By Brian Berletic – Jul 16, 2026
As the Western media continues shaping narratives depicting a growing divide between the US and Europe regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine — a narrative involving an increasingly disinterested and disengaging US with an increasingly desperate and confrontational Europe — it is important to remember precisely how this war was started and why, as well as the material reality shaping its continuation.
y doing so, it is revealed the only “division” taking place between the US and Europe is a “division of labor,” a phrase literally spoken by the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels in February 2025, delegating the continuation of what is a US proxy war on Russia to Europe while the US redirects resources toward Asia.
Precisely because the war in Ukraine is a US proxy war on Russia, and the fact that Ukraine’s trained military manpower and territory continue to contract under the pressure of Russia’s strategy of attrition, to continue the war will require introducing additional pools of trained military manpower — and to extend Russia further — to do so along a wider front.
The military build-up of the Baltic states appears to be at a minimum an attempt to fix Russian forces along their border with Russia. The worst-case scenario for Moscow would be for the US to repeat with its Baltic state proxies what it has already done in 2008 with its Georgian proxies and what it has done from 2011 onward with its Ukrainian proxies — attack Russia and its allies militarily, precipitating wider war along a wider front.
As the US continues escalating its war on Russia in Ukraine — threatening to expand it even further across the rest of Europe — the US also continues its direct war of aggression against Iran, together precipitating a widening, global energy crisis aimed directly at China itself
Western European nations, including the so-called “coalition of the willing,” led by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have implemented Secretary Hegseth’s directives from February 2025 enthusiastically — directives including to “double down” on arming Ukraine, “spending more on defense,” and convincing the European public of the “threat facing Europe” (meaning Russia).
With this in mind, it is clear there is not only no split of any kind between the US and its European proxies; Washington’s European proxies have demonstrated unflinching servile obedience even at the cost of placing themselves on the precipice of war with neighboring nuclear-armed Russia themselves.
The Larger, Long-Engineered War on Russia
Surrounding Russia with a number of geopolitical and economic crises to “extend Russia” with the hope of eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse is the subject of numerous US policy papers spanning the entirety of the post-Cold War period.
There is even a paper published by the RAND Corporation literally titled, “Extending Russia,” listing a number of measures the US has since implemented verbatim before and since its publication in 2019.
The paper lays out the economic and geopolitical measures the US has since used to both prepare the grounds for this current proxy war, and to both perpetuate and expand it over time. These measures include targeting Russia’s energy exports, specifically targeting pipeline expansion (Nord Stream, since destroyed by the US), the imposition of sanctions on Russia, the destabilization, destruction, and/or the political capture of Russia’s allies both along its borders and beyond (including Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and Armenia, as well as Syria), and the arming of Ukraine itself following its political capture by Washington in 2014.
This latter measure, the RAND paper admits, would inevitably invite in wider conflict with Russia — and it did. The paper also admitted the measure would likely end in “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows” and that “it might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.”
The purpose of US policy is not to necessarily “defeat” Russia in Ukraine, or in Georgia, or Armenia, Syria, or in any other particular region — but to create a multitude of crises mounting ever-increasing pressure on Russia to create cracks and collapse wherever opportunities allow and eventually precipitate overall collapse following pressure along a large and growing collection of fronts.
And this is precisely what the US is doing.
It doesn’t matter that Ukraine can’t win the current US proxy war against Russia — or that Europe collectively might not be able to either. US objectives are to create a growing conflict that eventually outpaces Russia’s ability to respond and defend itself against.
Similar strategies have been used against other targets of US “regime change,” including Libya, Syria, and Iraq, spanning decades before finally and fully succeeding.
Thus, the measure of Russia’s success is not simply on the battlefield in Ukraine, but its success or failure in defending itself against this much wider campaign of US-driven encroachment — a campaign that has transcended all US presidential administrations since the end of the Cold War without exception and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.
The Growing Drone & Missile War
Growing attention has been placed on the steadily expanding drone and missile campaign targeting Russia deep within its territory. While proponents of Ukraine claim the strikes have “turned the tide” in Ukraine’s favor, and Russian proponents claim the attacks have had no impact at all — the truth is likely somewhere in between and subject to shift as both sides adapt. .
The Western media has already admitted “Ukraine’s” deep strikes into Russia using both US and European-manufactured missiles and drones are actually the product of the US intelligence community and the US military.
In late 2025, the New York Times would admit, “The Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military, with [US President Donald Trump’s ] blessing, supercharged a Ukrainian campaign of drone strikes on Russian oil facilities and tankers.”
