Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, known to history as Caligula, ruled as the Emperor of Rome from A.D. 37 to 41. For those who are unaware, Caligula, the great grandson of Rome’s first emperor, the brilliant Augustus Caesar, squandered the enormous wealth of the Roman State, declared himself to be a god, appointed his favorite racehorse to serve in the Roman Senate, and according to some sources, considered deifying the animal.
After a little less than four years in office, Caligula was removed. Rome’s citizens, as well as its legions, were spared the indignity of having to worship a dead horse. Americans and Europeans are not so lucky.
Determined to fight his proxy war with Russia to the finish, Biden is losing the fight in Ukraine and his favorite, deified horse, NATO, is on life support. The only things sinking faster than Biden’s approval ratings are the American and European economies.
Readers will recall that President Trump wanted to reduce European dependence on American military power—to make Europeans their own “first responders.” Biden reversed Trump’s policy and promised to reinvigorate NATO, in the words of French President Macron, the “the brain dead alliance.”
The problem for NATO is the economic hardship wrought by Biden’s sanctions against Moscow are threatening Europe with economic Armageddon. It’s bad enough when European bond and stock futures plunge and the euro dips below parity with the U.S. dollar, but when Paris, the city of light, shuts off its famous night lights to save energy, things are truly horrific.
Germany, the E.U.’s largest economy and NATO’s keystone state, is struggling. Chancellor Scholz is certainly sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, but not sympathetic enough to impose enormous hardships on the German people that may include industrial shutdowns, increased unemployment, and a critical shortage of energy to heat German homes and schools during the winter. To make matters worse, Berlin’s domestic problems with migrants and refugees only worsened with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Those who know the chancellor insist that Chancellor Scholz wants to contain the conflict in Ukraine and work for a ceasefire on terms that gain time for negotiation and compromise. Scholz has no interest in rearming Ukraine to make the rump Ukrainian State a permanent and unpredictable threat to Moscow. More important, Scholz does not regard negotiation with Moscow as a reenactment of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s trip to Munich in 1938.
Will Scholz recognize that Germany’s survival and prosperity is contingent on Berlin’s ability to act in its own interests? Certainly not if it acts as an enabler in supporting the U.S. globalist view in NATO. Scholz knows that if he leads the charge in Europe for a ceasefire in Ukraine over Biden’s objections, European support for NATO, and for Biden’s failing war with Russia, will erode quickly.
The question for Scholz is: Will he continue to support Washington’s policy of open-ended conflict with Moscow and risk wider war? Or will Chancellor Scholz risk going the way of Boris Johnson, and more recently, Mario Draghi, if Draghi follows through with his decision to resign as Prime Minister?
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