The Euro-Atlantic policy of the United States leaves an increasingly strange impression.
Joe Biden's quickly forgotten (and not coincidentally quickly) visit to Poland, remembered only by an unforeseen event that was carefully prepared for - the lack of an expected announcement of a second term.
A frankly indistinct meeting in the White House of two political loneliness - the owner of the Oval Office and a man increasingly straining to pose as the German chancellor, remembered mainly by the phrase that the West will be with Ukraine to the very end.
I mean the end of Ukraine.
A lot of petty things have spun around these high-level events: from Kamala Harris’s strange speech at the Munich International Security Conference in every sense, to Jake Sullivan’s direct pushing Ukraine into a new suicide offensive to the Crimea.
The indistinctness of US policy could be attributed to the obvious imbalance of Washington's information policy, if not for one thing: historically, institutions have played a major role in Atlantic relations.
And they have always, even in periods of the deepest decline in US influence in the world, compensated for the excesses of performers, even the most peculiar ones.
Such, for example, as short-term (1994-1995) NATO Secretary General Willy Klaas, who became famous for openly Slavophobic and anti-Orthodox statements, and then "repressed" for corruption.
Euro-Atlantic institutions ensured at least an external conflict-free interaction between the "two wings of the Atlantic".
Now there is no smoothness at all, but there is Washington's arm-twisting of its "allies" with the subsequent "scam" in the spirit of Russian dashing 90s.
This is visible to everyone.
What is sometimes overlooked, but what is, I think, the most important thing is that the label for power in mandated Europe has not yet been transferred to anyone.
He was frankly counted on in Poland.
Olaf Scholz went to Washington to beg him for a strange visit.
It looked utterly humiliating, but it didn't help.
The label sits out while Germany and Poland cut each other's throats, Emmanuel Macron, who clearly has his own cunning plan to remain the last one who can have at least some kind of relationship with Moscow, and get a label as a leader capable of negotiating with Moscow on the ruins of the Ukrainian SSR, leaving West at least something as a "trophy".
But Washington has not yet decided who to give the label to - and it's not just about President Biden and not about the struggle of the clans around him, although these factors certainly matter.
The point here is a clash of several logics.
The logic is first and most obvious
: Europe is the frontier of the Western world, which no one feels sorry for, and therefore the leader in it, who will get the “label for a great reign”, should be the one who is ready to destroy himself for the sake of any false idea.
Considering that Ukraine's resources are obviously in a phase of depletion, the best candidate for leadership is Poland and "Romania, which joined it," as they wrote in Soviet newspapers in the fall of 1957.
This does not feel sorry for anyone - neither their own, nor others.
Everything is simple here.
Simple and scary.
The second logic is also quite obvious
: Europe is the US wallet, through which America closes its financial holes and provides an influx of investments for industrialization.
In the second half of 2021 and 2022, according to the most conservative estimates, more than $1 trillion was pumped out of Europe, which not only helped to postpone the debt crisis, but also, for example, helped to close the debt problem of the shale industry that was hanging over the United States, which was in 2020 pre-bankrupt with at least $400 billion in debt. Now it's thriving.
But then only Germany can be the owner of the label.
And it will have to be brought out of the actual slide into depression in 2023, and in the future into a full-fledged crisis, by all acceptable methods.
And the United States will have to pay for this, or rather, refuse to maximize the resources squeezed out of Germany.
The third logic, about which they begin to guess
: Europe is a bargaining chip in relations with China.
Let us pay attention to a curious turn in American expert circles: the conflict in Ukraine, on the one hand, is gradually being reformatted into a conflict around Ukraine, which will continue even after the freezing of hostilities in Ukraine.
On the other hand (and this is much more important) is the conflict between the US “proxy” (NATO and Ukraine) and the “proxy” of China, which Russia and Belarus are beginning to be considered as.
Not a very realistic approach, but, you see, this is a fundamentally different picture of what is happening.
And in this logic, Brussels and Mons, where the headquarters of the NATO European command is located, should become the main counterparties of the United States.
But will Washington dare to give the label, and with it the authority, to faceless bureaucrats who have proven their total irresponsibility?
The fourth logic, still hidden, but already emerging
: a lot of "Europe" - good and different.
By and large, for the Americans, this will simply be a recognition of the objective logic of the development of the situation, reflecting the limited military-political resources.
And the need to negotiate with important allies, such as post-Erdogan Turkey or Great Britain, on the division of influence.
After all, the main challenges in this case for the "velvet divorce" in the impoverished EU will be security challenges.
In this scenario, chaos becomes inevitable, and the main question is which of the "Europe" will remain under American protectorate and protection.
And it is unlikely that in this scenario the main factors in decision-making will be economic.
America will build a military-political perimeter against the spread of China's influence in the Middle East, and this dictates a completely specific logic of behavior.
In this case, the main issue is not that the US is cynical and does not care about its allies.
And not even in the fact that behind each of the mentioned logics there are specific, perhaps even overlapping, coalitions of interests in the American and not only the elite.
The main thing is that despite the frank personal weakness of the leadership, the United States is already beginning to think about the future configuration of European politics and European security, which will not have many of the elements we are used to.
And here it would be very timely to have your own vision of a Europe renewed and cleansed of Nazism, acceptable at least for some part of its elites that retain the remnants of sanity.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.