Bridgehead Europe

by Sevim Dagdelen*

(15 August 2025) If a capital city is the place where the most important political decisions are made, then it must be said that 21st-century Europe appears to have three capitals: Ramstein, Wiesbaden and Turnberry in Scotland.

In Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, the arms manufacturers’ conferences for Ukraine are taking place at the invitation of the USA. The key decisions on the continuation of the proxy war in Ukraine are being made here, at the world’s largest US military base outside the USA. And it is not the military but the political level that has chosen the US base as the venue for decision-making.

At the invitation of the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA), the LANDEURO conference took place in Wiesbaden, Hesse, from 16 to 17 July 2025 – according to its own information, the first international symposium for land forces. US General Chris Donahue, who is also commander of the US Army in Europe and NATO commander for the continent, announced in Wiesbaden that he would be able to conquer the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad militarily within a very short time.

Like kings of old ...

Central to Donahue’s thinking of taking Kaliningrad “in an unprecedented amount of time and faster than ever before from the ground” is apparently the use of AI-supported systems such as Palantir's “Maven Smart System,” which NATO has been using since April 2025.

Palantir’s AI system is considered the system of land warfare of the future and could make a NATO attack on Russia much easier.

US President Donald Trump, for his part, used a golf course he owns in Scotland to dictate the Euro-Atlantic trade deal to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This deal brings massive economic advantages to the US, while at the same time sealing the industrial decline of Europe.

Ramstein, Wiesbaden and Turnberry stand for a policy in which important decisions for Europe are made by the US on European soil. Just as kings once travelled to their vassals to demand allegiance and tribute, the US is acting on its “bridgehead” Europe (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives”) in Eurasia.

Europe’s compradors

And even for cautious observers, it is becoming increasingly clear that the US can count on the support of a number of politicians who can only be described as representatives of a European comprador bourgeoisie in its policy of plundering Europe and attempting to put Europeans in the front line in a war with Russia.

Just as in Latin America in the 1970s, the primary concern is the representation of the interests of US investment funds and US capital by the political elites of Europe in their respective countries. Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz are paradigmatic representatives of this class. Institutionally, the continent is open, through the EU (economically) and NATO (militarily), to unconditionally subordinating itself to US interests – even if this is the road to certain ruin.

It should be noted that comprador bourgeoisies can exist not only in developing countries, but also in countries experiencing involution, i.e. a decline in their economic power. Attempts to downplay the massive increase in the importance of US investment funds such as BlackRock for the German economy, for example, must be regarded as futile in their attempt to trivialise the takeover strategies of US capital.

US investment funds are now the decisive owners of the “German” arms manufacturer Rheinmetall alone. Added to this is the investment of European taxpayers – as contractually agreed by Ms von der Leyen – in the US military-industrial complex to the tune of 600 billion euros.

The crisis of subjugation

However, the recent escalation of subordination must be seen as a symptom of crisis. After all, domination works best when it is invisible. Acts of subjugation in full public view, however, carry the seeds of resistance within them.

Europe must be social – or it will not be, as the social democratic EU Commission President Jacques Delors once put it. Today, the same applies: Europe must emancipate itself from the US – or it will not be.

The plundering of Europe through trade agreements by US imperialism or through gigantic arms commitments for US wars threatens to completely destroy the social welfare state in Europe. At its founding congress in Bochum, the BSW Youth took a groundbreaking decision: for Germany’s neutrality and withdrawal from NATO. Otherwise, a bailout will hardly be possible – if the population is to be saved.

* Sevim Dagdelen was a member of the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2025. The politician is the foreign policy spokesperson for the “Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit” (BSW) group and was chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The MP was a member of the US Parliamentary Group, the German-Chinese Parliamentary Group and the German-Indian Parliamentary Group. Sevim Dagdelen was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for many years, in which MPs from the member states of the military pact discuss security and defence policy issues.

Source: https://overton-magazin.de/kolumnen/dagdelen-direkt/brueckenkopf-europa/, 30 July 2025

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)