Many are appalled by Donald Trump’s willingness to play power politics in the traditional manner which, until he swaggered onto the scene, they thought belonged to the benighted past. Unlike his immediate predecessors in the White House, he is convinced that, far from being the principal beneficiary of the international “rules-based order” the United States set up after World War II, since then what Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright called the “indispensable nation” he now rules allowed itself to be ripped off by other countries and the time has come to deprive them of their ill-gotten gains.
In the 19th century, Trump’s geopolitical views would have struck most people as logical enough. They would have sympathised with his belief that what matters most is the challenge posed by China and agreed that, if making friends with Vladimir Putin would help the United States in any way, he should allow him to acquire a two-bit country like Ukraine. At any rate, that was what Trump clearly thought a year ago, but since then he appears to have changed his mind. Despite Russia throwing everything at a smallish neighbour and, while about it, suffering well over a million casualties, Putin has so far been unable to complete his “special military operation” and the likelihood of him managing to do so in the near future remains remote.
From Trump’s standpoint, the foreign leader he and some of his cronies admired for his macho no-nonsense approach is looking increasingly like a loser. For a man who prides himself on his ability to read the character of those he bumps into, feeling let down by an individual who once impressed him could be more than enough to make him rewrite his country’s policies towards the war that is ravaging Eastern Europe.
Voldymyr Zelenskyy is well aware that, with Trump, everything is personal, which is why he has done his best to overlook the insults flung at him by Trump, JD Vance and the rest in the hope that, as time went by, they would come to understand that Putin, and Russia for that matter, were by no means as powerful as had been made out and that sucking up to them was a mug’s game. The mere fact that, despite four years of relentless war, Ukraine can still defend most of her territory against a far bigger invader with what, before the tanks started clattering towards Kyiv, had been regarded as the second-best armed forces on the planet, should already have taught them this.
Along with his European friends such as Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Friedrich Merz, Zelenskyy is trying to persuade Trump that he would be well-advised to see their part of the world as a strategic asset and not as a liability that is about to be colonised by hordes of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East who, in some cases, really are determined to “erase” Western civilisation in the lands that gave it birth.
This is not proving easy. Trump and members of his entourage enjoy expressing their contempt for Europe for a combination of straightforward chauvinistic reasons and a desire to warn their compatriots that, unless they are very careful, the US could share the unhappy fate that in their opinion is about to overcome their former allies.
In the Trumpite scheme of things, Europe is going to the dogs because for three-quarters of a century most of it was ruled by politicians who, like left-leaning Democrats back home, favoured open borders, spent huge amounts of money on welfare, supported green energy policies and, after taking it for granted that the US would always afford them protection against their foes, told themselves they could do without proper armed forces because the world was becoming a peace-loving place in which soft power would matter more than the hard variety. By and large, this is the charge sheet that first Vance and then, in a far politer but equally firm manner, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, read out to assemblies of European dignitaries who gathered together to discuss security concerns. Many such Europeans objected strongly to being lectured by US politicians led by a man they despise but even so they had to agree that most of the strictures could be justified. Trump and his associates may be an unprepossessing bunch, but that does not mean that they have not got some things right.
After all, it is undeniable that large-scale immigration from non-Western countries, accompanied in many places by the abandonment of serious attempts to assimilate the newcomers, is causing many difficult problems and quite conceivably could soon lead to civil conflict far worse than what is currently being experienced in the US. It is also generally appreciated that there have to be limits to the proportion of the national income that can be spent on welfare which, unless checked, will continue to rise; unfortunately, nobody in Europe seems to know how to go about this without risking getting booted out by an angry electorate. As for efforts to fight climate change by phasing out fossil fuels, they have only served to weaken European industry so gravely that even Germany has become uncompetitive. Team Trump’s members think that, unless the Europeans adopt a turbocharged version of the policies they recommend, they could disappear from history before the present century has run its course.
When first taking office, Trump limited himself to demanding that they pay for their own defence rather than relying on the US. After several years of turning a deaf ear to his exhortations, most European leaders have come to the conclusion that he was right, but they are doing so in circumstances that are even less congenial for them than was the case almost a decade earlier. In their ageing societies, large numbers of people have different priorities. They insist that pensions, healthcare, education and other needs should take precedence over military spending and are therefore reluctant to listen to warnings about Russian aggression or threats from further afield.
Since recorded history began, rich societies that proved unable to defend themselves have tended to fall prey to less wealthy but far more ruthless depredators. Until disaster finally struck, their inhabitants refused to believe that anything unpleasant could ever happen to them. Though many European leaders suspect that something very nasty could be coming their way, they have done little to prepare themselves, both mentally and physically, to confront whatever it might be; like their counterparts a century ago, they cling to the belief that all will turn out well because if anything goes badly wrong, they will have to shoulder the blame.
Comments