Welfare versus warfare considerations in Europe
Europe is experiencing a cost-of-living crisis. Everything is expensive and there is not enough money even for the basics. More and more people are coming to the realisation that our society has become a grand pay-to-win scheme in which the many are becoming increasingly marginalised as they are getting priced out of housing and sociability altogether. Meanwhile, European policy-makers keep furnishing billions for their proxy war with Russia. Ukrainians do the fighting so that Western elites may profit.
It is, nonetheless, a mistake to think that the ruling class is decoupled from the rest of society. All exist on a continuum of want, else differences in degree, underpinned by shared values. Those are made manifest as expectations of what amounts to the desirable life. The average European wants the comforts of the city, amusements aplenty, just-in-time consumption of anything their heart desires, plenty of vacation, travels around the world, and a robust welfare state. The question now is “what does it take to finance that sort of lifestyle?” and the answer is not pretty.
The continuum of trade and conquest
International trade and imperialism differ only in means. Both have the same end, which is to collect resources from different parts of the planet and make possible goods that are otherwise not available in conditions of autarky (self-sufficiency). The piecing together of resources is what makes people more affluent.
Consider a simple scenario where Europeans make trade with the Chinese. Both sides are benevolent and eager to help each other thrive. And both work towards their own enrichment. The routes between Europe and China are inhabited by other peoples who will eventually want a piece of that delicious pie. This they will get either through piracy or by trying to get involved in the trade agreements. Raiding and negotiating are themselves on a continuum: you attack so that you can sit at the table and you sit at the table because you can attack. But them getting involved means that the share of wealth eventually diminishes, relative to how it was before.
A saturated market has much tighter margins for profit. Eventually the original actors will be dismayed. They will have the memory of the good old days when money was plentiful and will seek to change things. This they can do by redefining the rules of the agreement with the consent of those involved, or by imposing their will through brute force. Again, the same continuum of negotiation and aggression is in effect. Consent means concessions though, which result in less profit.
What then tilts the balance between peaceful cooperation and violent confrontation is the cost-benefit calculation.
The same dynamics exist within each region. The European who is not involved in business sees the entrepreneur next door live the opulent life and now wants some of it as well. Thus arises the social demand for spreading the wealth around. Again, this diminishes the surplus per person.
Against this backdrop, there is the trade-off between giving and taking. It applies to the interior and between states. Giving means that surpluses are eventually distributed so widely until there is nothing more to give. While taking involves increasing levels of aggression, in the form of social stratification and the subjugation of other peoples. At any rate, there is no distinction between what is happening in the notional inside and in the outside: it is the same propensity for giving or taking; the same peremptory rules of life.
To be more concrete now. The international trade we had following the collapse of the Soviet Union coincided with the supremacy of American power. The so-called “international community” was what America wanted it to be. Economic and political “freedom” was the flip-side of “security” with strong American military presence practically everywhere around the globe. To speak of international trade is to describe the American empire, and vice versa.
This is not a new phenomenon. All political arrangements have this dual nature. Pax Romana, for example, was a time of prosperity which was underpinned by the iron fist of the Roman war machine. The golden ages of European nations after the Middle Ages coincided with their rise as colonial powers. Even the most abstract market depends on the consistent application of norms, tacit or explicit, which are necessarily underpinned by the potential for corrective action.
The latent violence of safety
Which brings me to the potential for violence. Every order is constituted against disorder, every safe space is carved out of the wilderness, every given plan consists as a diminution of complete openendedness.
Think of the common symbol of love, which is the mother holding her baby. Love is made possible by all that is non-love, such as ruthless opposition to all that represents a threat to the baby’s wellness. The mother keeps the baby protected from, say, poisonous spiders, rats, vipers, creepy strangers, and so on. Failure to do so results in the near-certain death of the child. Her love towards the baby is made possible by her willingness to actively avoid or, if necessary, displace and otherwise control all those other life forms. Not because she harbours some inherent hatred, but as a matter of showing love. Such is the drawing of boundaries, which is supported by a determination to stand and fight where the dividing line is.
The same principle is true for a house. The interior is comfortable because it leaves out the wilderness. If there are bats, for example, they carry with them the disease of rabies: a bat resting on your face while you are asleep will transmit a horrible and incurable virus to you through saliva. So bats must be kept outside. Again, not because one actively loathes them, but as a necessary condition for survival. Extend this idea to the grass, the vegetation all around, the tiniest of species, which also bring all sorts of challenges and threats.
Those who romanticise nature have not lived outside their comfortable milieu: nature destroys anyone who is not paying attention to their surroundings.
Same for the society, which rests on institutions. Members of the social whole agree on shared values either outright or through acculturation, which they may codify as law. The common good they share is made possible by the delineation of the space within which it can be made manifest. The realm of inclusivity necessarily stands as exclusivity to whatever cannot be a party to it. If, for example, the society institutes theft as undesirable, then it must contain, constrain, dissuade, deter, or otherwise eliminate thieves. Else the thieves will undo that which the society considers its midpoint, namely, the order where theft does not exist.
