The Vassal Continent In Terminal Decline.

## The Vassal Continent Thesis: Europe’s Drift from Market Community to Geopolitical Bloc What emerges from the conversation is a stark interpretation of contemporary Europe: the European Union, once conceived primarily as a market-building project designed to bind former adversaries into a shared economic and legal order, is increasingly behaving like an imperial center—centralized, coercive, and protective of elite privilege. The discussion frames this shift not as an accidental byproduct of external threats, but as the predictable outcome of captured institutions, transnational networks of power, and a conscious repurposing of the EU into a tool of great-power politics. Viewed through that lens, the continent looks less like a zone of cooperative sovereignty and more like a patchwork of client states orbiting a kleptocratic periphery and a dominant transatlantic core. ## Kakistocracy and the Capture of Leadership A recurring theme in the exchange is the quality—and origin—of political leadership in Europe and its wider neighborhood. The claim is not merely that some leaders are inept or self-interested; rather, the structure of postwar institutions and post-Cold War networks has made it likely that the most conformist, most networked, and often most compromised figures rise to prominence. The conversation labels this phenomenon kakistocracy: governance by the least suitable, whose incentives align more with elite networks and corporate backers than with domestic majorities. These leaders are embedded in overlapping ecosystems of parties, foundations, think tanks, corporations, and international organizations. They circulate through a revolving door between public office and private power, thereby internalizing a worldview that privileges transatlantic alignment and market integration above local democratic preferences, social cohesion, or neutral strategic postures. When leadership selection is shaped by such networks, foreign policy becomes a function of membership and loyalty in elite epistemic communities rather than a reflection of national interest or democratic deliberation. ## Epistemic Communities, Revolving Doors, and the New Clientelism The conversation highlights how institutions like political foundations, fellowship programs, and elite conferences manufacture consensus. What began after World War II as a reconstruction of European civil society—exchanges to reintegrate Germany, to foster cooperation—has matured into a dense web that reproduces similar career paths, shared diagnoses, and convergent policy prescriptions across countries. When young politicians, business executives, and civil servants are socialized through the same networks, divergent national outlooks shrink and a common script takes hold: Europe as a geostrategic bloc, supportive of Western security priorities. This is reinforced by private capital and fashionable governance projects. Financial firms, multinational consultancies, and philanthropic foundations place alumni into cabinets, boards, and party leadership. The result is a hybrid clientelism: elites are not simply appointed by states; they are cultivated by cross-border institutions and then rewarded with positions that cement a single orientation. That consolidation explains why policies often diverge sharply from popular preferences and why dissenting domestic voices are marginalized or portrayed as suspect. ## From Economic Community to Geopolitical Project Another central argument in the conversation is chronological: the EU’s mission has shifted. For decades the European Economic Community—and later the EU—centered on tariff reduction, regulatory harmonization, and market expansion. Membership offered concrete economic benefits that small states coveted: access to markets, investment flows, and regulatory stability. Over roughly the last decade, however, the EU has increasingly declared itself a geopolitical actor. The claim is that Brussels’ leadership consciously weaponized accession criteria and conditionality to extend political control over aspiring members. Under a geopoliticized paradigm, accession is no longer a primarily economic bargain but an instrument of external alignment. The conversation argues that demands for judicial reform, anti-corruption measures, and media pluralism have been repurposed to produce political outcomes favorable to the bloc’s strategic posture. Where the accession process once functioned as an inducement, it now operates also as a means of pressure: compliance is demanded not only to secure trade benefits but to ensure that political elites in neighboring states act as faithful proxies in broader confrontations. ## Case Studies: Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia The most vivid material in the discussion comes from recent history and current crises. Ukraine is presented as a paradigmatic example of instrumentalized nation-building: a post-Soviet polity with a messy mix of identities that, over time and particularly after 2014, was transformed into the frontline of a geopolitical contest. The conversation contends that Western support for certain Ukrainian leaderships—figures whose careers and fortunes are intertwined with transatlantic networks—has turned Kyiv into a sacrificial pawn, offering strategic utility to alliance politics at the expense of domestic stability and the well-being of citizens. Georgia is used to show how accession pressure can resemble coercion. The current tensions between Tbilisi and Brussels are portrayed as the product of EU demands that, rather than fostering convergence, incentivize regime change or at least unduly punish governments attempting a cautious balancing act. For small states that seek the economic benefits of membership but simultaneously want to avoid being drawn into a direct military flashpoint, this squeeze leaves few good options. The fear is that Brussels’ insistence on conformity creates conditions where domestic politics are destabilized—sometimes through protests, sometimes through external funding of opposition networks—echoing Cold War-era tactics but now carried out by democratic powers. Armenia’s recent internal crackdown receives attention as evidence of the broader corrosive dynamic. The conversation highlights how domestic debates and political pluralism in smaller states are becoming securitized: opposition movements are criminalized, clerical leaders prosecuted, and civil society squeezed in the name of stability or anti-corruption. While the motives and actors vary by case, the pattern—that external alignment pressures combine with domestic elites’ insecurity to