What Else Can Go Wrong?

The international outlook, with a particular focus on Donald Trump, is troubling

Well, this year is off to a good start. This doesn’t even refer so much to the collapse of the Austrian coalition negotiations, but rather the international situation. The year so far is characterized by the insanity in the West’s leading power, the United States, weakness in the EU’s leading countries, and sinister developments in Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war.

The only relative ray of light is that Israel seems to have succeeded in breaking down the “ring of radicals” surrounding the country. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are badly beaten; in Syria, the Bashar Assad regime was toppled as an indirect consequence; Iran has lost influence massively and proven itself practically helpless against Israeli military intervention. Only the distant Houthis in Yemen remain. However, the price for all of this was Israel’s merciless war in Gaza. Not a “genocide” as sometimes claimed, but a deliberate, accepted hell for the civilian population.

Incompetent Fanatics

But the bigger picture is depressing. Even before he takes office, the president-elect of the United States superpower has been rampaging through the country in such a way that underestimates all the fears people have had. Trump’s nominated Cabinet consists of a bunch of crazy, incompetent fanatics. The man nominated to be secretary of health and human services who, by his own admission, has had a part of his brain eaten away by a worm, is opposed to vaccines and was responsible for a measles epidemic in Samoa. His staff is already talking about eliminating polio vaccinations. The designated director of the Secret Service is a completely incompetent conspiracy theorist who parrots Putin’s propaganda. The new “first buddy” Elon Musk, who has been designated the “efficiency” czar, and is practically camping on Trump’s doorstep, wants to cut a third of the U.S. budget and, in an insult to the German chancellor and president, supports the radical right-wing parties in Great Britain and Germany. Trump himself has already made territorial claims on the Panama Canal, Greenland and, covertly, Canada. Recently, he demanded that the British take down the wind turbines in the North Sea so that American corporations can more easily get to the oil and gas there again.

Putin thinks that’s wonderful: an American president who goes after his own allies! In Ukraine, Russian troops are advancing only slowly under horrendous losses, but that doesn’t matter because Ukraine has the shorter end of the stick in a war of attrition — unless something happens in Russia, which is always to be expected, especially there, the sudden, unexpected event, the “black swan” so to speak.

Trump and the Tech Oligarchs

Putin has his own oligarchs under control, but Trump clearly does not have control over his, including — Musk, Peter Thiel (whom Sebastian Kurz apparently no longer works for), and David Sacks. American historian Timothy Snyder has already predicted that Trump will be sidelined by the tech oligarchs and/or replaced in a few years by his even more radical vice president, JD Vance (whom the tech billionaires propped up).

Is this all that can go wrong in 2025? No, not by a long shot, but for the time being, we must leave it at this depressing, crude picture.