I don’t usually do politics with a capital ‘P’ here, although it wouldn’t take much reading to guess how I think about that world. Below are three quotes from the Economist’s editorial published today. In order, they are the first paragraph, a sentence mid way through, and the final paragraph.
How Europe must respond as Trump and Putin smash the post-war order
The past week has been the bleakest in Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Ukraine is being sold out, Russia is being rehabilitated and, under Donald Trump, America can no longer be counted on to come to Europe’s aid in wartime. The implications for Europe’s security are grave, but they have yet to sink in to the continent’s leaders and people. The old world needs a crash course on how to wield hard power in a lawless era, or it will fall victim to the new world disorder.
It is trapped in an obsolete worldview of multilateral treaties and shared values.
All this sounds outlandish. NATO has been the world’s most successful alliance: its disappearance is hard to imagine. But the old things have passed away; all things have become new. Europe needs to face up to that before it is too late.
I don’t know what are the true historical comparisons, but the repeated appeasement by the UK against Hitler, pre 1938, and the carving up of Europe in 1945 at Yalta (effectively by the USA and Russia) come to mind. The optimism of 1989 and the Wall seems distant.