Political weakness towards Trump, the bully of the West
In the US, the country which until recently was widely seen as leading the free world and as the military guarantor of its continued freedom, shocking events are taking place: The current government is working quite intensely on destroying essential freedoms of people in general, apparently with a goal of transforming the country into a mafia state, where the members of the ruling cabal would be free to enrich themselves with few if any restrictions.
Millions of people have participated in “no kings day” protests, but for example the major social media companies appear eager to appease the Trumpist government, and many others are fearfully silent. That invites uncomfortable historic comparisons, for example:
I now want to look at how the political leaders of important European democratic countries are responding.
This week’s NATO summit
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, is the major military alliance of democratic countries on both sides of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. In the preamble of the North Atlantic Treaty, they affirm that they “are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” These principles are not somehow merely incidental to NATO — defending these principles of freedom is NATO’s core purpose.
Traditionally NATO has been led by the US. Now however the US has a government that is working directly, and quite intensely, against the very principles that NATO is intended to safeguard. On top of that, the current president of the US wants to annex Canada (while calling it “highly unlikely” that the US would use military force to make that happen) and Greenland (explicitly not ruling out the use of military force in that case).
Therefore I consider the NATO summit group photo remarkable in that it essentially pretends that the NATO leaders can still stand together in unity:
The actual content of the summit’s proceedings was reportedly worse still, effectively an orchestrated grovel at the feet of Donald Trump.
The foolishness of hypocrisy
By means of all that hypocrisy, the risks that are inherent in open political conflict with the US have been avoided for now.
However, the political leaders of the other NATO countries have also weakened themselves. Both in regard to the relationship with the US, and in relation to their own populations. Nobody has much respect for sycophants. Such weakness is not a good starting point when the time comes for addressing matters of importance, like the climate crisis, defending the country’s economic interests when Trump starts the next round of bullying around the topic of tarriffs, or informing the country’s citizens about why Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is in fact a serious problem for the whole of the free world.
Exactly. Martin Niemöller - First they came for the gypsies….