Europe Rises, America Falls

Having not experienced an age of antiquity, a medieval period, or a Renaissance, and having broken all ties with our mother country, which has experienced all that, the United States has long lacked the maturity or the wisdom to be a world leader.  This was evident as soon as the U.S. replaced Great Britain and France as the leading power of the West in the late 1940s, when the Chinese Communists drove Chiang Kai-shek from the mainland to Taiwan and the leading paranoiacs in Washington rhetorically asked, "Who lost China?", as if a country so old even its laundry secrets date back to antiquity was ever ours to lose.  The one thing that gave us legitimacy as a world leader was our values system - our commitment to the rule of law, our generosity to other countries in the form of the Peace Corps and the United States Agency for International Development, and our support for international health and education standards - but most of all our commitment to other countries fighting for their freedom and for their sovereignty.  Yes, we made some blunders - overthrowing democratically elected socialist governments in Latin America, invading Iraq - but overall our commitment to freedom remained strong.

Not . . . any . . . more.

This past week, American leaders, from the Orange Man in the White House to his vice presidential lackey to the drunk running the Pentagon (replacing a brilliant black man like Lloyd Austin with Pete Hegseth to lead Defense is like a '60s oldies radio station playing Sam Cooke records switching to a '90s oldies format that plays Michael Bolton covers of Sam Cooke songs), have made it clear that they will no longer back Ukraine in its fight against Russia.  Not because we can't afford it, or because we care about the carnage in the war, but because . . . we just don't want to.  Our so-called leaders have decided that a commitment to a free and democratic Ukraine and a fair and just peace for Ukraine and for all of Europe is no business of ours.  This is the same country that never recognized the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was one of the original republics (though not by choice).  This is the same country that, until President Biden was gone, continued to commit to helping Ukraine in its fight against Vladmir Putin.  Trump, rather than redouble American efforts to aid the Ukrainians, chose instead to have a summit with Putin for which neither Ukraine nor the European Union were to be consulted, to discuss a peace deal that neither Ukraine nor the European Union support - one that would support Russian claims to Ukrainian territory.  

Oh yeah, and Americans would get the rights to half of Ukraine's mineral resources.  Trump tried to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a document to that effect, but Zelensky refused.  Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth reaffirmed Russian claims to Ukrainian territory and its own regional interests by saying it was inconceivable that Ukraine regain its land from before the invasion of Crimea in 2014 and should not allowed to join the European Union or NATO.  (So, even while Trump and Putin were acting like Ribbentrop and Molotov in pilfering Eastern Europe, Hegseth was appeasing the Russians for peace in our time while in . . . Munich.)

Now the Europeans, with encouragement from President Zelensky and leadership from President Emanuel Macron of France, are planning to combine their military forces to come to Ukraine's aid.  Great Britain - no longer an EU member but still having an interest in Continental affairs - has committed more aid to Ukraine.  The nations of Europe are banding together to help Ukraine because they no longer trust us anymore.  Why should they?  A plurality of us just put Trump back into the White House and he's still getting broad support in the polls.  Not only is America withdrawing from its international commitments, American voters seem to be just fine - happy, even - with that.  The Europeans knew that Trump's return was inevitable, largely, because they've long known what I said at the beginning of this post - Americans are not mature enough and wise enough to lead the world, and the large support Trump enjoys among voters signified to them that we were no longer committed to a value system - the one thing that legitimized as as a superpower in the first place.  

When Joe Biden assumed the Presidency in 2021, he famously said, "America is back!"  To which world leaders replied, "But for how long?"  The answer - four years.  And even if "America is back"  in 2029 should a Democrat be elected President, the rest of the world won't want us back.  We're too unlearned and too foolish, too mercurial and too unstable, The question is no longer whether the European Union should lead the free world . . . they must lead it!   Because not only will Trump not lead it . . . he's too busy working with Musk to make sure we're no longer part of it.