Collected Poetry

Europe wants another war, rather like ones they've stirred before.
Europe wants what Europe's sore to whip into a frothy roar.

Bonaparte marched both here and there, to Russia and Egypt, with French flair.
Prussians, Spaniards heard the blare, and Italy too was in his snare.

The Kaiser's lads were strong and proud to strut parades for a Prussian crowd.
Bloodied Europe's warfare shroud draped the dead, as war's allowed.

Old Adolf and Duke Benny too foamed and frothed about the Jew,
And others of many nations who were erased in his national socialists' brew.

Emperors all, with different names, play with war as if with games;
Mighty lads' and lasses' claims? Time has come to renew the flames?

Addendum from the Secretary General: "Insisting on an immediate and rapid boost of defence spending as a deterrent, he added: 'Conflict is at our door.' Mr Rutte suggested that Russia could use military force against Nato within the next five years, and that Europe is not ready." In "Europe should prepare for war ‘like our grandparents endured’, warns Nato chief," Independent UK, 12 December 2025. ^{[ 1 ]}

Addendum from a French General: "We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to dissuade Moscow’s regime. What we are lacking, and that is where you have a major role, is the strength of soul to accept pain to protect what we are. If our country is weak because it is not ready to accept losing its children — because it’s better to say things clearly — [and] to suffer economically because the priority will be the defence sector, then we are at risk." In "French general: We must be ready to ‘lose our children’ in war," Times UK, 20 November 2025

Addendum from ta German: "German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has issued a stark warning, declaring that decades of 'Pax Americana' are over for Europe. Speaking on shifting transatlantic ties, Merz said the era of US-led security guarantees is fading and urged European nations to strengthen their own independent defence capabilities. His remarks signal a major turning point in Europe’s strategic outlook and raise urgent questions about NATO, US–EU relations, and Europe’s future security in an increasingly uncertain world." In "'Europe on its own': Merz declares Pax Americana over, urges independent defence as US shifts focus," ET Online, 15 December 2025.

Addendum from a Brit: "While the chief of the defence staff suggested there was only a remote chance of a direct Russian attack on the UK, he told an event at the Royal United Services Institute that so-called hybrid attacks showed the threat was worsening. Sir Richard said: 'Sons and daughters. Colleagues. Veterans will all have a role to play. To build. To serve. And if necessary, to fight. And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means'." In "We need more people ready to fight, military chief says," by Jamie Whitehead, BBC, 15 December 2025.

Addendum from a Pole: "Tusk outlined the wide-ranging security challenges confronting Europe. 'The biggest and most important task for our leaders today is to make people — the entire Western, transatlantic community — realize: this is war,' he said. 'We didn’t want it, and yes, it’s strange at times — a new kind of war — but it’s still war,' the Polish prime minister added." In "Tusk warns Europe is already at war, urges united front against Russian threat," New Voice of Ukraine, 29 September 2025.

Addendum of a Pole Pretending to Talk for an American: "The United States has declared it is ready to take part in postwar security guarantees for Ukraine, including the possible deployment of American troops once a peace deal with Russia is reached, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, has said." In "Tusk says US ready to deploy troops to Ukraine to secure peace deal," Telewizja Polska S.A. , 30 December 2025.

Addendum from a Hungarian: "For the first time in the history of the European Union, 24 member states have jointly granted a war loan to a country outside the Union. This is not a technical detail but a qualitative shift. The logic of a loan is clear: whoever lends money wants it back. In this case, repayment is not tied to economic growth or stabilisation, but to military victory. For this money to ever be recovered, Russia would have to be defeated. That is not the logic of peace but the logic of war. A war loan inevitably makes its financiers interested in the continuation and escalation of the conflict, because defeat would also mean a financial loss. From this moment on, we are no longer talking merely about political or moral decisions, but about hard financial constraints that push Europe in one direction: into war." In an X tweet, Orbán Viktor, 20 December 2025.

Addendum of One Opposing View: "European leaders are not irrational, but their public language is increasingly reckless. Pledges of 'reassurance forces' for Ukraine and open talk of being 'ready to fight Russia' may be intended as deterrence, yet they also serve as fodder for Kremlin propaganda and create political expectations that are hard to reverse." In "Europe’s Dangerous Rhetoric: Stubb, Security Guarantees and the Drift Toward a Wider War," by Jvan Ricciardella, LinkedIn, 22 September 2025. ^{[ 2 ]}

Addendum of an Expectation: "The Soviet Union thought it was eternal in 1988. The French monarchy thought it was secure in 1788. The EU thinks it is safe today. They are wrong." In "The EU could be gone in four years: A revolutionary eruption is coming," by Ralph Schoellhammer, Brussels Signal / Remedia Europe SRL, 22 December 2025.

Addendum from a Ukrainian: "According to the main plan, the Russian Federation should have been ready to start actions in 2030. Now the plans have been adjusted, revised in the direction of shortening the terms for 2027." In "We ourselves destroyed our mobilization. No matter who says the opposite, it is not so. We destroyed it ourselves," LB / Ukraine, 20 December 2025. ^{[ 3 ]}

Addendum from an American: “Some of that land has been taken,” Trump said. “Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months, and you are better off making a deal now.” In "Trump says ‘a lot closer’ to Ukraine peace deal after Zelenskyy meeting, though thorny issues remain," CNBC, 28 December 2025. ^{[ 4 ]}

Addendum of the Coalition Colliding with Real Numbers: "The UK and France are considering sending up to 15,000 troops to Ukraine if a peace agreement is reached. These numbers are far lower than the plans previously discussed within the framework of the Coalition of the Willing." In "Europe plans military mission in Ukraine: Number of troops named," RBC-Ukraine, 8 January 2026

Addendum of an EU Military Powerhouse: " 'We know that we need to be strong and strength means. We are not a military powerhouse, but we are building up to be a military powerhouse,' she told lawmakers from her own centre-right European People’s Party grouping. 'But we are an economic powerhouse … we have to improve our performance over and over and over, it's like a business, that it stays an economic powerhouse,' she said, according to several sources in the room." In "EXCLUSIVE: EU to become 'military powerhouse,' von der Leyen told MEPs," Euractiv, 14 January 2026.

