How the West was lost

Europes panicked the response to the change in Washingtons priorities raises a number of intriguing questions, especially why his leadership was so badly prepared for the second coming of Donald Trump.

One of Most broadcast images From his first mandate showed an irritated but provocative American president, the cross weapons, apparently reprimanded by European leaders led by Angela Merkel at a G7 summit in Canada. Body language was no different from that of Volodymyr Zelenskyy during its deconuting in the oval office at the end of February.

Ukraine is in no way the only conflict bone between the Trump administration and Europe, but it is currently the largest. It is easy to forget that the Biden administration jumped for the defense of Ukraines three years ago with a considerably larger grip than a large part of Europe, Germany restricting its initial offer to assist a Shipping of helmets. The biggest exception was Great Britain under Boris Johnson, which has somehow become a mascot for the Ukrainian resistance and was accused of having helped to thwart a kyiv-Moscow peace initiative at the start.

Keir Starmer recently entered Johnsons boots, warmly receiving Zelenskyy in London after his reception hostile to Washington, promising to marginally increase the British defense budget by reducing the already lean Uks and offering troops for a possible peacekeeping mission in Ukraine as part of a coalition of the will A toxic term, given that it was deployed for the first time in the context of the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States offers a safety net.

Other European nations offer unparalleled support for the Ukraine military effort exercise almost equal dependence on American support. Almost no leader dared to directly challenge Trump or one of his coins, despite the strongly Atlanticist Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, recognizing the need to European independence of the United StatesAnd the head of the foreign policy of European unions, Kaja Kallas, saying that the free world needs a new leader.

The frequent repetition of illusory concepts such as the free world and the rules based on the rules reflect a long -standing disconnection with reality. The sculpture of Europe by the three large ones 80 years ago last month at the Yalta summit in Crimea was indeed a parody. This was not only a case, however, of acquiesce in Josef Stalines the insistence on the regimes adapted to Moscow through Eastern Europe, given that a large part of the rest of the continent was actually transformed into American domination.

The generous Marshall plan came with attached channels. The intervention in mosques in the 1948 Czechoslovakies elections is often cited as proof of Soviet Perfidia. The emerging role of the CIA in the guarantee of the relegation of the communist and socialist parties of Italy to the opposition, despite their popularity as the main components of the resistance against the Mussolini regime, is less commonly recognized. Then there was Greece the day after its release, where Nazi collaborators triumphed in the civil war of 1946-1949 against the veterans of the socialist and communist resistance, with the British and American aid. Stalin remained away, respecting Yalta's rules as he had done before in the context of the non-aggressive Nazi-Soviet pact, rejecting overwhelming evidence of the Germans intention to invade the USSR.

Even under the grip of the Cold War, the Soviet zone of influence had its aberrant values ​​at the start Yugoslavia and Albania, and later Romania. In Western Europe, Charles de Gaulle was perhaps the only eminent leader who was somewhat skeptical of the American embrace and his potentially disastrous implications. Western Germany was an unequivocal dedicated acolyte of the emerging American Empire and used the coverage of its alliance to rehabilitate a certain number of Nazi executives and collaborators.

While Europe has become an economic community (in order to screw America, Trump suspects) and then alluded to political union, Eastern Europe and the USSR were not part of the image. Until the mid -1980s, half of the continent could almost convince Uncle Sam with insurance: everything I do, I do it for you. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev with his package of volume And perestroika. Fill the virgin pages of Soviet history and tell each of the Soviet satellites to follow their own path, a dream was reality for cold warriors.

Reconstruction was another matter. Western fans who had praised Gorbachev as a Soviet Messiah turned their back on his project when he asked for financial assistance. At the end of 1991, they had found a new dupe at Boris Yeltsin who, between vodka sips, could not say Nyet to its impatient sponsors in Western Europe and the United States. Shock therapy? Bring it. A dysfunctional economy has been struck in a basket box and open to the voracious appetites of Western societies and local potential oligarchs.

Europe and the United States have looked with a sly smile and, unlike the promises made in Gorbachev, stimulated an expansion towards the east of NATO. The intention of military alliances has become clearer with his intervention in the former Yugoslavia. Light protests for Oltsins could easily be ignored after all, if the West had not intervened to ensure its re -election? Its unexpected successor has proven to be less in line.

Vladimir Putin was initially considered a potential savior at the national level after the chaos of the years of adhesion, and a Western ally in the post-September 11 war against terrorism. The West looked away while he took the opportunity to devastate Chechnya, while Israels Ariel Sharon sent his tanks to the West Bank. More than two decades later, there is a perverse logic for the Americas Volt-face during the Ukraine War. The gap between the support of the aggressor in the Middle East and the victim of the assault in Europe was resolved in favor of the guilty parts. Is there really a huge difference between blaming Hamas to invite the genocide to Gaza and designate Kyiv as guilty of the incentive of Putin's anger?

Western liberal commentators in the consumer media have recently completed their lamentation columns on how the United States suddenly brought democracy to the support of authoritarianism. It is a nonsense. Even a quick glance at the post-war story is launching a plethora of cases where Washington favored military dictatorships or civil authorities on voters of democracy around the world. Even today, the Gulf repressive monarchies are among the United States and the Middle East allies in the United States and Israel.

During a 2018 G20 summit in Buenos Aires shortly after the Minions of the Princes of the Saudi Crown had suffocated a slightly critical journalist before cutting his remains, Western leaders were slightly suspicious of being photographed with Mohammed Bin Salman. Putin, too familiar with the pleasure of killing annoying journalists, welcomed MBS with a High Five and a smile heard. Four years later, Prince Killer was fist by Joe Biden, who had previously designated him as pariah.

The usual suspects, of Thomas Friedman has Nicholas Kristofare reluctant to recognize that the predilections prevail is only a continuation of American policy by other means. Their journalist's colleagues often do not recognize that while the United States voted with Russia, Belarus and North Korea to reject a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly sponsored by Europe on Ukraine, Israel was also on the same side. Could this persuade Zelenskyy to reverse his pro-Zionist position? Dream on.

Most of Europe was dishonored by refusing to recognize the Zionist demonstration of Nazism which he rejected in the 1940s with Soviet and American aid. The far -right forces upwards of France and Germany on the Russian border and in Russia and in Ukraine are only a consequence of Western carelessness, a repetition in some respects of everything that went wrong following the Second World War and in the 1980s and the 190s, after the Soviet Union has implated.

Even 80 years ago, Europe should have had a strategy to possibly get out of the toxic embrace of the Americas. It's not. The opportunities presented in 1989-1991, which led to the reunification of Germany, were also wasted. It is hardly a surprise that the former Germany in the East economically neglected Provides the most fertile land for AFD to the far right Just one of the many movements across Europe who consider Trump and Putin as the potential Messiah.

The center-right forces in Europe which appear with various names, but which share a similar ideology, have not been miserably faced this challenge. There could be years or even decades, before the European powers find a formula to stand up, without American accessories. He can take them even more time to recognize that peaceful coexistence with Russia is a sine qua no For a flourishing Europe. Until then, hoist with their own petard, they will continue to wonder where they have gone wrong by once again ignoring the plethora of missed opportunities.

If the West as a post-imperial concept has been lost in recent weeks, this can be a partial cause of celebration. Posterity could look back in the mid-2020 as the period when world leading Hegémon has thrown its children's gloves to display its claws and too much of its vassals, from the United Kingdom to Australia and beyond, continued to hang on to its tails. Until they inevitably undergo the consequences of their idiocy.