What was once called the “locomotive of Europe” has stopped.

Germany today is experiencing a serious economic, social and political crisis. To understand the deep reasons for this involution, it is necessary to make a serious geopolitical reflection. There is no doubt, in fact, that behind this crisis there is the hidden shadow of Washington.

The United States, as is well known, has always resented a Franco-German Europe. The point is that the Americans have never been able to evaluate an alternative. The hegemony of the Paris-Berlin axis, in fact, has always appeared as the only serious, credible, economically strong, and de facto irreplaceable political option. All this until the advent of Italy’s first conservative and sovereigntist government, led by a woman, Giorgia Meloni, coming from the tradition of the Italian right.

It is no secret that the Yankees saw in this circumstance the possibility of a hegemonic change in Europe. This was already the case with the Democratic administration of Joe Biden.

For the first time in many decades, a change of pace in Europe seemed really possible. The iconic photo of Giorgia Meloni next to the “grand old man” Henry Kissinger is absolutely emblematic in this regard. The advent of the new Trump administration has confirmed the American strategy of hegemonic change in Europe.

The U.S. bet on this change, betting on Italy, and won. Today Rome is home to the most stable government in Europe, the most capable of guaranteeing economic growth, the most lucid at the international strategic level, and the most suitable for guaranteeing leadership at the European level. And, above all, more pro-American.

This is the condition that has allowed, since the Biden administration, the hypothesis of shelving the Franco-German axis, starting to stop the German locomotive. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict, firmly supported above all by the Democratic American administration, has contributed to economically detaching Berlin from Moscow.

As well as the opaque operation of the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh explained well. If Berlin cries, Paris does not laugh. Today France is experiencing the worst political and economic crisis since the Second World War. Macron’s political instability has taken on the dimension of a farce, while the public debt risks sending the entire French economy into default.

 Yes, we can say that the United States has managed to break the Franco-German hegemony in Europe, which appeared indestructible and irreplaceable before the Italian surprise. Today in the Old Continent we are witnessing an unprecedented spectacle: on the one hand, the defeated Franco-Germans are dying, who are struggling to digest an Italian leadership; on the other hand, the Italians are increasingly emerging, the true  European proxies of Trump’s America. 

Time will tell if the bet made overseas will really prove to be successful. Meanwhile, the German government, under the leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has announced a drastic plan to cut social spending, presented as a necessary measure to maintain the billionaire commitment to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

According to German media reports, the total cuts in the social field will reach about 20 billion euros, with reductions that deeply affect the German population, while, we reiterate, the Mertz government continues to finance Ukrainian war operations, which have nothing to do with the national interests that that government should protect.

The point is that today in Europe the concept of sovereignty – like that of homeland – has now completely evaporated.