Concretely, this is backed by force and the attendant readiness to employ it. Your favourite cafeteria is not overrun by beasts because the built-up area it exists in forces all other life forms away, from the grass, to the insects, the snakes, the jackals, and so on. Force is ultimately expressed as the potential for violence, which is typically actualised when the easier pathways to the given objective are exhausted.
At this point, naive people will respond with emotionally charged commentary: “oh, so you believe violence is good, you monster!” No, silly. Whether this is “good” or “bad” is irrelevant. Mine is a description, not a prescription. I explain how the world is. Else we live in the fantasy land of ideology from where we cannot enact thoroughgoing reform.
Bringing the realities of living into the discussion of international affairs, we appreciate how trade and war are on a continuum of latent violence. They both share the goal of piecing together resources from different parts, such that they expand the pool of wealth. We choose to trade because the alternative is to kill each other. And, sometimes, that alternative is more appealing, hence warfare. War may be destructive over the short-to-medium term, but it still has the potential to be greatly profitable long-term, such as in the case of colonisation.
A crisis of attitude
The cost-of-living crisis in Europe is fundamentally a question of the average character. Europeans do not know what they actually want. They lack the maturity to set priorities and the wherewithal to deal with the concomitant trade-offs.
Europeans want to remain self-righteous about their democracy and fundamental rights, call out the Russians, antagonise the Chinese, control the Arabs and the Africans, make fun of the Americans, and still enjoy the opulent life.
Consider the cost of energy. Lowering it will make everything else more affordable. Though there still are great costs involved. Europe is strongly dependent on imports from America right now, which means that it needs to diversify.
- Europe could be importing cheap oil from Russia, but that would bring billions of fresh cash into the coffers of Putin’s war machine, which he would definitely use to wipe Ukraine and maybe even the Baltic nations off the map. Here is already one trade-off.
- Europeans want cheap renewable energy, but this means that they must collaborate with the Chinese who have all the expertise and relevant resources for panels, batteries, inverters, et cetera. The Chinese will ask for concessions, such as to eliminate all tariffs, provide unencumbered access to ports, and so on. Importing cheap goods from China effectively forces domestic businesses into bankruptcy. Again, this has far-reaching implications.
- Another option is to approach the Arabs and the Iranians. Europeans can get energy from them in exchange for something they want. For example, Europeans will have to accept the legitimacy of the Iranian regime, they will have to withdraw all military presence from the Middle East, stop arming Israel, and so on. As always, there are consequences that have to be considered very carefully. What, for example, prevents China or Russia from filling in the vacuum left behind by Westerners? “Nothing” is the answer.
There are other neighbouring considerations which pertain to matters of lifestyle. The average person does not think about the energy profile of their appliances. They do not know how demanding and energy-intensive it is to have heating, a hair-drier, and a toaster all working at once, while the washing machine is running, the computer is active, and all the lights are switched on. This is the typical household. None of it is “cheap” anymore: it can be made cheaper through shrewd and perhaps unscrupulous international agreements and/or outright pillaging of other people’s resources.
Renewables are not a panacea either. They cannot address the insatiable desire for energy that an energivorous lifestyle demands. Put differently, people must understand that their own consumption habits have a cumulative effect on the world they live in and the political realities they enable. Put differently, it is far more revealing to check how people vote with their wallets than to listen to what they signal as a virtue.
The easiest way to understand the crisis of attitude in Europe is to shift the discussion away from ideological purity into matters of governance. There is where things get real. Ask somebody what exactly will they do first day at the office. They have the keys to Europe and they can act as they see fit. You call up Putin? He is like “okay, you want energy but what do I get in return?”. Russia will make its demands very clear. Whatever concessions you make do not merely have an expression in present time: they also create the conditions for future bargaining. Every decision has ramifications. For example, if Russia controls the Black Sea as well as the Baltics, it can get a better deal out of its trade with Germany and France. Similarly, the Franco-Germans being in charge of that space gives them more leverage.
[ Also read: Notes on European geopolitics in Ukraine and the Middle East (2026-10-14) ]
Extend this principle to every transaction and instance of trade, always being mindful of the aforementioned continuum. If you are honest, you will always reach the same trade-offs; trade-offs that the average citizen has not bothered to think through and thus blithely purports to be righteous.
Fundamentally, the Europeans do not understand how entitled they are. They fail to realise that the good life they used to have was built on the legacy of colonialism. If the average citizen still wants to have all the comforts they are effectively advocating for a new imperialism, even if they have not connected the dots themselves.
Europeans, and Canadians for that matter, have long now been shielded from the realities of the bonanza they were partaking in. It was principally the Americans who were doing the dirty work, but in a world that has shifted towards multipolarity all the Western nations are faced with the reality of how to remain relevant.
“Relevance” in this world is a polite way of describing the efforts that culminate in dominance. Europeans will know this the moment they take a cursory view of their history as well as a cool look at the rigours of governance. Though the political correctness of recent times has distracted them from the facts. Hence their crisis.