The Looming Storm of European War

Reflections on the Coming Storm in Europe

Looming Storm: War Escalating in Europe

I have been listening with dismay to the crescendo of drums of war coming from Greater Europe, John Darwin’s term from After Tamerlane for the troubled ménage a trois of Europe (including the splitter British Isles), North America, and Russia.

In Europe, on 18 and 19 June the European Council met with President Zelenskyy and stated its “firm and unwavering support for Ukraine.” This show of support for Europe’s largest army is cheered by shrill voices, such as Kaja Kallas and Boris Pistorious, Germany’s Defence Minister. Russia has become the enemy Other that galvanizes the shadow emotions of the modern West. It serves a useful function for a leadership class, unable to marshal opinion through reason. They seek to weaken Russia, even if Ukraine does not win. War with Russia is the new Northern Crusade.

Though the most militant European leaders have felt for the clifftop edges of this deadly abyss for months if not years, the actual language of the European Council communiqué is more cautious. It speaks of earnest diplomacy and together with reports of clumsy attempts to establish back channels to Moscow, may be interpreted as the assertion of a quiet diplomatic faction in Europe. This as yet leaderless grouping, in the words of the Council resolutions, “underlines the EU’s readiness to step up its engagement in that context in accordance with the Union’s aim to promote peace, as enshrined in the Treaties.” The context that this memory of the European peace project refers to is the “diplomatic efforts . . . to engage in meaningful negotiations towards a just and lasting peace.”

However, the European peacemakers, unlike the warmongers, as yet do not pose for photo ops.

The E5 Group are the Fervid Five of the European War Faction

Some diplomatic spirits may be willing, but as yet their institutional flesh is weak. Their diplomacy is strangled by the muscular frenzy of a strong war faction in Europe, closely tied to the Atlantic Bunker State, as symbolised by the partnership between Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski and US American anti-Russia propagandist, Anne Applebaum. On 24 June, the leaders of Fervid Five (France, Germany, Italy, Poland and United Kingdom) met in Berlin the US American Political Commissar, also known as he Secretary General of NATO. They reiterated “their commitment to deepening NATO’s partnership with Ukraine, bringing Ukraine closer to the Alliance and recognizing the vital contribution Ukraine makes to Euro-Atlantic security.” This militant faction spoke in favour of war against the quibbling diplomats in the European Council. Behind closed doors, some militant European officials seem to be planning Operation Unthinkable again, planning another Napoleonic march on Moscow. Tarik Cyril Amar suspects key military and political officials in Germany are advocating war with Russia. It is deeply alarming. An imaginary New Grand Armée of drones is surely doomed to repeat history as farce and corruption.

In Britain, despite the political and social malaises of that imperial husk, hatred of Russia and Russians is ubiquitous, and manifests in poisonous belligerent rhetoric by the toy soldiers of the London clubs, ghoulish gutter press headlines, academic complicity in intelligence operations, and sabre-rattling boys’ own adventures such as ‘seizing’ Russian tankers for the photo op. It is not only an elite phenomenon regrettably, but a widely validated social antipathy, driven by blood-curdling in-group vs out-group thinking. For example, on 24 June The Telegraph published an opinion piece titled, “Ordinary Russians can’t escape the blame for Putin’s wars of aggression.” The war crime of collective punishment has infected every room of the Bunker State.

