An angry autumn (fall) is unfolding disturbingly and tragically across the European Union (EU). Extreme internal dissension in many countries is accelerating their decline in the midst of world-altering wars in Ukraine, the Gulf, US, Iran and Israel, alongside commercial wars with China.
France will deploy 70,000 paramilitary gendarmes and police buttressed by professional soldiers from the army to quell at least 646 mass protests across 600 municipalities and cities on Saturday October 24.
Alongside them will be elite counter-terrorism troops, hostage-rescue units and specialist SWAT units supported by police helicopters, armored vehicles, water cannons, and canine units.
The very violent French protests of recent days are at the epicenter of similar mass demonstrations in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Albania and less violent ones in Germany.
Europe’s downward slide is gradual but could become irreversible partly because of the widening rift with US President Donald Trump whose political perch also seems to be rattling.
Europeans are suffering much worse negative energy impacts than Americans from their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, compounded by the US-Israeli war against Iran and Israel’s continuing conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank, South Lebanon and Syria.
Against this backdrop, Russia’s “Boiling Frog” and “Salami Slicing” (The Death of a Thousand Cuts) tactics are fueling upheavals and mass protests across many European countries that could change the fundamentals of their political and economic governance.
Absent an early end to the wars in Ukraine and Iran, major countries like France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain and the Nordic belt may slip into the quick sands of illiberal democracy. That could have severe impacts on the fragile democracies of the Global South, including India and Africa.
The harm to the model of liberal democracy would be immense. For nearly two decades, the Chinese authoritarian model of “alternative democracy” has steadily gained credence in poorer countries as a platform better suited for steady economic development and social stability.
A main cause prolonging the Ukraine war is the self-imposed refusal of EU leaders to see the destructive implications for their own countries and the Global South, including India, of their failure to even talk to Russia’s Vladimir Putin or provide genuine support to Trump’s peace overtures to him.
Nor have they offered any workable ideas for restoring peace in West Asia although hurdles at the Gulf’s Hormuz Strait and the Red Sea’s Bab El Mandep Strait cause them more economic harm than to Americans.
While Ukraine’s supporters in the US and Europe concentrate on detecting hues of victory in the heavy fog of war, Russia is patiently battering European members of the NATO military alliance in a classic Boiling Frog Threshold Trap.
That’s a military concept used to slowly achieve major strategic goals through a series of small, incremental provocations, none of which are severe enough on their own to trigger a massive, unified military response.
A frog dropped into boiling water immediately jumps out to save itself; but placed in lukewarm water slowly brought to boil, it will fail to notice the danger in time.
Following this notion, Russia is keeping its provocations below the collective defense threshold that would trigger NATO’s Article 5 when an armed attack against one ally is handled as an attack against all.
Salami Slicing refers to Russia’s tactic of patiently slicing away tiny fractions of security, law or territory over time instead of grabbing a massive piece of territory or launching a full-scale assault.
Frontline states like Poland, Estonia, or Lithuania feel the heat immediately so they seek a, collective response. But leading European capitals are far away so they prefer to avoid escalation against a power with the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads.
The gridlock has split the alliance at a time when its chief protector, Trump, is soft pedaling America’s Article 5 commitment and seems to distrust European reliability as allies.
But Trump is letting NATO use a “tripwire” model in Baltic countries that would trigger an immediate response if Russia actually attacked their homelands. It is also using a “pre-bunking” methodology that empowers people, institutions and frontline operators to neutralize manipulative online narratives before they spread.
In principle, such methods give the frog enough time to escape before it starts to boil but they don’t protect people across Europe from unaffordable costs of living. Almost all Europeans face slowing economies, factory closures and strains on funding for health care, education, pensions and dole to tide over unemployment.
The mass anger is red hot and rage is rising by the day. European leaders are using much tougher policing but have refused so far to talk peace with Moscow or Tehran.