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Is the US-Europe alliance permanently damaged?
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm, Sweden.
Is the transatlantic relationship permanently damaged by what we have seen during the last 10 days or so?
Well, there is no question that the last 10 days or so have been the worst by far for the transatlantic relationship in, well, modern recorded history. You can go through all of the details if you want. It started with the shameful vote in the UN General Assembly on the same day that was three years after the war of aggression that Russia started, where the United States turned around, lined up with Russia, and with primarily a bunch of countries that you would not normally like to be seen in the company of, in order to try to defeat the Europeans, and defeat the Ukrainians, and defeat the Japanese, and defeat the Australians, defeat all of the friends who have criticized the Russians.
It was truly shameful. It was defeated, needless to say, but it left deep marks there. And then it was downhill from there, with that particular week ending with the ambush in the Oval Office, with all of the details associated with that, with sort of a childish dispute about dress codes, and respect for whatever, and total disregard for the important issues that are at stake at the moment. And to that was added, the vice president seriously insulting the allies, primarily the British and the French, and then cutting of aid to Ukraine, including intelligence cooperation, which is unheard of, unheard of when it comes to these particular issues.
So, is damage permanent? Well, one would hope that... well, hope springs eternal, that there would be a way back. But this will be remembered for a long time to come. And the reaction in Europe, well, you have to keep a straight face if you are a political leader. And they do, they hope for the best, but they're increasingly preparing for the worst. What we might be heading into is Mr. Trump, President Trump lining up with President Putin in a deal that is essentially on Russia's term over Ukraine, then trying to force Ukraine into that particular deal, a repetition of Munich 1938.
Will that work? I think it's unlikely to work because the Ukrainians are determined to stand up for their country. And they have the support of the Europeans. Czechoslovakia in 1938 didn't have much support. So, whether it will work or not is debatable, but that is the direction in which things are heading at the moment. Can this be stopped or can the trajectory of things be changed? Let's hope. There's a flurry of meetings in Europe. There will be a lot of contacts across the Atlantic. There is a strong support for Ukraine in Europe, but then deep apprehensions of where we are heading. Further four years with President Trump. After that, (possibly) four to eight years with JD Vance. Well, well, there's a lot of thinking that needs to be done on this side of the Atlantic.
Why Trump won’t break the Putin-Xi alliance
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Does Trump's relationship with Putin isolate or concern China?
I wouldn't say so. I think that Putin and Xi Jinping have one of the stronger relationships on the global stage today. I think they've met something like 81 times bilaterally since the two have been in power. They're both leaders for life, they run dictatorships, and they support each other all the time at the United Nations. There's a lot of technology and trade, and China needs to buy Russian energy. The Americans certainly don't. So, for lots of reasons, this relationship is much more stable and strong than anything that Trump is likely to build with Putin. Especially because Trump is a one more term president, 78 years old, with checks and balances in the US, even if they're getting weaker, they exist. That's not true in Russia. It's not true in China. So, I don't think Beijing is very worried about that.
What does the resignation of Iran's Vice President Zarif signal about tensions in the country?
Well, given the fact that the finance minister was also just impeached this weekend, also a would-be reformist, a moderate, in the context of the Iranian political spectrum, it means the supreme leader and the conservatives do not trust these guys to engage with the Americans or the West. It's a harder line Iranian policy as they move towards greater levels of stockpiling, of enriched uranium, and as their military strategy has fallen apart for the region. If anyone is going to talk to the Americans, and if anyone is going to try to forestall attacks from Israel, and maybe by the US as well, it's not going to be the people that got the original Iranian nuclear deal done, the JCPOA. So, that's what it looks like in reform. Nascent under a lot of trouble. The Iranian president under a lot of pressure right now at home.
What's next for the Israel-Hamas ceasefire as the first phase comes to an end?