In North America, the source of the war infection, some pretences of being a ‘mediator’ have been discarded. Trump told the G7 he backed Ukraine. The Ukrainian press claim Trump signalled to Zelenskyy that the ‘Peace President’ was just fine with the intensification of NATO-Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Marco Rubio confirmed the USA was not a mediator and was on Ukraine’s side. The US military is practising drone attacks and developing plans to convert civilian industrial production to manufacture more weapons to throw against the old enemy, the Heartland of Eurasia. Across the USA’s political spectrum, the failure of the Iran War is not used to dismantle the USA’s global military presence, but rather to argue the other side could deploy violence against ‘our adversaries’ more effectively. Those Russophobe ghouls, Timothy Snyder and Jake Sullivan, recently got together in a podcast, to celebrate Trump’s failure in Iran, to make the case for ‘freedom', to crow how American public support for the Ukraine was holding up. They argued that Europe and Ukraine, by sustaining the drone war against Russia, will ‘help’ the USA (until the Democrats get back in and go full bore on the Northern Crusade). This common viewpoint in the transatlantic elite believes that the war can go on for a long time because Ukraine does not have to win. It just has to not lose, or at least not at an inconvenient time in the USA American political cycle.

And in the cheap seats of the geopolitics podcast universe, in both the right ‘anti-globalist’ and USA-oriented ‘anti-imperialist’ variants, the old habits of US American strategic culture prevail. Europe and its “stupid leaders” are to blame for the war, not the USA. The USA remains the fantasy peacemaker. These commentators routinely restate the self-flattering fantasy that the USA is the ‘Pacifier of Europe’, that stops wars of ‘ancient hatreds’ breaking out, and that ‘pulled Europe’s chestnuts out of the fire twice’ in the world wars of the twentieth century. Europe cannot run a war by committee, they say (what, pray tell is a War Cabinet?). Europeans are petty children and driving the war with their Russophobia. It is all a stale repeat of the traditional US American calumnies of Europeans as soft, lazy, authoritarian aristocrats who cannot compete with real macho men of the Western frontier. And really, they say, Mr Trump and Mr Vance really do, somewhere deep in their malevolent triad hearts, want peace. It is all a pathetic evasion of the USA’s primary culpability for this tragic war, whose root cause is the USA empire’s aggression and expansion since 1989. It is also all just fan service for the social media market. I guess it pays well.

Commentators like Glenn Diesen, whom I used to respect, have become unwatchable with his constant whining about Europe, his deflections of criticisms of the USA, and his evasion of his own misjudgements of Trump and the US American state. Ray McGovern seems to think, like Bush Senior and Dick Cheney, it is a good thing that Russia wants to keep the USA military occupation of Europe going, and that USA and Russian interests “coincide” in Ukraine (see from 1:50:00 of this talk with Jamarl Thomas). Regrettably too, the infection of US American strategic culture has spread to Russian commentary through figures like Karaganov and disaffected ex-USA military technicians, recycled as ‘geopolitical analysts’, like Mark Sleboda or Stanislav Krapivnik. Their shtick is ‘black-pill’ historical fallacies, endless Europe-bashing, and men’s locker talk about military prowess. Some postures are dangerous, like Krapivnik’s recent talk of using a nuclear weapon on Ukraine. I think it is time many in the ‘alt-media’ took a good, hard look at themselves. But that is a talk for another day.

Many in Russia too are still seduced by this love of the American spirit, as seen by imbecilic fawning of the oligarch negotiator to the Trumps, Kirill Dmitriev, the invitation of clown figures like Candace Owens and Andrew Tate to the recent St Petersburg International Economic Forum, or many of Peter Lavelle and George Szamuely’s discussions about the mythic hopes for Trump lost legacy on the Gaggle. This new conservative American infatuation is a variant of the late 1980s/early 1990s love of America that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the social disaster of Russia’s 1990s. But the penny does appear to have finally dropped in Russian decision-making quarters that the USA is not Russia’s friend.

Statements by President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, principal Presidential aide Ushakov, and Deputy Foreign Minister Rybakov this week all suggest the Russian Cabinet or Security Council has dismissed prospects of a peace partnership with the USA. They seem to recognise that the USA is a ruthless enemy, and the ‘Spirit of Anchorage’, the limerent romance of a peace with Trump touted after the 2025 Alaska meeting, was a deceit and a self-delusion. War is coming, Putin warned his military. It will be war with the West, that is Europe and North America (not forgetting Canada’s shameful militancy in the Ukraine fight).

