Swaggering Cabal Fuels World Disorder

Starmer, Macron, Merz, Duda, and Zelenskyy echo Rat Pack bravado as their war-driven alliances threaten peace.

Flicking through the pages of one of Australia’s more reputable papers, I came across a story that carried the picture of Britain's Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Friedrich Merz, Poland's Andrzej Duda (nicknamed 'Musk' by critics for his robotic obedience to Washington), and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It was a picture that should have allowed any reader to draw many comparatives.

And while they strut across the global stage underlying their façade of smiles, bravado and apparent charm is a dangerous dose of deceit. Together, they present themselves as the guardians of democracy, defenders of order, and standard-bearers of Western values. But behind the photo ops and tailored suits, Starmer, Macron, Merz, Duda and Zelenskyy are emerging as the 21st century’s version of Frank Sinatra's infamous Rat Pack—a cabal whose arrogance, self-interest, and love of spectacle are driving the world toward greater instability.

Much like Sinatra’s notorious crew of the 1950s and 60s—who ruled Hollywood lounges while masking their inner insecurities with bravado—today’s Rat Pack of global leaders cloak their diplomatic failures behind performative alliances and war-fuelled distractions. Their cocktail of ignorance, deceitfulness, and reckless ambition has become a potent accelerant to crises that threaten to upend the fragile balance of global peace.

Starmer, once hailed as the sober antidote to Boris Johnson’s chaos, has become the poster child for bland authoritarianism dressed in the language of stability. But beneath it lies his dangerous willingness to enable hawkish foreign policy and disregard for global law. Starmer parrots Washington’s line on every major conflict, from Gaza to Ukraine, stripping Britain of its once-proud tradition of diplomatic independence.

His refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, his blind support for NATO escalation in Eastern Europe, and his embrace of a surveillance-driven security state at home position him less as a statesman and more as the Rat Pack’s compliant crooner, singing whatever tune the Pentagon or Whitehall demands.

Emmanuel Macron is Europe’s self-appointed philosopher king. While he pontificates about European autonomy and global dialogue, he’s quietly overseen France’s slide into authoritarianism at home and militarism abroad. His bellicose posturing in Africa, arms sales to authoritarian regimes, and aggressive stance against Russia expose his real ambition: to restore France’s faded imperial glory at any cost.

Like Sinatra in his prime, Macron’s charisma masks his insecurities about France’s declining relevance. His gestures toward peace are quickly betrayed by his addiction to spectacle and conflict, leaving Europe more fractured than unified.

Germany’s Friedrich Merz, the conservative corporate titan turned chancellor-in-waiting, completes the trio of Western European Rat Packers. A loyal servant of transatlantic capital and the military-industrial complex, Merz’s rhetoric about defending Europe is little more than a smokescreen for an agenda of endless rearmament and neoliberal austerity.

Merz’s Germany has abandoned the post-WWII commitment to peace, replacing it with belligerent calls for militarisation under the guise of “defending democracy.” His disdain for diplomacy with Russia or China echoes the same cowboy politics that plunged Europe into catastrophe in the 20th century.

In Poland, Duda a Washington cutout—has transformed the nation into the Pentagon’s most obedient proxy state. Under Duda’s hawkish leadership, Poland has become the launchpad for NATO’s most provocative manoeuvres against Russia and Belarus.

Duda boasts of being Europe’s shield, but really, he’s America’s blunt instrument. His regime thrives on fuelling regional insecurities, inflaming the refugee crisis, and using fear to cement authoritarian rule at home. His reckless military buildup and intolerance for dissent embody the Rat Pack’s addiction to spectacle over substance.

And finally, Zelenskyy, the consummate performer. Once a comedian, now cast as Europe’s Churchill, Zelenskyy has mastered the art of wartime propaganda. His speeches to Western parliaments, draped in olive fatigues, are made-for-TV events, designed to shame and cajole NATO allies into sending more weapons, more money, and more bodies into a war that shows no sign of resolution.

Zelenskyy’s carefully crafted image as the righteous underdog obscures his own government’s authoritarian tendencies, attacks on press freedom, and reluctance to engage in serious peace talks. Like Sinatra before him, Zelenskyy commands the stage while the reality behind the curtain is far less glamorous.

This modern-day Rat Pack is more interested in performance than diplomacy, more committed to fuelling conflicts than resolving them - cloaking themselves in the language of democracy and peace while weaponising fear, division, and arms sales.

Their ignorance of history—whether the failures of appeasement, the catastrophes of colonial interventions, or the dangers of proxy wars—is staggering. Their deceitfulness, whether in spinning narratives about freedom while crushing dissent at home, or ignoring the humanitarian toll of their militarism, is shameless.

But perhaps most dangerous is their shared addiction to war as a means of distraction. Like the Rat Pack’s parties distracted the world from the social upheavals of the 60s, today’s leaders use war as their cocktail of choice—masking domestic failures with foreign battles and hiding their incompetence behind swaggering displays of unity.

As the new Rat Pack tightens its grip on global affairs, theirs is a club of swagger, ego, and showmanship—one that prizes loyalty to Western hegemony over the messy work of peace-building. In the end, like the Rat Pack of old, they may wake up to find that the party is over, the world is on fire, and the only thing left is the wreckage of their vanity.