In Barabara Tuchman’s classic The Guns of August, readers are acquainted with the ways in which Europe’s leading statesmen sleepwalked and stumbled into World War I. The underlying cause of the primary driver of the war, German imperial dreams and aggressive war plans, was “the body of accumulated egoism.” Each party to the geopolitical structure of alliances was convinced of its own prime ‘place under the sun’ and could not brook a loss of face that backing down would bring once other parties escalated and mobilized for a war they really did not even want.
Some analysts think that European and/or NATO leaders do not want a full-fledged, open, direct war with Russia. They rely on the rationality of humankind too much. Although it may be true for the overwhelming majority of European and NATO leaders, there are small numbers of European elites who would like a war in the future and are manuevering to make that the choice of the majority sometime in the offing. The war minority is largely but not exclusively based in Eastern or ‘new Europe.’ The EU’s High Minister for Foreign and Security Policy Kaya Kallas, who is a former prime minister of Estonia, is a case in point. She and many other members of the European elite are deluded by their national and personal egoism. The body of accumulated egoism is enormous in today’s European political and strategic culture The ongoing, three-year gradual escalation of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War on Kiev’s part — with Europe’s full material, military, and political backing — is driven by such elites.
Their scheme for the future is as follows.
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About the Author –
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com. Websites: Russian and Eurasian Politics, gordonhahn.com and gordonhahn.academia.edu
Dr. Hahn is the author of the new book: Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Thought, Culture, History, and Politics (Europe Books, 2022). He has authored five previous, well-received books: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin (McFarland, 2021); Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.
Dr. Hahn taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and was a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group.