One response to the terrible and often cruel behavior of the Trump administration is anger. It’s understandable, but most of it is counterproductive and, worse, the reaction that Donald Trump supporters enjoy. In this situation, ice is recommended over fires, and the situation is better evaluated with a colder head than a hot one.
Broadly speaking, there are three ways of impact management. Trump’s vindictive, moral, authoritarian, ignorant personality is the most obvious personality. But what’s so important is the influence of the marginal intellectuals and podcast Lanter who provide ideas to the angry but empty man. These ideas range from merely dangerous (single executive) to religious authoritarians (7 mountain domination or Catholic integrationism) to crazy people (should we reach the bottom of John F. Kennedy’s assassination?). Finally, there are the structural elements and conditions that have brought us to this moment. The loss of manufacturing unemployment to China and other countries, the widespread failure of American governing elites, and the general rejection of identity-driven policies.
This combination of influences also applies to foreign policy. Trump’s policies towards Europe, and especially Ukraine, are motivated by understanding the protective rackets that NATO has been cheated on, his animus against Ukraine, and his warmth towards Russian President Vladimir Putin. But alongside these singular complaints of men who can’t separate individuals from the public, it’s an idea that Trump has absorbed from the people around him.
Even the so-called international relations realists, and even the supporters of the American foreign policy “confinement” schools, have the unrealistic notion that values ​​should not play a role in foreign policy, and embrace the unfair admiration of religion for those who think they are not. They want to play around being Metternig. This was on display, for example, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio proposed it to a journalist at Breitbart News. The US may not have been entirely successful in separating Russia and China, but at least it was able to try and understand Russia’s interests better than Moscow.
In this case, the secretary (not to mention his interviewer) forgot that Nixon Kisinger’s opening up to China came when Russia and China were fighting a border war with each other and the Soviet Union was considering a preemptive attack on China’s nuclear weapons. Tinhorn Tallyland in Foggy Bottom may have thought that he hadn’t announced that he would tell the Crackpot news outlet that splitting the alliance of enemies was the purpose of European policy.
The idea and it is an idea that the administration would make the US safer by reducing its deal with Russia on the head of our European allies, and that is an idea. Such a deal would undermine America’s greatest international strength: the alliance and its credibility, its hostility is deeply rooted (fearing ideological and democratic contagion), and two inexplicable malicious forces. Or, as my grandmother once said of someone who thought she was smarter, “Smart, clever, stupid.”
However, it is also important to understand the underlying strengths that work here. The long dependence on the US on basic European security is unacceptable. This has certainly been clear for a very long time. In fact, it is clear that even the simple, newly created assistant professor, I understood it over 40 years ago.
The greatest danger to the alliance arises from the psychological relationships of the Old World, which rely solely on survival in the arms of the United States and the New World. As Raymond Aron said, “By its nature, dependence on the United States on its own country’s defense is unhealthy.” After Europe recovered from the devastation of World War II, by 1960, for convenience, guardians and protected relationships are said to be likely to evoke rog arrogance from one side and arrogance and modesty from the other side.
The Trump administration’s eruption against NATO comes in this context. Perhaps they were supposed to come. The same version of criticism has been offered repeatedly, including a much more friendly regime with far fewer vitriol.
Europe’s trust in the US, which is even deeper and benign, is a product of some selective memory. It is true that for nearly 80 years the US, including the nuclear umbrellas in Europe, has extended protections, but don’t forget the bitter accusations that have regularly plagued the alliance. The Suez crisis of 1956, massive hostility towards the Vietnam War, European hostile resentment towards Europe, European hostile resentment towards America’s skepticism towards Germany’s Ostopolitik, ferocious debate about Germany’s and France’s betrayal, German Ostopolitik does not mention the repeated repetitions with the American economy. Furthermore, the American had visited Europe on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003, but did not receive it because he could not expect a completely comfortable reception.
Eastern European countries have reasons for warm feelings towards the United States. This actually helped them with secret aid during the late stages of the Cold War. But it’s not entirely wrong to feel that Washington had abandoned him before that. Rather than misuse Russia’s weakness, it chose to appease the country and stymed shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union by the US administration, reluctant to admit it to NATO.
However, the roots of tensions between the US and Europe are even deeper. The 80 years of the alliance were extraordinary. Over the nearly quarterly millennium, relationships were vague. Most Americans descend from those who left Europe in search of a new, better life. We are people who have left and most of the time we are happy to do what we did. Wars with European powers occurred regularly and could have been worse. France and the United States approached defeating Mexico after the Civil War, and the lovely fortress of Quebec City was designed to defend the American fleet. American leaders were well aware that the French and British governments had a great preference for a union to the Union.
During the World War, the US exploited European partners and allies. It called for the repayment of loans made in the first war on a common cause, and used a second leverage to divide the British Imperial preference system, speeding up the collapse of the European Empire. The Marshall Plan was grand, but it was also an act of self-interest. And from an American perspective, it was sufficient that the US rescued Europe from what it saw from its greatest perspective three times in the 20th century.
Americans and Europeans are different and they remain, even if they can get great wine, bread, coffee in the US and jeans and rap music in Europe. Their concepts of freedom, freedom of speech, and the proper role of government are not the same as JD Vance, who mentioned at the Munich security conference.
The cast has been different before. As Henry Adams said, “The American hearts have angered Europeans. The truth is, and the fact that English is now the lingua franca of Europe does not make American politics and culture more transparent or predictable for those living on the other side of the Atlantic.
In the long run, a more normal kind of American administration will return. It also returns productive and predictable relationships, cooperation, and friendships. But in the past two months, we can’t and shouldn’t be trusted. One Trump administration was wrong. The two Trump administrations are correctly read as differences that can never be repaired. The Atlantic Alliance can be rebuilt, but its foundation is by no means the same, and in some ways it is not entirely bad. Well-armed Europe, as the Polish Prime Minister recently proposed, is a good thing, including those that include larger groups of nuclear forces. Psychological dependence on Europe and the US without unnatural material would benefit both.
But when it comes to the Trump administration, distrust should be a completely different order. Men, ideas, structural conditions create hellish integration, and Europe faces the greatest danger at this moment. If it frees itself from psychological dependence, opens its finance ministry, and releases the energy of a democratic society, it can protect itself, including Ukraine. Meanwhile, and with the deepest regrets, I say that European leaders are fools who believe in the promises that come out of the mouths of Trump administration officials. For at least four years, you are in serious danger as you cannot trust us.
