Thank You, Señor Trump!

A president of the United States who speaks clearly is welcome. The content of his speech is yet another matter, but no one can doubt Donald Trump’s sincerity. He said he would bet on virtual money, and within two days he had created a currency with his name, with profits approaching $40 billion. Impressive!

In 24 hours he signed 79 decrees, canceling the decisions of Joe Biden; Cuba was reinstated in the list of countries that promote terrorism. Likewise, he pardoned those convicted for the assault on the Capitol, withdrew from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, and renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

It goes on and on. None of the measures he promoted during the campaign is a long shot: from the persecution of undocumented immigrants to the declaration of an emergency zone on the border with Mexico, the colonization of Greenland and the acquisition of the Panama Canal.

It’s best to take him seriously; the way to face his mandates is not by laughing at his excesses or by expressing surprise or disbelief. The scandalized world cannot seem to come up with a response. His decision to raise tariffs, to send planes with deportees to Colombia, and indications that he doesn’t give a damn about Mexico’s sovereignty — these are not minor problems.

Trump warns and then moves forward. I don’t remember John F. Kennedy giving press conferences announcing the Bay of Pigs invasion. Nor Lyndon B. Johnson giving the day and time of the Marines’ landing in the Dominican Republic. In October 1983, Ronald Reagan invaded the island of Grenada without publicizing it in the press. And George H.W. Bush — covertly and secretly — gave the green light to Operation Just Cause to invade Panama in 1989. His Marines entered Panamanian territory, causing the death of thousands of civilians.

Instead, Trump has decided that he and his advisers will turn their visibility into a plus. Live threats to obtain unconditional surrender and for demands to be met: He doesn’t care. He feels powerful.

The United Nations means nothing to him, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is his plaything and the rest of the institutions are relegated to roles as sidekicks. The European Union does not get it; in Davos, the executive chair of Banco Santander, Ana Botín, opined that the EU is on its way to becoming a museum of antiquities.

His proposal to turn Canada into a U.S. state should suffice as a warning of the danger. His plans for Latin America may seem crazy, lacking all logic, but he will not relent in his efforts to carry them out. He is taking a strong stance toward Mexico, deploying his armed forces to fight illegal immigration on the border near Tijuana. He supports Argentina’s Javier Milei, as well as El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele; he invited former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to his inauguration. In Trump’s mind, he is returning to the politics of the carrot and the stick. This is not bluster; these are political decisions. Marco Rubio, who is responsible for foreign policy, is not Henry Kissinger, a classy criminal and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Never before has U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America been marked by so much contempt.

The ball is in our court. To focus on the risks of a world conflagration is to ignore the map of regional conflict fomented by the United States and its European partners. The time for peace is mere rhetoric. Trump’s political intervention is palpable in his financing and support of the planetary extreme right: support for Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and for the oil autocracies of sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The idea of expelling Palestinians from Gaza, allowing more Zionist settlements in the occupied territories, represents the deepening of a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Let us not lose our way. Democracy is not part of the current world order. Instead, we have a trompe l’oeil, an individualism rooted in a market society that was established in the late 1970s. Conservatives, social democrats, Euro-communists, the new left, Christian democrats and liberals were the fathers of neoliberalism; if they first promoted John Maynard Keynes, they wound up with Friedrich Hayek. Deregulate, privatize, making it more flexible and decentralizing was their mantra.

Promotors of his theory were Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Felipe González, Giulio Andreotti, Silvio Berlusconi, Salinas de Gortari, Vicente Fox, Ricardo Lagos, Michelle Bachelet, José María Aznar, Helmut Kohl, Jacques Chirac, François Mitterrand, Carlos Menem, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Carlos Andrés Pérez, Alan García, César Gaviria and Álvaro Uribe. Unfortunately, Trump is their prodigal son.

With few exceptions, current leaders will bow to his wishes out of fear, cowardice or political affinity. Not a month has passed with him in the White House and already, at least in Latin America, there are signs of a front in formation that is based on the best traditions of the anti-imperialist struggle. The examples of José Martí, Lázaro Cárdenas, Jacobo Árbenz, Fidel Castro, João Goulart, Juan Bosch and Salvador Allende, among others, speak to the defense of sovereignty and the struggle for the dignity of our America. This is no time for cowards.