thanks for this piece. Although, this time, I must say I find it unconvincing.
While your framework on the bunker-state strongly holds regarding European elites, your conclusions on Nato 3.0 do not seem grounded in European reality. At best, they may underline a purpose of some of factions in play, but I would argue that you've missed too many dynamics at play in Europe.
To start with, it is hazardous to take Mark Rutte's words as a reliable sign of what Europe is doing. The man has notoriously been out of touch with reality for a while, and while he attempts to maintain the illusion of European unity, growing disunity cannot be ignored.
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Europe is entirely incapable to reach the 5% GDP target. That is, if they may facially progress towards the target, it is primarily because major European economies, and the EU economy as a whole, have been shrinking for a while, despite official GDP data. The share of defense spending grows artifically because total spending is shrinking.
The UK is already broke, and cannot find money to follow the desired rythm even in its poster-child military programs, such as GCAP.
Germany will soon be collapsing economically.
France may follow the same route.
Same for Italy.
Etc...
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Furthermore, there is a serious lack of industrial capability to back intentions to turn Europe into an American proxy in any military industrial revolution. Only 3 countries in Europe can claim to have a worthy defense industry today : France, Sweden and Italy. None of these are the hardcore promoters of relying on US tech for present and future European needs.
The countries talking this way are: 1) Eastern European countries, with virtually no industrial capability that have thouroughly tied themselves to US interest and policies, up to the point of fearing to find themselves totally naked before the Russian bear if the US withdraws, hence the need to provide long term economic incentive to US interests ; 2) Germany, who seeks to replace its collapsing export industries with a defense industry to serve the needs of Central and Eastern European countries, but who does not have the technologies to do so, and who thus needs to obtain production licenses from US industries.
But Germany is out of energy, and its government is thoroughly incapable to drive any form of military-industrial ambition, as was demonstrated in Germany's slow cancellation of rather ambitious and realisitc plans for industrial cooperation proposed by France almost a decade ago. So much so, also, that the German goverment has obviously chosen to devolve the full responsibility of driving military-industrial policies to Rheinmettal and Airbus. Problems are : 1) Airbus is not a German company, and Germany will be at the mercy of French retaliation for a lost decade of German treachery, as soon as Macron is out of office ; plus, Airbus as a dismal record in driving military projects that were much simpler than those that are required of them today ; and 2) Rheinmetall does NOT produce the kind of technologies that will be needed in tomorrows wars, but rather they are an entrenched rent-based industrial company that keeps recycling 1970's tech backed with powerful marketing BS. But the Ukrainian battlefield has largely demonstrated the lack of relevance of Rheinmetall's hardware.
The recent collapses of cooperations between France and Germany must be read as the effect of disagreement regarding the relationship to the US. Germans seek to acquire European preponderance through transfer of US tech to German industries; while France failed to build European industrial power with Germany and will now be seeking its salvation outside of Europe, mainly trough cooperation with India (mark my words on this, realisation will be quicker than anyone expects, and it will conclude fast as soon as Macron is out of the French landscape).
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Overall, the European landscape right now is one where competitors are moving fast to gather has much resources as they can before the start of a general onslaught in which they'll be killing one another. Germany seeks primacy but its financial reousrces are fast dwindling and its industrial credibility is dubious. France holds much stronger industrial cards but lacks financial resources, and it will likely leave the realm of European defense to seek long term partnerships with India. Sweden is being courted, and while it has recently signed a cooperation agreement with germanyè, I do not find major ambitions in it and I will not be surprised if the Swedes seek to follow the French dynamic. Italy will as usual rely on its strong domestic industry to provide self-sufficient solutions, but will not acquire significant reach over the rest of Europe.
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This leaves US prospects with only those countries that have no industrial capabilities of their own, and no military credibility besides talking loud while hiding behind the protection of their partners. Follow my eyes to Lithuanua or Estonia. Those will be the future US allies in Europe.
Poland spends a lot but builds no reliable industrial framework to sustain war on the long run. Romania is trying to maintain a diversity of providers because it still cannot see one path that guarantees is security on the long run. And Turkey is already planning the post-NATO world, and is only seeking industrial know-how to be transferred to its national industries, which have been progressing extremely fast on the quality aspect, but are still not a credibly self-sufficient provider of successful technologies.
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At the same time, what of US military, industrial and strategic credibility? They are all fading rapidly. Seen from Europe, relying on the US is now seen by several countries as a major liability, starting with the field of digital technologies, military and civilian, where several EU countries have discreetly startiung to prepare for a major shake up to free themselves from their dependency to the US.
Despite the marketing BS from Anduril and others, US military industries are no longer a credible source of useful innovation. They lack agility, they are used to extracting resource from the Federal State to provide weapons never to be used, but now that these weapons are indeed being used, they appear to be unreliable, inefficient, much too expensive, much too slow to produce. You can invest as much as you want on AI-based mass-targeting technologies, which is indeed impressive, that will not take you very far if your arsenals are emptied in just a few rounds of fighting with no significant strategic effect achieved...
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A word on a country you've not mentioned : Spain. It is proving that getting out of the US strategic coffin can be done before final burial.
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While I agree that many in the current European elites may be seeking their survival in tying Europe to the US, I also see : 1) several factions in those elites seeking their survival in trying to turn Europe into a power of its own, seperate from the US and non-aligned with US strategic policies; 2) immense fragilities in European economies, societies, political and institutional frameworks, that risk causing collapses much quicker than European elites can handle; 3) for European countries that matter in defining the larger European trend, major opportunities and plans outside the US-European realm (for France especially, but not only, others will follow... see the looming major agreement between France and Morocco for instance); 4) massive rejection of present European elites among European citizens, which the EU-bunker has already planned to silence through undemocratic means, but... well, you know, European masses have a history of getting rid of elites that no longer satisy them, so, I expect something on that side.
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If I can propose a short conclusions from those many, complex, divergent, hard-to-connect elements, I'd say that even if there were an actual shared intent over NATO 3.0 between present US power and European elites, it is not on a path to success. And alternatives are already being built.
