![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe318142c-36ef-4835-a337-773e3cdc92c4_386x642.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAnd not until 2025 can the EU no longer buy Russian crude oil because the USA stopped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do we need enemies with such friends?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, European companies sell everything RU needs to a mass – place instead without anyone caring. And RU buys it with money they received from the EU until the turn of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am trying to find historical points of contact here and want to go through some misunderstandings, I have already done a couple of posts and here come more puzzle pieces because over the years many claim that the EU has nothing and that US support is critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1939, the UK (or then GB – Great Britain) stood quite alone and the rest of Europe was either the enemy or down to zero so the USA was a formidable potential ally and our only lifeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UK tried to get the USA on board, which stayed away until Japan made the mistake of attacking, but the USA tried all the time to trade help for the UK to decolonize – it was a running point on the agenda from the USA. The UK also lost its empire post-WW2 and was in debt until 2006 but they won the war – because lend-lease was about skinning the UK for everything they could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just in passing, you might also wonder if the Soviet Union also made a final payment on its lend-lease in 2006 and I can reveal that they did not. Do you think they paid off harder on all the material they received, which was 30% of what the UK got, or do you think they got some kind of debt write-off?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So did the USA collect more repayments from its friends than its supposed enemies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1943, the USA started to bypass the UK and go to the Soviet Union instead as they considered the Soviet Union to be a greater “superpower” than the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the war, the UK desperately tried to at least get Poland free but the USA allowed the Soviet Union to occupy half of Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same USA that did its utmost to get the UK to release its colonies now allowed the Soviet Union to become a major colonizer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cold War was by no means bad for the USA and as a country, they probably had some of their best years then, “American dream”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Europe was under a wet Soviet blanket and since 1989, it has been considerably better, most people would probably agree?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now I have peeled off everything and shown it in the clearest possible way – the USA wanted to remove UK dominance and then they divided the world between themselves and the Soviet Union, sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it’s clear that the USA would not mind a new Cold War at all today and I can understand why if you look in the rearview mirror – the USA, Biden, and Trump are\/were all working against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For several years, I have argued that we do not need the USA and can solve this ourselves, but the WW2 thinking still lives on in far too many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The truth is that the US military and MIC are somewhat of a paper tiger today – if you compare the cost with what they have, they get very little bang for the buck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the UK is not alone today – we are 27 countries including Germany, Italy, and France who are on the same side in this conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Sweden is not neutral, nor is Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EU is an absolutely formidable military force to be reckoned with here, I have previously summed up personnel and materiel and it is obscenely much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is not 1941 either where the central thing is to get the USA to join – the big thing in this war is what China will undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So far, it is the USA that is confrontational with China, not the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Trump is doing, if not unimportant, is at least not central. What the EU does in the case of Russia, on the other hand, will shape our national security for the next 100 years. If we don’t bring Ukraine into the EU, if Belarus becomes westernized, and if Kaliningrad is demilitarized, we will miss an opportunity that may only come once every hundred years, if even that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, I’m getting a lot of Groundhog Day vibes actually with Trump \u2013 “I have asked Putin to spare the lives of several thousand UA soldiers who could retreat,” “we have given 350 billion USD,” “I am the only one who can make peace” \u2013 all qualified nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I’ve been pushing something for a long time \u2013 this thing about Iran wanting to kill Trump. It’s a little Trump psyops that he stirs up from time to time, and nothing else \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what China does will determine whether this becomes a global conflict with conscript armies or not. If China seriously starts a war, this will become a world war with mass armies again, just like WW1 and WW2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If there’s one thing you’ve learned in this war, it’s probably that infantry is the backbone, and then comes the ability to sustain production over time. The UA war is exciting because it’s high-tech and it’s infantry in its simplest form \u2013 very exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That we would cheer in 2025 because Germany wants to go to war and they themselves say “Germany is back baby” is somewhat worrying perhaps, but that’s where we are now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taurus seems to be coming at least before the Germans start mumbling about Lebensraum and looking around again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether we like it or not, we are at the point where Putin either gets his breather and can aim for round two, or he loses the war and the air goes out of the global escalation \u2013 in the year 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was a bit euphoric about 2025 before Trump started his “peace negotiations,” which brought my mood down a few notches to see McDonald’s Gandhi shuffling around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
USA is now openly discussing what territorial concessions Ukraine must make, and Mark Rutte is open about Ukraine not joining NATO. If the USA recognizes Crimea as Russian, it would depart from a US practice since the 1930s \u2013 a best guess RUMINT though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do you think Ukrainians feel right now as all of this washes over them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where are the EU statements about the borders of 1991 and so on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EU also needs to start with strategic communication for our citizens in the EU \u2013 we need to start preparing for a war that may be months away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EU has only difficult decisions to make in the future, and decisions must be made. We have reached the point in our lifetime where those of us who are in the wrong age and in the wrong positions are forced to take responsibility, and also the consequences of not taking responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the day, country after country was drawn into the maelstrom of war, and those of us who love to criticize the Ukrainians’ poor soldier qualities managed to hold out for weeks before