A year has passed since the Ukrainian war was mistaken in the West. Chess says a player is in zugzwang position to be affected by any movement he can make. If I didn't have to make any movement, I would get the draw, but if it's your turn, yours did.

If in 2024 Ukraine maintained the war front, Brussels would not want to make any movement. But Kiev is not able to resist, at least as long as Ukraine continues with the shortage of men and arms. That is why the West only has to move the card, going to negotiations with capitulation stains or escalating into war as the front line collapses.

If we look at the statements by the majority of EU politicians and governments, it seems that the war against Russia is closer than ever. The media bombard us every day with the possibility of normalising the war scene and increasing military spending for the benefit of the United States. The option is to scale. Emmanuel Macron has clearly pointed out that if the Russian army continued to make progress it would be willing to send soldiers to Ukraine. But this movement is also losing out from the position of zugzwang in Brussels. To the EU’s socio-economic crisis, a human and material loss should be added. Not to mention the scenario of a possible nuclear war. However, it seems that it does not matter, because the EU is committed to taking decisions contrary to its interests. But how was that possible? The cultural hegemony of the United States in Europe.

Four dimensions intervene in the processes of constructing the hegemony of a superpower: economic, military, political-diplomatic and cultural. The first two provide hegemonic material. The basis of construction and the engine is economic, on which military reinforcement is supported. However, in order to maintain hegemony in the medium and long term, it is necessary to develop a political-diplomatic dimension. Political and diplomatic superiority is the last expression of economic and military superiority; the subordinates accept a situation subordinated to pragmatism. However, they seek autonomy to the extent of their possibilities. That is why the EU talked about the need for strategic autonomy or Washington, among other things, spy on Merkel and Hollande, because among the supposed allies there was a low-intensity economic war.

The long-term maintenance of the dominated requires the development of the cultural dimension of hegemony. The United States has been able from the outset to harness the financial strength to build a cultural hegemony: the audiovisual industry, the media, universities, NGOs and, in general, the cooptation of brains and future elites from other countries. When the economic decline of EE.UU began in the early 21st century, they reached the summit of cultural hegemony.

As the new century passed, American cultural hegemony began to erode in the peripheries, while in the heart of the beast, in what Josep Borrell calls the garden, it continued to strengthen. That is why, at a time when the West is losing privilege, European society is culturally more colonized than ever with Washington. The size of cognitive dissonance is so great that, rather than accepting that we are serving the interests of the United States by harming Europe, we prefer to say that we defend democracy, feminism, environmentalism, human rights, freedom of expression or international law, propelling wars or protecting genocides.