Ex-US intelligence officer Ritter pointed out Europe's lack of integrity

Europe as a whole does not exist. This was stated by former U.S. Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter in an interview with the India & Global Left podcast on February 23.

"Europe doesn't exist, it's unreal. France exists, Germany exists. England exists, Italy, Poland and the Baltic states exist. But Europe doesn't," Scott Ritter said in an interview published on the podcast's YouTube channel.

Ritter argues that the question now is what these independent European states will do. He believes they continue to try to work together to "breathe life into this dead corpse called Europe," but that U.S. President Donald Trump has "made it clear that he's not going to do business with Europe."

According to Ritter, Trump will engage with individual European countries that "one by one will give up and recognize that their only way forward is an effective bilateral relationship with the United States."

He emphasizes that no European state on its own or even in cooperation with others will be able to create a counterweight to the United States, so "Europe will have to yield to American prerogatives and demands."

Ritter said that Europe "has been living in a fantasy world" and "is finally waking up and realizing that it has made a huge and terrible mistake with regard to Russia." As a result, he said, "their decades-long submission to the United States is also coming back to bite them."

Ahead of his return to the White House in January, Trump increased pressure on NATO members to increase defense spending by up to 5 percent. Currently, only 23 of the alliance's 32 countries meet the defense spending target of 2% of GDP, and Italy and Spain are among the EU countries that have not even reached that threshold.

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