DISINFO: European states are vassals of the US
SUMMARY
European states are vassals of the US and are forced to support the US State Department’s disinformation campaigns about the ‘Russian threat’, to increase their defence spending and acquisition of US weapons and to block any kind of cooperation with Russia.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the lack of sovereignty of EU countries, which are allegedly controlled by the US, combined with the recurring narrative claiming that the “Russian threat” is a false idea and an expression of Russophobia, created by the US and other Western actors to isolate and encircle Russia.
It is not true, as the article claims, that European states are “vassals of the US”: EU Member States are sovereign countries and make sovereign decisions about their own internal, economic, foreign and security policies.
Furthermore, it is not true that Europe’s concerns about Russian threats to security are unfounded and are the result of US-imposed disinformation campaigns. Ever since the Ukraine crisis, European governments and security experts have been genuinely concerned about Russia’s increasingly aggressive foreign and military policies. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine in early 2014 was widely viewed both in North America and in Europe as violating the basic rules of the post-Cold War European order, especially the rule that borders are inviolable and the states should not use force to alter them or take territory from other states. As a result of Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, many Western states - including key EU members such as Germany and France - critically reassessed their “strategic partnership” policies towards Russia and began to view Russia as a serious challenge to the European security order.
Moreover, in recent six years, European governments and security services have been increasingly concerned about Russian hostile influence activities aimed at weakening the EU and NATO, fermenting divisions in societies and discrediting and destabilising liberal democracies. Such activities – often described as “hybrid threats” – include cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, interference in political processes, energy pressures, intelligence operations, the strategic use of corruption and the deployment of unmarked military personnel.
Among the best known cases of hostile Russian influence operations are interference in the US, Spanish, and French presidential elections, and cyber attacks against Sweden, the US, the Netherlands, and Germany. European governments have also been concerned about other types of Russian hostile behaviour, such as the violation of NATO air space, frequent unmarked military flights in international airspace on busy routes and violation of international nuclear arms agreements.
The article’s claim that the US State Department carries out disinformation campaigns about a non-existent Russian threat is also not true. The State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) monitors hostile disinformation campaigns, including Kremlin-sponsored disinformation. A GEC report published in August 2020 analysed the pillars of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.
European member states have also been engaged since 2015 in a joint effort aimed at countering Russian disinformation activities online.
Read similar cases claiming that Italy and Europe are governed and surveilled by the United States, that although the American military-industrial complex and democratic think tanks claim otherwise Russia no longer represents a threat and that the US creates and spreads a false image about an “aggressive” Russia constituting a security “threat”.