The Gaza and Gaza crises clarify the meaning of Trump’s global policy. More than sovereignty over the Arctic island or a geopolitical solution in the Holy Land, the man in the White House aims to break the institutions on which the international order built in the post-war period is supported. Their actions lead the world to the Hobbesian state of “war of all against all”.
Macron expressed his perplexity at Trump’s insistence on obtaining “possession” of Greenland. One stated, in line with conventional analyses, that such an obsession “defies reason” (). However, it is necessary not to confuse rational reason with ideological reason. The first explains that the US does not need sovereignty over the Arctic island to achieve geopolitical security objectives or mineral business. The second illuminates the White House’s underlying motivation.
Trump engages in the implosion of the Atlantic Alliance that welded the US to . The superpower’s new National Security Strategy points to a “civilizational decline” in Europe and states that the regeneration of European nations depends on the rise to power of radical right parties. The American president sees the European Union as an adversary of the USA. From their point of view, it is a useless burden that drains American resources and limits US strategic options.
The tactical retreat in the case of Greenland, imposed by a Europe that understood the ineffectiveness of flattery, does not change the general direction of things. In the shadow of military threats pronounced by the White House, NATO’s mutual defense commitment becomes an empty shell. Thanks to Trump, the Russian invasion of Russia is achieving a triumph that the Kremlin did not dare to dream of: the destruction of the Atlantic Alliance is a much more valuable prize than the Donbass.
The truce in Gaza, a real Trump achievement, coalesced into a zombie ceasefire. The US does not appear willing to impose the progress towards the two-state peace promised by the original plan. But the American president uses the impasse as a springboard for the creation of his Peace Council, a private club of global leaders that, in his words, could take the place of the . With an eye on Ukraine, Putin joined the organization. Concerned about US neo-imperialism in the “American Hemisphere”, he resists the invitation.
In Maga circles, Trump’s movement, contempt for NATO is as intense as aversion to the UN. The Atlantic Alliance is based on security cooperation between democratic and sovereign nations. The UN Charter expresses the project of an international order based on the principles of self-determination of peoples and the inviolability of borders. The Peace Council, in contrast, dispenses with any support of values or rules: its only implicit norm is subordination to the figure of its founder and perpetual president.
NATO curbed the USSR’s expansionism in Europe — and, after 1991, formed the framework for the integration of former Soviet satellites into the European Union. The UN has never prevented wars of aggression, but it has prevented imperial conquest of sovereign nations. The new order imagined by Trump is a concert of great powers engaged in delimiting spheres of influence. “Peace” is the name with which the right of force is baptized.
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