The great deciding factor over the next decade will likely not be drawn from all those plans, though. It will be about who manages to safeguard access to critical resources, who has enough energy to keep producing military ware, and who can find reliable friends to bail them out and allow them to keep standing.
A decade from now, many of the actors we are talking about will no longer be standing and will no longer be relevant.
Thanks Nel. Well researched and informative. Many of us have a sense of this direction but not all of the details. Those details in fact are so perverse they made me quite nauseous when reading them. This is quickly heading towards the destruction of Europe. If they could only focus their resources in a constructive way they might save themselves. Instead they are going to focus all of their resources into the destructive channels of war machinery and it will eventually turn them into what they fear the most... the Jungle. They invite the destruction of war, social chaos, and poverty upon themselves, clinging to their delusions of power and superiority. Yet they cannot turn away from the illusory seductions of money and power. Tragically and ironically, it will only lead to both financial disaster, and complete dependency.
Capitalism keeps driving us in the direction. No surprise, as it has always been a system of organised crime as your historical references point out. It has always made its false profits by theft, extortion and slavery, always endorsed by false prophets. The world is desperate for a third way.
Great analysis of what NATO/USA plans to do. However I find those 10-15 years plans incompatible with the reality of a collapsing (not anymore just declining but clearly collapsing) US Empire and also with the red line of History that this very year of 2026 CE seems to be, in which the tipping point of the Global Warming ecocatastrophe converges with the mass economic crisis deepened in just few months by the Hormuz standoff.
Attrition warfare for years sounds "logical" until you observe how US military assets in Arabia, built through the decades of Iraq wars, have been absolutely destroyed in a matter of weeks and with no particular effort by the enemy.
Control via AI and quantum computing also sound absurdly speculative and not well grounded. Even the once quite powerful Western intelligence (secret services) now appear rather like a great failure (of which the recent Mossad purge is a symptom).
In fact, as I read this analysis I could not help but wondering, paragraph after paragraph, if, by promoting European military unification and industrial self-sufficiency (regardless of where the energy comes from, that can change easily), the USA is not digging their own tomb even deeper. I do wonder if, much as Britain unified India, the USA is not unifying Europe beyond what Europeans ourselves would be naturally inclined to? And, if so, whether in this 2026-35 decade (which IMO will be one of radical changes at global level, deeply chaotic rather than predictable, revolutionary even eventually), a better integrated and militarily powerful Europe won't become a direct challenge to US hegemony (after due expropriation of BlackRock and the like). Granted that it doesn't look like in the short term but what about 2030 or 2035?
1. I think the article would have been more useful if it had been better at citing sources. Some claims are necessarily conclusions from the reasoning, but others must have been taken from somewhere. For example, the claim about “chokepoints” in the infrastructure where non-allies can be discriminated against and harassed. Where did it come from? There are more like that. The sources are possibly mentioned elsewhere in the text, but they should be pinpointed every time. It would be a pity if what is claimed could be brushed away as conspiracy theories.
2. One should also be able to tell something about the opportunities that the Western elite gang ignored in their strategy of violence. We know that what scares the crap out of them is China’s rise. But China has not used violence or the threat of violence for this, they have only used carrots and sticks against their own businesses, strategic technology purchases, and the deliberate busting of their unproductive rentier businesses. Surely Europeans and Americans could have done that too, and that way regained some of their lost advantage?
It is still quite clear why they have not. Those who dominate the Western elite today are precisely the rentiers who neither want nor can engage in production. Cory Doctorow addresses this in one of his posts, https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/11/tragedy-of-the-commoners/. The biggest profits are not made in production but in dominating “chokepoints”; Michael Hudson and Michael Lind have called it “tollbooth capitalism”, https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/the-politics-of-tollbooth-capitalism/, and Brett Christophers has documented the fact in Rentier capitalism, Verso 2020. And this is the ultimate cause of the West’s decline.
There is a whole small literature on how rentierism has strangled periods of prosperity in history, for example Charles Kindleberger: World economic primacy 1500-1990, Oxford 1996, Bas van Bavel: The invisible hand, Oxford 2016 (which goes all the way back to the Abbasid Caliphate), and one could add the final chapter in Alfred Chandler: Scale and scope, Harvard 1990 (the book otherwise deals with the heyday of production capitalism in the 20th century).
It is thus the rentier-created decline that has caused the panic. The West has necessarily ended up at a disadvantage. I assume you are familiar with Dale Copeland's Economic interdependence and war, Princeton 2013. He believes, after examining every great power conflict since 1790, that it is almost always the great power that perceives itself to be in an inferior position that resorts to violence as a last resort, but that it almost never gains anything from doing so. The economic loser is also the war’s loser. NATO's strategy of violence is therefore a rather desperate gamble, which many may see reason to oppose.
One reason why I think it is important to focus on this kind of thing is that it highlights who our enemies are, and makes it possible to broaden our own political base to include everyone else who does not benefit from their order. Which is necessary to win a fight; no successful revolution has ever been built exclusively on a popular movement, marginalized elite groups have always been necessary to bring about a lasting post-revolutionary order. In this case, everyone who sees their future in production – from the workers to those capitalists who organize production chains, and including all who would oppose a probably unsuccessful war.
Thank you for your deep engagement with my essay, Jan! I really appreciate these comments. I apologize for the delay. Answering these questions requires some time and space to gather the references.
First, I take your point on sourcing and will be more diligent about pinpointing them in the text going forward. Regarding the “chokepoints” and infrastructure denial, there is indeed a long, documented paper trail. While there is no single master document called “The Chokepoint Strategy,” it is a foundational doctrine spread across several strategic papers. I am currently working on Part II of this NATO 3.0 essay, as well as a standalone piece on energy policy, which will dive into this partly and the other one deeply, but here is a sample of that paper trail:
Brookings Institution (2014) – “Fueling a New Order?”: This paper discusses "mutually assured denial" regarding the U.S. and China. It outlines the U.S. strategy of sea blockades, noting that China is building naval capacity specifically so it "can’t be subject to an economic or energy blockade by sea," while the U.S. must recognize "China will develop enough naval capacity to stop the U.S. from blockading the sea lanes." Blocking energy by sea is an acknowledged U.S. Navy strategy.
