George Friedman: We Are Abandoning Europe

is George Friedman. And George Friedman is, uh, the, uh, founder and president of Geopolitical Futures, a private intelligence service. He has a daily newsletter at geopoliticacultures.com.

Future.

Future. I did that last time, I Isn't that funny? Geopolitical Futures. There you go, geopoliticalfutures.com. George Friedman, and he has a piece out at Geopolitical Futures today, What Does It Mean to Rejoin Europe? The press is just ecstatic with the Biden administration rejoining Europe. What does that even mean? And do we want to join Europe? Are the subjects of his piece. George Friedman, welcome back to my show.

Always happy to be here.

Uh, thank you, I appreciate that. Uh, by the way, I will be speaking in Hungary in August, and you're from Hungary, is that correct?

I was born in Hungary and I've been back there many, many times. So, I'm sorry, where are you going to be speaking?

Um, it's, it's, is it Budapest? You know, and what is the group? I'm asking my, my producer who— I'll get it for you. Anyway, the reason I mentioned that, aside from that we'd have, we would have that in common, uh, is I'm going to start with something I don't remember you were addressing, and that is Eastern Europe. Because whenever people say we're joining the, you know, Europe or they think of Europe, it's always Western Europe. When I spoke in Romania 3 years ago, I told them— they asked me, well, you know, what's going to happen with Western Europe? And I said to them, here's a thought for you: maybe Eastern Europe will save the West, not Western Europe. What's your take on Eastern Europe?

My take is very much like yours. I've been involved in trying to organize Eastern Europe into something called Intermarium. An old concept of an alliance of Poland, Hungary, Romania, and some of the other countries, on the premise that the Germans are at the very least unreliable and the Russians are dangerous. And they've actually moved in that direction a bit. But yeah, my article did mention Eastern Europe, which is to say that while Biden absolutely delighted his dinner companions at the G7, he terrified the Poles and Hungarians.

Go on.

Well, I mean, he's talking about joining Europe. What Europe? There is no such thing as Europe. Europe is a continent. It has a lot of different countries. Uh, back in 1945, it was wrecked. The Soviets are threatening. The U.S. had a reason to come into Europe, organize, feed it to resist the communists. We are now in a position where the Europeans, taken as a whole, are as wealthy as the Americans. There is no reason why their military force should not be sufficient to protect the East. And the fact is that they are trying to leech off the United States to take the risk of defending them, when they're not even prepared to cooperate with the United States really on countries like China. The countries that are on the front line who are facing the Russians, like the Poles, like the Hungarians, the Romanians, are absolutely terrified. They're not terrified of the Americans, God knows. They all pray that, as was done under the Trump administration, troops would be deployed in Poland. They're worried about what the Russians are going to do, what the French are going to do. And so, when we talk about Europe and ignore The eastern part of Europe, probably the most strategic part, and winter is going to be the most important.

So are they worried in Poland, for example, about America leaving Europe militarily, taking our troops out of Germany?

Well, they're worried about things like— there's something called Nord Stream 2. It's an oil pipeline, it's a gas pipeline going from Russia to Germany. The United States opposed it. The Germans wanted it. The U.S. opposed it because the last time the Russians were shipping that much oil to Europe, they cut off the supply for the Europeans to try to do the things that the Russians wanted. Well, the Biden administration, as one of its very first actions, agreed to Nord Stream 2. And this, the Poles and these countries fear, is going to leave them completely exposed That's the biggest issue. The second biggest issue is that NATO doesn't exist. It's a place where you go have dinners and champagne and everything else. You can't have a military alliance without a military. And aside from the British, most of the Europeans don't have militaries. We have 40,000 troops in Germany. That's not enough to do much. We tried to withdraw 10,000 under Trump. Uh, Europe went into a rage. We're abandoning Europe.