Europe’s Leaders Dutifully Follow Trump and Netanyahu into the Abyss

Barely any of the major British news outlets reported on the protest, although French media did, and the day, so powerful to actually experience firsthand, otherwise passed by without much heed. The press had other priorities. Members of an activist group called Palestine Action had, the day before the protest, managed to break into a Royal Air Force base and vandalize two British warplanes by spraying them in blood-red paint. That was the real story. Nobody was killed and nobody was hurt. A couple of aircraft will need to be cleaned up, and that’s about it. But elements of the press reported this as an “attack” on a British military base, and the government opted to respond as if it had been truly so. It has decided to designate Palestine Action, an explicitly non-violent group, as a terror organization. As the Irish author Sally Rooney pointed out in The Guardian, Israeli forces, on the very same day as the base break-in, murdered 23 more people seeking aid in Gaza. But it is not they, according to the British government, who inflict terror. It is a few spray-painters. The absurdity of this terrorism accusation would beggar belief, had the government not already done the same thing to a pro-Palestinian rapper last month. These are silly, scary times.

The British state is an increasingly authoritarian entity. The country has been sliding along this trajectory for a long time now, but the war on Gaza has sped up the process. The government, be it under the Tories or Labour, has persistently bent over backwards to support Israel, despite the public’s disgust. Britain offers kind words and hard weapons. It spies on Gaza, and it is not yet clear if it had anything to do with the bombing campaign against Iran. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, refuses to say so one way or the other. Protestors are arrested, phony terrorism charges are cooked up, and the will of the public is ignored. Welfare for disabled people is cut, while more money for war is spent. The consequences for all of this will be felt at the next election, when a roundly despised Labour party’s probable collapse will see the far-right Reform party sweep to power. The government is, at this stage, undermining its own domestic interests.

Why does it do this? Why is the British government backing Israel to the extent that its own hopes of reelection are being damaged? There are many answers and theories one could offer here, but one motivation, surely, is simply that the United States wishes it to be so. That is the raison d’être of the British government and the British military: to serve the interests of the United States. It is the true obligation of Keir Starmer’s leadership. When Donald Trump orders him to jump, it is his duty to smile and enquire quite how high sire wishes.

Britain’s prime minister, while perhaps a distinctly pathetic figure, is hardly alone as he grovels at the feet of Trump. European leaders across the board have, over the last week, been belting out the usual chorus of “Israel has a right to self-defense,” while calling for Iran to return to a negotiating table it was actively approaching when Israel blew the fucking thing up. Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas—all of these lofty leaders of the Old Continent have bowed, not only to the United States, but to Israel itself, echoing whatever message it wishes to toss into the world. It would, on the surface, appear to be simple cowardice on their part, a fear of displeasing the Americans, but the German chancellor Friedrich Merz has actually implied something much deeper is going on. By illegally attacking Iran, Israel is, in Merz’s own words, just doing “the dirty work” of the West as a whole. The destruction of Iran is, at least according to this logic, a unifying, civilizational project for the West.

These European leaders are so deeply Atlanticist in their outlook that they have absorbed the U.S. establishment’s strangest, most depraved paranoias and neuroses. The U.S. has long sought the downfall of the Iranian menace, so they, too, must seek the same thing, without ever pausing for a moment to think through what that might actually mean for their own countries and continent. Europe is already creaking under the weight of the high energy costs and inflation sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its societies are still convulsing from the shock of the Syrian refugee crisis. It fears Islamist terror attacks. So what do its leaders do? They support an Israeli regime determined to create the conditions that will make all of these things worse. War with Iran means higher oil prices, disrupted trade routes, the creation of more refugees, and increased radicalization. And, for good measure, maybe it’ll actually make nuclear proliferation more likely, too.

Europe’s hollow and obsequious leaders have surrendered their ability to ever again appeal to notions of international law and human rights—all for the sake of pleasing a United States that, under Trump, nakedly despises them. They are vassals without integrity or vision, sacrificing their own interests and purported values for the sake of an Atlanticist ideology they cannot imagine doing without. Let’s hope a ceasefire can be implemented to stop this war with Iran. But whatever happens from here, norms have been irreparably broken, and they are not going to be reestablished any time soon. Europe enthusiastically cheered this situation on, and its own decline will accelerate because of it.