by Amal Zadok
Edward R. Murrow, the legendary American journalist, warned that “a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” The line is more than a clever metaphor; it is a political law of gravity. When citizens trade critical thought for propaganda, courage for comfort, and responsibility for blind loyalty, they do not merely tolerate bad rulers—they manufacture the perfect conditions for predators to thrive. In such nations, wolves do not seize power against the will of the people; they rise with their permission.
At the dawn of the third decade of the twenty‑first century, four fault lines define much of the global order: the internal crisis of the United States, the strategic drift of the European Union, the permanent emergency around Israel, and the grinding war in Ukraine. Each of the four cases below is a snapshot of how major powers are choosing to behave at this crucial turning point in history. Together they draw a simple, brutal picture: powerful societies that still speak the language of democracy and “values,” but increasingly tolerate governments that behave like wolves guarding a distracted flock.
United States: a moral crime scene in red, white and blue
The United States is no longer merely “polarized”; it is governed by a cartel that wraps betrayal in flags and Bible verses while turning the country into a moral crime scene. A president elected on “America First” now hugs a former jihadist once tied to networks with a U.S. bounty on their heads, frees a convicted narco‑president whose cocaine helped drown American streets in corpses, and pumps weapons, diplomatic cover, and endless cash into the hands of a regime accused of broadcasting genocide in Gaza in high definition. This is not a technical error of policy; it is the fusion of American power with terror fixers, cartel states, and a government openly erasing a people under the banner of “self‑defense.”
For MAGA voters, the insult is surgical and personal. They were told they were voting to crush jihadism, end “stupid wars,” defend the border, stop drugs from turning the heartland into a graveyard, and shatter the immunity of billionaire predators and blackmail networks. Instead, they got Trumpstein™️: a regime that buries the real Epstein files behind “classified” walls, choreographs a fake “transparency” act that releases only safe scraps, and then demands applause.
The same system that can vaporize teenagers on a dirt bike in Yemen suddenly becomes timid when predators, princes, tech oligarchs, and Western politicians appear in Epstein’s orbit. The result is a hierarchy of life: the poor and nameless are disposable; the well‑connected are untouchable.
Meanwhile, the language of “America First” has been converted into a weapon against the very Americans who believed in it. Every betrayal is marketed as clever statecraft: embracing a jihadist fixer becomes “realism,” pardoning a narco‑president becomes “strategic outreach,” underwriting a genocidal onslaught with bombs and vetoes becomes “supporting our closest ally.”
The message to the forgotten American is unmistakable: your rage is a resource to be mined, your vote is a tool, your children are cannon fodder if necessary—but the real decisions will always serve the same transnational caste of criminals in suits and uniforms. If this is the republic’s idea of “sovereignty,” then the United States has ceased to be a nation of citizens and has become an empire of spectators, forced to clap while their supposed champions kneel before the very forces they promised to destroy.
European Union: arsonist in a white helmet
The European Union likes to pose as a firefighter rushing to save Ukraine, but for years it played arsonist’s assistant and now hides behind a white helmet and pious press releases. Brussels and the NATO capitals behind it treated Russia’s red lines as a joke—expanding NATO ever eastward, pushing “partnerships” and military integration up to Russia’s border, and dangling EU and NATO membership before Kyiv like a loaded gun at Moscow’s front door.
The war in Ukraine did not fall from the sky; it is the outcome of a Western project that treated a nuclear power’s existential warnings as “paranoia” until the tanks rolled.
Europe’s leaders knew what they were doing.
They heard Russian officials repeat that NATO expansion and the military absorption of Ukraine were existential threats. They saw the 2014 coup, the civil war in Donbas, the steady militarisation of Ukraine, and the incorporation of its forces into NATO structures in everything but name. Yet they kept pushing, calculating that Moscow would either swallow the humiliation or collapse.
When Russia finally invaded, Brussels discovered a new role: innocent victim, shocked democrat, defender of “sovereignty”—after years of playing geopolitical chicken with someone it knew had real red lines.
Now the EU wraps its guilt in moral language. It sends weapons “for freedom,” sanctions “for peace,” and repeats “as long as it takes” as if the slogan erases the fact that European policy helped manufacture the very war it laments. Ukraine is treated as both shield and laboratory: a place to test weapons, bleed Russian power, and perform moral superiority without risking European soldiers.
Ukrainians die in trenches; Europeans die on talk shows and draft communiqués.
At the same time, the EU that claims to defend international law in Ukraine is funding, arming, and politically shielding a regime accused of genocide in Gaza.
That is not a contradiction; it is a pattern. Europe’s problem is not confusion, it is corruption of the soul: a continent willing to risk a proxy war with a nuclear power and excuse a live‑streamed extermination campaign, so long as gas flows, arms contracts hold, and the illusion of “civilised Europe” survives for domestic consumption.
Israel: a regime of impunity and a blindfolded public
The current Israeli regime is not “controversial” or “divisive”; it is openly genocidal, and it survives because its own population, its Western sponsors, and a captured media ecosystem choose cowardice over conscience.
