Think about what happened this past week. Two major European leaders met with Trump and in front of reporters defied him. Or at least corrected him and flat-out said he was wrong. Trump is NOT the kind of guy who will take that. He managed not to lash out at either Macron or Starmer but he was bound to be jacked up and spoiling for a fight when Zelenskyy came to the WH to sign a deal that had been worked out. You all know by now not only about the public ambush turned blowup by Trump and Vance on Ukraine’s President yesterday. It seems Vance is the one who got the mugging going but he’d have never done so without Trump telling him to. Trump wanted a fight, and an excuse to “dump Ukraine” and created a live, on camera spectacle. The more I’ve thought about the notion that came to me last night the more I think Europe and NATO decided it was time to proverbially ‘rip off the band-aid’ and lay bare where Trump stands and our allies stand. That the seven plus decades of the most successful military, diplomatic and economic alliance the world has known is over. That the ‘patient’ has actually been on life support but effectively dead, and it was time to pull the plug.
I’m sorry but the leaders of Europe HAD to know that having two top leaders openly confront Trump on successive days before Zelenskyy would arrive would provoke exactly what we saw happen. The fallout started out huge and we still don’t know how it will all shake out. There are longtime GOP supporters of Ukraine on Capitol Hill who are terrified of Trump now turning on Zelenskyy and Ukraine. Others, not enough I should add are doubling down on their support. Longtime allies of the United States are stunned and longtime adversaries including and especially Russia are delighted. Trump has made it quite clear that our allies don’t matter, and that Putin/Russia and other dictators do.
In a single meeting what should have been a private airing of differences laid bare the new reality. I’m still absorbing it but yesterday evening I started wondering if France’s Macron and the UK’s Starmer didn’t set Trump up. Wind him up to publicly break the world order that’s existed since before I was born and establish something new. Where the United States would no longer be dominant. Important when we want to be? Sometimes yes. But the days when we could dictate policy are officially over. Perhaps Europe and NATO have become more prepared to ‘go it alone’ that we knew. Perhaps. I sure hope so because the times are a changing faster than we realize.
Here in the U.S. a shifting of support is taking place, at least with the Republican Party. People who damn well know better and who have understood all along how important it was to support Ukraine are all of a sudden supporting Trump AND trashing Zelenskyy. Trump knew that would be the case. He’s confidently assumed he could bully our allies the same way he’s bullied the GOP. However a CNN report indicates Trump and his gang might well have miscalculated. Bigly. You should take a couple of minutes to read the whole thing because it contains specific statements from quite a few world leaders/countries voicing support for Zelenkskyy and Ukraine. To me, the fact so many spoke up so quickly suggests they thought something like what happened might indeed happen. But the linked article sums things up in a devastating way for Trump:
Western leaders scrambled to back Ukraine after Friday’s acrimonious meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky deepened the already yawning fault lines between Washington and many of its key allies.
The fact is, NATO and Europe as well as other countries we’ve had good relations with since WWII started to re-assess the United States due to the disastrous war Bush 43 started. It was his getting re-elected that really got to them. But since we seemed to have come to our senses and gave Obama two terms we got our ‘Mulligan’ but Trump sleazing his way into the WH changed things and not for the better. Even during his first term the top players in Europe and NATO were starting to think of a world in which the United States was no longer a country to be counted on. Biden was able to repair much of the damage so planning continued over there to shoulder more of the burden but with less urgency. Then it became clear American media was going to ensure their “horse race”, the antics of SCOTUS protecting Trump from a criminal conviction in DC and the horrifying possibility of him getting back into office. Which has happened.
We knew the day would come, even if many in this country hoped, even deluded themselves into thinking it wouldn’t. However it was inevitable that Trump would make it crystal clear to the world that the Unites States’ word was worthless. Even worse, international intelligence sharing is corrupted forever. No one will ever know how much has been given to our enemies already or what’s to come. Trump’s economic plans will badly weaken our power in that area and give China more opportunity in the Pacific. Our military will remain formidable to be sure, but badly led and if forced to fight again, or even properly train the cost in blood for our troops will be dear.
The free world will have a new leader or leadership but it won’t be the United States. Trump has made it clear that any agreement, even treaties approved by the Senate can be avoided by any U.S. President – and worse this country has a large enough population of goobers that every four years any good will we’ve built up can be tossed aside at the whims of someone like Trump. As I said, Europe and NATO have seen this coming since during the first Trump administration. They could also see that despite all President Biden did to repair Trump’s damage enough voters here might put him back in the WH so they’ve been quietly and urgently preparing for that possibility. One-fourth of the way into the 21st century it’s clear that at best the kind of American leadership the free world use to be able to count on is up for grabs every four years.