CSIS (2025) – “No Safe Harbor”: In evaluating China's port projects in Latin America, this paper assumes infrastructure will be weaponized: "Control or deep involvement in port operations can enable intelligence collection... privileged access to maritime logistics data, and the ability to deny or delay access during a crisis."
Atlantic Council (2025) – “A US and allied strategy for Greenland”: This anchors the 2025 National Security Strategy to "deterrence by denial." The authors write: "To achieve its goals for the Arctic, the United States must work with its allies and partners to deny these adversaries the ability to dominate the region militarily and economically." This is about the denial of infrastructure among other things.
U.S. Navy–Marine Corps–Coast Guard (2020) – “Advantage at Sea”: This is perhaps the most explicit. It states: "Where adversaries must cross open water, sea denial robs them of the initiative... We control or deny the seas by destroying an adversary’s fleet... or by controlling sea lines of communication. In collaboration with allies and partners, we will be capable of controlling critical choke points, enabling us to safeguard joint forces flowing into theater and to impose military and economic costs on our adversaries." Furthermore, there are a myriad of lectures from the Energy Defense seminars of the US Naval Academy that openly discuss oil as a weapon (and its different variants) and chokepoint control dating back to at least 2016.
Secondly, I completely agree with you on the rentier point. My analysis is always informed by that dynamic in the background. However, I am currently going back and forth and trying to understand what we are actually all observing here: Is the thesis drawn from Copeland and others that because the empire is "standing on its last legs," it is desperately lashing out, the apt one?
Or what we are mistaking for “lashing out” is actually more in the line of Heide Gerstenberger’s book Market and Violence. I am increasingly thinking that the extreme violence we see today is simply capitalism functioning as it is designed to when it operates without brakes.
Historically, capitalist organized violence wasn't tamed by the system maturing or by free markets; it was only ever domesticated by organized, scaled resistance and the construction of alternative institutions. Today, where are those brakes? Where is the resistance organized at a systemic scale (institutions that are organized differently, and don’t just work reactively as shields)? Without a global counter-force imposing friction, the U.S.-led core might just be operating as a frictionless machine of capitalist violence (and yes, that includes cannibalizing its so-called allies).
This idea of what we are observing as unbraked violence or "desperate collapse" is something I’m trying to understand right now. I don’t think it is actually that obvious; maybe it is a combination of the two.
I would however argue that a capitalism that is not tamed by society always would tend towards rentierism and robber baronism. Why engage in production if you don't need to? As Doctorow argued, Gates earned more money as retired rentier than he did as a CEO.
On the other hand, even robber baron capitalists need a state to protect them, and a state has to be fed. Reasonable statesmen wouldn't take bigger risks than they could escape if somethong goes wrong. If they exceed that level, there must be panic luring somewhere.
The Anglo-murican Imperialist Oligarchs don't want to work, trade and cooperate. They only want to LOOT, 'cause maximum immediate profit comes from looting.
The US/UK have basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the Alglo-murican Oligarchy does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it. In the eyes of the Anglo-murican Empire you are either servant, livestock or enemy. It’s a greedy empire.
Thank you for the liking, Nel. But which *is* the source where they admit their "chokepoint strategy" – just to take the most obvious example? I would like to know, I dare not repeat the claim without having evidence to back it up.
A side point on the capital/investment issue: If I understand correctly the article claims that the Norwegian soveregin fund and other similar sovereign wealth funds excluded investments in weapons. Which I dont think is correct.
The Norwegian soveregin wealth fund had an ethics board ( now disbanded because it would have excluded Caterpilllar and Palantir) and some ESG criteria for companies, but I dont believe that those "standards" ever reached as high as a blanket exclusion on weapons. They excluded nuclear weapons, and certain types of weapons such as land mines etc which are banned by international treaties, but did not exclude weapons. But now they basically have no standards.
Some asset managers like Tridos do have a blanket ban. And many asset managers who dont, have offered investors the ability to choose to invest in a few certain individual funds that exclude investments in any weapons or fund. But this has always been more the exception than the rule: at all levels in that sector from the mega national funds to the smaller ones, the general rule has been weapons companies are investable objects and they dont care about the ethics.
It is obvious that the NATO expansion involved lots of pressure by the US: strange incidents in Macedonia and Montenegro that resulted in regime change where the new regime immediately joined NATO, suggesting that NATO membership is needed for joining the EU, etc.
My question is whether there is a webpage that provides a good overview of this subject. A website that is well documented with links so that you can send a NATO-fan there in order to convince him.
Just finished reading, excellent stuff, extremely thorough and enlightening, am based in Ireland, I am not sure how widely known what is happening in Ireland vis a vis our neutrality and the pressure it is under politically, but in terms of responding to the call for perspectives I will elaborate a little. There has been a concerted effort to get Ireland on board with NATO that has accelerated notably in recent years. Ireland has historically viewed itself as a neutral nation, independence from Britain was also independence from the machinations of empire, a robust Irish military would also have been a threat to the UK, Jack Lynch reportedly considered invading the North in the 70's.
A pressure point is Ireland's territorial waters, which extend well into the Atlantic, including transatlantic cables which are claimed to be a strategic weak point vulnerable to attack from Russia. After making do without an Air Force for decades (the last fighter jets Ireland had in service were Magister training jets retired in the early 00's IIRC), we are now set to invest billions in acquiring a fighter jet squadron in order to meet the threat of Russia, (presumably 4th generation fighter jets, the kind of 6th generation fighter jet can take out twenty of before leaving it's hanger). We are often pilloried by political commentators from NATO countries (who are given prominent voices) in the media as being "free loaders" and so on owing to our relatively tiny military spend (a blissful 0.25%).