Well, I think what everyone is waiting for is the Egypt deal, which is being penned and is being sent over in advance of an Arab League summit to Trump in the coming hours, if not day. Originally, it was a few hundred pages long. The Saudis told the Egyptians, "Maybe you want to have an executive summary that's a little glossier for Trump? He's not reading a couple hundred pages." That's been worked on all weekend. And it certainly isn't the Americans owning Gaza. It certainly isn't the Palestinians being forced out or all voluntarily leaving. Whether or not Trump is prepared to sign off on that, or at least allow it to go forward and not veto it, as long as it hits that hurdle, I think you'll have pretty much all of the Arab states signing off on it in the Arab summit. That's where we are right now, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Can Europe broker a Ukraine ceasefire?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. The big news, everything around Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Europe. The Europeans now with the ball in their court, a big summit, a coalition of the willing in London this week. And Zelensky very warmly embraced, quite literally, by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and by everyone in attendance. It was very different visuals, very different takeaways than the meeting between Zelensky, Trump, and Vance in the Oval Office, which couldn't have gone much worse if everyone tried.
Where we are right now, certainly this coalition of the willing had everyone that mattered in Europe. I mean, not the countries, not the leaders that have been skeptical, that have been more aligned with the Russians, or more, say, in a minimal position, like the Hungarians, like the Slovaks, but everybody else was there. So, you've got the Brits, you've got the French, you've got the Italians, and the Germans. You also have EU leadership, Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas, and also you have all of the frontline leaders that have the most at stake from a national security perspective: the Nordics, the Balts, the Poles. You even have Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who doesn't spend very much on defense, but nonetheless going there to show he's aligned with the Ukrainians, whether or not the Americans, who the Canadians rely on completely economically, are not.
Does it matter? Does it matter? If you're asking does it matter in the sense that can the Europeans go it alone without the Americans? I'm still skeptical, though they're putting a lot more on the table now than they were a week ago, and they should have been doing that years ago. And that's going to remain a very big question, and I'm probably going to remain pretty skeptical. But very interesting that the Europeans do now have a level of ownership. Remember that Trump, both when he was running for president and once he became president, said that the United States was going to end this war, that he, Trump, would be responsible for the ceasefire, that he's going to do it himself with the Ukrainians, with the Russians, he could do it in 24 hours. That's obviously an exaggeration, but nonetheless, even as he realized it was going to take longer, he was the dominant actor. That's now changed. Keir Starmer has now told Trump that the Europeans, this coalition of the willing, is coming up with a ceasefire plan, and they are going to present it to the United States, and Trump is expecting it.
So for now, the Europeans don't just have a seat at the table, but they actually are in the driver's seat, in terms of the ceasefire on the back of the Ukrainian-US relationship having functionally blown up, and the Americans saying they're not going to do anything particularly more for the Ukrainians. They're not even prepared to sign the critical minerals deal that Zelensky now says he is prepared to sign. But if the Europeans are the ones that are going to be coughing up the money and providing the troops, then certainly they're the ones that are responsible for the terms of the ceasefire.
Now, that's interesting. And we're hearing certainly that there's going to be a lot more engagement, that potentially Starmer, Macron, and Zelensky will all three come together to the White House to meet Trump maybe later this week, maybe next week. Certainly Zelensky should not be attending meetings like that by himself anymore, I think he understands that, the Europeans understand that as well.
What they should do now, the Europeans, is present a UN Security Council resolution with the plan once Trump has seen it and is prepared to move forward. A simple thing, deciding nothing, just saying that the Security Council supports the path to peace as outlined from the UK summit. This will force Russian amendments, which the UK and France will veto, and then Russia will be forced to veto the resolution. And that's useful in a couple of different ways. First of all, it costs the French and the UK nothing, and they win a fair amount. The news will be all about how their Russian veto was used for the first time since 1989, and it places the Americans on the same side as the Europeans on the ceasefire issue, which is what the Europeans, the Ukrainians desperately need, and frankly, the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress as well.