More recently, the Financial Times would explain:
Analysts attribute the growing success of Ukraine’s drone campaign to its ability to significantly increase production, as well as improved management.
American intelligence assistance has also played a role, aiding Kyiv in charting the best paths for its drones and helping to skirt air defences, senior Ukrainian officials told the FT.
Of course, Ukraine’s “ability to significantly increase production” actually translates into expanded production by both the US and Europe, who then simply transfer components, kits, or entirely assembled drones to Ukraine for storage and use.
This includes the US-made artificial intelligence (AI) driven “Hornet” drones — a result of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s AI drone campaign announced at least 2 years ago.
These US-made and directed drones are carrying out a large-scale region-wide campaign of strikes on Russian maritime shipping in the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and beyond, as well as military, civilian, and energy production infrastructure at further and further ranges from the Russian-Ukrainian border deep inside Russian territory.
While the damage inflicted by these attacks has not matched Russia’s missile, guided bomb, drone, and guided rocket attacks on Ukraine, it is admittedly causing disruptions even according to the Russian government itself, especially for specific regions like Crimea and logistical routes leading into it.
Remembering that Washington’s goal with its war in Ukraine on Russia and its wider campaign of encroachment is meant to “extend,” not “defeat” Russia, it cannot be denied that the US strategy has significantly raised the costs of an already expensive war forced onto Russia.
The US and its European proxies will likely never match Russia in military industrial production, but given enough time, it will certainly continue to expand its ability to inflict greater and greater costs unless and until Russia is able to fully and finally end the war in Ukraine on the battlefield.
With the prospect of Ukraine collapsing and the war ending, the temptation for the US to open up additional fronts along Russia’s borders will increase, with preparations seemingly already underway for just such a front in at least the Baltic states.
Ukraine Hires CNN to Film Drone Strike Operations – Russian MFA Spokeswoman
Wider War on Multipolarism
As the US continues escalating its war on Russia in Ukraine — threatening to expand it even further across the rest of Europe — the US also continues its direct war of aggression against Iran, together precipitating a widening, global energy crisis aimed directly at China itself.
Meanwhile, the United States continues shaping the Asia-Pacific region in precisely the way it shaped and transformed Europe vis-a-vis Russia and West Asia vis-a-vis Iran — for large-scale war and/or proxy war with China.
The US is in the process of transforming the Philippines in Southeast Asia into the Asia-Pacific’s “Ukraine,” while integrating the military capabilities of South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines under a single interoperable US military command.
Just as the US has utilized drone attacks on Russia laundered through “Ukraine,” the US is likewise preparing the Philippines and the Chinese island province of Taiwan as launching points for similar attacks on China.
Understanding the wider, global nature of US foreign policy, the US proxy war on Russia fits into and helps explain the growing degree of cooperation between the primary targets of this US foreign policy — notably Russia, China, and Iran. Understanding that the US is advancing this policy by not only directly targeting these three nations but also targeting third parties — undermining, politically capturing, and using them as proxies to advance this policy — helps highlight the imperative of creating a global effort to expose and defend against this threat the US pursuit of primacy poses.
This threat is not only of a military and economic dimension but also targets information, education, and political space.
Centuries ago, securing only one’s castle against a siege gives an enemy access to all the space and resources surrounding that castle, creating dynamics of attrition that favor the enemy over time no matter how well-protected the castle itself is. A besieged castle that creates strategic depth far beyond the walls of the castle, enabling it to attack and deny an enemy the ability to approach, let alone begin the siege, increases the odds of victory in the long term.
Today, the multipolar world needs to improve its strategic depth as much as individual nations need to fortify their borders against US encroachment, aggression, infiltration, destabilization, and political capture or collapse. This must be done not only through the traditional domains of national and global security but also by focusing on information space — a domain as important to protect in the 21st century as one’s airspace, land borders, and shores.
Integrating this policy not only nationally but across the emerging multipolar world in a collective manner helps create the strategic depth required in the 21st century to frustrate and defeat aggression today as strategic depth has done in past centuries.
Only time will tell whether or not Russia’s advantages amid the US proxy war in Ukraine can be extended successfully to the much wider campaign of encroachment the US is pursuing against Moscow — and whether Russia, Iran, and China can combine their efforts sufficiently enough to frustrate and defeat Washington’s global campaign of encroachment and aggression it is subjecting the rest of the world to.
(NEO)
Brian Berletic
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer who hosts The New Atlas; former US marine officer. For over ten years he wrote under the pseudonym 'Tony Cartalucci.'
