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NOTAN | European Whiplash!

Updated: Apr 1

Drawn on February 18 | Published from Miami | Updated February 27

J.D. Vance burning the EU and NATO flags with Russian fire.
NOTAN

A dark tableau was drawn at the February 2025 Munich Security Conference, one where J.D. Vance depicted European democracies as deaf to their constituents and in the business of actively muting freedom. Meanwhile, extremist right-wing, Russian-backed parties were framed as legitimate alternatives to save the continent from this supposed decline. Truly, the abhorrent speech betrayed either a cynical exploitation of his American audience’s ignorance to gain domestic political rewards, or a deliberate PR stunt to telegraph MAGA’s support of Russia's efforts to undermine European stability. Not to bury the lede, Vance’s smug Kremlin-scripted appraisal of Europe read as a barely veiled love letter to authoritarianism, with penmanship strangely reminiscent of Putin’s own imperialistic subversive oratorical style [1]. To paint a picture: a glib, calmly supercilious, nonchalant yet cavalier, condescending, sophomoric, pontificating Monday-morning quarterback wise-guy, dispensing hindsight judgment through shallow obfuscations.


Indeed, by twisting the idea that the health of Romanian democracy hinged on defending the victory of a party with sufficiently clear beneficial-ties to Russian oligarchs [2], adding that the annulment of that election was a sign of European impotence rather than resistance to the Moscow menace [3], he revealed his subterfuge. This ghastly whataboutism, an echo of comments made by alt-right pundits in regards to Moldova's 2024 election [4], unambiguously underscored the U.S. Vice President's openly reckless endorsement of Russian interference in European politics.


His logic follows a dangerous pattern: Europe, according to Vance, is too weak to resist enemy propaganda — so the solution, apparently, is to hand power to popular populist far-right governments, precisely those funded by Putin operatives [more here]. This despotic blueprint, aimed at dismantling European unity, may in fact extend beyond the E.U., with the potential to cut even deeper — into NATO itself [more here]. A fear reinforced by the U.S. decision to vote along side Russia, Belarus, and North Korea — dictatorships of the axis of evil — against a U.N. resolution urging Russia's withdrawal from Ukraine [5].


“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

— Sir Winston Churchill, Reader’s Digest, December 1954.


Given the clear rhetorical U.S. realignment to back Russian interests, Trump’s personal hatred toward Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a quid-pro-quo-shaped scar from the first impeachment [6] [more here] — along with his intimidating remarks about violating NATO-member sovereignty, such as with Danish Greenland [7], could this signal the first blow to the dismantling of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, leaving Europe trapped between two suffocating aggressors: Russia to the East and its former ally, the U.S., to the West? One need only look at recent diplomatic dialogues in Saudi Arabia regarding the war in Ukraine. While the American, Saudi, and Russian flags prominently stood in the background, Ukrainian blue and yellow remained noticeably absent [8], only to be invoked in a follow up by Trump, who blamed Ukraine for “starting the war” [9] and petulantly went so far as to call Zelenskyy a "dictator" [10]. This last fib, a slick coin trick deceptively rooted in the fact that Zelenskyy’s term expired in May 2024, is a half-truth that conveniently ignores a crucial detail: under martial law, the Ukrainian constitution extends the president’s term indefinitely [11][12] — an emergency measure valid only during wartime. An avoidable situation, had Russia not entangled Ukraine’s fate into a struggle for its very existence to begin with!


For an optimist, however, the dissolution of NATO could accelerate the European Union’s push to develop its own army, recognizing it can no longer trust its supposed allies — and possibly grabbing the opportunity to amputate liabilities like Hungary and Turkey in the process. Such a jolting restructuring could arrive too late, costing too many lives and resources in its transition.


Meanwhile, in the United States, the sabotage orchestrated by Trump and Vance unfolds on the home front. This crisis of leadership and the erosion of democratic resilience recall older debates on revolution and governance — ones the philosopher, and statesman, Edmond Burke warned of over two centuries ago. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, an Irish Londoner's critique, provides a 400-page 'pocketbook' for understanding moments like this — not that one is likely to find it on a French curriculum.


"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” [13]

― Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.



In 1790, Burke argued that revolution should not be violent, warning that upheaval was a threat to public order and justice. He also insisted that social hierarchies should be preserved, believing that the wisdom of communities was safest in the hands of the aristocracy, where wealthy landlords — by his logic — were naturally superior. At the time, his argument might have seemed reasonable, given that the nobility was often the most educated in the sciences and classics. Purging them wholesale, he feared, would mean the loss of 'essential knowledge,' crippling any chance for meaningful progress and leaving society without a stable foundation.


But can this brand of classist reasoning, which may have held weight 235 years ago, still stand when so many of today’s wealthiest are as dumb as soup?


The French Revolution, for all its bloodshed, did not entirely defenestrate the educated class. The bourgeoisie — not members of the Clergy or Nobility but of the Tiers État— emerged largely unscathed, ensuring that culture and knowledge survived. Compare this to the 20th-century Bolshevik revolution in Russia and, to a greater extent, the communist 'Great Leap Forward' in China, where no one was spared. Intellectuals were systematically eliminated, dignitaries and scientists were replaced with street-cleaners and meat-packers, and education itself was seen as a mark of corruption from a bygone era. The dumber, the better.