The triple lock is the specific legal mechanism that essentially says the Irish military cannot be deployed except with a UN mandate, so you will often see Irish based commentary making reference to "the triple lock" and it being potentially dismantled, we are being sold on the idea that the Russian security council veto represents a threat to our sovereignty, as such getting rid of the triple lock is a reclaiming our sovereignty from Putin and such nonsense. The media needless to say is heavily pushing further NATO alignment.
There is significant resistance to all this in Ireland, NATO membership remains unpopular despite the recent PR push and there is an active grassroots political movement that opposed it. However Ireland is economically very much embedded in the US orbit, a third of our tax take is from five or so US international corporations based here for tax purposes, post-colonial comprador class ruling elite mentality remains received wisdom and our hyper local PR voting system means civic questions are rarely high up the electorate's agenda, so the gravitational pull towards further NATO alignment seems on the face of it irresistible one way or another (I'm not sure if there is an immediate alternative, to talk the talk and perhaps drag your feet is one thing, but to signal total non-compliance would be to make a small open European economy a strategic target for isolation and any government implementing such policy a target for removal, realistically who would Ireland's allies be in such a scenario? Pragmatically a non hegemonic regional country needs friends in the neighbourhood and the European project has shifted its terms of membership).
Ireland is doing her bit in other ways though, 22%-25% of the Irish electrical grid is now consumed by data centres.
Insightful article as usual. I would like to understand how the recent increase in both the selling off of U.S. Treasury Bonds and the purchasing of gold by many nations in place of these bonds effects the ability of the U.S. to implement its designs that you describe, and also how it is effecting relations with Europe whose bonds were just used by the U.S., seemingly without warning, to purchase Yen to stall the Yen's decline, which only did so for a very short duration. I would think that these recent developments (accelerated de-dollarization) may affect the larger aims of this historically formed transnational trans-Atlantic dominated ruling strata. Might this factor into your future analysis?
Bedankt voor de fantastische uitleg! De puzzelstukjes vallen wat mij betreft nu op zijn plaats.
Maar de SACEUR heeft absoluut geen bevoegdheid om nationale veto’s te omzeilen of soevereine landen te dwingen hun troepen in te zetten. Hoezo denk je dat hij dat wel kan? De SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) is inderdaad altijd een Amerikaanse generaal, en hij heeft vergaande operationele bevoegdheden. Het is heel begrijpelijk dat de structuur daardoor overkomt als een Amerikaanse commandostructuur, maar de verdeling tussen militaire macht en politieke zeggenschap is strikt geregeld:1. Wat de SACEUR wel kan (Binnen strikte grenzen)Troepen verplaatsen: De SACEUR kan alléén troepen verplaatsen die door lidstaten vrijwillig onder NAVO-bevel zijn geplaatst (zoals de Standing NATO Maritime Groups of de NATO Response Force).Alertniveaus bepalen: Hij kan de paraatheid van die specifieke NAVO-eenheden verhogen als de dreiging toeneemt.2. Wat de SACEUR absoluut niet kanNationale veto's omzeilen: De NAVO-commandostructuur staat volledig onder de politieke leiding. De SACEUR mag pas grootschalig in actie komen nadat de Noord-Atlantische Raad (de politieke leiders van álle lidstaten) daar met 100% consensus toestemming voor heeft gegeven. Eén veto van bijvoorbeeld Nederland, Frankrijk of Hongarije blokkeert de hele operatie.Nationale troepen opeisen: Defensie is een nationale aangelegenheid. Als de SACEUR vraagt om extra troepen, beslist de Nederlandse regering (en de Tweede Kamer via Artikel 100 van de Grondwet) volledig zelfstandig of die militairen wel of niet gaan. De Amerikaanse generaal kan dat op geen enkele manier afdwingen.De SACEUR is dus een uitvoerder, geen dictator. Hij is de bevelhebber van het leger, maar de Europese politiek houdt te allen tijde de vinger op de knop.
We cannot have world peace with NATO 3.0. Humanity must unite against the horrors that warmongering US/NATO 3.0 brings, least of which is increasing threat of a nuclear holocaust that would wipe out humanity. We, as humans, must support friendship, cooperation, & trade among nations for a brighter multipolar world without the death, destruction & suffering that NATO 3.0 leads to.
The more interesting shift is not simply “Europe spends more on defense.” It is the changing division of labor inside NATO. Europe is being pushed to provide more conventional capacity, industrial output, logistics and infrastructure, while the US remains disproportionately important in the strategic layer: nuclear deterrence, ISR, long-range strike, command-and-control and high-end technology.
That makes the 5% target much more than a fiscal story. NATO’s own framework splits it into at least 3.5% for core defense and up to 1.5% for infrastructure, resilience, cybersecurity and industrial capacity. Ankara then explicitly moved the agenda from setting targets to delivering production and capabilities. The real question is therefore not whether Europe rearms, but what kind of military autonomy that spending actually buys.
Excellent, thank you for your great research work. I understand the critiques, having nothing to add. Just looking for more enlightening discussions. Moreover you are a very sophisticated academic writer, congratulations.
Failure to adopt and accept a middle way (reciprocity) will see the West, after much trouble and toil, collapse. We are only 12 % of the world's population and the majority will ultimately prevail. What was Fortress North America is transitioning to a ghetto of intransigence. Empires of spite and malevolence die a hard and bitter death.
Hi Nel,
thanks for this piece. Although, this time, I must say I find it unconvincing.
While your framework on the bunker-state strongly holds regarding European elites, your conclusions on Nato 3.0 do not seem grounded in European reality. At best, they may underline a purpose of some of factions in play, but I would argue that you've missed too many dynamics at play in Europe.
To start with, it is hazardous to take Mark Rutte's words as a reliable sign of what Europe is doing. The man has notoriously been out of touch with reality for a while, and while he attempts to maintain the illusion of European unity, growing disunity cannot be ignored.
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Europe is entirely incapable to reach the 5% GDP target. That is, if they may facially progress towards the target, it is primarily because major European economies, and the EU economy as a whole, have been shrinking for a while, despite official GDP data. The share of defense spending grows artifically because total spending is shrinking.