erode pluralistic politics—repeats across the European neighborhood. ## Neutrality Under Siege: Strategic Options for Small States What emerges from the exchange is not just a catalogue of complaints but a strategic worry: neutrality and hedging are harder to maintain when larger actors treat neighbor-states as either assets to be recruited or liabilities to be disciplined. For states like Georgia, Armenia, and historically Finland, neutrality was not mere moral posturing but a pragmatic approach to survival in a region dominated by competing great powers. The conversation argues that the contemporary EU model—geopolitical, prescriptive, and centrally governed—reduces the space for such pragmatic hedging. This has practical consequences. First, escalating pressure can radicalize societies, pushing political actors toward more extreme positions rather than moderation. Second, when accession criteria become instruments of political vetting, they empower domestic actors who are more willing to sacrifice national autonomy for access to external patronage. Third, the securitization of internal dissent delegitimizes pluralism and makes democratic backsliding more likely—ironically under the banner of “protecting” democratic norms. In short, the internationalization of domestic politics produces a feedback loop that narrows the options of small sta

The Vassal Continent In Terminal Decline The further the EU develops, the more it starts acting and behaving like the Soviet Empire. Kleptocratic elites from the center (Ursula) and the peripheries (K Kallas) amass power and wealth while cracking down on dissent internally and fostering instability and client states abroad. The big difference of course being that the EU itself is also nothing but a client of the real center of power that sits on the other side of the Atlantic. The sociological structures this creates for the EU-Russian periphery like Georgia, Armenia, and (the lost cause of) Ukraine is disastrous. #M2 Hello everybody, Pascal here from Neutrality Studies, and today is Sunday, July 20th. I thought maybe we could just reflect for 20-25 minutes about a few of the things that happened this week and what gets me thinking about how the international system works in these very sad times. You know, what we are seeing is escalation toward Russia, escalation in West Asia and the Middle East, and we're seeing preparations for war also in the Pacific. So all the signs of our time are pointing toward more and more violence in international relations. My question is, of course, why do we see that? Optimally, how would we stop it? But before we can have a proper analysis of what the individual elements of this escalation are, we need to understand them to get to a better situation. This week, or rather, in the last, let's say, 10 days or so, has been quite interesting to me because of a couple of guests I've had. So let me maybe point this out: on my channel in the last week, I had, I think, two people who I would particularly want to mention. The first one is the last video on the channel with Ambassador Sandor Kushai, former Hungarian ambassador to China and Hungarian ambassador to Malaysia. He's retired now, and he told me that one of the main problems with the way the European Union works is that diplomacy depends very much on the political goals, of course, of the current leadership, but not so much on the leadership of the individual nation-states, rather on the preferences of the entire bloc. And the bloc itself is currently going through major leadership problems. I'll come back to this leadership issue. This then impacts the way that diplomats on the ground can do their work. So he brings it back to a clear problem of leadership. And that's something that I've seen on this channel and in discussions with my interviewees time and time again: that currently, the European Union is caught in a kakistocracy trap, where only the worst and most corruptible individuals manage to float to the top and then follow policies that are neither in the national interest nor in the European interest, but solely in their very narrow-minded personal interest. And, of course, the best example of that is Volodymyr Zelensky. Although he's not part of the European Union nor of NATO, he's an expression of that kind of leadership—a person whose political and private fate are tied one hundred percent to the future of the transatlantic network that he's also representing. These people then take decisions that are directly, diametrically -- 1 of 9 -- opposed to the interests of the majorities of their populations, but they find enough support in the West, and also in the media, and also in the power centers—of course, Washington first and foremost, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London, and so on, downstream. And what we've seen in the Ukraine war—the way that Ukraine has been instrumentalized to be a spear tip for the NATO alliance against Russia—is the transformation of Ukraine from basically an imperfect post-Soviet nation, a former Soviet republic, into a proper nation-state. It went through nation-building and state-building efforts in the '90s and 2000s, transforming from that, having an independent position, also officially a neutral position, and being aware that it needed to be careful about how it moved in international relations, into a tool of great power politics. That took time, but it also required a transformation of its leadership, and we've seen that, of course. And the most blatant moment of leadership transformation was, of course, 2014—the Maidan, the coup—when a neutralist government was replaced through brute force with a European, Western- willing leadership. And that leadership also became completely and utterly dependent. And it's not just Mr. Zelensky; there are others, right, who all benefit downstream from the transatlantic networks and ties that they are in personally, while basically selling out the majority of their population and still even using the narrative of defending the Ukrainian nation and so on. But in fact, what they're doing is making all but sure that Ukraine is being sacrificed as a lamb on the altar of neoconservative geostrategic objectives. So this is one piece in the puzzle: the way that this kakistocratic oligarchy is in power and is linked up to the transatlantic networks. But then if you combine that with the views and the analysis of Nel Bonilla down here, who I had on my channel at the beginning of the week—she's a young researcher, and she took the pain of going through all of the think tanks, and not just think tanks but networks, transatlantic networks that were created