Donald Trump in the White House Doesn’t Mean It’s the End of the World
Published in Welt
(Germany) on 20 March 2024
by Jacques Schuster (link to original)
(Germany) on 20 March 2024
by Jacques Schuster (link to original)
Translated from
by Peter Carioca.
Edited by Michelle Bisson.
Even if Donald Trump is behaving wildly in his election campaign he will not serve up Ukraine to Vladimir Putin on a silver platter. Otherwise, Europe would be permanently lost to the U.S., and they would lose the trust of their Asian allies. Even Trump has geopolitical shackles.
Europeans tend to see Trump as a comical Caesar, who is more feared than ridiculed for his vulgarity and ruthlessness. Whether the Republican presidential candidate wins the election, or whether he will change the U.S. to such an extent that democracy will be damaged, who can say? The Germans certainly cannot.
They thought his 2016 campaign victory was out of the question. Just as they were unerringly wrong about that, now they firmly believe that Trump will return to the White House. However, you must be self-critical: even if almost everyone thinks that they know the country between the Pacific and Atlantic after watching dozens of U.S. Netflix shows, America remains an enigma, as Churchill would have it, surrounded by a mystery within a riddle.
And Trump? We will see. In the case of Trump and other future U.S. presidents, one thing should now be taken into account: there are geostrategic and foreign policy interests that tie up the men and women in the White House, like the ropes with which the Lilliputians tied up Gulliver in “Gulliver's Travels.”
Will Trump serve up Ukraine on a silver platter to Russian President Vladimir Putin? It's hard to imagine the biggest narcissist in Washington since the beginning of the 20th century actually wanting to go down in the history books as the president who permanently lost Europe's trust in America.
Concern for Asian Allies
Additionally, even for an isolationist like Trump, it will dawn on him at some point that if the U.S. drops Ukraine and Europe, all of their Asian allies will turn away from them if they believe they will be left in the lurch. Should this occur, then it will be all over for the U.S. superpower.
Trump has now qualified his statement about dropping NATO allies if they do not contribute enough money for their defense. It's his negotiating tactic to use a sledgehammer method to get everyone to agree on a 2% target for NATO.
Whether he is actually responsible for this, or the war in Ukraine, is anyone's guess. In any case, Trump in the White House doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the world. Regardless of this, when will Europeans finally realize how humiliating it is to panic every four years about who is going to be in the White House?
Europeans tend to see Trump as a comical Caesar, who is more feared than ridiculed for his vulgarity and ruthlessness. Whether the Republican presidential candidate wins the election, or whether he will change the U.S. to such an extent that democracy will be damaged, who can say? The Germans certainly cannot.
They thought his 2016 campaign victory was out of the question. Just as they were unerringly wrong about that, now they firmly believe that Trump will return to the White House. However, you must be self-critical: even if almost everyone thinks that they know the country between the Pacific and Atlantic after watching dozens of U.S. Netflix shows, America remains an enigma, as Churchill would have it, surrounded by a mystery within a riddle.
And Trump? We will see. In the case of Trump and other future U.S. presidents, one thing should now be taken into account: there are geostrategic and foreign policy interests that tie up the men and women in the White House, like the ropes with which the Lilliputians tied up Gulliver in “Gulliver's Travels.”
Will Trump serve up Ukraine on a silver platter to Russian President Vladimir Putin? It's hard to imagine the biggest narcissist in Washington since the beginning of the 20th century actually wanting to go down in the history books as the president who permanently lost Europe's trust in America.
Concern for Asian Allies
Additionally, even for an isolationist like Trump, it will dawn on him at some point that if the U.S. drops Ukraine and Europe, all of their Asian allies will turn away from them if they believe they will be left in the lurch. Should this occur, then it will be all over for the U.S. superpower.
Trump has now qualified his statement about dropping NATO allies if they do not contribute enough money for their defense. It's his negotiating tactic to use a sledgehammer method to get everyone to agree on a 2% target for NATO.
Whether he is actually responsible for this, or the war in Ukraine, is anyone's guess. In any case, Trump in the White House doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the world. Regardless of this, when will Europeans finally realize how humiliating it is to panic every four years about who is going to be in the White House?
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