DISINFO: US lack of help to Europe is a strategy to ensure its dominance over the continent
SUMMARY
US leaving its European allies alone with the disastrous effects of the disease, may be a well-thought strategy. A destroyed Europe may bring many benefits to the US, as it happened after World War II with the Marshall Plan, which in practice served to take control over European countries devastated by the conflict.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory, with no evidence presented to support the claim based on a false premise. The US government actually pledged 100 million dollars in medical supplies to France, Italy and Spain, and several million dollars to other European nations outside the EU to confront the coronavirus crisis. Contrary to the claim, the Marshall Plan helped European economies to recover but was not a tool to take control of European countries, which remained sovereign and independent. This is a mix of several long-established Kremlin-led narratives, such as alleged US dominance over Europe and Washington supposedly playing with coronavirus in favour of its geopolitical interests. It can be framed as part of Russia’s disinformation campaign on coronavirus, well documented by both media and governments, some of whose elements were widely reported by Russian and international publications and by the European External Action Service. EUvsDisinfo database has a long set of Kremlin-linked disinformation cases on this subject, such as claims that Bill Gates and George Soros are sponsoring the Wuhan coronavirus, that it is a UK, US or NATO creation and Americans have its cure, that it is an artificial disease which specifically targets Chinese DNA, that it is a pretext to gain control of the world’s population, that it was created with economic goals while big pharma companies are spreading panic for their own profits, that it is a biological weapon against Russia and China, that it will wipe out Ukraine’s population in a few days or that it was predicted by Nostradamus and others.