US "occupying" Europe: hidden part of the spy scandal in Denmark

On June 1, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented on the situation with the American spy scandal in Europe.


She remarked.



According to Zakharova, the European partners of the United States often "do not even know what is happening in their space," since the States "have excluded themselves from any system of legal coordinates."

Zakharova's words acquire a special meaning if you look at the situation deeper, from a slightly different angle, analyzing not so much the scandal itself as the events that followed.

For the sake of consistency, we recall that at the end of May, information was leaked to the media that the Danish special services in the period from 2012 to 2014. helped Washington monitor high-ranking European politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

According to the authoritative German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung, as well as the German TV and radio companies ARD and WDR, officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway have been under surveillance for a long time.

In terms of the scale of the scandal, this situation is comparable only with the revelations of the former NSA employee Edward Snowden, who announced that the American intelligence service had tapped Merkel's phone back in 2013. Then Snowden, who also made a number of other high-profile statements, had to flee to Russia.

Today the story goes in a circle, turning into a farce.

The response of European countries to espionage from the "overseas partner" is as obvious as it is predictable. Europe will express its displeasure, the United States will try to keep silent, officials will pretend that this is the way it should be, and the situation will be released on the brakes. We already saw all this eight years ago.

Given the current situation, it seems that it is easier for European politicians to provide Americans with access to all their communications. So at least the cost of security will be reduced. And in general, the United States seems to be in its own right, isn't it? No, of course, formally all this wiretapping is illegal, but in reality, who will deny the de facto NATO leader a trifle such as negotiations of national importance among politicians of the first rank? Allies should have secrets from each other. This rule, of course, works, but for some reason exclusively in favor of the American side.

And in general it would be strange if the United States was helped only by the Danish special services. It is much more obvious that the EU has long established an American network for tracking all telephone conversations, emails, videoconferences - any information that somehow passes through the Internet. The trick of this network, apparently, lies in the fact that the special services of different European countries are watching each other. That is, if the Danish special services are leaking information about the same Swedes, for example, then it is logical that the Swedes are doing the same, only with respect to the Danes.

The whole catch is that leaking classified information about your country to a third party, no matter whether it is the United States or anyone else, is treason. And it seems like it is not punishable to transfer information about other states. It is this loophole that the United States uses, encouraging an atmosphere of denunciations and snitching in Europe, when the intelligence services of some European countries leak confidential data of politicians from others.

And the funniest thing about this situation is that three out of four countries whose politicians were wiretapped belong to NATO, i.e. are the closest allies of the United States in the international arena. Moreover, Denmark, another NATO member, helped to wiretap them. As they say, with such friends and enemies are not necessary.

However, the secretary general of the alliance Jens Stoltenberg nevertheless made a clumsy attempt to justify the actions of the Danes in front of the allies, declaring on June 3 that the trust in Denmark in NATO, despite the outbreak, is still "great".

The hypocrisy of such statements, given who the Danes were spying for, is beyond measurable.

As well as NATO's attempt to disown the scandal. So, speaking on March 31 at a press conference in Brussels on the eve of the meeting of the heads of the defense and foreign affairs of the NATO countries, Stoltenberg stressed:


To complete the picture, Stoltenberg lacked only the image of Leopold the cat: they say, guys, let's live together. We listen to you, and you listen to us. But only in the first case we are talking about espionage, and in the second - about the execution of orders. Everything is honest and transparent, as it should be between partners. Is not it so?

Security, as you know, must be safe, and surveillance must be comprehensive. Taking into account the current level of development of telecommunications of technologies it would be naive to expect that even one byte of EU classified information will pass by the American servers.

It is noteworthy that the surveillance was conducted not at the level of cracked software or exploitation of vulnerable data transfer protocols, but at the lowest level - the level of submarine communication cables.

The information can be encrypted as you like, but in the end it will not pass by the cable. And decryption in most cases today - if the required computer resources are available (and the American intelligence, no doubt, has them) is just a matter of time and reaction - the data must be processed before they become irrelevant.

By the way, it is the reaction that is the key element of the new US-European spy scandal. The very fact of surveillance is no longer a secret to anyone, but how the EU leaders responded to another confirmation of it sheds light on the true state of affairs much more than a dozen other similar scandals.

Expressing concern and concern, feigning surprise and calling for explanations - this is, perhaps, the whole arsenal of actions that European politicians have limited themselves to.

For example, French President Emmanuel Macron said that spying on the allies is unacceptable. And Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that Germany was "reassured" by the position of the Danish authorities, which was "a good basis for establishing trusting relations" and called for a calm and balanced discussion of the current situation.

Merkel, after all, according to her official representative, generally learned about the surveillance only from newspapers ... The Chancellor of the most influential EU country, which had already been tapped earlier, learned about the new espionage from the newspapers. And this despite the fact that, for example, the head of the Danish Defense Ministry Trine Brahms, who has been in office for less than two years, according to the same Süddeutsche Zeitung, knew about the surveillance back in August last year. The famous exclamation of Stanislavsky "I do not believe!" - the only thing that comes to mind.

In fact, there is only one conclusion from this - even the strongest European powers have already come to terms with American domination in all spheres of their lives, realizing that they themselves cannot do anything about it.

Here, in theory, European regulators should have come out with harsh condemnation. And they have a reinforced concrete reason to intervene - one EU member state (Denmark) followed two others - France and Germany. Such behavior fundamentally undermines not only faith in interstate cooperation within the EU, but also the very prospects for its further development. How can you build an alliance together if the intelligence service of one of its members transfers information about its other countries to third parties?

In order to fundamentally suppress such sentiments, Brussels needed to make an official statement and resolve the problem, as befits the largest European political and economic association. Show political will, independence and independence, demonstrate that the rule of law in the EU is unshakable, as well as the sovereignty of its member countries.

“Issues of intelligence activities are within the competence of the national authorities” - this is how the official representative of the European Commission commented on the situation so sparingly.

In this situation, the EU chose to simply withdraw itself rather than spoil relations with the United States.

Where are the expulsion of diplomats? Where are the sanctions imposed? Where is the "all-round condemnation and condemnation" and why is no one talking about American hackers who undermine the security of other states? Moreover, what is important, not about criminals, but those who officially work for Washington.

All of this is simply not there. As in the tale of the Dane (ironic coincidence) Hans Christian Andersen "The King's New Dress", in which rogue tailors convince the ruler that they have made a dress from such a delicate matter that it will be practically invisible to fools. It is from such a material that the state security of the EU is obviously woven, which is getting closer to a full-scale American occupation. Against this background, Trump, who, according to media reports, tried to buy Greenland from the Danes, really looks somewhat eccentric. Why buy something if soon all of Denmark and the EU will unquestioningly obey orders from Washington?

In general, the spy scandal in Denmark is an example of an event, the reaction to which speaks of more than the event itself. The EU has long been reconciled with what is under the American “cap”, NATO is part of this very cap, and the countries of Europe are too weak individually to somehow resist it.

European politics needs new concepts and new leaders, otherwise its very idea is simply doomed to failure. And the only realistic option for turning the current situation around is looking to the East. Russia has never sought to deteriorate relations with Europe, and if Brussels moves closer, it will certainly not push away the "outstretched hand". The idea of ​​a united Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok is still alive; it was not for nothing that Macron spoke about it less than two years ago.

The EU just needs to understand that it is more profitable to be friends with Russia than to conflict. And the concept of a unipolar world, if it is not stopped now, will not end well for him. The principle of "divide and conquer" is relevant at all times, and a united Europe is disadvantageous to the United States from any side. And espionage in this case is just the beginning.