commander (with enough weight in int’l affairs behind it), so, that’s true; it’s also proof-positive of what I wrote yesterday: NATO will remain in place because it assures a steady stream of consumers buying American, which will render the US-based military-industrial complex ‘MAGA’ and reinforce the plunder of Europeans; it’s called tribute since immemorial]

Threatened to Pull the US Out

During the last presidential term, Trump himself was critical of NATO and threatened to pull the US out of the alliance if the allies did not increase their defence budgets [this was a slick move by Mr. Trump, which every mafia don understands clearly: it’s called a ‘protection racket’, and the most intuitive scholarly discussion I’ve yet read is by Frederic C. Lane, Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence-Controlling Enterprises (Albany: SUNY, 1979)].

‘I think he will stand by the Nato alliance’, said Stoltenberg when he appeared on [TV talk show] ‘Dagsrevyen’ on Wednesday evening.

He justified this with three points. Firstly, that it is in the US interest to be part of a strong NATO [hahahaha, nope, it’s a money-sucking racket]. Secondly, there is still broad cross-party support for the alliance, including in the new Congress [well, the Congress people know which side the bread is buttered, and the military-industrial establishment has spread their manufacturing operations across all 50 states, so, sure, that’s actually true].

Thirdly, his criticism then was of NATO allies who did not pay for membership [remember that NATO ‘safeguards’, of course, ‘our values™’, which are so wonderful that the moralising argument for NATO’s continued existence has now morphed into something like ‘it’s o.k. to pay for this racket’]. He was right about that. ‘Things have changed dramatically now’, said Stoltenberg.

As recently as this summer, Trump said that it was time for Europe to contribute more to the community and for the US contribution to be reduced.

Stoltenberg has congratulated Trump on his victory. Trump reportedly thanked him for the congratulations.

Will End the War Overnight

Trump has previously said that he will end the war in Ukraine ‘within 24 hours’. Several sources close to Trump claim that this may involve pressurising Ukraine to give up territory [it’s 7 Nov. now, this hasn’t happened, and I remain wary the war will be done on 21 Jan. 2025 because].

‘If Ukraine loses this war, there won’t be peace, there will be occupation’, said Stoltenberg, who believes that the only way towards peace is through military support for the country [and his secondary quality is, obviously, not to finish a coherent sentence: a perfect little lapdog who will bark at bigger canines; also, let’s not forget that there are still ‘Allied’ troops occupying Germany and Japan, with some 800 US military bases dispersed literally all across the world].

He also pointed out that it was Trump who suggested providing arms support to Ukraine when the war broke out [oopsie, sorry ‘bout that folks, I suppose, and let’s not omit that, like a broken clock, Mr. Stoltenberg isn’t incorrect, technically speaking—but he knows better: in February 2023, he publicly admitted that ‘the war began…in 2014’, which was, of course, well before Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015; this is likely the clumsy attempt to saddle Mr. Trump with both the beginning of the conflict (which began under Mr. Obama who received the Nobel Peace Prize™) and its possible end (which, if accomplished, won’t bring that Prize to Mr. Trump, I’d suppose]

Russia's war of invasion in Ukraine is the largest in Europe since World War II. American arms aid has been crucial to Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. [all the while Mr. Stoltenberg casually omits that the US-led war of aggression vs. Yugoslavia in 1999 over Kosovo was the first such conflict in Europe after 1945]

Earlier on Wednesday, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide (Ap) said that concerns about Trump pulling the US out of Nato are exaggerated, according to NTB [I concur; Mr. Trump will use the threat of doing so to extort more tribute by way of increased defence budgets from ‘Allies’, which is money funnelled towards US arms manufactures, with some crumbs also given to the former’s European partners, such as British Aerospace and the like; note that Norway’s left-leaning gov’t has just increased ‘defence spending’ by 18% in fiscal year 2025].

In February, Trump threatened not to protect NATO countries that spend too little on their own defence [and he will do so again, and consistently so].

Eide believes that Trump feels that he has helped to change the alliance—precisely because European countries are shouldering a greater share of the financial burden of the co-operation [which reveals its core mission: to keep the ‘allies’ in a fiscal-military straightjacket that works like a charm whichever way one looks at it (from Europe): pay up or the US won’t ‘help™’ you, and when European countries fork over more money (to US arms manufacturers), complaints from European politicos™, journos™, and experts™ will come that ‘Europe must do more for its own security’—it’s a merry-go-round, which we’ve been observing ever since the Berlin Wall came down; it would be foolish to expect otherwise].

