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Vance Criticizes Europe In Fierce Speech
The 2007 speech by Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference was one for the ages.
Concepts mentioned therein are only now getting acknowledged:
It is well known that international security comprises much more than issues relating to military and political stability. It involves the stability of the global economy, overcoming poverty, economic security and developing a dialogue between civilisations.
This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that “security for one is security for all”.
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The unipolar world that had been proposed after the Cold War did not take place either.
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It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.
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There is no reason to doubt that the economic potential of the new centres of global economic growth will inevitably be converted into political influence and will strengthen multipolarity.
Eighteen years later the new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged the fact of a multipolar world. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demolished any hope for Ukraine to enter NATO. Donald Trump, by calling President Putin, accepted the concept of a shared if not yet indivisible security. In 2007 Putin also spoke out against the abuse of so called NGOs to manipulate foreign countries' internal policies. Trump has now stopped USAID and NED from financing these.
Eighteen years on the core concepts of Putin's speech have thus been accepted.
Yesterday another speech at the Munich Security Conference was given by U.S. Vice-President JD Vance (video, transcript). It will also echo for years to come:
Vance opened by saying that the biggest threat to Europe comes not from Russia or China or other external threats. It comes from within by the antidemocratic instincts and behavior of those in power, who trample free speech in the name of fighting ‘disinformation’ and show no respect for political opposition.
While I agree with Vance on this I wonder if he can acknowledge his own U.S. made hypocrisy. It were not the Europeans who initiated the campaign against 'disinformation'. It was the U.S. who came up with this concept and which has been using its 'soft power' to push censorship into Europe.
The German Defense Minister immediately reinforced Vance's critique of too little tolerance for political speech in Europe by calling his speech unacceptable:
"Democracy was called into question by the US Vice President for the whole of Europe earlier," German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said from the main stage at the conference. "He speaks of the annihilation of democracy. And if I have understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regions… that is not acceptable."
This critique by Vance is also shallow:
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears.
For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything—from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship—is billed as a defense of democracy.
But when we see European courts canceling elections, and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.
As Arnaud Bertrand points out:
[O]n Romania and much of Vance's criticism directed at Europe, the U.S. was right there alongside Europe acting jointly, and often even guiding Europe's actions. Specifically on Romania for instance, I believe that the US State Department was first in issuing a statement on December 4th (https://2021-2025.state.gov/statement-on-romanias-presidential-elections/) expressing its concern about "Russian involvement in malign cyber activity designed to influence the integrity of the Romanian electoral process" which led to the elections being cancelled two days later (and which, it was later proven, was completely false: it turned out that this "malign cyber activity" were paid for by the very Romanian party in power that cancelled the elections!). It's only after that State Department statement that the Europeans followed the U.S.'s lead.
So it's a bit rich, even very rich, for Vance, less than 2 months afterwards, to lecture Europeans on this without as much as acknowledging the U.S.'s own role in a lot of it.
Vance also criticized mass immigration to Europe. But he is neglecting the fact that the streams of Afghan, Syrian and Ukrainian refugees are a consequence of wars that the U.S. has caused and is waging. He laments the de-industrialization of Germany but ignores the U.S. bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines which is the greatest cause of it.
Vance calls for more democracy in Europe but at the same time is actively meddling in it. By pushing nationalist parties against European institution he is endangering peace in Europe.
The speech is a wake up call for Europeans to fight for their own sovereignty. As such it may have good impact:
After the dark days of the Biden repressions, the reliance of Power on corrupt intelligence agencies and the weaponization of the Justice Department, it was remarkable to be treated to such brave words from a top American official in defense of the people against the authoritarian rulers in Brussels, in Berlin, in Paris.
It is hard to see how the usurper Ursula van der Leyen and her whole team of people-haters will be able to hold onto power in these conditions.
Vance's speech may also be seen as the watershed where the U.S. divorces from Europe. There is a hidden danger in this:
The Europeanisation of Nato, framed as a necessity following US withdrawal, has accelerated the continent’s militarisation and its leaders’ demonisation of Russia, perpetuating the very conditions that caused the conflict in Ukraine in the first place. Instead of using this moment to engage in diplomacy, European leaders view the US retreat as a reason to escalate militarily. In this sense, Washington’s decoupling from Europe is at odds with Trump’s stated aim of achieving peace in Ukraine.