A Lesson From the Part Still Ignored: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." In "Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors," Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Amercian Presidency Project, 16 April 1953.

NOTES

^{[ 1 ]} The "Europe should prepare for war" is echoed by some in the appointed European Commission, sitting atop the European Union. One reads:
"We need a plan to prevent Russia from invading again, instead of making things easier for them. The plans regarding Ukraine that have been made public don’t include a single obligation for Russia." In "Kaja Kallas: ‘We should stop pretending that Russia is negotiating peace and force it to do so’," María R. Sahuquillo, EL PAÍS, 2 December 2025.

Force. Without clear definition, it is a word, and without action, it seems an empty word. Even when uttered by the EU's High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Not only a representative, but a "high" one as well.

^{[ 2 ]} As to "political expectations that are hard to reverse," one finds a history of reversals tells the European tale, in part.

"...in the post-Napoleonic era, the vague consensus among the European monarchies favouring preservation of the territorial and political status quo. The term assumed the responsibility and right of the great powers to intervene and impose their collective will on states threatened by internal rebellion. The powers notably suppressed uprisings in Italy (1820) and Spain (1822) but later condoned Belgium’s rebellion and proclamation of independence (1830)." In "Concert of Europe," Britannica, n. d.

In spite of such "concert" within Europe of that time, change was unavoidable. Certainly the "political status quo" of over 19th century Europe was an illusion.

          Specifically for today one looks back, "After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Russia was not peripheral to Europe; it was central. Russia bore a decisive share of the burden in defeating Napoleon, and the Tsar was a principal architect of the post-Napoleonic settlement. The Concert of Europe was built on an implicit proposition: peace requires the great powers to accept one another as legitimate stakeholders and to manage crises by consultation rather than by moralized demonology. Yet, within a generation, a counter-proposition gained strength in British and French political culture: that Russia was not a normal great power but a civilizational danger — one whose demands, even when local and defensive, should be treated as inherently expansionist and therefore unacceptable."
          It came down to power, and still does. And words. In that, one revisits recent words of Donald Tusk, "500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians. [...] Europe today lacks the belief that we are truly a global force.” X, 2 March 2025.
          "Europe’s strategic autonomy has diminished as Europe once again becomes the primary theater of great-power confrontation rather than an independent pole." In "Two Centuries of Russophobia & Rejection of Peace," Jeffrey Sachs, Consortium News, 24 December 2025.

What seems clear in the moment is again found in Tusk's words from earlier: “Ask not of America what it can do for our security. Ask yourselves what we can do for our own security,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose country holds the EU presidency, said, paraphrasing a quote from U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961. In "EU needs to end its military dependency on the US and arm itself ‘to survive,’ says Tusk, Associated Press, 22 January 2025.

Another view shows the likely folly: "The Coalition of the Willing and its deployable Multinational Force–Ukraine are exercises in 'if.' If there was a peace settlement to monitor or enforce, if Russia was prepared to countenance NATO ground troops in Ukraine, if the U.S. intended to provide hard military capabilities to support it, then the initiative begun by Starmer and Macron in March 2025 might be a deft diplomatic achievement in alliance-building. Absent those conditions, it is a comforting scenario of Europe’s decisive influence: comforting, but imaginary." In "The ‘Coalition of the Willing’: a European pipe-dream?" by Eliot Wilson, The Hill, 23 December 2025. Whither then?

A Lithuanian politician weighed in: "A new pan-European military is just one part of the Kubilius plan. Noting Europe lacks 'proper united leadership', he also called for the establishment of a European Security Council to 'discuss the most important issues in defence… swiftly preparing important decisions'. The first task of this council would be Ukraine, he said." In "European Union Needs Its Own Army of 100,000, Says Commissioner," Breitbart, 13 January 2026.

Given that Europe, as defined as within the European Union, is not synonymous with Europe in more traditional geographic definitions, the notion that Ukraine is somehow European while Russia is amusing in the same way that one may ask whether Greenland, in the news of late, and Iceland are Europe. Or the Dutch Caribbean ( once known as the Dutch West Indies ) or the one-time colonies of a number of European nations in Africa?

^{[ 3 ]} An admission is found as to messaging: "The main mistake, purely in my opinion, is a — tightly lost media campaign."

One notes that these remarks about Russia's plans are from the official chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Media, by which one seems to win or lose, until one actually wins or loses.

^{[ 4 ]} The notion of "Some of that land has been taken" is most interesting. More than sovereignty alone, control is an evident reality. In that regards, control by a government -- any government -- is "up for grabs." So has it been throughout history/

Of recent history, one reads of NATO -- a consortium of governance -- addressing the EU -- another consortium of governance.

"....we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite." In "Opening remarks," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, 7 September 2023.

This is instructive, as it documents that two forms of supranational governance, NATO and the EU, were dealing with a national government about another nation's national government. And NATO opted with Russia, essentially, for the "opposite" which "happened." War in Europe.

But maybe not. One finds the UK's Daily Mail popping a hole in the "talking smack" which fills the media. "...British involvement in any modern war could be risky and unpopular because of the current weakness of our forces. We simply don’t have enough soldiers. Much of their equipment is obsolete, non-functioning or worn-out." In "The PM is big on bravado but his troops plan won't deter Putin's aggression," Daily Mail, 10 January 2026. But the "bravado" is strong from The Once Great British Bulldog .