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October 9, 2024 - 7:00am
Nato will “disintegrate” if Ukraine loses its war with Russia, according to the French historian and public intellectual Emmanuel Todd. Speaking to Italian newspaper Corriere di Bologna this week, Todd claimed that “if Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans will last for a century”, but that if the US-backed Ukrainian effort fails, “Nato will disintegrate and Europe will be left free.”
The comments were made during a tour to promote the Italian edition of Todd’s book The Defeat of the West, in which the author attributes Western decline to the increased secularisation of Anglosphere society and argues that European powers are becoming increasingly dependent on the United States. As he sees it, the Ukraine war has only highlighted this wider malaise. In the interview with Corriere di Bologna, he claimed that “the Ukrainian army is in retreat, and it is a fact that it has difficulty recruiting soldiers”, adding that “Western economic sanctions have done more damage to the European economy than to the Russian one.”
Having stated at the beginning of last year that a third world war has already begun, Todd told the Italian newspaper that the outcome of the Ukraine war “will decide the fate of Europe”. He argued that Vladimir Putin “will have neither the means nor the desire to expand once the borders of pre-communist Russia are reconstituted”, and that the West “fantasises about the desire for Russian expansion in Europe”, when really this “is simply ridiculous for a serious historian”. He added: “The psychological shock that awaits Europeans will be to understand that Nato does not exist to protect us but to control us.”
Todd also claimed in the interview that America’s high command encouraged the escalation of the Ukraine war, with a view to the further “separation of Russia from Germany”. According to the French historian, “forcing the Russians to enter the war to prevent the de facto integration of Ukraine into Nato was, initially, a great diplomatic success for Washington.” But he believes that Germany and Russia will eventually repair their relations and “American control over Europe will be pulverised.”
More than two decades ago, Todd wrote After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, in which he argued that US economic, diplomatic and military hegemony was already on the downturn. In The Defeat of the West, published in French at the beginning of this year, the historian has suggested that “as its power diminishes worldwide, the American system ultimately ends up burdening its protectorates more and more, as they remain the last bases of its power.” Referring to the Ukraine war, he said in the new interview that “we Westerners provoked this war and lost it, and with this defeat we also lost our grip on the world.”
Asked by Corriere di Bologna whether he’d rather live in Russia than Western Europe, Todd responded: “The liberal oligarchy is not a practical problem for me […] Basically I am just a dissident member of the intellectual oligarchy.” While he said he would remain in France “as long as the regime is not fascist or racist”, he claimed he would not move to the US as the country is “descending into something worse than the liberal oligarchy”. That something worse, Todd argued, is “nihilism”.
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SubscribeIt seems like the understatement of the year to say that European countries are “becoming” dependent on the United States. Haven’t we been dependent on them since about 1945?
The difference between the French and the Britishin this regard is that the French were always appalled by American influence over postwar Europe whereas the British were fine with bathing in the secondhand imperial glow. The situation is only now becoming scary because the US is on the retreat as a world power and Europe isn’t in a condition to defend itself.
Whatever people may feel about Brexit and the pain that came with it, in the (near) future they may be very glad to find themselves removed from it.
Some people were glad enough at the time.
Very scary indeed, which is why, we see right across Europe, the electorate fleeing to the populist parties, there is much turmoil to come in Europe and the UK.
> Europe isn’t in a condition to defend itself.
Which armies is Europe threatened by? The Ukraine war shows clearly that it’s not Russia’s.
Good point. Something I’ve wondered as well. Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan might be under threat. But Russia, Iran and China are never going to attack Europe. They have no incentive, or ability to, do so.
That depends how you define “Europe”. I would say Russia is attacking a European nation as we speak.
That’s true. I was thinking more of a European Union or NATO country.
Really? What about Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia, or Moldova
Because Carlos is a Russian agent of influence, those don’t count.
Irt not counting….
I don’t think Russia would gain enough out of invading any of those countries to make it worth doing. Russia invaded Ukraine only after 8 years of a smoldering proxy war. Hardly evidence that Russia has expansionist tendencies.
Never and always are seldom true.
Russia’s army might have shown that it is far less to be feared than some might have thought, but Russia as a nation still needs to be feared (and it should certainly never be trusted).
And should not be permitted to gather resources violently by crimes of war, with their then having later more capacity for like violence.
It is so clear only the very, very evil and stupid could object to opposing Russia materially.
My current view is that the USSR was neither capable of, nor intended to pose a military threat to Western Europe. It was incapable of invading it and holding it. It did however indulge in subversion…but so did the West.
The Cold War was probably a huge waste of money which could have been better spent.
Yes it’s like “kkk Kenny’s come to kkk kill me”.
Certainly the European countries would do well to rearm….
