After more than half a century of peace at least in the Western world, the starting signal for the beginning of a new era of lawlessness in international relations has just been sounded in the US. Donald Trump wants to place the Panama Canal, up to now the property of a sovereign state, under US administration, i.e. occupy it. Not without reason, of course. The US is vitally dependent on the sea route for trade between the west and east coasts of the country, as the completely outdated and dilapidated rail infrastructure is unable to cope with the trade and transport by road is too expensive. In 1989, the United States already saw its interests threatened. At that time, it took appropriate action against dictator Noriega. Trump is a cold-blooded realist. He knows exactly what will happen after such an attack. There will be short-term outcry, especially from South America but otherwise:
Nothing!
Nor is it for the first time that the charismatic cowboy, who will soon reside in the White House, talks about acquiring Greenland in return for payment or, if Denmark opposes such a demand, by military force. Like Denmark, Greenland is part of the European Union. It is also part of NATO. However, the transatlantic military alliance takes action only against external enemies; it is not designed to prevent attacks among its own members. So, what will happen if Donald Trump decides to install further military bases on Greenland without Denmark’s permission or simply annexes the island? Of course, the European Union will angrily protest against this violation of international law, but since it is militarily powerless, it will not be able to raise any effective resistance, let alone mount a military defense. Unlike Trump, Putin or even Xi Jinping, the EU cannot threaten with ballistic missiles. That is why the realist Donald Trump knows exactly what will happen:
Nothing at all!
Instead the future president of the United States will have reason to be pleased. Just like Putin after the perfidious occupation of Crimea, he may count on at least every second American applauding when he fulfills such a promise. After all, his mantra-like resolve to make America great again is what catapulted him to the top of power in the first place. That explain why his uncompromising realism even inspires him to a much greater vision. A vision the realization of which could see him go down in the annals of American history as a celebrated hero. Making Canada the 51st state would certainly do much to restore the now tarnished world power to its former glory. Similar to united Europe, Canada is a formidable economic power, but a military dwarf. Should the highly armed nuclear power USA occupy its neighboring country in a lightning operation, what would be the likely consequence? Of course, moral outrage would flare up worldwide; a handful of Canadians might go underground as terrorists, bombs would explode here and there. But certainly, neither Russia nor China will risk a nuclear war against the United States because of this annexation. So, in this case, too, the realist Trump knows exactly what will happen, namely:
Nothing!
But one thing, the most important thing for this pathologically glory-addicted man, will surely happen. Even those who see him for what he really is, namely a man contemptuous of all morals and intellectually narrow-minded, will cheer him in the same way as the masses once cheered a Mussolini, a Stalin and a Hitler. Because he has made good on his promise: America is great again. Of course, if you keep in mind what the aforementioned predecessors have done to themselves and to their countries, the question remains: for how long?
How could this new lawlessness come about? It certainly does not happen without preparation. Over the past few decades, the world has changed fundamentally. After the murderous self-destruction of the Second World War, when the survivors in Europe had only just escaped from barbarism, virtues that had been thought dead were once again held in esteem throughout the West: namely humanity in mutual dealings, trust and honesty. But a generation or two have passed since then. The memory of the former horror has faded to a mere shadow, barbarism raises its head again. It can take on the features of a Putin just as easily as those of a Trump. The two seem to understand each other very well anyway. They will soon meet for the second time.
The stakes are high for the US. Trump is not the first president concerned with pushing back enemy number one, the frighteningly successful China. The rise of the Far Eastern giant is indeed breathtaking. Its course resembles that of a comet, whose orbit can be quite precisely predicted. If we extrapolate past developments, then everything – the potential of aircraft carriers, economic strength as measured by GNP, the nuclear arsenal and the flow of trade to and from China – will be significantly greater than American values in two or three decades at the latest. Even not it is an open secret that the US can no longer match the military might of the two superpowers combined, that is, Russia plus China. This development had already become apparent during the Cold War half a century ago. Richard Nixon – a man whose personality is quite similar to that of Donald Trump – had already come to the conclusion in 1972 that it must be an imperative of US foreign policy to draw one of the two remaining superpowers onto its own orbit, i.e. either Russia or China. A temporary rapprochement between the two powers occurred with the promise of the United States to allow the unification of mainland China with “renegade” Taiwan – provided that this unification took place in a peaceful democratic way.
This political honeymoon between the US and the People’s Republic of China has long since given way to an apparently insurmountable polarization. We are witnessing a development that essentially consists of the US tearing down more and more bridges to China, especially with the help of trade barriers such as tariffs and sanctions. This is because China has emerged as the most brilliant student of Western achievements. In the space of just three to four decades, the Far Eastern country has appropriated the entire scientific and technical know-how of the West that took over three centuries to accumulate. Now only a few areas remain in which China still lags behind the cutting-edge technology of the US, but there are more and more in which it is outstripping the rest of the world. In the United States, this seemingly unstoppable rise is inspiring nothing less than panic and the political imperative to gain a powerful ally against China. If Europe were a serious nuclear power, like Russia – a demand that the French President Macron has repeatedly made without being heard by his German colleagues – then a cold realist like Trump would have no choice but to take the EU seriously. But Europe has missed its chance. From Trump’s point of view, Europeans cling to some kind of morally disguised narrow-mindedness, because they seriously want to believe that values defend themselves, even without the help of weapons. Nobody else believes this, certainly not Trump himself or either Putin, or Xi. In fact, even the Europeans themselves only feigned this belief. What they actually did, was to let the Americans pay for their protection, thus promoting their own industries at America’s expense – that is how the situation presents itself to Donald Trump, and it is by no means unrealistic.
