This article appears in the March 21, 2025 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Trump in Motion as Disruptor-in-Chief
London, European Leaders Prepare for War
[Print version of this article]
March 12—Across Western Europe, anxiety-ridden governments are scrambling to come up with a credible strategy to “defend” Ukraine, to increase defense spending to deter what they predict will be an expected Russian onslaught if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is forced by United States President Donald Trump to submit to the terms for peace dictated by Russia. This, despite no evidence of a Russian intent to attack its European neighbors!
The inability to present a convincing case of an aggressive Russian imperial desire to overrun Europe has not stopped the war hawks in European governments and institutions from demanding more than one trillion euros for a defense build-up to prepare for a Russian attack. The latest display of this hysteria was a meeting convened March 11 by French President Emmanuel Macron, who brought armed forces chiefs from 37 countries to Paris. According to a French source quoted in the Italian daily Libero, Macron urged them to move from the concept, to the plan of deploying European troops in Ukraine. The co-hosts for this event were French Army Chief of Staff General Thierry Burkhard, and his British counterpart, Admiral Tony Radakin.
As the military leaders were gathered in Paris, a gleeful Ursula von der Leyen reminded the elected members of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France, that their voices will not be heard, as the unelected European Commission of the EU—of which she is President—had already decided to create an 800-billion-euro defense fund. Subtly named the “ReArm Europe Plan,” it will move forward by decree of the European Council. Among critics of this plan is an Italian Member of the European Parliament, Roberto Vannacci, who denounced von der Leyen for invoking a state-of-emergency declaration to bypass the Parliament. He stated that “Russian tanks are not in Warsaw or Budapest or even Prague, and Paris is not burning.... The real emergencies are the European families who have no money to pay their bills because of the dastardly policies of your Commission.”
Not one to miss an opportunity to grandstand, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for yet another multi-nation meeting for March 15, “to discuss the next steps.” Starmer joined other leaders in greeting reports from the meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, March 11, between U.S. and Ukrainian officials, that Ukraine had agreed to accept a thirty-day ceasefire; he hailed this as progress. The common refrain from these advocates of “weakening” Russia, is that now, “the ball is in Russia’s court.” This catch-phrase was fabricated in advance of the U.S.-Ukraine meeting.
Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who attended the Jeddah meeting, headed for Moscow to brief Russian officials and discuss the next steps in securing a lasting peace.
Why Eurocrats Are Hoping for a Long War
The deeper concern of “leaders” such as the hypocrites French President Macron and UK Prime Minister Starmer, who have warmly embraced Zelensky while demanding a huge increase in European defense spending, is not about defending Ukraine, but how to prevent the end of an era of 500 years of global domination by European colonizers. They fear that a “multipolar” alliance centered around the U.S., Russia, and China, backed by the Global South, spells the end of trans-Atlantic dominance; the termination of the globalist’s “unipolar order” in control of global strategic and economic affairs. For the British, this is especially difficult, as their ability to assert financial control depends on maintaining the “Special Relationship” with the U.S. The demise of this is featured in headlines, such as one in the formerly pro-American Guardian—or more accurately, of the “pro-Biden war hawk” press—which announced, “The U.S. may no longer be considered an ally”; and in editorials, such as one in last Wednesday’s Guardian which asked, “How long do Ukraine and Europe have to respond to the U.S. betrayal?”
This angst was reflected in an article in the Daily Mail, citing diplomatic sources in Washington who said that Trump has “gone cool” on the UK, due to King Charles’s public welcoming of Ukraine’s acting president, Zelensky. The Mail reports that allies of Trump said “that pictures of the King with the Ukrainian leader made him feel ‘less special’ about the monarch’s invitation for a state visit to Britain.”
The derangement demonstrated by Starmer and Macron has been matched by incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has broken his promise to voters that he would maintain adherence to the debt brake, a constitutional measure to contain deficit spending. Merz is rushing a measure through the Bundestag to allow for a 400-billion euro increase in defense spending, with the intention of getting it passed before the newly-elected members are seated on March 25. Knowing that he would lack the votes in the new parliament to reach the two-thirds vote needed to change the law to increase spending—due to the opposition to the Ukraine war led by Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) members, which will constitute the second largest bloc of voters in the new parliament—he is hoping to get the votes from the old coalition members from the Social Democratic Party, the Greens, and the Free Democratic Party, many of whom were voted out in the February 23 election. The AfD is opposing this plan of Merz, as representing an anti-democratic trick to reverse the will of the voters.