The UK is already broke, and cannot find money to follow the desired rythm even in its poster-child military programs, such as GCAP.
Germany will soon be collapsing economically.
France may follow the same route.
Same for Italy.
Etc...
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Furthermore, there is a serious lack of industrial capability to back intentions to turn Europe into an American proxy in any military industrial revolution. Only 3 countries in Europe can claim to have a worthy defense industry today : France, Sweden and Italy. None of these are the hardcore promoters of relying on US tech for present and future European needs.
The countries talking this way are: 1) Eastern European countries, with virtually no industrial capability that have thouroughly tied themselves to US interest and policies, up to the point of fearing to find themselves totally naked before the Russian bear if the US withdraws, hence the need to provide long term economic incentive to US interests ; 2) Germany, who seeks to replace its collapsing export industries with a defense industry to serve the needs of Central and Eastern European countries, but who does not have the technologies to do so, and who thus needs to obtain production licenses from US industries.
But Germany is out of energy, and its government is thoroughly incapable to drive any form of military-industrial ambition, as was demonstrated in Germany's slow cancellation of rather ambitious and realisitc plans for industrial cooperation proposed by France almost a decade ago. So much so, also, that the German goverment has obviously chosen to devolve the full responsibility of driving military-industrial policies to Rheinmettal and Airbus. Problems are : 1) Airbus is not a German company, and Germany will be at the mercy of French retaliation for a lost decade of German treachery, as soon as Macron is out of office ; plus, Airbus as a dismal record in driving military projects that were much simpler than those that are required of them today ; and 2) Rheinmetall does NOT produce the kind of technologies that will be needed in tomorrows wars, but rather they are an entrenched rent-based industrial company that keeps recycling 1970's tech backed with powerful marketing BS. But the Ukrainian battlefield has largely demonstrated the lack of relevance of Rheinmetall's hardware.
The recent collapses of cooperations between France and Germany must be read as the effect of disagreement regarding the relationship to the US. Germans seek to acquire European preponderance through transfer of US tech to German industries; while France failed to build European industrial power with Germany and will now be seeking its salvation outside of Europe, mainly trough cooperation with India (mark my words on this, realisation will be quicker than anyone expects, and it will conclude fast as soon as Macron is out of the French landscape).
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Overall, the European landscape right now is one where competitors are moving fast to gather has much resources as they can before the start of a general onslaught in which they'll be killing one another. Germany seeks primacy but its financial reousrces are fast dwindling and its industrial credibility is dubious. France holds much stronger industrial cards but lacks financial resources, and it will likely leave the realm of European defense to seek long term partnerships with India. Sweden is being courted, and while it has recently signed a cooperation agreement with germanyè, I do not find major ambitions in it and I will not be surprised if the Swedes seek to follow the French dynamic. Italy will as usual rely on its strong domestic industry to provide self-sufficient solutions, but will not acquire significant reach over the rest of Europe.
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This leaves US prospects with only those countries that have no industrial capabilities of their own, and no military credibility besides talking loud while hiding behind the protection of their partners. Follow my eyes to Lithuanua or Estonia. Those will be the future US allies in Europe.
Poland spends a lot but builds no reliable industrial framework to sustain war on the long run. Romania is trying to maintain a diversity of providers because it still cannot see one path that guarantees is security on the long run. And Turkey is already planning the post-NATO world, and is only seeking industrial know-how to be transferred to its national industries, which have been progressing extremely fast on the quality aspect, but are still not a credibly self-sufficient provider of successful technologies.
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At the same time, what of US military, industrial and strategic credibility? They are all fading rapidly. Seen from Europe, relying on the US is now seen by several countries as a major liability, starting with the field of digital technologies, military and civilian, where several EU countries have discreetly startiung to prepare for a major shake up to free themselves from their dependency to the US.
Despite the marketing BS from Anduril and others, US military industries are no longer a credible source of useful innovation. They lack agility, they are used to extracting resource from the Federal State to provide weapons never to be used, but now that these weapons are indeed being used, they appear to be unreliable, inefficient, much too expensive, much too slow to produce. You can invest as much as you want on AI-based mass-targeting technologies, which is indeed impressive, that will not take you very far if your arsenals are emptied in just a few rounds of fighting with no significant strategic effect achieved...
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A word on a country you've not mentioned : Spain. It is proving that getting out of the US strategic coffin can be done before final burial.
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While I agree that many in the current European elites may be seeking their survival in tying Europe to the US, I also see : 1) several factions in those elites seeking their survival in trying to turn Europe into a power of its own, seperate from the US and non-aligned with US strategic policies; 2) immense fragilities in European economies, societies, political and institutional frameworks, that risk causing collapses much quicker than European elites can handle; 3) for European countries that matter in defining the larger European trend, major opportunities and plans outside the US-European realm (for France especially, but not only, others will follow... see the looming major agreement between France and Morocco for instance); 4) massive rejection of present European elites among European citizens, which the EU-bunker has already planned to silence through undemocratic means, but... well, you know, European masses have a history of getting rid of elites that no longer satisy them, so, I expect something on that side.
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If I can propose a short conclusions from those many, complex, divergent, hard-to-connect elements, I'd say that even if there were an actual shared intent over NATO 3.0 between present US power and European elites, it is not on a path to success. And alternatives are already being built.
The great deciding factor over the next decade will likely not be drawn from all those plans, though. It will be about who manages to safeguard access to critical resources, who has enough energy to keep producing military ware, and who can find reliable friends to bail them out and allow them to keep standing.
A decade from now, many of the actors we are talking about will no longer be standing and will no longer be relevant.
One of the NATO chiefs said the quiet part out loud: "If peace breaks out, we’ll be out of a job."
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"Peace is more dangerous than war"
-Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen 2025
Thanks Nel. Well researched and informative. Many of us have a sense of this direction but not all of the details. Those details in fact are so perverse they made me quite nauseous when reading them. This is quickly heading towards the destruction of Europe. If they could only focus their resources in a constructive way they might save themselves. Instead they are going to focus all of their resources into the destructive channels of war machinery and it will eventually turn them into what they fear the most... the Jungle. They invite the destruction of war, social chaos, and poverty upon themselves, clinging to their delusions of power and superiority. Yet they cannot turn away from the illusory seductions of money and power. Tragically and ironically, it will only lead to both financial disaster, and complete dependency.
