"City upon a hill," the torch lighting up the darkness of the world, the land of freedom... These are the enduring stereotypes of the United States in international politics. Indeed, the very foundations of the U.S. were built upon a professed faith in integrity and morality. However, the unsealing of the Epstein files has ripped away this veil, revealing a grim reality of elite impunity that erodes American moral claims. How did this happen? Who allowed corruption to fester beneath the very skin of the U.S. Constitution? And ultimately, what remains of the American image in the wake of the Epstein earthquake?

Selective justice for global elite

Jeffrey Epstein has long ceased to be merely a sordid tale of a financier’s abuse of children. It has metastasized into a damning indictment of the American justice system and the opaque networks of power that operate above it. While the Western media often fixates on the salacious details of Epstein’s Little Saint James island, a far more consequential story is unfolding in the corridors of Washington, one of missing documents, redacted truths and the weaponization of intelligence.

Epstein was not simply a predator, but a node in a vast network of leverage. His operation was less about perversion than it was about the accumulation of "kompromat," which is a stick held over the heads of the global political elite. Epstein’s reach transcended borders, threatening a supranational class of elites whose interests align only with their own preservation.

This brings us to the recent, highly contentious release of the "Epstein Files." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently dropped a bombshell that should have dominated the headlines: the existence of a massive disparity in the documentation. Schumer indicated that the total volume of Epstein-related files collected by federal authorities hovers around 6 million pages. Yet, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has shared only half of that tranche, roughly 3 million pages. This statistical gap is the smoking gun.

Schumer’s interrogation of this discrepancy strikes at the heart of the American establishment’s credibility. "What is in the other half?" is not just a procedural question, but an existential one for the U.S. political class. If the Department of Justice, currently operating under the Trump administration’s appointed leadership, has indeed "cherry-picked" which documents to release, we are witnessing a curated reality. Is it possible that a public institution selected only those documents that serve specific U.S. interests or shield preferred power centers?

The timing and nature of these leaks suggest they are not a chaotic flood of transparency, but a controlled demolition. As sociologist Michel Foucault highlights in his essays, knowledge is the ultimate power. Who controls the distribution of words has an upper hand in regulating the matrix of relationships. In other words, we are not seeing the full picture of the Epstein network; we are seeing only what the masters of the archive want us to see.

Weapon of influence

If we look past the scandal, a distinct, darker pattern emerges. One must ask the ultimate question: Which countries have been placed in the crosshairs? A close reading of these files suggests they are not merely a log of depravity, but a map of American strategic anxiety. It is hardly a coincidence that the countries most frequently flagged as "associated" with the Epstein network are the very allies currently drifting from Washington’s orbit.

Take Europe, for instance. The United Kingdom and France appear in the documents with startling frequency; by some counts, mentions of their nationals and territories exceed 200 instances. Why these two? In the post-Brexit era, London and Paris are the two capitals most aggressively seeking to redefine their roles independent of the U.S. global projection.

The United Kingdom is currently attempting a complex reconfiguration of its influence in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Ocean. This "Global Britain" strategy does not always align with American interests. The recent and heated dispute over the Chagos Islands, specifically the security status of the U.S. base on Diego Garcia, triggered a fierce debate in the American media. Just as London attempts to assert its own sovereign decision-making regarding its overseas territories, the Epstein files conveniently remind the world of the British elite's compromised past.

France faces a similar, perhaps more intense, pressure. Paris is desperate to reclaim its old grandeur, particularly in Africa and the Indo-Pacific. President Emmanuel Macron has made bold claims about "strategic autonomy," signalling a desire to renew France’s diplomatic weight and leverage its status as a nuclear power independent of NATO’s U.S.-led command. Washington has not forgotten France’s friction over the submarine deal with Australia (AUKUS) or its distinct, sometimes divergent, position on the war in Ukraine. In this context, the heavy rotation of French names in the files serves as a subtle check on French ambitions, which is a reminder of vulnerability.

The pattern extends to the Northern Flank. The files cast a shadow over the Baltic states and Scandinavia, a region where the U.S. plays a pivotal role in countering Russia’s alleged expansionism. This is a region where the U.S. has repeatedly tried to deepen its footprint. It is important to recall the reiterated American desire to purchase Greenland and the pressure on Nordic capitals to ramp up defence spending. Yet, Washington has faced fierce opposition from these nations when asking them to bow completely to the American "order." Now, they too find their reputations grazed by the shrapnel of the Epstein explosion.

Nationalists vs. Globalists

What, then, will we see in the coming days?

The world is spinning out of its known patterns. The international system is shedding its old skin. We have reached a point where the simplistic binary of "The West versus The Rest" no longer holds water. That era is dead. It is time to conjure new spheres of influence, defined not by geography but by ideology and sovereignty.

The emerging fault line divides the world into two distinct camps: the Nationalists and the Globalists. On one side stand those who seek to preserve the sanctity of national boundaries and the specificities of their cultures. On the other side are the proponents of a Kantian world imagery, a borderless, homogenized order that has long served as a mask for hegemonic control. In this calamity, other actors are scrambling, wishing for nothing more than to preserve their room for manoeuvre or to revisit their glorious pasts.

This equilibrium, with its multiple variables, is the ultimate stress test for a decades-old international system. And it is failing. The reality where "Western values" were dictated as "universal values" is collapsing before our eyes. Today, the West has lost its allure. It cannot sustain its moral foundations, largely because the world has realized that what was sold as universal human rights is, for many scholars and observers, merely a secularized derivative of Western Christianity – distinct, local and non-transferable.

It is in this context that the details of the Epstein files become geopolitically explosive. It is telling that China and Russia are frequently framed as "threats" or "adversaries" within the orbit of these intelligence-linked documents. This labelling is significant. It implies that these two powers have largely managed to remain outside the web of dependency that ensnared the Western elite. By being designated as "threats," they are paradoxically validated as the only powers capable of preserving their own values and resisting the global, corrupted elite network that Epstein represented.

This sets the stage for the next great battle. The conflict will not be a sprawling multilateral confusion, but a sharp confrontation within a new triangle: the U.S., China and Russia. However, the outcome of this unknown quest will not be decided by the titans alone. It will be determined by the auxiliary actors, the "swing states," and middle powers. Those countries that choose to bandwagon with one of these three poles will tip the scales of fate.

Returning to the Epstein files, we must recognize what is happening: we are witnessing the weaponization of archives. The timing and content of these releases are not accidental. By labelling the elites of specific nations as "associated" with Epstein, the release acts as a Sword of Damocles hanging over European capitals. It signals to wavering allies in London, Paris and Northern Europe that their prestige is fragile. It is a stark warning that their moral standing can be eroded in an instant by leaks flowing from across the Atlantic.

In the brutal, cynical game of realpolitik, they serve a dual and darker purpose, as a leash, tightened precisely at the moment America’s allies attempt to walk away.