Europe's financial structure is unraveling...

Editor's note: ...under the weight of unsustainable debt, stagnant growth, collapsing industrial competitiveness, and fiscal systems propped up by perpetual borrowing. With major economies like France, Italy, and Germany facing deep structural deficits and shrinking economic leverage, Europe's ruling class has turned outward, manufacturing confrontation with Russia as a means of survival. War rhetoric and escalation provide cover for financial failure, justify emergency powers, suppress dissent, and lock populations into sacrifice they never voted for. With President Trump expected to visit Davos in the coming weeks, insiders anticipate a decisive break, as the US moves to cut Europe and its Davos-aligned elites loose, ending unconditional support for a system that has bankrupted its citizens, hollowed out its economies, and now seeks war with Russia to delay collapse.
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Europe at the Ramparts: Power, Panic, and the Closing of the Mind

Against the backdrop of a geopolitical shift and the conflict in Ukraine, France and the EU as a whole are moving from liberal confidence towards defensive and increasingly authoritarian self-restraint.

By Phil Butler | January 8, 2026

A recent New York Times article titled "France Needs More Than a New Leader. It Needs a New France" demonstrates that truth always shines through subterfuge and propaganda. Some days ago, France's President Macron was accused of throwing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz under the bus over the hundreds of billions in seized Russian assets. We now observe the French preparing for the inevitable dissolution of the EU itself.

Is France Circling the Wagons?

The recent exchange between French political figure Florian Philippot and Telegram founder Pavel Durov, in which Durov accused President Macron and his allies of steering Europe toward a "digital gulag," may at first glance appear to be another skirmish in the EU's long-running disputes over speech moderation and platform regulation. In reality, it exposes something far more structural: a governing class in the European Union instinctively bracing itself as the global order that sustained its authority for decades begins to give way. As for Macron and this "New France" the NYTs speaks of, outreach to farmers and the construction of new aircraft carriers hint that the transition to a new nationalism is underway.

Europe's current path suggests an attempt to freeze a post–Cold War order in place through regulation rather than renewal.

The key issue at hand, the Digital Services Act, "Chat Control," or the technicalities of online governance, is causing a more profound loss of confidence. Europe's post–Cold War elite senses, perhaps more intuitively than explicitly, that the liberal, unipolar system that underwrote its prosperity and moral authority is no longer the operating framework of the world. And when systems begin to doubt their future, they do not loosen their grip. They consolidate, narrow the acceptable range of debate, and redefine dissent as instability. The American cliche, "circling the wagons," applies.

For three decades, Europe has been governed comfortably in the slipstream of American power. Through security guarantees, cheap energy, open markets, and ideological legitimacy were primarily taken for granted. Moral posturing came cheaply when material conditions were assumed to be permanent. The emergence of a genuinely multipolar world has ended that comfort. Today, power is now distributed among competing centers, and Europe increasingly finds itself not as a shaper of outcomes but as a dependent participant, reliant on external energy, foreign capital, and security arrangements it neither commands nor can replace. Another cliche comes to mind when I think of the news from France: "Rats deserting sinking ships" also applies. A paradigm shift is imminent.

Ukraine and the Drain

This shift has been accelerated, not softened, by the conflict in Ukraine, which has functioned as a stress test for Europe's economic and strategic foundations. Publicly framed as a moral crusade or an existential defense of European values, the conflict has, in practice, exposed structural weaknesses that were long masked by favorable global conditions. Energy prices have surged, industrial margins have collapsed, public finances have been strained, and long-term investment decisions have quietly begun moving elsewhere.

At the same time, the United States has adopted a more openly protectionist stance, reshoring strategic industries and prioritizing domestic resilience over transatlantic balance. Europe, meanwhile, has borne a disproportionate share of the economic costs while retaining only limited influence over the conflict's trajectory. This asymmetry is rarely acknowledged in Brussels, but it is acutely felt in boardrooms and balance sheets across the continent.

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Editor's note: Europe's leadership is no longer seeking de-escalation with Russia but is instead fixated on confrontation, operating under the belief that force and pressure are the only language Moscow understands. It suggests that, unable to match Russia conventionally and unwilling to accept strategic limits, European elites may drift toward asymmetric warfare, proxy escalation, and long-term attrition strategies. In doing so, Europe risks sacrificing its own youth in a manner eerily similar to Ukraine, potentially sending a generation into conflict to mask deepening financial collapse, unsustainable debt, industrial decline, and the unraveling of economic systems its leaders can no longer stabilize:

That's The Only Language...

Zelensky calling Europe for help is calling for war with Russia:

"Zelensky is calling Europeans": Oreshnik has deprived Ukraine of 50% of its gas reserves in underground gas storage facilities.

The reason the US can do this is because it has an endless supply of money. There is "an asset market that can't clear with money" so the only option is war. The asset market clears with war. If current proposals to push annual US defense spending above $1 trillion are sustained and never reduced, total military outlays over the next decade would exceed $5 trillion, rising to nearly $6 trillion when debt financing and interest costs are included. The amount of money at this scale loses all meaning. One way to comprehend it is that $6 trillion is roughly $18,000 for every tax debt slave in the US, or enough to fund the entire federal government for more than a year, rebuild major national infrastructure multiple times over, eliminate most public college tuition for a generation and much more. At this level, defense spending stops being a budget item and becomes a structural force reshaping the entire economy and political infrastructure. It is the complete militarization of the US economy:

Inside the $1.5 Trillion Question: Why the U.S. Wants a Bigger Military Budget