The US cannot rely on the European Union to rein in an increasingly assertive China, but it could very well do so with Russia as a partner. But how can that be done? What would Trump have to offer Moscow if he wants to persuade Putin to flirt with the Americans and cut the previously close ties with China? Lifting sanctions and promising that America will provide no further military aid to Ukraine is certainly not enough. But Vladimir Putin has never made a secret of the goal he is pursuing in the long term. With his professed admiration for Stalin and his lament that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of the past century, he has made his position clear enough. Stalin once asked how many divisions the Pope has at his disposal. We may assume that Putin is asking the same question with regard to the EU, that military dwarf. How many divisions could it mobilize against Russia if the US were to deny it protection? The answer is much the same. Putin knows perfectly well that Europe would lie defenselessly at his feet if America were to withdraw from NATO or if the USA – in order to save face – were simply to demand that the Europeans increase their defense budget to five percent. And as to Germany, it would rather be swallowed by Russia than give its approval to a Europe as a nuclear power in its own right together with France.[1] The ruthless realist Donald Trump knows all this. We may therefore assume that he could make his colleague Putin an offer that the latter simply cannot refuse.
As is well known, Donald Trump had publicly questioned NATO’s raison d’être already during his first term in office. Apparently, nothing has changed in the meantime. On the contrary. Ahead of his meeting with the Russian president, which will likely take place in the near future, he is now showing understanding for the Russian narrative that NATO poses an existential threat to Russia. It is true that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European states, which had ample reason to fear the Russian bear, pushed hard for admission to NATO (just as Ukraine is now doing in their wake) – even though Germany had made other verbal promises after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This narrative omits an important fact. In contrast to the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation under Putin with their aggressive expansionist policies, the North Atlantic Alliance has to this day served almost exclusively to ward off aggression. Its only lapse into evil was the 1999 intervention in Yugoslavia.
Trump is unlikely to care about lessons from history. If it is true that the US can only defend its position as a world power with a strong partner at its side, then it does not take much imagination to foresee the truly dangerous deal the future president has in store for Europe. In a world-historical deal with Vladimir Putin, Europe could become a bargaining chip. Trump and Putin, no different than Hitler and Stalin before them, are certainly willing to betray anyone if so doing they get a decisive advantage. During their first meeting, the much more sophisticated Putin had already managed to influence Donald Trump so skilfully that the latter disavowed his own secret service. Trump could make the following proposal to his Russian counterpart: We will withdraw from Europe, save ourselves the burden of defense spending there, which earns us no thanks anyway, and give you a free hand in Europe if, in return, you stand with us against China.
That would be the greatest conceivable catastrophe for Europe, but undoubtedly a win-win maneuver for the United States and for Russia as well. And what could the European Union, the victim of such a power play at its expense, do against such a U.S. policy shift? Given the EU’s fatal military powerlessness, the answer seems to leave no doubt.
Nothing!
Let us reflect for a moment! Europe, this rather small western corner of the vast Eurasian continent, is arguably the greatest miracle of human creativeness, considering its wealth of sky-scraping cathedrals, ancient historical sites, divine music, immortal poetry, and the many landscapes that man has transformed into gardens. Great American presidents such as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton and Obama still felt an obligation to their own roots and their country’s cultural proximity to Europe. By contrast, Donald Trump is an uneducated but charismatic barbarian who delights in ostentatious kitsch, a barbarian who, like Putin, merely pretends to worship God, while in fact he worships nothing but power. The man has as little respect for creative values and human achievements as his Russian colleague, who mercilessly lays one city after another to waste for the sole reason that the people there dare to oppose his will. If the same fate were to befall the whole of Europe, that would be no loss for people like Putin, but certainly not for Trump either, who would rather be convinced that Disneyland will subsequently rebuild everything much better.
This conviction is certainly shared by a man whom Trump has chosen as his closest companion, Elon Musk, the modern techno-barbarian. In an ingenious way, the multiple billionaire embodies a modern type of person existing in greater numbers only since about the second half of the twentieth century. This new type is largely blind to the beauties of nature and culture; the artificial reality of technical gadgets is the only true thing. This new generation lives exclusively in the here and now, with complete indifference to history. It is divided into brilliant doers at the highest, but extremely narrow intellectual level of science and technology on the one side and their slaves on the other, slaves for whom cell phones and computers are indispensable daily drugs. The intellectual star and avatar of this new type of human being, Elon Musk, is so obsessed with this self-created, thoroughly artificial world that he extols the bare, deadly cold and hostile Mars as the goal of man’s highest aspirations, while not saying a word about the fact that he and his ilk are exposing our magnificent globe to relentless exploitation and destruction.