post-Second World War with, you know, on the one hand, a very laudable goal: the reintegration of Europe, even Nazi Germany—former Nazi Germany, now, you know, the new Germany—and I must say, you know, the split-up, the occupied Germany, and the reintegration of that society into not just the West but, you know, again, society, international society at large. There were all of these think tanks and institutions created, including the institutions that are very close to the centers of power, which includes the German parties, with things like the German Marshall Fund, with things like the Konrad Adenauer Foundation—of course, the Adenauer Foundation being basically the think tank arm of the CDU—but all of these institutions then created schemes and opportunities for young and aspiring leaders to basically go to the United States or exchange with the British and with the French, and you have all of these friendship agreements. But one thing that this did downstream is also create networks of dependence and epistemic communities that think alike. And the further we progress through the Cold War and into the '90s, the more ideologically captive these systems became, in trying to really grab young people, foster them, and then make sure that they get good positions in leadership—not just in politics but also in business. And the number one example of that is, of course, the World Economic Forum, with Klaus Schwab even openly bragging about the way that the World Economic Forum is able to reach -- 2 of 9 -- directly into the cabinets of Europe and North America, and having some of their young leaders sitting in every cabinet. This is not a nefarious theory about how some people manipulate international relations. It's really just how these networks tend to work, and it's not just one—there are several of them. What they do is create an epistemic community; they create a bubble of more or less like-minded people who then have interests that are probably divorced from the interests of the majority of their populations. And you create these Zelensky types, the Merz type—Friedrich Merz is, of course, a wonderful example. "BlackRock Merz," as Alexander Christoforou keeps calling him, who was part of this BlackRock community of financiers that channel geopolitical and economic business projects, also in Europe but worldwide, through massive funding. So it's not just the think tanks and the parties and so on; it is also the business community, it is also the financial communities, right, that work in these networks and meet every once in a while and then give each other positions. That's why we call this thing a revolving door, or also, you know, just when we refer to the corruption of a system—how it is always the same people who then get shuffled from one position to another, even if it's not in the same industry. That is fostered and created, but it's fostered and created by the system. So this is, I think, a very important point. And if you have time, I recommend watching the talk with Nel Bonilla, since she explains it even more deeply. This is an important issue, right? That we have captured elites. They are not necessarily the worst of the worst; they're just mentally in a different place from where most people are, who then end up voting for them or being part of them—because, again, we don't vote for all of them. Some of them are just installed and are there by the graces of the power of capitalism. Because if we have no say over the CEOs and so on of these private corporations, right, that's capitalism that just installs people there, and then the networks that they're in determine whether or not they might find a next opportunity. And you see that, of course, also with the politicians, right, who sometimes are elected and then sometimes get placed in a central bank or become CEOs of large corporations. They sit on the boards of some of these corporations. Now, we need to combine this also with the analysis of what these people are trying to do. Let's leave the realm of economics, think tanks, and NGOs for a moment and just go to the political sphere, especially the European Union and the way that the EU, ever since Ursula von der Leyen came to power—I think in 2019—and announced that her administration, what's it called, the EU, the European Union, not the cabinet, that her era would be one of geopolitics. Ever since she said that, the EU actually set out to do more direct control of and over these non-EU states that are aspiring to become EU member states. And you can see how the EU has been putting pressure mostly on them. At the beginning, with the first European Economic Community and then the EU, the idea for third states wanting to join the bloc was that the EU has certain minimum standards, especially democratic and good governance standards, and countries need to adjust to those. Once they manage to tick off the checklist— -- 3 of 9 -- balance of power internally, independence of the judiciary, due process, having a legal system, this and that—then you would qualify and be integrated. Now, we've seen in the case of Turkey already, which applied to the bloc in the 1970s, that talk of necessary adjustments was always, in the background, a possibility to keep certain states out, right? There would just never be a moment when these states would clear all of the hurdles, whereas you have other countries that are still in somewhat dubious circumstances and might not have cleared the whole checklist, who then are integrated and carried forward. But what we are seeing now, since a couple of years ago, is that the EU is using this talk of what states have to do in order to pressure them also to implement non-democratic reforms at home. And my favorite example here really is what's happening to Georgia, because the pressure over the last couple of years to regime-change Georgia and to get rid of the popularly and publicly elected Georgian Dream government—which wants, for all intents and purposes, to tread a middle ground, a middle ground between Russia and the West, not becoming a second front for the West's war against Russia, while also not cuddling up with Russia—right? Lasha Kasaradze on this channel has said several times, look, we have enough problems with the Russians. We know the problems with the Russians. The Russians, despite the fact that we have moments of good relations, we have also had times of bad relations, and nobody needs to teach the Georgians how to dislike Russia. Georgians understand the good parts and the bad parts about the Russians. But what the Georgians don't want to do is to become a second Ukraine, right? And so what we must not do as Geo