Katherine Eyre´s comment is the most level-headed of all about this article. The Head of MI5 seems to believe that Russia is set on destabilizing UK. Our support for Ukraine has made UK an enemy of Russia. And Brexit has made UK more reliant on USA rather than EU. Like the other European nations, we should stop sheltering under the NATO/US umbrella, and look after our own security. Which means beefing up our armed forces.
Russian interests would absolutely love for European countries to be in mice bite-sized morsels. NATO is long in the tooth, the EU imperial bureaucrats are useless. New thinking is required that does not involve the emerging global empire. Sadly, a global empire may be inevitble.
Defend itself against what?
What concerns me is why is this whole article, along with his views not under the Malinformation category and not something the UnHerd could be held accountable for? I mean, everything he said is probably completely true, but it shows the whole narrative that has been forced upon us and continues to be forced upon us is male-bovine-excrement.
So, under the new EU censorship laws, how is this allowed? Or more so, do you think this kind of thing will be safe to share just because they are not doing anything to UnHerd today because of it? I can only assume that it’s being allowed because our masters want us to now hear it, and we are now at this point after nearly 1M Ukrainian men have died free to believe it. In that case, is UnHerd increasingly only of value to them for the times of allowed narrative shifts?
Also, how many women and children need to die in Gaza before we’re free to discuss the that that the Zionist expansion to Greater Israel under the excuse that it was all just self-defense probably was a bad thing?
“we are now at this point after nearly 1M Ukrainian men have died”
Are you genuinely so stupid as to believe that?
It’s a long time since i’ve read so many views by one person that make so much sense. What Todd is saying is what so many of us felt without being able to fully articulate. Either way the news is not good. I appreciate the book reviews and coverage of people like this we get on Unherd.
That’s because you are a conspiracy nut, with no clue how the world actually works. Unherds,core audience.
Really?
Let’s look at what Putin wanted before invasion of Ukraine.
Withdrawal if NATO from countries Russia previously occupied.
So saying that Russia just wants restoration of pre Soviet Empire is blatant lie.
Let’s remember that Baltic States were part of pre Soviet Russia.
So is he OK with Russia attacking and occupying Baltic States?
Looks that way as per this article.
Unless this historian doesn’t know the borders of pre Soviet Russia.
Some people on here think that defeat of Ukraine somehow makes Europe safer.
In my view Poland, Sweden and Finland go nuclear if USA can not be relied on to deliver security.
Obviously nobody would trust any Europen Security Framework guaranteed by France and Geemany.
Mr Todd is deluded if he thinks China’s proxy, Russia, will not continue to disrupt Europe, they have no choice, that is China’s plan.
Europe has only itself to blame for its massive decline, allowing itself to continue on the path to a socialist totalitarian state, under the guise of the EU project, will only confirm this decline.
I’m not sure that Russia is China’s proxy. I think Russia disrupts Europe for its own reasons.
Yeah sure, that’s why they blew up their own Nordstream gas pipeline to Germany, right?
This is what we all need to understand is that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
Oh, you are an idiot.
The borders of pre-communist Russia at various times included most of the territories of the following modern European countries: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, plus the Asian republics of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, with parts of the territories of the USA, China and Norway. While it is possible that Putin does not seriously aspire to recover Alaska, it is very far from ridiculous to suggest that he would like to regain the Baltic states or Svalbard.
Utter drivel IMO. Europe has many, many problems and none of those will be solved by blaming the U.S. or Russia.
Emmanuel Todd didn’t seem much driveling to me, certainly not utterly so. He didn’t really blame the US or Russia for Europe’s problems, but Europe. His point that NATO seems more about political control than military defense seems accurate.
I well remember when American diplomat in Ukraine Victoria Nuland showed her contempt for the European Union in a private telephone call in 2014 that was made public. “F— the EU”, I believe she said, as she took charge on the ground in Ukraine during the Maidan revolution.
Getting free from the American yoke would not solve Europe’s problems, but it would mean one less burden to bear. The demise of NATO would simply reflect the reality that is already here.
Who is going to keep Russia down if NATO collapses?
The same nations who are keeping Russia down now. Ukraine, for one. NATO isn’t helping Ukraine now, but it’s getting plenty of support. Russia has shown it is not capable of posing a threat to any other European countries even if it wanted to, which it doesn’t.
Actually without the cheap energy through the Nordstream pipeline the German economy is going under. It’s becoming deindustrialized. That’s a big deal. We’re all struggling across Europe to afford our energy bills in a shrinking economy.
The problem is that everything the West did only made Russia stronger, and sent them into the arms of China. Meanwhile have you seen the German economy? Its being deindustrialized. Cheap energy is what strong economies are made of. Europe is deep in debt, and meanwhile Russia has little debt and is experiencing an economic boom.
Are you sure russia is being ‘kept down’ at the moment?