At the same time, he believes it will be necessary to have ‘ongoing engagement with Trump and his people’ and to remind them of the importance of NATO [oh, that’s not technically required as Mr. ‘Trump and his people’ know that this is a protection racket; the only reason they might need reminders from intellectual midgets like Mr. Stoltenberg is, in my view, to ensure continued perks, such as comfy positions with, say, the World Bank or a think tank in the US (Stoltenberg already served as NATO’s Sec-Gen, and his plush job as Central Bank chief in Norway looks a bit…unavailable].

‘For us, but not least for them’, Eide told NTB [on which I call BS].

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Bottom Lines

‘If you desire peace, prepare for war’, an ancient adage runs (si vis pacem para bellum), which may now also be combined with any Chekov play: if there’s a shotgun hanging over the mantelpiece in the first act, you can be sure it’ll be used before the play’s over.

Military Keynesianism is a double-edged sword, though, for it is unproductive and neither adds value to the economy nor does it generate wealth. What it does, mainly, is to provide short-term relief on the job market and ensures that, once the products are used to their destructive ends, there may be more ‘opportunities’ for contractors for re-building bombed places (which, by the way, is typically more public-private money into the bottomless pit of the war machine, i.e., more of the same).

There is a good argument to be made, I think, that ‘WW2’—in the sense of massive spending on arms coupled with rationing, i.e., demand suppression—never ended. Both in the US and in ‘Europe’ (as well as elsewhere once manufacturing capabilities were in place), gov’t spending on ‘defence’ has contributed substantially towards GDP growth™, and it begs the question if something like ‘capitalism’ (which itself is a Soviet ‘gift to America’, as Steven Marks holds) actually exists since the Great Depression.

I think there’s a good case to be made for ‘military spending’ + ‘demand suppression’ during WW2 masked the sustained economic depression; as evidence for this claim I offer the economic woes that ensued demobilisation in 1945, which was countered—by massive rearmament under Mr. Truman as soon as ‘geopolitical’ tensions permitted the opening of the spigot of ‘public’ money flowing to ‘defence contractors’ once again.

This M.O. has never ceased in the US; things are a wee bit different in Europe after the end of the Cold War, with most countries downsizing their military establishments. Although there was to be no ‘peace dividend’, the funds now available have been funnelled towards the EU project and its rapidly multiplying bureaucracy. The end result, by the way, isn’t that different from the US, with the main feature over here being its less obviously militaristic quality—which isn’t any less extractive; given sky-high tax rates in Europe, which are higher than in the US, a good case can be made that insane amounts of ‘defence spending’ are actually cheaper for taxpayers than its ostensibly ‘civilianised’ version carried out in Europe.

NATO’s future is assured, with both Mr. Trump and his European lapdogs knowing full well how to play this game.

What the above piece is, then, is prima facie evidence of the continued decline of what once used to be called journalism.

We’ll likely see increased calls to ramp up military spending, especially after the Ukrainian quagmire winds down (if it does, that is, because some ‘temporary™’ solution like with UN Peacekeepers in Cyprus) will be even more profitable for all involved: Russia and the West can insist on the importance of int’l law™ (whatever), provide comfy perks for Third World-soldiers in these missions (isn’t it strange that it’s always personnel from, e.g., Bangladesh or the like that is deployed in actual conflict zones in Africa? To understand why, just look at median wages in their countries and the pay the US offers…) while such a (non-) solution™ will benefit both DC and Moscow as both can beat the ‘if you desire peace, prepare for war’ drums.

The end result of the European peoples will be the same either way: Russia is self-sufficient in natural resources (which Europe isn’t), and the US controls int’l trade (which Europe doesn’t). Between the White House/the Pentagon/Langley/Wall Street and ‘the Kremlin’, Europeans will be bled dry as more ‘defence’ [sic] spending will inevitably curtail non-military spending over time, with the continued ‘evolution’ [sic] of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy being the prime vehicle here.

There is no way out, which is perhaps why European governments are now building a shiny new fence all along NATO’s eastern borders. It’s not designed to keep anyone out, least of all Russian tanks, but to keep the rabble from leaving.

One does wonder, by the way, if the Trumpian border wall doesn’t serve analogous purposes, too.

Either way, if uncontrolled mass migration (invasion) of Europe continues, the election of Donald Trump might bring about the end of European countries (and not the end of whatever organisation claiming to ‘govern’ from Brussels).