Our word doesn’t mean jack anymore. We will never again be fully trusted. There are simply too many Americans willing to vote for someone like Trump. And the hell of it is, Russia and their once vaunted (it turns out incorrectly so) military is reeling. Another six months to a year of war is an awful thing to contemplate but despite some overhyped battlefield gains here and there overall Russia’s forces are frozen in place. Even being driven back in others AND Ukraine is launching ever deeper attacks into Russia. For Russia, NOT having won (and long ago) is the same as losing. Putin has been desperate for a lifeline and Trump is giving him one!
I won’t waste your time on speculation why Trump is so enamored of Putin and will do ANYTHING to help him. That includes changing decades worth of GOP sentiment about the USSR/Russia to be supportive of them. All that matters is that a major split between the United States and our longtime allies has taken place. It won’t be patched up as Biden was able to do. Some wounds can’t be repaired. The sooner everyone accepts that for the next four years the United States will not be a friend to our old allies and instead to all it can to support murderous dictators like Putin the sooner much needed changes can be made.
That brings me back to where I started. Trump didn’t specifically say ‘screw NATO, Europe and our other old allies – I’m with Putin so deal with it’ but he might as well have done so. It was right out in the open for all to see. I truly believe a quiet decision was made by the old guard in Europe to force the issue so everyone can move on.
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“Two major European leaders met with Trump and in front of reporters defied him. Or at least corrected him and flat-out said he was wrong.”
And that’s not the problem, or it damn well shouldn’t be. The problem is the USA having a president who can’t cope with being told he’s wrong. Instead the country has elected into power someone who can’t function as a normal, sane adult.
And while it’s possible that this can happen again, the USA can no longer be taken seriously.
As a world power.
As a proper country, a nation worth considering.
As a people.
Nah, I don’t rate that theory, Denis. It’s too ‘clever’ a theory – cock-ups are always more likely. Starmer & Macron responded to the situation at the time – they couldn’t have known they’d feel sufficiently incensed to need to correct him like that.
& crucially, it’s not in Europe’s interest to piss off America – we (in Europe) are certainly not in a position to casually dispense with our US comfort blanket.
Perhaps. But both of them know how easy it is to handle Trump. A bit of flattery and he’s good, and both of them (among others) have taken that approach. Even mildly challenging him in front of reporters is something they damn well knew he’d NOT like. However they knew damn well what his schedule was this week. They also know the value in not pissing Trump off but THEIR country’s don’t have Russian invaders. Yet. It was big news that Zelenskyy had come to some sort of agreement with Trump that would for the moment at least keep some support from the U.S. coming. Not for long of course as Trump feels emboldened to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to whomever he damn well pleases. Ukraine isn’t going to hold on, much less prevail without western help and opening this fissure makes it clear to the world how out of control Trump is and that the rest of the free world is going to have to step up for Ukraine. Provoking the kind of blowup we saw reduces Trump’s and the United States’ influence in matters. And the citizens/subjects of our allies now can see quite clearly the US and Trump are allied with Putin and that if Putin and Russia aren’t stopped it’s back to the bad old days of the USSR only without the US helping shield the NATO alliance countries from Russian agression.
“A bit of flattery and he’s good, and both of them (among others) have taken that approach.Even mildly challenging him in front of reporters is something they damn well knew he’d NOT like.” Yes, and I’m quite sure they flattered him but good this time too. But you know, there are some things that cannot be accepted and have to be corrected in real time, not just for Macron’s sake but for the sake of Europe such as a typically baldfaced lie from Trump. So Macron said : “We paid 60% of the total effort and it was through like the US loans guarantee grants and we provided real money.” If he hadn’t said this he would have caught flak at home. And most commentators felt he had done it very gracefully . . .
No, I don’t agree with this. Trump (and Musk, and Vance) set Zelensky up. The purpose of the meeting was to put Zelensky in a corner and try to put the screws on him. They were never going to give him security guarantees because that’s the opposite of what Putin wants. And Zelensky was (quite rightly) never going to accept a deal without security guarantees.In addition, Trump tried to pull a fast one on Zelensky right before the meeting started. “The Ukrainian president was apparently presented with a minerals for security agreement by the Trump administration prior to the press event, but the deal included no security guarantees to protect Ukraine from another Russian invasion.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/heres-real-reason-trump-zelenskyys-205211718.html
It had nothing to do with Macron or Starmer. It’s just another example of sicken\ing behavior by the wretches now running this country (into the ground).