At a recent European Union summit, the gynecologist-in-chief Frau Leyen demanded €800 billion for a four-year plan to rearm the EU. Just €150 billion of this sum would come from freshly minted eurobonds; the remaining €650 billion to be scrounged up by EU member states by driving up their already very high sovereign debt. To make the process of scrounging easier, the 3% budget deficit limit rule would be waived. All of these funds would be directed toward rearmament, and at a breakneck pace.

The rearmament plan comes with some small print: weapons manufacturers would only be allowed to participate after signing a special security pact with the European Commission. This little poison pill was inserted by the self-important Gallic rooster Emmanual Macron in hopes that this will direct some of the funds in the general direction of French arms industry. Should any arms manufacturers agree to this rather preposterous security pact, there are other stipulations: they would get no more than a third of the total, since 65% of it has to be spent on the European military-industrial complex, which has to spontaneously spring into existence and start churning out modern weapons systems on a closed-cycle, highly localized manufacturing model. Special mention was given to Norway (as Europe’s armory) and, of all places, the Ukraine (as Europe’s… money laundry?).

Let us back up a bit and state the obvious: the lady-gynecologist’s war plan is preposterous. Babies can be made in nine months; high-tech weapons systems, with the underlying industrial capacity, take decades to develop. None of that is in place; nor will it be in four years. But there is more: as a matter of US government policy, no European weapons manufacturer can put much of anything together without US-sourced parts. This is by design: at the conclusion of World War II, the people behind the Marshall Plan thought it best to keep Europe’s weapons manufacturers on a short leash. The vaunted “NATO standards”, to which all European militaries must adhere, require that two-thirds of all weapons purchases have to be from US defense contractors while the remaining third must be generously sprinkled with US-made parts.

Thus it is clear that there won’t be €800 billion worth of EU-sourced weapons springing into existence over the next four years. And this, it turns out, is quite all right, because neither Frau Leyen, nor anyone else in the EU, knows what these weapons would be used for. There is no mention at all of the armies that would be equipped with these weapons. First of all, would these be national armies or EU-wide formations? National armies may be thinkable in the case of some of the larger nations (Germany, France and Italy, essentially) but when it comes to various Latvias and Slovenias there aren’t enough soldiers to make the exercise worthwhile.

If this is to be an EU-wide effort, in parallel or as a replacement for NATO, then it would probably be a good idea to at least double the €800 billion price tag to include all of the support, logistics, reconnaissance, intelligence, command and control, yadda-yadda, that such a large, sprawling, amorphous organization would entail. NATO can function at all because it is essentially US forces for the main course plus some European bruschetta, tapas and canapés. The sort of meal that could be concocted with the US taken out would be more of a light snack. Keep in mind that it has been eighty years since the last time Europe fought a war (which it lost) and ever since then the European military wagon has been hitched to the American warhorse. In turn, during this 80-year interbellum, that warhorse, in spite of receiving most plentiful fodder, has lost all wars with the exception of its invasion of the tiny island of Grenada during Regan’s reign.

Never mind what armies these weapons might be used for; armed force structure is, after all, a consequence of military doctrine. One doesn’t just blithely decide that we will have a sort of defense salad bar with a continental army or two, an expeditionary force, a tray of special forces and an assortment of air defenses as toppings. What is the European Union paying to achieve in terms of military strategy? Is it to attack Russia? Then their problem is not military but psychiatric. Russia is quite able to not just defeat but to completely destroy whatever bits of Europe decide to seriously threaten its security. Unlike Europe, Russia does have a military doctrine and follows it to the letter.

Is Europe’s intent to defend itself against Russian attack? Then why is the plan to rearm in four years rather than four hundred or four thousand? Does Russia need Europe? No, Russia has already gotten everything it needs out of Europe. Over the past three years, the Russians have learned how to make excellent sausages and cheeses and Russian wineries are doing extremely well while manufactured products that Europe once supplied now come from China or elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Russia is happy to let Europe stew in its own juices and not ever bother it again provided it remains mostly harmless, as it is now.

The reason for the four year time frame has nothing to do with any actual military threat and is rather simple: it is the amount of time left before the designated end of Trump’s reign, after which, Frau Leyen et al. must be thinking, it will be possible to re-insert into the White House some new autopen-wielding cadaver or the mentally retarded horse-woman or some other imbecile and the globalist looting spree would resume. Of course, by then, interest payments on US national debt might very well eat up the rest of the US national budget, meaning that there won’t be anything left to loot, but we shouldn’t expect a retired lady-gynecologist to understand such matters.