The UK and France can then show Trump that they indeed don't need to be invited to the table, because they're at the table, they have the ceasefire plan and they're the ones that are driving it. Now, having a ceasefire plan is different from being able to implement the ceasefire and support the Ukrainians, and that is where there's still an awful lot that still needs to be accomplished.
Specifically the one piece of good news, surprising news, is that the Germans are now talking about 800 billion Euro package, outside of their debt break, that would support defense spending and infrastructure spending. They weren't talking about anything remotely like this even a few days ago. It would have to be done well before the end of the month because when the new chancellor comes in, then you are going to have the far left and the far right with the ability to block any constitutional majority. They don't have that capacity now, which means the debt break can be overridden by a vote in the Bundestag. That's really important, and would lead to German leadership in helping to finance this war.
You also have the 300 billion Euros that are frozen, the Russian sovereign assets that are mostly in the hands of the Europeans, the Belgians, as it turns out, and some others as opposed to the Americans, the Japanese. So, that could also be used to support Ukraine to buy more weapons, also to build up Ukraine's military industrial complex. In other words, while this situation is difficult and urgent, I would not yet say that it has fallen apart for the Ukrainians or the Europeans. They are still, as it were, in the game.
Now, the big question overlooking all of this is the United States and Russia, because they still want to do a deal, and that deal is not mostly about Ukraine, that deal mostly is about rapprochement between the United States and Russia over the heads of their NATO allies. This is what Trump is interested in, this is what Putin is interested. And frankly, it's a little easier to do that deal if you don't have a ceasefire, because the Russians don't really want one, than it is to do that deal if a ceasefire is a part of it. That's what has to be watched very carefully because of course, Trump and Putin are talking about where they're going to meet in person, Saudi Arabia maybe in May, Trump would even be willing to go to Moscow. This could include things like the United States taking unilateral sanctions off of Russia while the Europeans would still have them on. Could lead to a lot of business, a much bigger critical minerals deal than the one that was going to be signed between the Americans and the Ukrainians, and now, at least, is off the table.
Also note that the US Defense Department has at least temporarily suspended offensive cyberattacks against the Russians, which is quite something, again, in the context of nothing having been agreed to between the Americans and the Russians, but clearly Trump much more willing to be on Putin's good side right now than he is with Zelensky. So ultimately, that is a very big challenge for the Europeans, but they will be in far better shape if they're able to move on the ceasefire in the near-term, which looks likely, and on support for Ukraine in the medium-term, which looks like more of a challenge.
So, that's it for now. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Playing cards depicting President Donald Trump on display in West Palm Beach, Florida, late last year.
Opinion: The US president plays a Trump card on Ukraine
On the 2016 campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was fond of repeating the truism: When someone shows you who they are, believe them. In a particular clip from August 2016, Clinton underscored her assessment of then-adversary and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by saying, “There is no new Donald Trump.”
Europe has been forced to confront this lesson once again in recent weeks. As the Trump 2.0 administration unveiled its foreign policy priorities, European leaders initially adopted a wait-and-see approach. They even held their breath for a window of opportunity around Ukraine. When Trump adjusted his ambitions to allow for a six-month timeframe to reach an agreement, after promising repeatedly on the campaign trail to end the war on his first day in office, European capitals felt buoyed that he was perhaps pursuing pragmatism.
All their cautious confidence has now left the room – only to be replaced by a rolling panic.
A period marked by Vice President JD Vance chastising Europe at the Munich Security Conference, high-level meetings between US and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia, and Trump declaring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” on Truth Social has riled European allies and left them looking for solid ground. A televised White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump on Friday devolved from cordial to transparently contentious in just 45 minutes.
With no apparent points of leverage, Vladimir Putin has managed to bring the US significantly closer to Russia’s preferred position. At this weekend’s summit in London, European leaders were forced to face a familiar and devastating fact: Even an isolated Russia is capable of strategically shifting the conversation as long as Putin leads. No amount of economic pain, coordinated sanctions, or falling of Syria’s Assad regime has changed this.
