OPINION: Mocked by the Illiberal Traitors of the West, What Can Europe Do?

Editor’s note: The following op-ed is an excerpt from Italian daily newspaper Il Foglio. The full version can be viewed here.

A gang of scoundrels, fraudsters, and snake oil salesmen disguised as statesmen and spokesmen for the people and peace has seized power in Washington by the most dangerous route: the ballot box. Now, as they work to dismantle the US Constitution and the separation of powers, as they rap the knuckles of allies with whom they share nearly 80 years of transatlantic history – victors together in the Cold War against the Soviet world – they intend to harass and humiliate a courageous people who have been fighting for three years for their survival, their political identity, and the defense of a piece of European sovereignty.

After three long winters in the cold, under threat from a power 10 times greater, these poorly armed Ukrainian Cossacks, constrained by debilitating anti-escalation red lines, have done more for Europe than Jean Monnet and the other EU founding fathers, infinitely more than the feckless participants of the Paris summit, who obsequiously ask this gang – gathered in Saudi Arabia with the tyrant of Moscow – for “security guarantees.” Let it be repeated: security guarantees.

After a ceasefire that will be dressed up as a just peace and the restoration of global prosperity – facilitated by the extraction of rare earths as compensation – toward a new world order marked by the convergence of an illiberal Western democracy and the great Eurasian autocracies.

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Let’s call things by their name. What remains to be seen is whether there will be a Ukrainian variant and a European variant of this inherently fragile and potentially irrelevant game of diverting and reversing the course of history.

In fact, the Ukrainian variant already exists. His name is Volodymyr Zelensky – the accidental president who refused to be evacuated into exile in the United States and instead asked for weapons and ammunition to defend his homeland. He did this precisely as the Russians – undeterred and fully aware of Europe’s vassalized and commodified condition – were on the road to Kyiv with their tanks, convicts, and mercenaries, aiming for a full sweep while leaving behind the massacres of Bucha and a capital plunged into darkness. The variant does exist:  a former comedian of Jewish stock, who has little inclination to perform a Yiddish dance before the superpowers gathered in Saudi Arabia.

Over time, Zelensky has become the symbol of an attempt at Western and European resurgence, later worn down and reduced to a kind of begging petulance by the sullen inefficacy of the West’s reluctant will to power. Now, he is being pushed to run for re-election as the warrior president who lost the fight and must step aside to make way for the usual puppets who have circled around the golden domes of “Little Russia” since the days of Maidan.

While Mohammed bin Salman welcomes the negotiator of Russia’s investment fund, ready for new deals at the expense of Ukrainians – and of the cowards who kept them on the front lines without giving them the means to win in their own defense – those same people, Europeans, now take pride in gathering for an informal and extraordinary summit, splitting into so-called “resisters” and “mediators.” As they abandon Eastern Europe, undermine the credibility of the EU and NATO, and prepare to serve as chorus of singers for the return of a demonic peace, they demand, of all things, security guarantees – like a collection of Chamberlain figurines.

The European variant is missing. Perhaps everyone thinks this is the time to avoid stirring the waters, to reflect with caution, to fix a mechanism that the capricious and narcissistic child – an embodiment of majority public opinion in America – has smashed to pieces. Perhaps many are uneasy about Vance and Peter Thiel, believing that the tech-optimists, in the style of Argentina’s Javier Milei, have the political muscle to impose themselves on a world that no longer recognizes itself – a pre-digital history made of lessons and books, treaties and embassies, old-school politics, imperial power elites, financial aristocracies, and pacts that foster social progress and the orderly integration of the masses into the state, generating and safeguarding liberal democratic institutions.

Instead, the bluff of Washington’s poker players and Moscow’s grim overlords must be called.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.