Unless you’ve been stuck in a cave for the past year, you’ve read the news of how #45, the current resident of the White House in Washington, has been spitting out insanity after insanity. And you don’t have to be a woke and bleeding liberal (like me) to shake your head at some of the manure coming out of the man’s mouth. He holds a grudge against Ukraine because it didn’t help him find dirt on Biden Jr. in his first failed term, and he loves Russia because he admires a strong man. It’s probably also why he loves the North Korean dictator Kim. Even though he usually doesn’t really listen to ”kids” (the term he refers to when he talks about his advisors, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, and Marco Rubio).
So why does he attack Venezuela to extract its dictator, Nicolas Maduro? I think the answer is simple: money and Epstein. We all know from politics that nothing detracts from a domestic crisis like a little foreign war to rally people around the flag. What Trump has done is create a crisis that also lines his pockets. He signed an executive order to stop the Venezuelan oil money from going to the American oil companies, which lost billions when Venezuela nationalized the industry at the onset of Hugo Chavez’s revolution in 1999. If he really cared, he’d at least make sure the money goes back to those who lost during the revolution. But I guess he’ll use the money to either add more gold to the White House, Mar-a-Lago, or hire more ICE agents to kill innocent moms in Minnesota. What do I know?
As a European and someone who’s lived and worked in the United States, this regime and the havoc it wreaks across the world is painful. I know a lot of Europeans, especially on the left, have always been sceptical of the Americans and their ignorance of worldly (here meant as non-US politics) matters, and their arrogance and supremacy. And America, the shining city on the hill, has never really been shiny. It’s never been the ”perfect union” they strive toward in their constitution. Panama was invaded in 1989 by Bush the elder. Not a shining moment, and while President Noriega was not exactly a nice guy, it’s just not the way you go about getting people in front of a judge. Serbia’s Milosevic is a better example of how to go about that.
Trump has been longing for Greenland since his first term. I have heard several explanations about why he wants it. Some say it was his idea, others claim advisors mentioned it because of the natural resources underneath the ice. It certainly isn’t national security, because the United States has signed treaties with Denmark that give them unprecedented access to the island to build bases and secure its borders. Except one, all bases have been abandoned. So that’s not it. I think, for Trump (and this is where my understanding of Trump might differ a bit from others), he’s become obsessed with his legacy. He wants to make sure he ends up in the history books as the greatest president ever (to beat, e.g., Obama, whom he has despised ever since a certain White House correspondent dinner where Obama mocked Trump, who was sitting in the audience). But Trump is a magalomaniac who wants more. He wants to be on Mount Rushmore, he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, and he wants to massively expand the territory of the United States (re Canada), which would forever earn him a place in the annals of US history. He doesn’t care about the people of Greenland (I wouldn’t even be surprised if he deported them to Denmark or Canada after a takeover). He doesn’t like brown people, so the indigenous people of Greenland don’t fit his white supremacist mold. White Canadians, on the other hand, would. And he’s too ignorant to see just how diverse Canada actually is. Another story that.
The problem with all of the above is that even if you understand how he ticks, it doesn’t help you manage him or develop a strategy to restrain him. As long as he doesn’t face resistance internally (Congress, anyone? SCOTUS?), we can’t expect anything to change. Denmark can’t militarily threaten the US, duh! Nor could the EU (no military), and NATO? Well, that organization is built around the military (particularly the nuclear) might of the US military.
I don’t know how best to Trump him, how to beat him at his own game. But as a friend of the US, the only viable way I see is for the people of the United States, and its elected officials on all levels, across both sides of the aisle, to rise and resist. I know it’s not easy with a president and regime that so openly flout the law and Congress. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get the answer from what is happening on the streets of Persian cities these days. It might be a hint of what is necessary in the United States, too. But war? I can’t fathom or even contemplate the idea of going to war against a country that has faithfully stood by democratic Europe since its inception 250 years ago. I refuse to give up hope that America will rise up to even this, maybe it’s its most existential crisis. But it’ll need men and women to realize that their individual power mustn’t be the end in itself, but a means to return the country to democracy.