Western Europe has long existed in a bubble of safety devoid of any real connection to the past outside of a few major events that rarely go further back than Hitler. For Europe, America mostly defended her lands, so the cost of defending one’s home from all enemies foreign and domestic was lost on a people that have been protected by America since the end of World War Two.
Russia has delivered to Europe a lesson in forgetting what that cost really is. Europe must now come to terms with the fact that they have no real military deterrence without the United States. Their green virtue signalling policies of relying on dirty energy from foreign powers have produced disastrous dependencies on energy from the very threat that has popped the bubble of safety they’ve long been living inside.
The invasion of Ukraine has increased Europe’s desire for alliances and security. Finland and Sweden are on a fast track to become new members of NATO. The German center-left coalition government have announced the intention to build a new robust military that many predict can quickly become the most powerful military in Europe. Additionally, the German Prime Minister, Klaus Sholz, told NATO that the Germans would increase their contribution to NATO.
Meanwhile the EU is making plans to also increase their military strength. With Ukraine seeking membership to the EU, Britain agreeing to a military partnership, and Ireland expanding its military involvement, the once diminishing European Union is looking attractive once again.
Almost every European nation has a green party within it, a party that primarily identifies as being committed to taking radical steps to save the planet from man-made climate change. But yet, the cost of Green Puritanism is increasing, as Europe comes to terms with what we like to call, the “blood and bone cost of the reality of power.”
Many wealthy nations virtue signal green by preventing non-green energy development at home while making their nation-states dependent on foreign-purchased non-green energy to meet their actual daily energy needs.
While much of Europe is now confronting the cost of going green, thanks to Russia, both for the Ukraine invasion and the natural gas pipeline shut-down threat, The Netherlands is coming to terms with another hard reality, when policy confronts real human action. The consequences have been ongoing protests, freedom convoys, police shootings, disruptions, and refusals to even meet with the government under the unrealistic terms given to the farmers now fighting for their very lives.
When you enact policies that destroy your internal food production at a time when food shortages are spreading throughout the globe, your government is about to face the cost of ignoring the facts. This is the blood and bone cost of the reality of power that the “experts” of the Netherlands hardly ever took into consideration.
There are protests now forming across Europe, including everything from resisting censorship, to taxes, to academic policy making with no regard for the people it harms. There are new parties forming and radical parties rising.
Europe is set to become a cauldron of competing radical powers, some doubling down even more on leftist suicide, and others promising to restore order, security, and common-sense morality.
We have great hope for our nation here in America to survive this liminal time, a time between what was and what will next be, but Europe seems set for a generation of turmoil and upheaval, terrorism and continued diminishment of quality of life. They won’t be alone, but their geographical and historical context leads us to believe they will be one of the hardest hit by the continued upheavals to come.