Capitalism keeps driving us in the direction. No surprise, as it has always been a system of organised crime as your historical references point out. It has always made its false profits by theft, extortion and slavery, always endorsed by false prophets. The world is desperate for a third way.
Great analysis of what NATO/USA plans to do. However I find those 10-15 years plans incompatible with the reality of a collapsing (not anymore just declining but clearly collapsing) US Empire and also with the red line of History that this very year of 2026 CE seems to be, in which the tipping point of the Global Warming ecocatastrophe converges with the mass economic crisis deepened in just few months by the Hormuz standoff.
Attrition warfare for years sounds "logical" until you observe how US military assets in Arabia, built through the decades of Iraq wars, have been absolutely destroyed in a matter of weeks and with no particular effort by the enemy.
Control via AI and quantum computing also sound absurdly speculative and not well grounded. Even the once quite powerful Western intelligence (secret services) now appear rather like a great failure (of which the recent Mossad purge is a symptom).
In fact, as I read this analysis I could not help but wondering, paragraph after paragraph, if, by promoting European military unification and industrial self-sufficiency (regardless of where the energy comes from, that can change easily), the USA is not digging their own tomb even deeper. I do wonder if, much as Britain unified India, the USA is not unifying Europe beyond what Europeans ourselves would be naturally inclined to? And, if so, whether in this 2026-35 decade (which IMO will be one of radical changes at global level, deeply chaotic rather than predictable, revolutionary even eventually), a better integrated and militarily powerful Europe won't become a direct challenge to US hegemony (after due expropriation of BlackRock and the like). Granted that it doesn't look like in the short term but what about 2030 or 2035?
1. I think the article would have been more useful if it had been better at citing sources. Some claims are necessarily conclusions from the reasoning, but others must have been taken from somewhere. For example, the claim about “chokepoints” in the infrastructure where non-allies can be discriminated against and harassed. Where did it come from? There are more like that. The sources are possibly mentioned elsewhere in the text, but they should be pinpointed every time. It would be a pity if what is claimed could be brushed away as conspiracy theories.
2. One should also be able to tell something about the opportunities that the Western elite gang ignored in their strategy of violence. We know that what scares the crap out of them is China’s rise. But China has not used violence or the threat of violence for this, they have only used carrots and sticks against their own businesses, strategic technology purchases, and the deliberate busting of their unproductive rentier businesses. Surely Europeans and Americans could have done that too, and that way regained some of their lost advantage?
It is still quite clear why they have not. Those who dominate the Western elite today are precisely the rentiers who neither want nor can engage in production. Cory Doctorow addresses this in one of his posts, https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/11/tragedy-of-the-commoners/. The biggest profits are not made in production but in dominating “chokepoints”; Michael Hudson and Michael Lind have called it “tollbooth capitalism”, https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/the-politics-of-tollbooth-capitalism/, and Brett Christophers has documented the fact in Rentier capitalism, Verso 2020. And this is the ultimate cause of the West’s decline.
There is a whole small literature on how rentierism has strangled periods of prosperity in history, for example Charles Kindleberger: World economic primacy 1500-1990, Oxford 1996, Bas van Bavel: The invisible hand, Oxford 2016 (which goes all the way back to the Abbasid Caliphate), and one could add the final chapter in Alfred Chandler: Scale and scope, Harvard 1990 (the book otherwise deals with the heyday of production capitalism in the 20th century).
It is thus the rentier-created decline that has caused the panic. The West has necessarily ended up at a disadvantage. I assume you are familiar with Dale Copeland's Economic interdependence and war, Princeton 2013. He believes, after examining every great power conflict since 1790, that it is almost always the great power that perceives itself to be in an inferior position that resorts to violence as a last resort, but that it almost never gains anything from doing so. The economic loser is also the war’s loser. NATO's strategy of violence is therefore a rather desperate gamble, which many may see reason to oppose.
One reason why I think it is important to focus on this kind of thing is that it highlights who our enemies are, and makes it possible to broaden our own political base to include everyone else who does not benefit from their order. Which is necessary to win a fight; no successful revolution has ever been built exclusively on a popular movement, marginalized elite groups have always been necessary to bring about a lasting post-revolutionary order. In this case, everyone who sees their future in production – from the workers to those capitalists who organize production chains, and including all who would oppose a probably unsuccessful war.
Thank you for your deep engagement with my essay, Jan! I really appreciate these comments. I apologize for the delay. Answering these questions requires some time and space to gather the references.
First, I take your point on sourcing and will be more diligent about pinpointing them in the text going forward. Regarding the “chokepoints” and infrastructure denial, there is indeed a long, documented paper trail. While there is no single master document called “The Chokepoint Strategy,” it is a foundational doctrine spread across several strategic papers. I am currently working on Part II of this NATO 3.0 essay, as well as a standalone piece on energy policy, which will dive into this partly and the other one deeply, but here is a sample of that paper trail:
Brookings Institution (2014) – “Fueling a New Order?”: This paper discusses "mutually assured denial" regarding the U.S. and China. It outlines the U.S. strategy of sea blockades, noting that China is building naval capacity specifically so it "can’t be subject to an economic or energy blockade by sea," while the U.S. must recognize "China will develop enough naval capacity to stop the U.S. from blockading the sea lanes." Blocking energy by sea is an acknowledged U.S. Navy strategy.
CSIS (2025) – “No Safe Harbor”: In evaluating China's port projects in Latin America, this paper assumes infrastructure will be weaponized: "Control or deep involvement in port operations can enable intelligence collection... privileged access to maritime logistics data, and the ability to deny or delay access during a crisis."
