The world was a cruel place this year, without light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. Not only are there 61 wars being waged, a record since 1946, according to the United Nations. The very structure of the international system built up since the second World War, with its multilateral institutions and reliance on law, is under attack from the most powerful country in the world.
Donald Trump and real estate agents masquerading as diplomats tried to force Ukraine to capitulate to Vladimir Putin. Europe did the minimum to prevent it, but the Ukraine war looks set to drag on.
Ukrainians are fighting and dying because they wanted to join the West, but with the defection of the United States, the West as we knew it has ceased to exit. What is left of it – those European states with centrist, liberal governments – now faces hostility from their putative ally and protector as well as from Russia.
European leaders warn of a looming war with Russia which could be “on a scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured,” according to Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.
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That war has already started, the Russian political scientist Sergey Karaganov told Russian television on December 5th. “We just don’t call it by that name yet. Our true adversary is really Europe ...”
The historical significance of the 29-page National Security Strategy (NSS) published by the White House this month cannot be overstated. It is now official US policy to work for the destruction of the European Union.
[ Trump’s disturbing National Security Strategy should be required readingOpens in new window ]
The essence of the text is Christian nationalist and white supremacist. It bears the imprimatur of vice-president JD Vance.
The NSS says it should be the US goal “to help Europe correct its current trajectory” by encouraging “the growing influence of patriotic European parties”. The White House advocates working with far-right parties in Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland to foment Brexit-like withdrawals from the EU.
Maga’s fellow travellers in Europe share with the Trump administration a visceral rejection of immigration, which the NSS blames for “the stark prospect of civilisational erasure”.
In a speech on December 17th, Putin engaged in a long-distance duet with Trump, calling the Europeans “swine” and asserting that Trump “may well be right” to say the war in Ukraine would not have happened had Trump been in office. Putin too called for “a change of political elites in Europe.”
Trump and Putin share a preference for what Le Monde calls “geopolitical Darwinism”; an illiberal world order in which the US concludes deals with Russia and China, and the great powers divide the world between them. “The outsized influence of larger, richer and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations,” says the NSS.
Trump’s 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine appeared to have been written mostly by Russia, and endorsed Moscow’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the approximately 20 per cent of Donetsk that it still holds.
[ We must be honest about who Vladimir Putin is. His goal is not peace, but empireOpens in new window ]
In Berlin in mid-December, Europeans and Ukrainians negotiated with Trump’s envoys, who defended Russia’s position. They could not agree on security guarantees for Ukraine or how much territory Ukraine must give up.
Trump claims to have brought peace to the Middle East after 3,000 years. But Trump’s “peace plan” provides no dates for implementation, does not mention the West Bank, the two-state solution or international law. Israel stopped carpet-bombing Gaza, but nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the “ceasefire”. Gazans are starving, the delivery of humanitarian aid is blocked, and journalists are banned from the enclave.
In the first demonstration of the “Trump corollary” to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, Trump is determined to overthrow the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The US military has blown up dozens of boats in the Pacific and Caribbean, killing close to 100 seamen, and imposed a shipping blockade against Venezuela.
Is Trump starting a war with Venezuela?
The concept of conflict of interest does not exist for Trump. Since his re-election, Trump and his family have raked in at least $1.8 billion in cash and gifts, according to the Center for American Progress. Affinity Partners, the investment company belonging to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has amassed US $5.4 billion, most of it from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Trump wages a vendetta against those who have crossed him, appoints unqualified people to high position, attacks science, universities and television networks. He showed contempt for the millions who marched in No Kings rallies by posting a cartoon of himself, labelled “King Trump”, dumping sewage on demonstrators from a fighter jet.
Trump has transformed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency into a militia that marauds the streets, arresting students who demonstrated for Palestine and dark-skinned people on the grounds they might be illegal immigrants.
The abolition of USAid by Trump’s former sidekick Elon Musk will result in countless deaths in the developing world. The self-described “president of peace” has threatened to seize Canada, the Panama Canal and Greenland, by force if necessary.
Unease over Trump’s megalomania is compounded by his erratic, irrational behaviour. He falls asleep at public events, is sometimes listless and apathetic, at other times raging. In one night, on December 1st, Trump posted 160 times on Truth Social in four hours, one post every minute, some of them twice. He shared conspiracy theories, cursed immigrants, called for retribution against his opponents and especially reposted praise of himself.
When Rob Reiner, a beloved cultural figure, and his wife were found stabbed to death at their home Trump’s hideous post shocked even Republicans. The Reiners were killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” Trump wrote. The couple’s 32-year-old son Nick Reiner has since been charged with their murder.
There has been no shortage of sycophants nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. When Trump is inevitably carried away in a straitjacket, they may be held accountable for complicity in his mad rule. In the meantime, Trump has created a civil war-like atmosphere in the US and threatens the security of the planet. When will someone stand up like the boy in the fairy tale and say the emperor has no clothes?