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Ironically, the US’s attempt to distance itself from European security affairs may ultimately pull it back into an even larger conflict — one that it will have far less control over.
It seems unfair to insist that the USA did this to us, that we are this authoritarian because the USA made us do it, which is how I’m reading your post.
America is not as much monolithic as Europe is. In Europe, with few exceptions, governments are formed from two nearly identical blocks, centre-right and centre-left, both neoliberal, pro-immigration, pro-sexual degeneracy, pro-green policies, in summary, leftish (not real Left).
America has a real division between conservatives and liberals. What you and Arnaud Bertrand are blaming on America, was actually the deeds of American liberals, they started this estrangulation of freedoms, not freedom-loving Americans, and here in Europe both political blocks were happy to oblige leading to things like the Romanian shenanigan and the efforts to isolate AfD.
America is under new management, and Vance was honest and straighforward, as well as eloquent, about how America is re-defined. Not fair to blame Vance for freedom-curtailing work by Obama’s and Biden’s administrations, which Europe was just too happy to follow.
Instead of using this moment to engage in diplomacy, European leaders view the US retreat as a reason to escalate militarily.
That’s not it. Europe is just being called to spend much more in American weapons to help America resolve the very big issue of trade deficits, and Europeans chiefs seem to be ready to do that, as they should. Europe will not militarize, Europe will just have to buy much more from America, and what does America produce? Well, Europe has to buy much more of all that, even if they don’t need it or have other choices where to buy.
I think Trump will have a successful presidency so after him there will be Vance for 8 yr, so Europe has to understand that it is highly likely facing 12 yr of this new America. In that time frame, trade deficits need to be resolved to the benefit of America.
Of course, this will be to the detriment of social services, pensions, health, etc, of European nations to a great extent, but eurochiefs can manage that, the euro populace at large will have to accept these new realities.
Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Feb 15 2025 13:45 utc | 24
All of a sudden, after J.D.Vance´s speech at MSC, the European right and far-right, often during these past years taking near connections to the remaining genuine European left which dared to oposse the freedom´s and humans killing process started with “the pandemic”, and were even calling for a united front against the madness of “wokeism” and the war in Ukraine, when they have seen Trump at power, and the harsh discourse of his officials in Europe, they all have started calling “to stop the left”…
Too much for eliminating “cordon sanitaires”…to which also aluded Vance…
Apart from this detail, what called my attention from J.D.Vance´s speech at MSC is that he called the forces of the right and far-righ in Europe “identitaries”….
Well, who in Europe could have anything against defending its own identity? Not the genuine workers of Europe, nor the genuine left…by the way…since the legion of immigrants with which some NGOs have gained fortunes from the USAID and the Soros organization act precisely as reserve army to take down our salaries and labor rights….
But let´s recall that before the Maidan happened, they also called themselves “identitaries” all the Ukrainian extrem-right, like the National Front of Ukraine lead by infamous Biletsky and ideologue Olena Semenyaka, which then gave place to the Azov Movement…of Azovstal fight fame…
These radical Ukrainian groups were in full contact through the past decade with so called “identitaries” in the US…
There are papers all over there, even by West Point Military Academy´s counterterrorism courses, describing these groups as extremists, like they had described Al Qaeda, ISIS , HTS, and all those varied franchises they have used all these decades as proxy armies around the world to advance the plundering of riches and resources and the cut of liberties and democratic rights which the financial transnartional elites need in thsi pahse of the world-system…
Recall here now that we have a government of Al Qaeda in Syria, in which all the so called “international community” agrees, including Russia…( well, after all, what it is being defended here is the capitslsit system, and if for that it is necessary to place plain terrorists in power, let it be…for the sake of the market and the reset…)
I am wondering what is in the menu for a ruined Europe in which already some months ago the French Ecomony Minister, Le Maire, was calling for the take over of the taxpayers bank deposits to be fed to the MIC…
We know that the “Dragui Plan” has been thoroughly prepared by the international transnational financial elites ( of which Dragui is but one peon…), who are above Biden and Trump, for the “great plundering” of Europe ( in lack of that of Russia now that they have demonstrated able to defend themselves….) which is what they understand for “Big Reset” of capitalism in crisis which can not be made but through violence and terror…for that plundering, before was needed to ruin the continent in its Western part…so that the satraps in charge in every country, ( which Schwab bragged have been all prepared and placed by them there…) can sell that the price required is the end of the wellfare state and “democratic liberties”…