But let us, for the moment, assume that attacking Russia is the actual plan in spite of what this implies in terms of clinical psychiatry. Would Europe be able to repeat Marshall Hermann Göring’s four-year rearmament plan? During that time, Göring did succeed in rearming Wehrmacht, Lüftwaffe and Kriegsmarine to about the 50% level. Then Nazi Germany ran out of gold and had to rush into war, which it lost. To achieve even this, the Nazis had to reorganize Europe into a work camp, impose numerous restrictions on private business, outlaw trade unions, put a freeze on debt service and dividend payments, and generally act like a bunch of crazed Nazis. Is Germany capable of going full-on Nazi again? This seems quite doubtful, although Bundeskanzler Scholz plus Bundeskanzler Merz add up to “Schmerz”, which means “pain”, and in the case of both of these characters it is clear that the blood of their Nazi grandfathers has boiled their brains. Still, the Germans of Scholz and Merz are not the Germans of Hitler or of Keiser Wilhelm or of Bismarck but are made of much softer, squishier stuff.

What seems even more doubtful is the willingness or the ability of the European states to pony up the €800 billion Frau Leyen demanded. The trend is the opposite. Of the €40 billion announced aid for Kiev for this year, to compensate for American reticence in continuing to finance the Ukrainian fiasco, only €5 billion remained after protests from France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Hungary. How, under such circumstances, can they be prevailed upon to provide 200 times that for Frau Leyen’s militaristic fantasies? And if that were to somehow magically happen, wouldn’t Donald Trump furrow an angry brow and cancel the entire proceedings by threatening to shut down and dismantle NATO?

Luckily, none of this is actually relevant. There is something tawdry and tiresomely repetitive hiding behind the curtain of European faux-militarism: grift. The European elite has become addicted to free American money laundered via the Ukraine. The scheme worked like a charm: various European dignitaries would take the slow night train to Kiev and come back with millions of dollars in cash in their diplomatic baggage. But the era of zombie-president Biden and his thieving minions is now over and Trump won’t be paying for any more of this rot; therefore, the Europeans have to find a way to keep the party going without US help — by borrowing the money to throw at the Kiev regime.

Not only is this necessary for keeping the kickbacks and the hush money flowing, but it is also essential to keep Zelensky et al. from blackmailing the entire European leadership. There must be a little black book in a drawer in Zelensky’s desk, which contains the names of European officials with amounts of the laundered sums written next to them, and wouldn’t Donald Trump and Elon Musk like to find out what’s in it? Then they could start criminal proceedings, freeze bank accounts and claw back some of the money that Zelensky has laundered. Trump would very much like to deliver his classic line — “You’re fired!” — to almost the entire EU leadership (Orbán, Fico and perhaps Meloni excepted) but he can’t do that directly. But if it becomes clear that they are all shameless corruptionistas who absconded with US taxpayer funds, then getting rid of them would become more or less automatic.

If this were to happen, Europe would be in for some massive reorganization. The European Union and NATO would vanish; Germany might split into pro-AfD and anti-AfD Länder, the dividing line conveniently running along the Cold War BRD/DDR boundary; and quite a few newly minted European leaders would make a beeline to Moscow to see what deals they could get to jump-start their economies with reasonably priced energy, fertilizer and much else.

But there would also be a rather serious problem: Europe would need to prepare for war with… the Ukraine. You see, Zelensky, the bad boy that he is, is only part of the problem. The rest of the problem consists of the Nazi battalions, nurtured and coddled by the Americans (as they had done with Al Qaeda/ISIS). These miscreants have been conditioned for endless war and think in just two categories: “peremoha” (victory) and “zrada” (betrayal). Since the Russians have denied them victory, they naturally looked for who betrayed them, and instantly discovered that it was the Americans (Trump is already being vilified on Ukrainian propaganda channels) and, by extension, the Europeans. The Americans are hard to get at, hiding behind a big ocean, but the Europeans are right there — a short drive away, soft and squishy, still fairly rich and, rather importantly, already swamped with Ukrainian runaways.

Once it becomes clear that the Ukraine has lost its Russian (Novorussian and Malorussian) territories, as well as American support, central authority will crumble. The remaining territory of the former Ukraine will be gripped by lawlessness with elements of civil war. There are historical precedents for this: for long periods of time, parts of what is for now Ukrainian territory was called “The Ruin” or “The Wild Field.” Eventually, the process of self-destruction runs its course and Russia gradually restores order to these territories. But this process could easily take several decades.

In the meantime, what better way to finance a Ukrainian civil war than by robbing little defenseless European countries? The pattern has already been established and the Europeans are lining up to be fleeced. Recall that these Nazi brigades, although attritted by the Russians to a considerable extent, are still organized, very well armed and sufficiently disciplined to wreak havoc. The survivors in these brigades are brainwashed, practiced mass murderers who believe in Ukraine über alles. They are, in their current reincarnation, America’s creation, but they will be Europe’s nightmare.