A sequel to the catastrophe of the Second World War from which Europe has never recovered is its political-military and economic dependence on the United States of North America. This dependence originated with the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1944, the implementation of the Marshall Plan of economic aid which started in 1948 and the foundation in 1949 of the military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is generally forgotten that the Marshall Plan, under the U.S. Foreign Operations Administration agency, continued in effect until 1961. That period and its aftermath have determined the development of Europe up to the present.

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The Economic Relationship with the USA

From 1950 until the end of the Cold War in 1990 about 300,000 US troops occupied bases throughout Western Europe. Today, there are only 80,000 US military personnel left in Europe, but the financial and commercial dependence and interrelationship are still very much in force. This reality can be seen in the figures of the enormous mutual direct investment and the exchange of goods and services between the US economy and the main European countries. Especially noteworthy are the relations between the US economy and the economies of France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

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The data indicate that the disagreements in NATO now around Greenland and over material support to the Nazi regime in Ukraine, highlighted at the recent World Economic Forum summit in Davos, are mere political theater. It is absolutely clear that the US ruling elites and the European ruling elites are not going to divorce in the short term. The main dispute between them is about who will pay for the drastic militarization of Europe that the US elites no longer want to finance but need so as to be able follow their customary foreign policy of threatening Russia, intimidating China and projecting military power to Western Asia in support of Israel and against Iran.

An Objective Economic Perspective

With a total population of 450 million in a territorial extension of more than four million square kilometers, the European Union contributes about 13% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product. A comparison of its population, territorial extension and GDP with the most important countries in their respective regions shows that the economic power of the European Union relative to the majority world is very similar to US power, although it is undeniable that both are experiencing a decline in economic importance in relation to the rest of the world economy.

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Also the trade relations of the European Union with China are much more significant than China’s trade with the US.

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So to understand Europe’s submissive dependence relative to the United States, it is necessary to look at the transatlantic political-military history.

European Political-military Integration

After the catastrophic devastation in Europe in 1945, the US elites, with their economy unscathed, enjoyed almost absolute domination of the world economy. The project of European unification began in the context of US development cooperation and military occupation and took place as the political expression of the NATO military alliance. The initial step of European integration was the 1951 Treaty of Paris which established the European Coal and Steel Community composed of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In 1957, by means of the Treaty of Rome between the same countries, the European Economic Community was created along with the European Atomic Energy Community.

From the 1960s on, most Western European countries gradually joined the European integration project. In 1993, with the Maastricht Treaty, the European Union was founded, although it was not until the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 that the original European communities were formally subsumed into the new entity. In the fifteen years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, almost all the Eastern European countries joined the European Union. In parallel, they integrated in the same period into the military expression of the transatlantic relationship with US power, NATO, which was progressively expanding towards the borders of Russia.

Now twenty-seven countries are members of the European Union and all of them are members of NATO as well as Iceland and Norway. The European Union’s Lisbon Treaty of 2009 and the NATO summit in Bucharest the previous year were the culmination of Europe’s development as a faithful ally of the US elites to threaten Russia and Iran, coerce Venezuela, support the Israeli regime’s genocidal occupation of Palestine and confront China. Last week at the Davos summit of the World Economic Forum, Canada’s Prime Minister finally confessed the reality of the cynicism and hypocrisy of the collective West in international relations over recent decades:

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful… So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

Readjustment and Recalibration

It is possible that Mark Carney wants to distance himself from the criminal aggression and complete abandonment of international law by the administration of Donald Trump. But, perhaps unconsciously, his words highlight the rotten Western falsehood all too familiar to the majority world. Prime Minister Carney spoke in Davos shortly after he had visited Beijing to beg the Chinese government for measures increasing bilateral trade with Canada. But Canada is even more dependent on its trade with the US economy than Europe. At Davos, all Mr. Carney was doing was to hedge his bets because it is clear that, for the foreseeable future, there will never be a fundamental rupture between the US elites and their European cronies.

A rupture would be the expulsion of all US military presence from European territory and a vigorous reorientation of trade in goods and services towards the majority world. There would be a sharp adjustment in the financial relationship facilitating the viability of the US dollar when the US economy is bankrupt. European governments would effectively condemn the Zionist genocide in Gaza, which they have always facilitated, and impose strong coercive measures against the Israeli economy. There would be an end to European support for the Nazi regime in Ukraine, a normalization of relations with Russia and the severance of all political relations with the rebel Chinese province of Taiwan

We will never see the implementation of any of these measures, among many others that might be taken, because in truth all that is happening is a readjustment and recalibration shuffling the relations and the vocabulary of the rhetoric between the European ruling elites and their US counterparts. In fact, the resurgence of brutal Yankee colonialism requires the ruling elites of Europe to deepen political and economic repression against their own peoples in order to ensure the continuity of Europe’s submissive collaboration with US foreign policy to harass Russia, intimidate China, threaten Iran and support the genocidal Zionist regime in Israel. The development of the war in Ukraine since the coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 confirms this reality.

Throughout all this time the European political class, almost without exception, submitted to the leadership of the US ruling elites thinking they were fulfilling the role of allies when, in truth, they were only serving as vassals. The destruction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to make it impossible to supply Russian gas to Europe via that route exemplified this reality. Now, the Yankee empire has made sure that Europe depends on liquefied gas supplies from the US and its allies. The US elites need Europe to turn into a heavily militarized vassal region and everything indicates that the European ruling elites will comply. Increasingly extreme domestic measures of political repression, cuts to social welfare, health care and education and greater labor exploitation are already being applied. It remains to be seen if or when the peoples of Europe will finally rebel to demand sovereign policies meeting the aspirations and needs of their families.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Note

The data come from “The Transatlantic Economy, Edición 22” by Daniel S. Hamilton and Joseph P. Quinlan of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies de Johns Hopkins University, and official sources of the US and EU governments

Featured image: A photo of the 2025 meeting between Donald Trump and European leaders modified to include a hemispheric map showing Greenland and Venezuela as US territories (Source)

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