The sanctions are hurting nato nations in Europe and not sure the situation on the ground in Ukraine is going the way the leaders in the west said it would.
Nato is not really on top of its game, something needs to change or they need to get much better at what they are supposed to be doing, quite quickly.
She didn’t ‘take charge on the ground’ at all. Having phone conversations, including about what you would like to occur, is very far from those things actually occuring or even having a plan to make them occur. I was living and working in central Kyiv, essentially nobody on the protestor side was in control, the anti-Yanukovich Ukrainian ‘leaders’ on the protest side were pretty unpopular with the Maidan protestors too.
I totally agree with you – the final paragraph says it all. Just pseudo-intellectual rubbish. Also, it should be remembered that France and French people have always had a problem with the USA. Remember that in 1968 all of the revolting students were waving copies of Mao’s little red book, which is as anti-American as you can get.
We should indeed be very careful with the USA in the future; it is clear that their situation is unstable and no-one is going to be interested in ‘saving’ Europe, whatever that means.
I mean, if you don’t go along your pipeline gets blown up, right?
1. It has become more evident than at anytime since WW2 that Europe is a vassal state of the US empire
2. It has also become more evident that Kissinger’s prophetic words were true – the greatest danger lies in bring an ally of the US.
Therein lies Europe’s conundrum..
Point 2 is (as so often) out of context. He was saying he didn’t want/the US shouldn’t allow that to happen.
YouTube has started cancelling prominent content creators who criticise US neocon foreign policy. The latest is a well-respected American female academic, who has literally been banned from the platform have produced opinion pieces for years on it. The last time I heard that happening was to a gender-critical radical philosopher who was a detransitioner and former Berkeley student of Judith Butler.
Could you please identify who the American female academic is who has been banned?
I really do wish that Russia is defeated. I just don’t know what that looks like. Can Ukraine win? Win what? March into the Kremlin? Occupy Russia? Entirely dismantle the Russian military? Maybe they can get the Russians to just stop? What? forever? or just until they re-arm, re-group ,get a better plan and come back. Or more likely, just set about undermining and buggering up Ukraine at every turn even by terrorism (oh yes they would). Genuine question here. What does Ukraine “not losing”. look like?
I guess to a realist security and peace on its borders with the loss of Crimea and Donbas (Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts); to an optimist re-taking Donbas (though even the most optimistic would give up on Crimea, and I can’t actually see why Ukraine would want a hostile, ruined – it didn’t look great before the war, I’ve been btw – Donbas back). Remember the initial Russian aim was Kyiv and perhaps all the rest of Ukraine east of the Dniepr river. In this war, I doubt anyone will decisively win or lose, it’s already been a disaster for both sides in many ways.
I wasn’t aware that Europe needs its freedom. I’m delighted that, at long last, I may count myself a victim.
The EU electorate is descending into populist politics in desperation to recover their freedoms from netzero et al.
The extremists are gaining ground right across Europe and you are unaware?
The European nations are (for the most part) still democracies though.
I think you mean the moderates
The piece suggests that Europe needs freedom from America. I disagree.
The people who are pro-Net Zero are the extremists.
The US, with many pushing hard against what most of Europe passively accepts, social erasure via unregulated immigration, is not the nihilist this otherwise interesting thinker discusses.
There was no prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. Whatever Putin motive’s it was not that.
Good piece.
The whole point of NATO is to keep Russia down. It seems that a significant part of that nowadays is to ensure that Germany and Russia are not on good terms. I’m sure the US realises that. The worst possible scenario would be for Germany to be freely buying, and dependent on, Russian gas, something that looked likely until Nordstream had the good fortune to explode.
Wasn’t Donald Trump prescient when he chastised the Germans in Brussels and then at the UN in 2018 for putting their neck in Russia’s noose by being dependent on their natural gas. And he was laughed at for it.
Maybe. The problem is that when 99% of things you say are stupid, people tend to miss the odd occasion when you say something sensible.
I would say it was 99% stupid blowing up a gas pipeline that fed the industrial base of Germany, when Germany would surely have been a good place to increase weapons manufacturing and also its economy props up most of the eurozone.
Making manufacturing more expensive when you have a war to fight is very, very stupid.
Not stupid for the US military industrial complex though. They are more than happy to sell arms to the eurozone. In fact the fewer competitors the better.
Which even then, if it was part of some grand pro American geopolitical strategy, might be acceptable on some level, (as in at least there is logic at work), but the us mic can’t keep up with ammunition production for it’s own proxy war. It’s absolutely insane. Ukraine has been short of various things throughout the war because production levels of all the things the us mic could have made money on, are not high enough in some instances.
What the MIC does at the moment I have no idea – it is sh*t at all things military, not very industrial or industrious and incapable of coping with complexity, as far as I can tell anyway.