Could America’s dire socio-political predicament be an eerie parallel? To Burke’s point, the sidelining of intellectuals — those who might resist totalitarian control — is becoming increasingly evident as cornerstone institutions of science, education, and soft power like the NIH, NSF, CMS, DoE, NASA, FEMA, and USAID face the gallows — nothing short of an outright assault on knowledge itself [14] [more here]. The wealthy, once stewards of institutional advancement, are no longer cultivated. Instead, they have been replaced by inerudite philistine billionaires, like Elon Musk, who see ignorance not as a deficiency but as an asset — an instrument to wield against the gullible; conning undereducated masses to mistake their own disenfranchisement for liberation.


And yet, this decay is not contained within America’s borders. Vance’s bombast is merely one manifestation of a broader, calculated effort to undermine both knowledge and democracy, at home and abroad. His speech, while seemingly focused on Europe’s supposed failings, was also a reflection of the very forces hollowing out the United States from within. His lies, though cobbled into compelling claims, were an experiment in how far overt dishonesty could be pushed before meeting resistance from an audience — a litmus test for the comfortably ignorant and a gauge of how fully Burke’s nightmare had come to pass.


By persuading world leaders and their nescient electorates — chiefly figures like President Trump and his base of anarchic apologists — with these contortions of reality, Vance's patronizing lecture encapsulates Burke’s warning about the collapse of order under uneducated populism, as the uninformed ascend society and, from behind their pulpits, work to tear apart the very systems meant to protect us, including democratic coalitions.


"Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level, never equalize." [15]

― Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.



With the E.U. and NATO as tinder, is Vance an arsonist, igniting a blaze he cannot control? A mere player in a larger game resting on Putin’s shoulders — one where the true climax isn’t just Europe’s fall, but the unmaking of the West itself?



[1] Romania's election interference case:

[2] Lu, C. (2025) The speech that stunned Europe , Foreign Policy. Available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/18/vance-speech-munich-full-text-read-transcript-europe/ (Accessed: 18 February 2025).

"Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making." "Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with." [3] Lu, C. (2025) The speech that stunned Europe , Foreign Policy. Available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/18/vance-speech-munich-full-text-read-transcript-europe/ (Accessed: 18 February 2025).

"Now we’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that, this December, Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors."


[4] Jensen, D.N. (2024) Russian interference in the 2024 Moldovan presidential election and constitutional referendum | United States Institute of Peace, USIP.org. Available at: https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/11/russian-interference-2024-moldovan-presidential-election-and-constitutional (Accessed: 19 February 2025).


[5] UN Resolution results:


[6] Something WAADL personally overheard in interactions with not only his entourage, but with Donald Trump himself [more here].


[7] H.R.1161 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Red, White, and ... (2025) Congress.gov. Available at: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1161 (Accessed: 18 February 2025).


[8] Waterhouse, J. (2025) Ukraine not invited to US-Russia peace talks in Saudi Arabia, Source says, BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm292319gr2o (Accessed: 19 February 2025).


[9] Stokols, E. (2025) Trump snaps back at Zelenskyy, blaming Ukraine for the war, politico.com. Available at: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/18/trump-blames-zelenskyy-ukraine-war-020517 (Accessed: 19 February 2025).


[10] Whisnant, G. (2025) Donald Trump says Zelensky ‘dictator’ without elections, Newsweek. Available at: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-zelensky-dictator-without-elections-2033269 (Accessed: 19 February 2025).

LIVE : Trump calls Zelensky a ‘dictator’ as he hits back at ‘disinformation’ criticism (2025) BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c62e2158mkpt (Accessed: 19 February 2025).


[11] and it's Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Minakov, B. et al. (2024) Functioning of Ukrainian courts during the War, Wilson Center. Available at: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/functioning-ukrainian-courts-during-war#:~:text=Ukrainian%20legislation%20provides%20that%20the,administered%20by%20the%20courts%20only. (Accessed: 19 February 2025).


[12] Jędrysiak, M. (2024) President until the end of the war. Volodymyr Zelensky’s term of office is extended, OSW Centre for Eastern Studies. Available at: https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2024-05-20/president-until-end-war-volodymyr-zelenskys-term-office-extended (Accessed: 19 February 2025).


[13] Burke, E., 1790. Reflections on the Revolution in France. [pdf] Available at: https://dn790008.ca.archive.org/0/items/reflectionsonre00burk/reflectionsonre00burk.pdf [Accessed 19 February 2025], p. 42.


[14] Cutting science funding:

NASA Garcia, A. (2025) NASA layoffs will take 10 percent of its workforce: Report, CHRON. Available at: https://www.chron.com/news/space/article/nasa-layoffs-musk-20173396.php (Accessed: 18 February 2025).


[15] Burke, E., 1790. Reflections on the Revolution in France. [pdf] Available at: https://dn790008.ca.archive.org/0/items/reflectionsonre00burk/reflectionsonre00burk.pdf [Accessed 19 February 2025], p. 64.


All audio is AI generated.

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