Atlantic Council (2025) – “A US and allied strategy for Greenland”: This anchors the 2025 National Security Strategy to "deterrence by denial." The authors write: "To achieve its goals for the Arctic, the United States must work with its allies and partners to deny these adversaries the ability to dominate the region militarily and economically." This is about the denial of infrastructure among other things.
U.S. Navy–Marine Corps–Coast Guard (2020) – “Advantage at Sea”: This is perhaps the most explicit. It states: "Where adversaries must cross open water, sea denial robs them of the initiative... We control or deny the seas by destroying an adversary’s fleet... or by controlling sea lines of communication. In collaboration with allies and partners, we will be capable of controlling critical choke points, enabling us to safeguard joint forces flowing into theater and to impose military and economic costs on our adversaries." Furthermore, there are a myriad of lectures from the Energy Defense seminars of the US Naval Academy that openly discuss oil as a weapon (and its different variants) and chokepoint control dating back to at least 2016.
Secondly, I completely agree with you on the rentier point. My analysis is always informed by that dynamic in the background. However, I am currently going back and forth and trying to understand what we are actually all observing here: Is the thesis drawn from Copeland and others that because the empire is "standing on its last legs," it is desperately lashing out, the apt one?
Or what we are mistaking for “lashing out” is actually more in the line of Heide Gerstenberger’s book Market and Violence. I am increasingly thinking that the extreme violence we see today is simply capitalism functioning as it is designed to when it operates without brakes.
Historically, capitalist organized violence wasn't tamed by the system maturing or by free markets; it was only ever domesticated by organized, scaled resistance and the construction of alternative institutions. Today, where are those brakes? Where is the resistance organized at a systemic scale (institutions that are organized differently, and don’t just work reactively as shields)? Without a global counter-force imposing friction, the U.S.-led core might just be operating as a frictionless machine of capitalist violence (and yes, that includes cannibalizing its so-called allies).
This idea of what we are observing as unbraked violence or "desperate collapse" is something I’m trying to understand right now. I don’t think it is actually that obvious; maybe it is a combination of the two.
I would however argue that a capitalism that is not tamed by society always would tend towards rentierism and robber baronism. Why engage in production if you don't need to? As Doctorow argued, Gates earned more money as retired rentier than he did as a CEO.
On the other hand, even robber baron capitalists need a state to protect them, and a state has to be fed. Reasonable statesmen wouldn't take bigger risks than they could escape if somethong goes wrong. If they exceed that level, there must be panic luring somewhere.
Absolutely.
The Anglo-murican Imperialist Oligarchs don't want to work, trade and cooperate. They only want to LOOT, 'cause maximum immediate profit comes from looting.
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youtube.com/watch?v=HABwKORAaZE
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The US/UK have basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the Alglo-murican Oligarchy does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it. In the eyes of the Anglo-murican Empire you are either servant, livestock or enemy. It’s a greedy empire.
Thank you for the liking, Nel. But which *is* the source where they admit their "chokepoint strategy" – just to take the most obvious example? I would like to know, I dare not repeat the claim without having evidence to back it up.
Good article as always.
A side point on the capital/investment issue: If I understand correctly the article claims that the Norwegian soveregin fund and other similar sovereign wealth funds excluded investments in weapons. Which I dont think is correct.
The Norwegian soveregin wealth fund had an ethics board ( now disbanded because it would have excluded Caterpilllar and Palantir) and some ESG criteria for companies, but I dont believe that those "standards" ever reached as high as a blanket exclusion on weapons. They excluded nuclear weapons, and certain types of weapons such as land mines etc which are banned by international treaties, but did not exclude weapons. But now they basically have no standards.
Some asset managers like Tridos do have a blanket ban. And many asset managers who dont, have offered investors the ability to choose to invest in a few certain individual funds that exclude investments in any weapons or fund. But this has always been more the exception than the rule: at all levels in that sector from the mega national funds to the smaller ones, the general rule has been weapons companies are investable objects and they dont care about the ethics.
It is obvious that the NATO expansion involved lots of pressure by the US: strange incidents in Macedonia and Montenegro that resulted in regime change where the new regime immediately joined NATO, suggesting that NATO membership is needed for joining the EU, etc.
My question is whether there is a webpage that provides a good overview of this subject. A website that is well documented with links so that you can send a NATO-fan there in order to convince him.
Just finished reading, excellent stuff, extremely thorough and enlightening, am based in Ireland, I am not sure how widely known what is happening in Ireland vis a vis our neutrality and the pressure it is under politically, but in terms of responding to the call for perspectives I will elaborate a little. There has been a concerted effort to get Ireland on board with NATO that has accelerated notably in recent years. Ireland has historically viewed itself as a neutral nation, independence from Britain was also independence from the machinations of empire, a robust Irish military would also have been a threat to the UK, Jack Lynch reportedly considered invading the North in the 70's.
A pressure point is Ireland's territorial waters, which extend well into the Atlantic, including transatlantic cables which are claimed to be a strategic weak point vulnerable to attack from Russia. After making do without an Air Force for decades (the last fighter jets Ireland had in service were Magister training jets retired in the early 00's IIRC), we are now set to invest billions in acquiring a fighter jet squadron in order to meet the threat of Russia, (presumably 4th generation fighter jets, the kind of 6th generation fighter jet can take out twenty of before leaving it's hanger). We are often pilloried by political commentators from NATO countries (who are given prominent voices) in the media as being "free loaders" and so on owing to our relatively tiny military spend (a blissful 0.25%).
The triple lock is the specific legal mechanism that essentially says the Irish military cannot be deployed except with a UN mandate, so you will often see Irish based commentary making reference to "the triple lock" and it being potentially dismantled, we are being sold on the idea that the Russian security council veto represents a threat to our sovereignty, as such getting rid of the triple lock is a reclaiming our sovereignty from Putin and such nonsense. The media needless to say is heavily pushing further NATO alignment.