Ukraine Today, Gaza Tomorrow?
The efforts of a chastened Zelensky, bolstered by his European Union and NATO allies, to return to Trump’s good graces, led into the meeting in Jeddah. Trump had turned up the heat on Zelensky since their Oval Office showdown, suspending arms and monetary aid, along with intelligence sharing. A spokesman for the President said of Zelensky before the meeting that one can’t say “I want peace” and yet insist on the right to refuse to compromise on anything. Following the concession in Jeddah by the Ukrainians, the Defense Department announced that the suspension of aid will be lifted. However, this applies only to aid already in the pipeline, courtesy of U.S. President Joe Biden, and does not include any new promises.
Trump also provoked a reaction from the U.S. press when he stated, truthfully, that NATO expansion provoked Russia’s Special Military Operation, and that Ukraine rejected a peace deal its negotiators had worked out with the Russians in March 2022. The Washington Post cited these comments as examples of Trump’s dishonesty!
While Trump is moving ahead to get a peace “deal” in Ukraine, there are signs that the peace offensive may spread to Southwest Asia. With the future of Palestinian lives in Gaza still unresolved, Trump’s special representative, Steve Witkoff, referred positively to the Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza, which was presented last week to Arab leaders in Cairo. The Egyptian Plan was drafted with the intent to reconstruct Gaza as a central part of a Palestinian state, in opposition to the desire of the extremists allied with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who openly call for the transfer of Palestinians to Egypt, Jordan, or anywhere other than in Palestine.
Though one Trump Administration spokesman initially sounded unenthusiastic about the Egyptian plan, Witkoff said the plan has “a lot of compelling features to it,” calling it a “good faith first step.” This puts the Administration at odds with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who denounced it as unacceptable. The Israeli press is highlighting the prospect of growing tension between Netanyahu and Trump, especially following the surprise meeting between a U.S. official and a Hamas leader to discuss the release of an American hostage.
As for the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran, which Netanyahu is yearning for and would likely require U.S. back-up, Trump said he had drafted a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, suggesting a new nuclear deal as an alternative to war. Though it is not clear if he sent the letter, by raising it publicly he has introduced the possibility of a peaceful resolution to what Netanyahu has called an existential threat to Israel. It is likely to provoke a decidedly hostile response from the neocons in the U.S., such as John Bolton, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, and Hillary Clinton, who have demanded regime change in Iran, and whose campaign treasuries and think tanks have been flush with funds from Zionist Lobby contributors.
Next Up: Nuclear Pact with Russia?
Following Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12, and the meeting of a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio with a Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on February 18 in Saudi Arabia, there was open discussion of a “normalization” of relations. After three years of no communication with Russia, on orders from the Biden White House, there is preparation underway for a Trump-Putin summit, with pledges to take up issues beyond achieving peace in Ukraine. One of the most urgent of these is to reopen talks on arms control, to halt a new nuclear arms race, and to prevent proliferation of these weapons.
This subject was raised by Trump in a March 9 interview on Fox News. Trump stated: “We spend a lot of money on nuclear missiles, nuclear weapons. The level of destruction is beyond anything you can even imagine. It’s just bad that everybody has to spend all this money on something that, if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.”
This caught the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, by surprise, as indicated by her response: “Wow. I don’t know what to say to that.”
Trump continued: “When I listen to these climate lunatics and they talk about global warming and they say the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 300 years, and nobody ever talks about nuclear weapons or some of the other things, but the nuclear weapons in particular right now.” He added, “And they talk about the climate, and they talk about the dangers of the climate, but they don’t talk about the dangers of a nuclear weapon, which could happen tomorrow. They say, in 300 years—I watched Biden for years say the existential threat. He loved the term existential threat. [Biden said] Our greatest existential threat is from the climate. And I said, no—the greatest [threat] is sitting in shelves in various countries, called nuclear weapons, that are big monsters that can blow your heads off for miles and miles and miles. And they never mention that.”
While these moves have not yet assured the end of geopolitical provocations, coups, and wars, they represent a promising opening toward peace and cooperation. The opening is there for European nations to reject the “endless wars” which the U.S. has initiated since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and which the EU and NATO have joined in the last decades. Will the citizens of Europe demand that their leaders stop posturing as “defenders of democracy,” while in reality serving as barking Chihuahuas looking for handouts from the global military-industrial complex?
