Looks like there's a new main villain supercharging Brussel's tax-and-spend narrative

During the Vietnam War, US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger concocted the "Madman Theory." The idea was to force the North Vietnamese and the Soviet Union to negotiate with Washington by making them think that then President Richard Nixon was so crazy that working things out was a better alternative than not doing so. Hanoi didn't buy it. But maybe the EU establishment would, in 2026?

Well, they believe there's a madman in the White House, alright. But the outcome is, once again, probably not entirely what Washington had in mind.

"Let no one be mistaken in thinking that the true intention of the US was simply to confront a geopolitical threat," French President Emmanuel Macron told El Pais in a new interview, addressing Trump's recent threats to take Greenland by force for "national security" reasons. "It was not the Russians or the Chinese who posed the threat. I can tell you that we have compiled an intelligence tally of the number of Russian and Chinese ships and submarines that were around Greenland and whose presence we detected: it is negligible."

Seems that Donald Trump has managed to do the impossible and make EU leaders switch out their Russian invasion fantasies for American ones. And wouldn't you know it, that actually works out better for them, because they've spent years trying - and failing - to convince Europeans that Putin is going to kick down the door to the EU sometime around 2030. This looming, abstract invasion fantasy that's always just far enough away to hope that people will have forgotten all about it by the time they've successfully used it as a pretext to steal billions in taxpayer cash.

Meanwhile, Europeans have long been like, "Yawn, yeah okay, let me guess, you need more of our money again, right?" It's like the guy trying to sell you a home alarm system by having the neighbor - Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky in this case - constantly talk about how his place got broken into. And how he was just a totally random victim. Just sitting there, minding his own business, doing nothing at all to do with dodgy neo-Nazis and NATO weapons on the Russian border. So it could have happened to anyone! Even you, Europe! Because NATO's so fragile, apparently. What have they been buying with all our money? Nerf guns?

No wonder Europeans aren't really buying it. Not outside of the establishment anyway. And maybe not even them, although it serves them to keep saying otherwise.

So lucky for guys like Macron, they now have a whole new narrative that gives them much better cover for the exact same scheme of washing massive amounts of public funds into defense spending. The new message coming now from Macron effectively marginalizes any existential threat from Russia or China in favor of panic about an American one.

The EU has to become a "power" to fend them off, he now says. And it's not just a matter of not being able to rely on the US anymore, which is what they were trying to sell back when Russia was the main villain. And this is even better for the EU's plans, because Europeans actually find Trump attacking the bloc entirely plausible, for one. So that helps.

And on top of that, this new narrative lets EU leaders commandeer tax cash not just for the defense sector but for several other sectors too, since Western Europe is deeply dependent on the US right across the board. And this massive spending spree conveniently boosts their own political survival odds, because it props up their flagging economies.

Macron is now talking about the need to build an entire tech ecosystem independent from the US, phasing out government use of American software like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex, and telling El Pais that the US is going to "attack" on the digital regulation front in the coming months as well. Probably because Washington doesn't appreciate that the EU is fed up with Elon Musk using his social media platform (and personal bullhorn), X, and its opaque algorithms, to control online narratives that Europeans get fed. In the same vein, American officials have also openly confirmed their intent to fund pro-Trump European NGOs, in the same meddling style of their nemesis, George Soros.

It's already starting to sound like a conscious uncoupling. The EU's banking chief, the ECB's Christine Lagarde, is talking about the need to come up with alternatives to America's Mastercard and Visa credit systems. And Macron is also saying how the world wants alternatives to the greenback now that America under Trump is "distancing itself further and further from a state of law."

Macron calls the current American ideology "blatantly anti-European." Apparently, it took Trump spelling it out for him, letter by letter, to notice. Decades of actively undermining the EU as an economic competitor just didn't quite make the point clear enough.

So now that there's a new main villain supercharging this European tax-and-spend narrative way better than hating on Russia or China ever did, guess what? Sounds like Russia's getting a soft rebrand.

"Like it or not, Russia will still be there tomorrow. And it turns out it's right on our doorstep. It's important to structure the resumption of a European debate with them," Macron told El Pais. The Kremlin confirms that technical talks have resumed between France and Russia. So Macron seems to be arriving at the same conclusion that former French President Charles de Gaulle did 60 years ago: the idea of "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals" as a counterbalance to the US as Europe's potential overlord.

Remember those security guarantees that Macron was insisting the US provide to Europe against Russia in Ukraine? Well these days, it sounds like he'd rather work those out with Russia than with Washington. "We will have to build a new security architecture in Europe with Russia," Macron now says. "Tomorrow's prosperity concerns Europeans. Or would you prefer that American ambassadors and envoys negotiate on your behalf the date of Ukraine's entry into the EU?"

Know what all this is starting to sound like? Someone trying to dump a bad screenplay half way through filming. In this case, because the hero suddenly got recast as the bad guy. In reality, it was a naive miscast right from the start.