A set of votes at the United Nations last week measured just how much things have changed. Three years ago, a March 2022 UN General Assembly resolution deploring Russian aggression against Ukraine in violation of the UN Charter was overwhelmingly adopted. The US joined 141 others in favor, while Russia found itself in the company of only four states. Last week, in an about-face, the US sided with Russia (and against its European allies) in two resolutions to mark the third anniversary of the conflict.
These votes reflect not only the gulf that has opened across the Atlantic; they also raise questions about the geopolitical landscape moving forward. After the March 2022 resolution, analysts began speaking fervently of a Global North-South world order. Russia and its near partners (those who stood against) – Belarus, North Korea, and Syria – and its sympathizers (the abstainers) – South Africa, China, India, and Bolivia against the US and Europe. Now, a question with long-term implications is emerging: How entrenched will the US pivot on Russia-Ukraine prove to be, and what does it mean for the future world order?
In the near term, European leaders are wrestling with how to manage the US president. Projects such asHarvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation categorize business negotiation styles from collaborative (I win – you win) on one end of the spectrum to avoidant (I lose – you lose) on the other. Negotiations are frequently circumstance-dependent, meaning that adopting a flexible approach responsive to the business at hand – and one’s adversary – is often advantageous.
Trump is, however, a predictable negotiator. His worldview always leads him to adopt a competitive (I win – you lose) approach in which heanchors a negotiation by “naming a price” early in the process, effectively bounding subsequent rounds. This is what is meant when his foreign policy is described as “transactional.”
With Colombia, for example, Trump threatened 25% tariffs that would escalate to 50% if it did not accept migrant flights. There was no win in these “negotiations.” Colombian President Gustavo Petro gave Trump what he wanted, and Trump backed off. Canada and Mexico were left in similar positions after Trump announced 25% tariffs. Each quickly made concessions to give Trump the win and reduce the economic pain at home. Both now face the hard news that their compromises were not enough, and levies are set to go ahead this week after the brief reprieve.
European allies would do well to remember that there is no new Trump. And there is evidence that some European leaders are beginning to update their model of him, accordingly. As part of a joint press conference last week held with Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron indicated that he and Europe were ready to help guarantee Ukraine’s security by sending troops to Ukraine. Not to be outdone, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer preempted his own visit to the White House by announcing that British troops would also be available when needed.
Zelensky, who had a front line to Trump during his first administration, is also keenly aware of who he is. Anticipating a Trump 2.0 presidency, Zelensky’s team purportedly devised the idea for the US-Ukraine mineral deal, which the two were meant to sign in Washington on Friday.
In the closing minutes of their fruitless meeting,Trump warned Zelensky, “You’ve got to be more thankful because, let me tell you, you don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don’t have any cards.”
Trump prefers to hold all the cards, shuffle them at will, and throw down a new hand to the world’s surprise. Yet, even when the substance shifts – as it has dramatically over the last weeks in Europe – the process remains the same: Trump will be looking for the win.
Lindsay Newman is a geopolitical risk expert and columnist for GZERO.
Trump's Ukraine peace plan confuses Europe leaders
What is the European reaction to what President Trump is trying to achieve in terms of peace?
Well, confusion. A lot of people, and there are quite a number of European leaders here, today, don't really understand what President Trump is up to. He wants peace, that's fine. But peace can be, well, that could be the complete capitulation of Ukraine, that is the Putin definition of peace. Or it can be the victory of Ukraine, that's another definition of peace. So exactly how President Trump intends to pursue this? And without Europe, obviously, neither Putin nor Trump wants Europe around the table.
