It is not entirely fair to say that Europe was mere puppets to the US, even though much of their imperialist streaks did align with the US interests and even benefited from the US being the hegemon. They did attempt to challenge the US numerous times, and were beaten back again and again. This would imply that the US is only winning because everyone is too stupid to challenge it.

The French did try to force the US into exchanging its hugely over-spent dollars they collected during the Vietnam War into gold in 1971, and Nixon simply said he’s not going to pay, and abruptly ended the Bretton Woods arrangement. Everyone thought the dollar would be worthless now that it’s not tied to gold, well, turns out it didn’t.

The US understood that denying Europe their energy sovereignty is key to making the Europeans cave, and this is very much reflected in the geopolitical conflicts that occurred over the past few decades.

When Saddam attempted to sell its oil in euro in the late 1990s, Iraq was “conveniently” invaded in 2003.

When the Germans attempted to build the Nord Stream pipeline to obtain cheap natural gas from Russia in 2011, the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine immediately erupted in 2013, creating instability and difficulties to the European economy.

This still did not deter Merkel, and a second Nord Stream line finally finished its construction in 2021 - guess what happened the next year?

The pattern recurs. If the EU does not have its monetary sovereignty and energy sovereignty, it cannot really do anything in realistic terms.

It’s also the same when I see people blaming Global South countries for not standing up to the US, and while it’s true the comprador class very much benefited from the US imperialism over the wellbeing of its own people, you have to ask the question of why couldn’t the left do anything in those countries? You are going against coups, economic sanctions and global institutions that deny you access to the global markets controlled by the US hegemon. Seeing what happened in countries like Libya and more recently Syria, and when the great economies (looking at you, China) refuse to do anything to alleviate the crisis in Gaza, most countries would rather keep the peace than to suffer the worse fate of mass poverty inflicted upon them.

I honestly do not think that Israel would be allowed what they’re doing in Gaza today if the USSR was still around.

I wonder how much of this reconfiguration/new status quo we're seeing is a conscious gearing up for hot war in 10-20 years. I also wonder if, this being the case, China's decisions will look sound in hindsight

Pitching the euro as the challenger to the dollar’s dominance immediately painted themselves as a target to the US empire.

That endeavour was stillborn and existed solely in the abstracts and maybes. Since 1945 the us had loyal puppets on the continent. The Suez crisis did reveal the last sovereign empires of europe to be a sham. The inclusion of the UK into the EC later was another nail in the coffin, because they always acted in the americans interest and made sure the continent could never truly challenge the us. Even worse is that the EC itself was basically an futile attempt of France to bind Germany and Italy to itself and use them to remain relevant as they were considered the “least” victorious of the allied powers. Which was flawed as Germany and Italy in their post 1945 form are compromised entities build on the whims of the primarily america.

The game could be played back even further. Both the UK and France became dependent on us financial power during the world wars, the modern us empire was created when the UK essentially loaned out its empire, South Africa during the 1920s tried open up the British economic sphere to the dollar. Churchill born of a transatlantic union himself was an major advocate for closer ties. So the reduction of europe into vassalage was in utero as far back as the 1913, when Germany and the USA passed the UK as the largest economies in the world. Combined with the Berlin-Bagdad railway, this was a hidden cause for WW1, because it would have destroyed the monopoly of the suez canal.

Ironically now another Anglophone Empire is fearing being passed by another surpassing economic power which has infrastructure projects that will destroy the former empires stranglehold over trading routes. History does repeat indeed.

Are you familiar with the AES situation, somewhat personally through relatives in there, a friend so to speak?

There's no western backing for JNIM and France was directly involved in fighting them

people suspect covert western funding i thought

Or it's about to get a lot more expensive when they have to sail the cape route.