There is significant resistance to all this in Ireland, NATO membership remains unpopular despite the recent PR push and there is an active grassroots political movement that opposed it. However Ireland is economically very much embedded in the US orbit, a third of our tax take is from five or so US international corporations based here for tax purposes, post-colonial comprador class ruling elite mentality remains received wisdom and our hyper local PR voting system means civic questions are rarely high up the electorate's agenda, so the gravitational pull towards further NATO alignment seems on the face of it irresistible one way or another (I'm not sure if there is an immediate alternative, to talk the talk and perhaps drag your feet is one thing, but to signal total non-compliance would be to make a small open European economy a strategic target for isolation and any government implementing such policy a target for removal, realistically who would Ireland's allies be in such a scenario? Pragmatically a non hegemonic regional country needs friends in the neighbourhood and the European project has shifted its terms of membership).
Ireland is doing her bit in other ways though, 22%-25% of the Irish electrical grid is now consumed by data centres.
Insightful article as usual. I would like to understand how the recent increase in both the selling off of U.S. Treasury Bonds and the purchasing of gold by many nations in place of these bonds effects the ability of the U.S. to implement its designs that you describe, and also how it is effecting relations with Europe whose bonds were just used by the U.S., seemingly without warning, to purchase Yen to stall the Yen's decline, which only did so for a very short duration. I would think that these recent developments (accelerated de-dollarization) may affect the larger aims of this historically formed transnational trans-Atlantic dominated ruling strata. Might this factor into your future analysis?
Bedankt voor de fantastische uitleg! De puzzelstukjes vallen wat mij betreft nu op zijn plaats.
Maar de SACEUR heeft absoluut geen bevoegdheid om nationale veto’s te omzeilen of soevereine landen te dwingen hun troepen in te zetten. Hoezo denk je dat hij dat wel kan? De SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) is inderdaad altijd een Amerikaanse generaal, en hij heeft vergaande operationele bevoegdheden. Het is heel begrijpelijk dat de structuur daardoor overkomt als een Amerikaanse commandostructuur, maar de verdeling tussen militaire macht en politieke zeggenschap is strikt geregeld:1. Wat de SACEUR wel kan (Binnen strikte grenzen)Troepen verplaatsen: De SACEUR kan alléén troepen verplaatsen die door lidstaten vrijwillig onder NAVO-bevel zijn geplaatst (zoals de Standing NATO Maritime Groups of de NATO Response Force).Alertniveaus bepalen: Hij kan de paraatheid van die specifieke NAVO-eenheden verhogen als de dreiging toeneemt.2. Wat de SACEUR absoluut niet kanNationale veto's omzeilen: De NAVO-commandostructuur staat volledig onder de politieke leiding. De SACEUR mag pas grootschalig in actie komen nadat de Noord-Atlantische Raad (de politieke leiders van álle lidstaten) daar met 100% consensus toestemming voor heeft gegeven. Eén veto van bijvoorbeeld Nederland, Frankrijk of Hongarije blokkeert de hele operatie.Nationale troepen opeisen: Defensie is een nationale aangelegenheid. Als de SACEUR vraagt om extra troepen, beslist de Nederlandse regering (en de Tweede Kamer via Artikel 100 van de Grondwet) volledig zelfstandig of die militairen wel of niet gaan. De Amerikaanse generaal kan dat op geen enkele manier afdwingen.De SACEUR is dus een uitvoerder, geen dictator. Hij is de bevelhebber van het leger, maar de Europese politiek houdt te allen tijde de vinger op de knop.
We cannot have world peace with NATO 3.0. Humanity must unite against the horrors that warmongering US/NATO 3.0 brings, least of which is increasing threat of a nuclear holocaust that would wipe out humanity. We, as humans, must support friendship, cooperation, & trade among nations for a brighter multipolar world without the death, destruction & suffering that NATO 3.0 leads to.
Prodigious.
Thoughtful.
But can the schematic prescriptions presented here, overwhelm the impending climate catastrophe, about to be revealed in its fullest context?
Bunkerstate or not the mass movement of potential millions to billions of entities will potentially, negate many preconceived notions and plans.
Not being a 'doom/gloom' propagandist but trying to envision a multi-plexed bio-social conundrum
Just thinking of some sustainable potentialities, that may require dired fixes, in the absence of functional nation-states, wherever they may be.
I appreciate your intellectual powers!
Great work.
BTW, I will read again x2. So much to absorbed. Lol........
The more interesting shift is not simply “Europe spends more on defense.” It is the changing division of labor inside NATO. Europe is being pushed to provide more conventional capacity, industrial output, logistics and infrastructure, while the US remains disproportionately important in the strategic layer: nuclear deterrence, ISR, long-range strike, command-and-control and high-end technology.
That makes the 5% target much more than a fiscal story. NATO’s own framework splits it into at least 3.5% for core defense and up to 1.5% for infrastructure, resilience, cybersecurity and industrial capacity. Ankara then explicitly moved the agenda from setting targets to delivering production and capabilities. The real question is therefore not whether Europe rearms, but what kind of military autonomy that spending actually buys.
Ils promirent la liberté, la propérité et la paix.
Ils livreront le totalitarisme, la misère et la guerre.
Les perdreaux, s'aveuglant toujours plus à chaque génération, ne réagiront jamais.
Quel Salut espérer ? Comment éradiquer l'OTAN, l'UE et l'euro, pour ancrer les propos sur le sol français ?
Je n'ai aucune certitude, quoiqu'imaginant une réponse acceptable à ce simplexe, fut-elle non optimale.
Il en faudra des marées pour la rendre exprimable.
J'attends patiemment, inexorablement.
Dépêchez-vous, car personne n'est immortel.
Thank you for this brilliant piece, translated in French here : https://zanzibar.substack.com/p/lotan-30-la-cage-transatlantique
Excellent, thank you for your great research work. I understand the critiques, having nothing to add. Just looking for more enlightening discussions. Moreover you are a very sophisticated academic writer, congratulations.
Failure to adopt and accept a middle way (reciprocity) will see the West, after much trouble and toil, collapse. We are only 12 % of the world's population and the majority will ultimately prevail. What was Fortress North America is transitioning to a ghetto of intransigence. Empires of spite and malevolence die a hard and bitter death.