Russia is but China’s proxy, they will not have a choice, they will depend on and take orders from China.
Perhaps you can call Putin, and put that proposition to him.
The job of NATO was “to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down”.
And the Mackinder policy has for over a century been to drive a solid wedge between Russia and Germany, to prevent a combination of German industry with Russian raw materials.
Well, the policy has been wildly successful – Germany has been destroyed as an industrial power. Even if they combine with Russia now, it won’t be the scary juggernaut Mackinder conjured up.
Of course, our brilliant Neocon strategist have achieved a combination of Russian raw materials and Chinese industry and a destruction of Europe. Whereas a combination of German industry and Russian raw materials would have drawn Russia closer into Europe, where Russia wanted to be, and provided a counterbalance to China, the destruction of Germany means the Europe too is destroyed, since the whole premise of the EU was based on German industrial strength. Even if Europe uncritically hews to the US, Europe will be so weak it will be irrelevant and an additional drain on the US.
“The job of NATO was “to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down”.”
And because of how and to the distressingly mild degree America is distinctive from the rest of Western civilization, it is quite neccessary for America to stay “in” — because the more and more swiftly Orientalizing, de-Enlightening, dirigisting Europe has no idea how to govern itself without war, war, war.
How is it that USA caused deindustralization of Germany?
What about Germany pursuing crazy net zero policies and shutting down nuclear power stations to burn lignite now?
Did USA tell them to do it?
What about mass immigration of savages into Germany?
Now Germany is trying to force other countries to take immigrants.
I don’t recall Merkel asking other countries about her daft idea.
Perhaps Germany didn’t think America would go bat sh*t crazy and get involved in a proxy war with Russia?
Isn’t this neoclassical economics business from America in the first place? Cheap labour feeding massive corporate enterprise? Sounds very American to me.
What about net zero? Isn’t America also pushing that one? I think that comes from the un dictatorship, not a unique policy to Germany.
You are right that the Greens, led by Robert Habeck, were instrumental in killing German industry.
Of course, the Rand Corporation’s policy prescriptions expressly referred to the Greens as useful tools for this purpose.
But what truly destroyed any ability to reverse was the US’ destruction of Nordstream.
And if you are in any doubt about the US’ agency in this respect, I would direct you to a publication from 1987, “Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis”. Note the author.
div > p:nth-of-type(5) > a”>https://www.amazon.com/Ally-Versus-America-Siberian-Pipeline/dp/0275924106/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2IM9OV69R2UY9&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._WK-5BocKV5E91ZSnarkaFqmqAsmZTKSkGwbqKJOTbi3248BdJsedzPpYcnSsIM9d2z_WXzpSma5b6azLBwKIllDPiY5pXwdDsO1aCtQYepToQ7F4zddggbpR54B_FV8OBgQ8aMFJ-lmM3Ivl9G8O3hmhwB9cysxISvqTK2ZSbyGMF4it2FLZnGHj0Yp8iBe5JcbpNLIWkRYhgUBis-F_P1k5aHAQQIj8ZSjFfox0c4.6z2ovCoLQrbdw-5BeuVasIj-k1OFKMWix3acR83jRrI&dib_tag=se&keywords=antony+blinken&qid=1728498148&sprefix=antony+blinken%2Caps%2C432&sr=8-1
I think the Rand Corporation document which set out that policy was said by it to be a fabrication (by the Russians no doubt…who else would be blamed?) but it always seemed fairly genuine to me.
The document set out rational objectives from the USA’s viewpoint, and how they were to be achieved, in order for the USA to remain the “world hegemon”.
And those are precisely the actions which have been done. Look at what people do, not what they say.
Thanks for pointing out the Blinken book, which I shall now read.
I admit I haven’t read the book, though I remember the time very well.
And of course, Helmut Schmidt was regime-changed.
Worthless articles, I’ve noticed, seed worthless commentary. What you’d expect when expressions of opinion pass for making observations. If the point is to be social, to just talk, it is remarkable how unsociable the conversation becomes where there is least to say.
There are imbeciles who think that would be a good result of Putin winning.
Of course Putin, ie Russia will win. As Mearsheimer, among others, pointed out it was always going to.
As good result would have been not getting into a position where that would happen. In short, best not to poke the Bear.
This chap has been an apologist for Putin for some time. Blaming the West for Putin’s invasion of another Country not unique to him of course. It’s the same basic fallacy and distorted thinking.
Probably reads too much social media too and hence thinks US a worse place to live than Russia.
Twaddle, but an audience for this sort of confirmatory bias nonsense and he’s got a living to make.
That his view differs from yours doesn’t make him a Putin “apologist”.
My view accords with Tod generally but I think the USA will become isolationist. It quite simply doesn’t need Europe.
Europe on the other hand has become infantilised under the warm cosy blanket of US protection. How it will grow up is the real question.