Vice President Vance excoriated the Europeans in his keynote speech at last week’s Munich Security Conference, which can be read in full here. He accused the ruling liberal-globalist elite of becoming the greatest threat to their own civilization after straying from its traditional values and massively importing migrants. Vance made it clear that Trump 2.0 won’t support them against their own people, especially the populist-nationalists who they’re actively canceling, censoring, and persecuting.
He very strongly implied that the US wants these same like-minded movements to rise to power across Europe, which would amount to a continent-wide revolution of the sort that Putin was the first to predict back in June 2022 while speaking at that year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. His speech can be read in full here, but what follows is the pertinent excerpt that’s since been vindicated by none other than the new American Vice President nearly three years after being mocked by Western leaders:
“A direct result of the European politicians’ actions and events this year will be the further growth of inequality in these countries, which will, in turn, split their societies still more, and the point at issue is not only the well-being but also the value orientation of various groups in these societies. Indeed, these differences are being suppressed and swept under the rug.
Frankly, the democratic procedures and elections in Europe and the forces that come to power look like a front, because almost identical political parties come and go, while deep down things remain the same. The real interests of people and national businesses are being pushed further and further to the periphery.
Such a disconnect from reality and the demands of society will inevitably lead to a surge in populism and extremist and radical movements, major socioeconomic changes, degradation and a change of elites in the short term. As you can see, traditional parties lose all the time. New entities are coming to the surface, but they have little chance for survival if they are not much different from the existing ones.”
The populist-nationalists that have since risen all across Europe wouldn’t have anywhere near the support that they do had it not been for the ruling liberal-globalist elite’s counterproductive compliance with the US’ anti-Russian sanctions. The massive import of civilizationally dissimilar immigrants, many of whom refuse to assimilate and integrate into European society, played a major role as well but it was the economic consequences of these sanctions that led to their surge in popularity over the past three years.
The public at large threw their weight behind populist-nationalists as a result of these socio-cultural (migrant-related) and especially economic (sanctions-related) changes, the latter of which have accelerated since 2022 unlike the former that peaked in 2015 and has since mostly stabilized. Forecasting the further worsening of these economic trends amidst the then-newly imposed sanctions and prognosticating their political consequences, Putin soon thereafter elaborated on his prediction.
He did this at the ceremony welcoming four former Ukrainian regions to Russia on 30 September 2022. His full speech can be read here and was analyzed here at the time, which focused on the last two-thirds of his speech about the global struggle for democracy against the Western elite, both across the world and within the West itself. There’s too much to cite so readers are encouraged to at least read through the analysis if they don’t have the time to read through the full speech, but here are a few highlights:
“People cannot be fed with printed dollars and euros…That is why politicians in Europe have to convince their fellow citizens to eat less, take a shower less often and dress warmer at home. And those who start asking fair questions like ‘Why is that, in fact?’ are immediately declared enemies, extremists and radicals. They point back at Russia and say: that is the source of all your troubles. More lies.
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Let me repeat that the dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a ‘religion in reverse’ – pure Satanism.
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As I have already said, we have many like-minded people in Europe and the United States, and we feel and see their support. An essentially emancipatory, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is taking shape in the most diverse countries and societies. Its power will only grow with time. It is this force that will determine our future geopolitical reality.”
Putin was talking about the exact same populist-nationalists who are now on the verge of electorally coming to power all across Europe and whose movements were just endorsed by Vance at Munich. The confluence of interests between Russia and Trump’s America as regards these political forces was also just touched upon in this analysis here, which mentions how these three – Russia, Trump’s America, and Europe’s populist-nationalists – embrace Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin’s civilization-state model.
Vance showed his adherence to these views by talking about the US and Europe’s “shared civilization”, which aligns with the essence of Dugin’s teachings about how International Relations are evolving in the direction of civilization-states like the West and the Russian World, et al. Trump 2.0, whose return to power can be described as the “Second American Revolution”, and Europe’s populist-nationalists can be considered the vanguards of the West’s civilizational revival that Trump calls the “American Golden Age”.
Putin embraced Dugin’s civilization-state model long ago, with his most famous expression thereof being the article that he wrote in July 2021 “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, which explicitly talks about these kindred people’s “civilizational ties”. He’s since made repeated references to the uniqueness of Russian Civilization, thus being ahead of his Western counterparts, who are only just now starting to speak in the same way.
Considering all of this, it was veritably the case that Vance just vindicated Putin’s prediction about political change in Europe, which could lead to a “new world order” if successful. The West’s coalescence into a civilization-state can accelerate a return to “spheres of influence” modeled off of the “19th-Century Great Power Chessboard” paradigm wherein Great Power-led civilization-states like Russia and the US-led West cut deals with one another over smaller countries instead of using them against each other.
While this approach is admittedly controversial, it’s the embodiment of realpolitik in contemporary global affairs, pragmatically eschewing ideological imperatives in favor of interests-driven agreements. Should the US-led West begin applying it, or rather return to this model of diplomacy that it previously practiced for centuries, then it would tremendously restore stability to International Relations. It’s premature to predict if this will happen, let alone when, just that it’s now a credible scenario to monitor.