In contrast to the instinctive certainty of a Trump in dealing with the masses cheering him, the fidgeting and bawling Musk behaves like a clown on the political stage – yes, you can be a genius technocrat and a miserable human being at the same time. But that is not all. Elon Musk is hardly less dangerous than his master. X and the other world-dominating internet platforms are not hesitating to undermine states from within with uncontrolled fakes and political agitation. In an effort to please Trump, Meta has just decided to ignore corresponding EU protection requirements in the future. Musk, moreover, is personally bringing his own power into play. He is interfering in the elections in Germany by making himself the champion of those who want to abolish the European Union. A Europe fragmented again into nation states will be completely unable to resist the dictates of the superpowers. The poor lunatics on the far left, led by Sarah Wagenknecht, and on the far right, led by Alice Weidel, refuse to understand that a united Europe of half a billion people is a much stronger power than any of its individual member states. We should not reproach the EU for taking away sovereignty from its member states to increase unity, but for having done so only hesitantly and insufficiently where it most matters, namely in the crucial area of common defense.
These lines, which are unfortunately very pessimistic with regard to future world politics and specifically with regard to Europe, may seem exaggerated. Do not all states live by the ideal of a multipolar world of live and let live? Just listen to the speeches of Putin and his entourage. Peace is always praised as the ultimate and highest goal, but it is a peace on Russia’s terms, which Putin understands only as total submission to his demands. When Trump annexes Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, it is also for the good of the whole world, for which America too only wishes the best. Honni soit qui mal y pense!
In fact, Donald Trump’s announcements herald nothing less than an era of lawlessness. If the US annexes countries like Panama, Greenland or Canada, why should China hesitate to take over Taiwan, as it has done before with Tibet and the land of the Uighurs? The US has so far publicly committed itself to not allowing a violent appropriation of the island state. Now the same Trump, who is working hard to prevent China from growing stronger, has opened Pandora’s box with his ill-considered announcements. He is providing the Chinese with a convenient pretext for another military attack, and as for Putin, Trump could give him free rein in Europe. Our old and magnificent continent would be the greatest victim of this new lawlessness.
In this context, one should remember another statement made by the unpredictable man in 2016. Trump allegedly asked three times in the presence of MSNBC presenter Scarborough: “If we have nuclear weapons, why don’t we use them?”[2] The question of what might happen under his second presidency, which grants him much greater freedom of action than the first, may now be answered with sufficient clarity. As always, when humanity, trust and honesty are lost in interhuman dealings, the answer in this case is:
Anything may happen!
[1] I do not to be misunderstood. In a world that is already a powder keg, any sensible person must consider any further armament, especially with nuclear weapons, to be a disaster. But we currently live in a world where there is no right living in the wrong, because the alternative is that the unarmed will be swallowed up.
[2] Joe Scarborough, moderator of the MSNBC program Morning Joe, reported in August 2016 that Trump asked a foreign policy adviser three times: “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?”
******************
Comment by Fritz Goergen, former federal chairman of the FDP and now coauthor at “Tichys Einblick”
Dear Mr. Jenner,
It is difficult to comment on an article like this, because it consists of a rapid sequence of passages that I can alternately (completely) agree with and (completely) disagree with.
Therefore, just briefly…
/You write/
“…that a united Europe of half a billion people is a much stronger power than any of its individual member states.”
If the two of us step on the scales together, they will show more weight. However, if we disagree on the crucial issues, our political weight does not add up, but is subtracted when we have opposing opinions.
EU-Europe has no weight. This is missing from your text – or the thesis of how this can be changed….
Sincerely, Fritz Goergen
Dear Mr. Goergen,
Thank you for your wise comment. Basically, you agree with me – though you don’t know it yet.
We both agree that any single state like for instance California or Texas has less global political power than the 50 states of the US combined, and that if Canada becomes the 51 member that would significantly increase the global power of the United States. You do, of course, admit that the same power dynamics also apply to the transition from individual European states to a United Europe: “When we two get on the scales together, it shows more weight”.
But you are right, we should be in agreement to make unity efficient.
Now, the question immediately arises as to how we achieve such agreement. We all know that the US has grown together into its present unity through a slow process that at times was by no means democratic. The path towards unity happened amid constant dispute, which even led the US to slide into the worst of all wars, the civil war. The process would certainly have been much faster if the unification, and thus the avoidance of conflict, had been forcibly brought about by a dictator (as happened in the Soviet Union, continued under Putin and in today’s China).
You, dear Mr. Goergen, are a fighter for democracy, so a slow, democratic process, even if accompanied by constant dispute, must of course be much more to your liking than the dictatorial commands of a Stalin, Putin or Xi. And that is precisely why you will agree with me that the EU, in the few decades of its existence, did well to take the path of the United States – and not that of Russia or China.
It is true that the EU does not always act democratically – nor can this be said of the two-hundred-year history of the US. But if the Union sometimes uses some non-democratic shortcuts to mitigate the constant tugging and arguing that you so decisively criticize and which is the very essence of any functioning democracy, that should actually be in line with your thinking.
Sincerely, Gero Jenner