But how do you do it without Ukraine on the table? Because a lot of the things that are going to be necessary to agree with are things that have to be agreed with Ukraine, with President Zelensky. So a lot of question marks. The desire for peace is clearly here, no question about that. This war has to come to end. But the peace has to be just, it has to be stable. It has to be something that is not just a pause for Russia to recalibrate and restart the war.
So a lot of things to discuss between the European leaders and between the European leaders and President Zelensky, is happening in Kyiv here today. But also eventually, across the Atlantic, President Macron is in Washington today, Prime Minister Starmer is heading into Washington on Thursday.
Germany's close election limits its ability to lead Europe
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Lots going on the German elections. Probably the most important though, everything around Europe and Russia and Ukraine and the United States kind of dominating the headlines right now. Germany went pretty much the way we all expected. The polls have been very, very steady over the course of the past couple of months. The big question was whether or not you could have a two-party or a three-party coalition that really depended on whether or not parties that were small would get over the 5% hurdle that allows them representation in Germany's parliament, in which case it would be harder to put together a government. You'd need three parties or whether they would stay out. The latter turned out to be the case. Didn't find that out until three A.M. in Germany. Very unusual how close in that regard the election was for those smaller parties, and that means you're going to get a grand coalition, a two-party coalition center-right and center-left.
They don't agree on a lot of policies. It is hard to get good outcomes politically from that kind of a coalition, but it's not unusual in Germany. The other big news, the Alternative für Deutschland performing about as well as they were expected to over the course of the past couple months, they came in a solid second. They won across former East Germany and they got single digits across former West Germany. But that's better than they performed last time around, even though their popularity has been high for a while now, certainly if you think about their trajectory over the some 12 years since they were founded, this is now a party that has a solid shot of being number one in 2029 next German elections, especially if the Germans are unable to turn their economy around. Though on migration, most of the German political spectrum has aligned with where AfD, more or less is just as we've seen across many countries in Europe, like in Italy and in the UK and France and elsewhere.
Okay. So that's the near-term outcome. Still a grand coalition is going to have a hard time spending a huge amount of money on defense or on Ukraine aid or on German growth. And there is some urgency in seeing if you can at least pass more German defense spending outside of their hard fast debt break while the present Scholz-led three-party coalition is in place. Why? Because there is a constitutional majority blocking capacity among the hard left and hard right parties, Die Linke and the AfD in Germany, which means that unless you get one of them on your side, you're not going to be able to do that spending. So the big takeaway here is Germany is probably going to have a really hard time really stepping up as a leader on doing far more in Europe for Europe than even you've seen under Scholz. It's going to be a more powerful government, but not the kind of power that they really need.
So here's a situation where Friedrich Merz, who will be the next German chancellor coming out immediately and saying that they can no longer count on the United States, that even NATO's existence as we look forward to the June NATO summit is open to question that Germany and Europe are going to have to have European defense without the United States, independent of the US claiming that American intervention in Germany's election in favor of the AfD considered by the other German parties to be a neo-Nazi party is as striking and dangerous in intervention and unacceptable as Moscow interventions into Germany's democracy. In other words, the German leadership, the next German chancellor, understanding that the US is an ally, believes that Trump and his administration is an adversary, is an enemy. And that is a truly shocking thing to hear from the incoming German government. Having said all of that, saying it is one thing, taking action to ensure that the Europeans are capable of defending themselves is quite another, and they're nowhere remotely close to that.
Macron in the United States today will be meeting with Trump shortly, meeting with him by himself. Kier Starmer from the UK later this week, same. Are their positions coordinated? More than they have been. But can they do enough? Can they put enough on the table in terms of financing, in terms of boots on the ground in Ukraine absent an American backstop? No, they can't. And I think as a consequence, the baseline expectation is that the US effort at rapprochement with Putin is going ahead. That the US effort of cutting a deal with Putin on Ukraine over the heads of the Ukrainians and the Europeans is largely going ahead. And this of course bodes very badly for the future of Ukraine and Zelensky, but also really does undermine the existence, the strength of NATO as the world's most important collective security agreement. I don't see Trump as wanting to end all military cooperation in Europe.