Lets´be clear here, the capitalist world-system is in its final phase, caos and sudden changes is what define this phase, hecne the Us circus,…it is not possible that the same elites who brought the nazis to power in Ukraine, who brought the “pandemic”, and who blew up of the Nord Stream pipelines, are coming now to save us…the same happened with nazi Germany….they resisted to the last minute to open a new front in the West, as asked for so many times by the Sovietics, and then run to save what of nazi elite they could to build the EU, that is, the next Reich…which has brought us to this sad and dangerosu hour…
Ursula von der Leyen is US elites agent..all these grimace at the pulbic meetings, refusing of shaking hands, pulling out their hair and tearing down their clothes is not but theatrics, of the bad quality, so that the masses swallow there are two sides of this…There are no, have it for sure…
I wonder whether what the far-right now refers to by “stopping the left”, just a week before German elections, ( when there is a party of the genuine left also in competition gaining intention of vote along AfD…) when they know for sure that what was in charge in the US before Trump, and is currently in charge in Europe, is in any way any “left”, ( since they have never defended anytime any labour right, but in the contrary….) but pure neoliberalism in its financial globalist phase, directed at extracting increasing ammounts of money from the workers and taxpayers to the accounts of especulators and parasites above, I wonder, then, whether what they mean is, really, “stopping the masses” from organizing and protesting…
And I wonder whether what TPTB need now in Europe is the old rancid fascism with which to get the masses opressed enough so that they can not move while they are plundered in the name of Wall Street and The City of London…again..and again…then wash and repeat…
Beware, people of the world…the communists also marched in Germany along the nazis for a while before being exterminated once the nazis in charge with the facilitation of the German, European and Transatlantic elites…
People in Ukraine have shockingly awake to this reality these past days..and start acting in total desperation…
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/138915
The same fate awaits to all of us in Europe if we do not organize, unite and form a front in defense of our rights and freedoms and a future in peace and real progress, not what is sold as such by Soros, Clinton, Obama and the like,
Vance, Trump, and all the same Sillicon Valley wannabe feudal lords ( who opressed us for the past four years and which changed sides so fast …), will not guarantee that for us…
Beware!!!!
What is in play here is the enternaintment of the masses with all this circus until the circle of IA control is closed…. when it will be almost imposible to survive if you do not submit, like we have witnessed in Gaza…That was shown and televised to cause fear and terror in people who are thinking of resisting this state of affairs around tthe globe, otherwise we would had not been able to watch…In this, they are all unite, all elites in the world, religious of this or that sect of Islam or Christianity, as the atent expectator can test…
No wonder the IA Summit in France, where som many Arab people was among the public, took place almost simultaneously with the MSC…
We are late, since we have altruistically dedicated the past decade to defend Russia and the Russian people ( which was no dishonest thing to do…), thinking that ours was granted, but, will Russia offer us a hand when being opressed and probably killed by our governments? The experience in Syria does not offer much hope…
For what is worth, amongst the Putin negotiation team to the US, goes Naryshkin ( and with great cryteria since skulduggery will be the order of the day from the US part, as usual…) and also Kyril Dimitriev, the Davos guy in Russia…
They will mend their issues, business will return to usual, and will be us who will be offered the bill..as planned and already stated..
The Ukrainian mafia of Zelensky complains they have not been offered a seat at the negotiation table…no, you, organized thieves and traffickers of everything, no, who has no representation at that table is the European people, and we know, as was crystal clear made known by Blinken at that international meeting, by the side of 360º coming out Analena Baerbock, “when you are not at the table, you are in the menu”…
Take that into your brains comrades, with fire if needed, start movilizing and getting out of TV and social networks all day and go meet peers in the streets and organize for your survival, or we are doomed like the Palestinian and Syrian peoples…
Yes, it will be laborious, apart from working exhausting duties at work, ( which is the plan of the elites for extermination at job before retirement and degrading of quality of job for deindustrialization and elimination of public services in our countries..), but this is the price for being politically and socially negligent for so many decades and leave all the work in the hands of governments and “euro-socialists” which came out of the Suresnes Congress…
Our ancestors also had such arduous work before them when they had to fight fascism with in their face and with their nude hands…we left their hard work and inheritance be waisted…they must be revolving in their graves now..
Posted by: Ghost of Mozgovoy | Feb 15 2025 15:07 utc | 64
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