The fantasy of “the only democracy in the Middle East” has collapsed under the weight of live‑streamed massacres, the systematic destruction of Gaza, and daily terror inflicted on Palestinians from the river to the sea. In its place stands a Zionist ethno‑state that treats an entire people as disposable raw material for a biblical‑nationalist project, while demanding applause from the very world whose laws it mocks.
For years, Israel sold the image of a small, embattled nation “defending itself” against faceless terror. That mask is gone. The scale of bombing, the deliberate targeting of homes, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, churches and mosques, the engineered starvation and disease, the open talk of “resettlement” and “voluntary migration” of Palestinians—none of this can be squared with self‑defence. It is the logic of elimination: make life so unbearable that survival itself becomes a crime.
This is not an excess of war; it is policy. A regime that knows it can erase neighbourhoods, families, generations and still be welcomed in Western capitals as a partner in “security” will keep doing so.
What makes this horror possible is not only the cruelty of the state, but the consent—or silence—of most of its citizens.
A population that once told itself it was “forced” to fight now cheers, jokes, and shrugs while children are buried under rubble in real time. The majority chooses propaganda over reality: every dead Palestinian is “Hamas,” every demolished hospital a “terror base,” every critic a Nazi or an antisemite.
They repeat slogans fed by politicians, generals, and compliant media because admitting the truth—that they are watching a genocide carried out in their name—would shatter the self‑image of a righteous victim. It is easier to live with blood on your hands than with a broken mythology.
Meanwhile, the establishment that claims to speak for all Jews weaponises Jewish suffering to shield its crimes. The memory of the Holocaust is twisted into a blank cheque for permanent domination; genuine antisemitism is cynically fused with any criticism of Zionism, so Palestinians can be crushed in the name of “never again.”
This moral blackmail traps Jews of conscience, silences Western governments, and turns entire societies into accomplices out of fear of being smeared. Under this blackmail, bombs fall, sanctions never arrive, and the language of human rights is reduced to theatre.
The result is a regime of impunity and a society marching towards moral suicide.
When a state convinces its people that survival requires the humiliation, dispossession, and slow extermination of another people, it is not only the victims whose future is stolen.
The oppressor’s soul rots from within. Israel today is not merely “losing its democracy”; it is burning through what is left of its moral legitimacy, betting that military strength and Western backing will suffice forever. A state that survives only by normalising genocide is sawing off the branch on which it sits.
Ukraine: proxy war, stolen futures
Ukraine’s tragedy is not only that it is the battlefield of a proxy war; it is that its own leaders have embraced that role while sacrificing two generations of their citizens. For the West, Ukraine is the perfect front: bleed Russia, advertise “values,” and send weapons instead of soldiers.
For part of the Ukrainian elite, it is an opportunity to convert foreign billions into personal fortunes, contracts, and offshore accounts, while wrapping every demand for more money in the language of heroism and resistance.
Russia, for its part, has made very clear its existential grievances and red lines—NATO expansion, the status of Russian‑speaking regions, and Ukraine’s strategic orientation. Instead of seriously addressing these issues at the negotiating table when there was still room to manoeuvre, too many in Kyiv chose to play the role of frontline fortress in exchange for promises and cash.
The result is catastrophic: a country emptied of its youth, its economy shattered, its soil turned into a graveyard, while the same leaders who failed to prevent war now pose as wartime heroes and prepare their post‑war careers in Western capitals. When a leadership prefers Western applause and dollars to the lives of its own sons and daughters, the war stops being only an invasion from outside and becomes a betrayal from within.
The connecting thread: elites without brakes, publics without teeth
Despite their differences, the crises in the United States, the European Union, Israel, and Ukraine share a common thread: a growing disconnect between rulers and ruled, between lofty rhetoric and concrete reality. In each case, elites have found ways to convert fear, polarization, and fatigue into political capital, while citizens are encouraged to shout at each other but not to impose real costs on those governing in their name.
In the U.S., polarization is a profitable business model for donors, media, and party machines. In the EU, strategic ambiguity shields leaders from paying a political price for hard decisions on sanctions, defense, and migration. In Israel, a government accused of genocide still floats on a sea of obedient consent, held up by a public that confuses survival with supremacy.
In Ukraine, local heroism collides with foreign calculation and domestic corruption: the country bleeds while its sponsors debate budgets and its leaders count their gains.
The uncomfortable conclusion is that none of this is a tragic accident. It is the logical outcome of societies that tolerate being treated as audiences rather than sovereigns, as demographic segments rather than citizens.
These four stories are not separate; they are one warning written in four different languages. When nations behave like flocks—angry, noisy, but easily herded—they should not be surprised to wake up under governments of wolves.
The question that hangs over Washington, Brussels, Jerusalem, and Kyiv alike is simple and brutal: how much more will the sheep endure before they remember they were meant to be shepherds?
©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.
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