The great Martin Sieff on what ails the faltering American Empire.
It may bring little solace, but the repeated failure of successive US administrations to rein in Israel, coupled with the fierce determination of Western European, Canadian, and NATO leaders to defy the United States, risking thermonuclear conflict with Russia at the behest of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, is not without historical precedent.
The somber and largely ignored truth of the last 120 years shows a recurring pattern: Tails Wag Dogs. Powerful global empires and superpowers have been dragged into devastating, unnecessary wars—often ending in mutual annihilation—by the manipulations, betrayals, and petty power struggles of small states with troubling and often genocidal recent histories.
This cycle repeats much like Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy, where a respected anti-hero is seduced into treachery and evil by the three witches—a detail deliberately crafted to resonate with King James I, whose own mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was a notorious figure in his upbringing.
The same dynamic appears in Georges Bizet’s famed opera “Carmen,” where the noble soldier Don Juan—adapted as an American GI in the film “Carmen Jones”—is led to downfall and disgrace by his obsession with the fiery gypsy temptress.
Similarly, Tsar Nikolai II and the Russian people plunged rashly into the disastrous 1914 war with Imperial Germany in defense of “gallant little Serbia.” Yet that Serbian government, like Zelensky’s current regime, had seized power in a brutal coup a decade earlier.
In 1903, King Alexander I and Queen Draga of the Obrenvic dynasty were gruesomely murdered in their palace, pleading desperately for mercy.
One key architect of that atrocity, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic—known as Apis—later orchestrated the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. The archduke, a committed advocate for peace, was shot dead while traveling publicly without a protective screen, alongside his innocent wife Sophie, whose murder highlighted Apis’s brutality.
Meanwhile, the vast British Empire, ruling a quarter of the world’s land and population, was pushed into a needless war with Imperial Germany by a small, powerful group: War Minister Richard Haldane, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Chancellor David Lloyd George, and Foreign Secretary Edward Grey.
Eleven out of fifteen Cabinet members, all Liberals, along with most Liberal MPs, opposed war—but it proceeded anyway.
The declared motive was to shield “gallant little Belgium” from alleged German aggression, though this justification rested on ignorance and outright falsehood.
For three decades prior, Belgium had perpetrated one of modern history’s worst genocides—the mass murder of ten million in the Congo for profit, along with the horrific mutilation of many, including women and children—a fact uncovered by a few European humanitarians in the years before 1914.
Churchill pushed the narrative that German occupation of Belgian ports posed a grave invasion threat to Britain—a claim both hysterical and false. Germany controlled these ports for over four years without compromising British naval security.
In truth, Churchill’s extensive program to build a cutting-edge fleet of fast, oil-driven dreadnoughts ensured North Sea safety. Yet, a million British and Empire soldiers perished pointlessly on the battlefields of France and Belgium, while German control of these ports remained strategically irrelevant.
A similar tragic pattern unfolded in 1939. Britain and France missed multiple chances to preempt Hitler’s Germany when it was still weak from 1936 onward.
Only after Soviet leader Josef Stalin had given up hope for an alliance with London and Paris did the Western democracies declare war alone, supposedly to defend “gallant little Poland.”
However, Poland was then a militaristic dictatorship with a racist apartheid system akin to white South Africa’s later on. Its rulers oppressed Slav Orthodox Ukrainian and Russian minorities terribly, and even more cruelly persecuted its three million Jews.
Despite this, Neville Chamberlain’s government rejected any preemptive alliance with the Soviet Union solely because Poland refused to cooperate. Only Winston Churchill advocated, unsuccessfully, for such an agreement to prevent, not provoke, global war.
Once again, the Tail Wagged the Dog.
Currently, Zelensky plays Poland’s former role, dragging Britain and France into an ill-timed war without critical allies.
Notably, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been one of the loudest voices opposing peace in Ukraine. His policies have directly contributed to the deaths of as many as two million Ukrainians—an entire lost generation. Johnson also authored a superficial, idolizing biography of Churchill, seeing himself as the latter’s rightful successor—though not in the way he imagines.
Consequently, major cities like Paris, London, Brussels, and Berlin now face the danger of nuclear devastation since their leaders prioritize the moral outrage of Zelensky, a former flamboyant TV figure, above the risk of world war.
Moreover, recent revelations by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in the New York Times (April 7) exposed how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad chief David Barnea persuaded US President Donald Trump to undertake a reckless and avoidable decapitation strike against Iran.
Netanyahu and Barnea personally assured Trump that Iran’s government would collapse within four days of a “hard but fair” air assault by Israeli and American forces.
US officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J. D. Vance, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe all dismissed this claim, yet Trump, in one of his most consequential decisions, disregarded their counsel and accepted Netanyahu and Barnea’s assurances without question.
Whether they truly believed their own promises is debatable, but it seems plausible they were blinded by reckless arrogance and ignorance.
Countless conspiracy theories have since appeared, implicating Zionist puppeteers, bankers, globalist operatives like Soros, Freemasons, Skull and Bones, and even the Knights Templar in the decision-making.
Ultimately, responsibility rested with Trump himself, just as Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reckless guarantee to Austria-Hungary to crush Serbia in 1914 and Churchill’s paranoid fantasies led to catastrophic conflict.
Again, the ancient truth of history applies: Tails Wag Dogs.
Senator Robert Taft’s caution about NATO’s founding 75 years ago remains relevant: boundless security commitments inevitably lead to endless warfare. Over time, the weak, foolish, and reckless gain the power to manipulate and doom the mighty and confident.
About 130 years ago, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, creator of the modern welfare state (without its pitfalls), declared the Balkans unworthy, saying even the bones of a single Pomerian grenadier were too costly a price—a statement shared by his close friend, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, at the 1878 Congress of Berlin.
Yet only 36 years later, the German and British peoples were dragged into a devastating world war by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith—unworthy successors to Bismarck and Disraeli.
Wilhelm II, Asquith, and Tsar Nikolai II all allowed small but nefarious entities—the Tails—to control their powerful nations, leading to the destruction of rich and advanced civilizations.
Today, President Trump and leaders of Canada and Western Europe stand on the brink of a far greater disaster.
Original article: therealistreview.substack.com
About the Author