The Storm is Coming. It may no longer be a social media stand with campaign or a siege or sanctions or a regional war far far away. It may be a ‘Great Power War’ that will ravage people and devastate places dear and close to us all. And yes, my North American readers, that may include you, too. It will harm us all and scar our memories for decades. The storm may pass far from shore, but it is time to shelter where you can. We may need to prepare mentally for how to endure a global catastrophe.

I have avoided commenting much on the NATO-Ukraine-Russia war - and the general topic of war - for more than six months now. By the end of last year, I was a bit emotionally exhausted by investing so much time and effort into the topic over the last few years. But that may be about to change; or events may overwhelm my voice. The news of the last week or so has left ambiguous signals and a lot of white noise. But I am deeply concerned and wanted to share some of my recent reflections on the topic.

I have been reading Odd Arne Westad, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from History which compares the looming great power wars of today with the onset of World War One. I will return to this book, and my earlier discussions of comparisons with World War One, in the weeks to come. I am not convinced the World War One comparison, at least as perceived within the US American academy really holds. But there is a crucial warning in Westad’s book that you might share within your worlds.

“We also have to realize that behaviour and rhetoric are essential elements of peace. War came in the summer of 1914 because of the all-encompassing fear that had gripped many Great Power leaders, looking for signs that they would be attacked. Much of that fear, which turned so debilitating in efforts to stop the war, was based on what opposing leaders had said in the past, publicly and privately, and what they believed they knew about the war plans of others. Patience and even guarantees, features that are often central to preventing the outbreak of conflict, had no place in such a scenario. Today we must prepare to do better. The alternative, which we must also behold, is war on a scale that the vast majority of us have never experienced.”

Odd Arne Westad, The Coming Storm

Regrettably, we are not doing better. We are doing worse including aerial invasions of Moscow and bullying threats to drop nuclear weapons or to end whole civilizations tonight.

I have also read Richard Sakwa, The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire. It is a sobering read with a difficult to grasp but more optimistic vision of a new world beckoning through the blood, ruins, smoke and ashes of the NATO-Ukraine-Russia war.

“The inevitable conclusion is that only some sort of North Eurasian Confederation can resolve the region’s security dilemmas. This vision of functionalist mega-regionalism would encompass all the states of Europe, including Central Asia, the South Caucasus, the Balkans, and Western Europe. It would provide a broader repertoire of political, economic, security and cultural choices and interactions than the stark binary on offer since 1991: the West or Russia. The confederation would possibly include the EU as an institution, and even NATO as a reconfigured European security structure aligned with the United States. It would be post-American but not anti-American.”

Sakwa, The Russo-Ukrainian War, p. 356

I agree that such a dismantling of “Atlantic power system, as constituted in the Political West” is a necessary path to a “culture of comity and cooperation” within the UN charter system. I would only add that another peace project is required: the disarming and reestablishment under peaceful, neutral constitutions of that belligerent monster and rogue state, the USA.

I have shared my thoughts on this situation in some recent videos and interviews, and one or two videos from last year that deserve more attention than they received at the time.

On 24 June I discussed the coming storm with Jamarl Thomas between 8:20 and 57:20 of this live stream

In this video, I discussed how the Iran War has exposed weaknesses in how we talk about war and peace and multipolarity.

And in this video from December 2025, I shared my thoughts on a 7-point peace plan for Ukraine, based on my analysis of this event as a five-state war. It draws inspiration from the Peace of Westphalia and the work of TFF Transnational Foundation.

Finally, two quick publishing notes.

• I will delay by a couple of weeks my planned Long Read on Orders of War and decolonisation, including discussing Egor Kotkin’s thoughts on World War Three talk.

• The July Book of the Month is Mark B. Smith, Exit Stalin: the Soviet Union as a Civilization, 1953-1991. It is uncannily timely and profoundly relevant to today’s crises.

Thanks for reading

Jeff

Note: Updated to remove redundant book club details 14 July 2026