He just met with the Polish president. It was a very short meeting, supposed to be an hour was 10 minutes. But the important thing for the Poles was announced, which is the US is still committed to maintaining American troops on the ground in Poland. Why? Because Poland is not only very friendly to the US, but it's also moving towards 5% of GDP spend on defense in this year. And it's also said that they're not sending any troops to Ukraine in a post-ceasefire environment. Why not? Well, number one, because they need troops on the ground in Poland. But number two, because the Russians have said that they won't accept any European troops, and right now that's Trump's position. So Poland doesn't want to undermine their important defense protector, the Americans and President Trump. All of this is to say that there's probably going to be more division inside Europe as a consequence of these policies that Trump is putting forward. It's going to be very hard for him to maintain strong unity of Europe, even as they are facing more existential challenges economically in terms of their competitiveness, their growth, and most importantly in terms of their national security. So that's where we are right now. Enormous amount of news coming down the pike this week. Haven't even talked about the latest on Israel and Gaza and China and everything else. But if this is the big news, might as well cover it. Talk to you all real soon.
Ukraine's military technology could benefit all of Europe — Deputy Minister Anna Gvozdiar
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine was already punching above its weight in technology—having one of the most powerful IT hubs and digitized governments in the world. Now, three years into the war, tech innovation in Ukraine has become a battlefield advantage, one that Anna Gvozdiar, Deputy Minister for Strategic Industries, says could benefit all of Europe. Tony Maciulis spoke with Gvozdiar on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference for GZERO Reports about how Ukraine’s rapid advancements in military technology, including drones and electronic warfare systems, can offer Western allies “priceless” lessons in the fight against Russian aggression. With the future of US support far from certain, Gvozdiar says Ukraine is committed to protecting European security and that the stakes of the war could not be higher.
“We are fighting not for territory. We are fighting for values,” Gvozdiar says, “I think that Europe has to understand that this is about protecting a democracy.”
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Trump through the looking glass
The shocking US pivot to Russia has sent the world through the political looking glass and into the upside-down era of Trumpland. Is the US abandoning its historic allies in NATO, Europe, and Canada in favor of … Russia?
The short answer is yes. For now.
Let’s start with exhibit A: the inversion of facts to justify the abandonment of Ukraine.
President Donald Trump has, to steal a Lewis Carroll phrase by the QAnon movement, followed the white rabbit down the disinformation hole. According to him, Ukraine started the war, not Russia. “You should’ve never started it,” Trump said this week about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “You could’ve made a deal.”
Wait, what?
Didn’t the war start when Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea in 2014? Didn’t it escalate when he invaded the country — three years ago this Saturday — in February 2022, bombing cities and trying to assassinate Zelensky?
Those are the facts that NATO nations have long accepted … because they are true. Putin was the dictator who started the war, and Zelensky the defender of democracy.
Not for Trump.
He now calls Zelensky “a Dictator without Elections,” not Putin. Parroting Russian propaganda, Trump claims that Zelensky has only 4% support in his country and so has no standing to be part of the peace negotiations.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice said, gazing around the new world of Wonderland. This just doesn’t make much sense.
Once you go through the political looking glass, the flow of disinformation threatens to overwhelm reality. Fact-checking is suddenly seen as a radical form of partisanship, but it shouldn’t be. Facts are facts. The truth is, in the last presidential election, Zelensky won 73% of the vote. It is also true that, since then, the war and martial law in Ukraine delayed the elections that were scheduled for last May, and concerns about that are legitimate. But as the UK prime minister pointed out, during World War II, Britain also suspended elections.
Zelensky responded in fury, saying that Trump “lives in this disinformation space.”