being overrun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Germany had “Blitzkrieg” as its superpower, and Russia has its subversive activities that help them conquer countries from within. Russia needs the war, but the primary focus is on an enormous subversive activity that even those of us interested in this do not fully understand the extent of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was nothing wrong with Putin’s plan if you consider that he envisioned maintaining a defensive force and turning his gaze towards the EU already in late 2022 or 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It didn’t turn out that way because the Ukrainians had the audacity to refuse to give up, and Putin is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to try to resolve this. Putin’s plan is still to bring down Ukraine and move on towards Europe \u2013 he just needs a breather first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia can only do one thing for the past 300 years: if they meet resistance, they escalate the level of violence until they win or crash. They are quite happy to sit on the Titanic and sink, provided that everyone else sinks with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new thing is that the USA has shown that it wants a new Cold War and apparently a weak EU, all the Hollywood movies were scripted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 2022, I have been saying the following \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-this is the prelude to our era’s global conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-the intensity is high enough that Western arms factories have restarted, and we will arm ourselves for the next 30-40 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are now at the point where either we extinguish this and our era’s world war was limited to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or Russia escalates its efforts, and at some point, no one can say when, today’s leaders will no longer be able to control the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This takes on a life of its own and spirals out of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think Europe is still a bit like WW1 \u2013 “if there’s a war, we’ll send our proud soldiers east, win this in a few months, and then have a BIG parade and medals.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I seem to hear this even among those who have followed the Ukraine war for three years \u2013 “our battalion in eastern Baltics will hold the line,” kind of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, it won’t go that way \u2013 we will probably be reactive when it comes to the Baltics, it’s mid-March now \ud83d\ude36<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And what does it mean for our Swedish battalion in eastern Baltics in the worst-case scenario if the West is reactive, do you think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next step after the Baltics is to seriously try to bring down Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The amount of sabotage in the EU is increasing and will increase even more. Furthermore, we have not yet activated our criminal gangs, criminal clans, right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, and Islamists in earnest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something I’ve missed in the EU is large-scale forest fires \u2013 don’t understand why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MENA is far from settled even though Israel turned out to be more than adequately proactive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Africa is a powder keg waiting to explode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South America is now controlled by Russia and China in the sense that they drive drug trafficking and illegal immigration up to the USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
USA has just rolled back to pre-Pearl Harbour, that’s where we are whether we want it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China… if they don’t stay in check, Taiwan is threatened along with South Korea, Japan, and Australia to varying degrees. China is building a Royal Navy in about two years in terms of production pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, the only country that can deliver a deadly blow to Russia is Ukraine, but ONCE AGAIN after three years, the USA pulled the rug out from under Ukraine, for how many times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, the risk is even higher now as Trump actively tries to destabilize Ukraine along with Putin, but so far, we seem to have gotten the expected Trump effect \u2013 Ukraine is even angrier at Russia than before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The time until this fall will determine our fate for a long time to come \u2013 for the first time in this war, we must start facing the consequences of our actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking of consequences, never go to the Caribbean \u2013 where we are, you need a triple-signed letter from the Ministry of Education for your child to start school, and the nonchalance is total (yes, they probably want money under the table, but I don’t know how to do that yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They tell us, “yes, we approve class 2 only, but if you want class 3, the school can test and decide.” The school says, “we must follow exactly what the ministry says” even after they have done a study test confirming class 3 \u2013 nothing happens until the triple-signed letter arrives, and it has been 8 weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n
A school thought we could start but wanted the full annual fee just for the last three months of the year (100,000 SEK), another said one thing and then something completely different, so we ran around in circles for a month, and a third private school said we were not the right people to be part of “our school’s family unity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I’m here because no one else in the country can do my job. The country’s richest and most influential person owns 51% of the Italian company I work for, and I have a salary that is 70 times what the truck drivers at work earn \u2013 so they judged based on appearance \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I haven’t played any of those cards yet, just trying to start children in school and pay for us without being mocked, humiliated, and deceived by authorities and schools in a self-reinforcing loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m already getting tired of this, and you know how it goes \u2013 you start circulating your CV, then you get a bite after a few months and leave. As an employer, you have to be responsive so it never gets to that point, especially if you have employees who find it easy to get a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you liked the post, feel free to share it on your channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want a fun comment section that is really starting to pick up and is no longer just me talking it up on Bluesky \u2013 johanno1.se. The comments are of high quality, I can promise you \u2013 you learn something new every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recommend everyone still commenting on Substack or Bluesky to jump over to that thread instead \u2013 then your grandchildren will read your historical archive and start liking you. I also don’t have time to respond there as I’m starting to get busy at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Substack \u2013 don’t forget to become paying subscribers, even those of you who already follow. It’s nice to see that some of you find it worth reading, appreciate all the work put into this, and took the step to subscribe \ud83d\udc4d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
johanno1.se<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n substack.com\/@johanno1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/johanno1.bsky.social<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n