By Madi Jobarteh
For more than a century, the United States has invaded sovereign countries, provoked and sustained wars, destabilized regions, assassinated leaders, overthrown elected governments, and imposed illegal sanctions with impunity. These actions violate the UN Charter, customary international law, and peremptory norms (jus cogens).
What has made this long record of aggression possible is not American power alone, but the consistent and obedient complicity of Europe through the European Union, NATO, and individual European states which has repeatedly chosen alignment over principle and silence over international law.
From the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine onward, Europe did not object to the United States’ unilateral arrogation of authority over the Western Hemisphere. Instead, it followed Washington’s lead, validated its doctrines, reinforced its actions, and materially benefited from American imperial expansion. In many cases, Europe went further by directly participating in these illegal actions. In doing so, European states failed in their obligation not only to respect international law, but to ensure respect for it, as required under common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Cuba. Since the unilateral US decision to impose a blockade on the island in 1959, an act overwhelmingly condemned by the international community, European states have largely aligned themselves with Washington’s policy of economic strangulation. Cuba, an independent nation with the sovereign right to determine its own political and economic system, has been collectively punished for more than six decades simply for refusing US domination. Europe did not resist this collective punishment, rather it normalized it, enabled it, and in practice sustained it.
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, the pattern repeated itself. The United States orchestrated coups, assassinations, kidnappings, proxy wars, and drug-fueled destabilization campaigns in countries such as Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and beyond. Europe neither resisted nor meaningfully opposed these crimes. Instead, it endorsed them through silence, diplomatic cover, and the imposition of sanctions at Washington’s request, thereby lending legitimacy to American criminality.
In Africa, European complicity is equally evident. Europe and the United States jointly engineered coups, sustained proxy wars, and plundered resources through extractive industries structured to benefit Western capital. While Europe readily joined the United States in imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe for undertaking land reform that challenged white settler ownership, the same urgency and punitive resolve were conspicuously absent during the decades of apartheid in South Africa. The United States was not sanctioned, and Europe and NATO failed to confront apartheid with comparable moral clarity or political consequence.
In the Middle East and Asia, US aggression has been catastrophic. From the Korean War to Vietnam, from Iraq to Afghanistan, Washington has invaded, divided, and destroyed societies at enormous human cost that violated the prohibition on the use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.
Rather than standing against these wars of aggression, Europe repeatedly joined them. The invasion of Iraq based on the fabricated pretext of weapons of mass destruction was carried out without UN authorization, yet European states, alongside Australia, formed a so-called “coalition of the willing” to wage an illegal war that devastated an entire nation.
Throughout this history, the United States arrogated to itself the authority to decide which governments were “democratic,” which were “autocratic,” and which allegedly “sponsored terrorism.” These labels were selectively applied to justify sanctions, coups, or wars, even as Washington propped up dictatorships, funded armed and terror groups, and shielded allies engaged in grave human-rights violations. While accusing other states of pursuing nuclear weapons, the US simultaneously tolerated, enabled, and protected Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Europe raised no serious objection. It followed obediently.
Apart from this notorious history of external aggression, the United States today is committing gross human-rights violations within its own borders without facing any meaningful backlash from the European Union or European governments. Masked immigration agents, police officers, and other security forces operating without uniforms are indiscriminately arresting, torturing, and killing both US and non-US citizens with near-total impunity.
The American regime has openly defied court rulings, carried out illegal deportations, and deployed chemical agents and extreme violence against protesters, critics, and political opponents, again without condemnation from Europe. Were such actions committed in Venezuela, Iran, Uganda, or elsewhere in the Global South, the EU and European governments would be the first to issue condemnations, impose sanctions, and threaten further punitive measures. The double standard is glaring and indefensible.
The record is therefore unmistakable: the United States has functioned as a rogue state at the center of the global order, and Europe has been its most reliable accomplice. The difference between the past and the present is largely rhetorical. Previously, US aggression was cloaked in the language of diplomacy, human rights, and democracy. Today, that façade has fallen away. American power now speaks bluntly, unapologetically, and imperially, while Europe continues to comply.
This raises unavoidable questions. What will Europe do now that American criminality increasingly turns inward and begins to threaten European interests themselves? Will Europe allow a U.S. regime to openly threaten territorial seizure, such as Greenland?
Will the United Kingdom continue to describe its relationship with Washington as “special” even as US politics descends further into authoritarianism, corruption, and unilateralism? Will Europe finally stand against Washington, or will it continue its historic role as a subordinate enabler?
If Europe has conscience and courage, the moment has come to acknowledge its complicity in the crimes committed by the United States against the world. More than acknowledgment is required. Europe must call out American lawlessness, mobilize global resistance to imperial violence, and reclaim the principles of international law it so often invokes selectively.
Europe gave birth to the United States. It nurtured it, empowered it, and shielded it. The Frankenstein that now threatens global peace did not emerge in isolation. Responsibility therefore lies not only in Washington, but also in London, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and NATO headquarters.
Until Europe finds the courage to confront, restrain, and oppose American banditry, it must be regarded for what it has long been: a shameless accomplice in some of the gravest crimes committed against humanity in the modern era. Europe has provided the moral, political, economic, and military scaffolding that has enabled the United States to ravage nations across the globe. Silence and obedience are no longer defensible. History will judge accordingly.
Europe must choose: uphold the law, or remain an accomplice.
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