Europe is reeling at the pivot — suddenly aware that their closest ally and friend has shifted toward Russia. European leaders, who have been holding a series of emergency meetings, are now realizing that if they want to defend themselves from Russia, they have to do it themselves. It’s not so much a wake-up call as a lifesaving shock from a political defibrillator. But it will be expensive and fraught with internal obstacles.
The sense of betrayal in the EU is overwhelming. Kaja Kallas, vice president of the European Commission, described this as “appeasement,” while Friedrich Merz, the man most likely to lead Germany after Sunday’s election, called it “a classic reversal of the role of perpetrator and victim.”
Even former British Prime Minster Boris Johnson, who supports the idea of helping Trump end the war, couldn’t defend the absurdity of Trump’s view. “Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor,” he wrote.
The truth is that European leaders are in full panic, watching the postwar multilateral world they worked so hard to build on the foundation of US support collapse.
Meanwhile, the Russians aren’t just throwing a Lewis Carroll-like tea party but a Kremlin-sponsored vodka chug-a-thon. The Russians have long courted far-right MAGA types like Tucker Carlson through their common interest in fighting “woke” culture and promoting Christian nationalism — all while maintaining their focus on weakening NATO and breaking up the alliance. Even they can’t believe their success.
“If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president wrote, not bothering to hide his gloating. “Trump is 200 percent right.”
“He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, cementing Russian propaganda as a Trumpian truth.
As I argued last week, this is part of Trump’s empire state of mind, his neo-imperialist goal of dividing the world into spheres of influence controlled by strongman leaders in countries like Russia and China. China is seeing all this through the lens of invading Taiwan, something that must look far more palatable to the current US administration as it retreats from its role as a global police officer and looks increasingly likely to join the mob looting weaker sovereign territories. Small countries who get in the way — Ukraine in this case, the Panamanians in another, and maybe Taiwan — have little or no say in the outcomes.
Other countries that have been threatened by Trump, like Canada, are watching nervously. After all, the propaganda Putin uses to talk about Ukraine — there is an artificial border where one never should have existed, that Ukrainians actually want Russia to come and protect them — sounds eerily familiar to the language Trump has used about Canada. He has called the US-Canada border an “artificially drawn line” and claimed, without proof, that most Canadians would welcome the US taking over the country to offer protection.
Earlier today, just hours before the 4 Nations hockey final between the US and Canada, Trump made it political. The event has been supercharged by the political climate to the point where Canadian fans booed the US national anthem during a round-robin matchup last weekend in Montreal. Expect the Canadian anthem to receive a similar treatment tonight in Boston. “I’ll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State,” Trump posted.
The threats are by now familiar, but the pivot toward Russia adds a more concerning element. Once he went through the looking glass and accepted the lie that Ukraine started the war, Trump implicitly accepted the idea that a manufactured threat can be a justifiable pretext for the most radical action.
Trump 1.0 already used the pretext of national security to slap tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, and his Trump 2.0 tariff wars and threats are no different. What happens when Canada responds in kind with reciprocal tariffs designed to hurt the US economically? Will it be long before Canada is accused of starting the tariff war? Does that quickly evolve into a pretext for more drastic US action to make Canada the 51st state? After all, it is just … self-defense.
All this sounds like phantasmagorical, political hyperventilating, and frankly paranoid. The rhetoric about the US taking over Canada the way Russia invaded Ukraine must be a joke, a trick to gain the upper hand in good old-fashioned trade negotiations. Right? Right?
Let’s hope.
But then, Trump has a Napoleonic view of his powers and the rule of law. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he posted on social media last weekend. If he does not see himself bound by US constitutional law, why would he feel bound by international law?
This US pivot toward Russia marks the most dangerous threat to the multilateral world’s adherence to the rule of law and the NATO alliance in general. It is not a bug of the Trump presidency; it is a feature. Everything has changed. “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then,” Alice says as she absorbs what has happened to her.
The Western world can’t go back either. There is malice in Wonderland now, and it is no longer just Russia; it’s the United States itself.