Special Relationship?

-

 


It seems like the transatlantic geopolitical zeitgeist at the moment centres on the metaphorical toss of an electoral coin, so close is the race for the next President of The United States. A round-robin email from my old mate Jeff this morning linked us out to a Guardian piece on Trump's Madison Square rally yesterday, which by all accounts, in any sane country, should have seen him arrested and banged up for incitement and race-hatred. But oh, no, not in the USA, where freedom of speech is paramount, so long as you're white and wealthy. The implications of this freedom to publicly abuse large swathes of the American population, his political opponents and just about anyone else who springs to his ever-diminishing mind, are legion and serious.

This madman's psychotic ramblings should not merely be dismissed as such, though: pretty much half the US electorate takes this guy seriously, despite his track record of grift and sleaze, his incoherence and childish tantrum-throwing. And the prospect of this dangerous individual yet again becoming the most powerful person in the world is frankly terrifying, with implications that fan out across the globe, including for us here in [almost in the UK, anyway] Europe. Trump is inherently isolationist and anti-NATO. He admires 'strong man' politics and supports Vladimir Putin: he is even alleged to have passed favourable comment about Adolf Hitler in the past. In short, he sees no 'special relationship' with Britain, let alone Europe in general, and seeks none.

Without the US, NATO will be moribund: a worthless, toothless talking shop of unenforcible ideals, leaving Britain and the wider continent of Europe under the shadow of Russia's ambition. In the FT Weekend magazine this week, Simon Kuper writes [if Trump is elected] 'The 80-year-old Pax Americana in Europe might expire next month [leaving] a 25 per cent chance of Europe facing its worst military threat since 1945.' Alarmist? Maybe, maybe not; but we're certainly revisiting stony historical ground here. Reading the two articles, I was minded to check back on a book I got in 1988: "Europe Without America?" by the then European Editor of The Guardian, John Palmer:

Talking about the Soviet Union, just post Second World War in chapter five, "Dawn in the East", Palmer posits that Stalin's realpolitik had moved the USSR from a Leninist, internationalist, revolutionary socialist base to '...a new doctrine of 'Socialism in one country'...'. Continuing with '...they were content to leave whole sectors of the economy in private hands.They actually preferred [other satellite] governments of pliant non-Communist Social Democrats, peasants, and even far-right parties to governments based on the popular anti-Fascist resistance forces.' This all has strong and disturbing echoes right now in 2024. According to Kuper's piece , 'Poland is building an army bigger than Britain's or France's to protect itself...' in advance of this looming continental instability and the threat of an effectively Trump-enabled Russia's ambitions. 'Worrying' doesn't even come close...


Comments

  1. Anonymous29 October 2024 at 07:03

    Despit the LOON Trump we still have NATO. The power in the US is in manufacturing and NATO is a superb sales platform; look at the long awaited F35 its construction is multi-national thus its adoption and after sales are locked in!
    You also (or is it John Palmer) underestimate the City and our "aristocrats" blood links to the septics. After the culling of our young "officer class" in WW1 it was a cattle sale of nubiles into the "gentry" plus VV wealthy septics married off a daughter with LOTS of loot to prop-up the "gentry's" crumbling estates who's skivvies had learned NOT to be indentured.
    Just like the attitude of EVERY ambitious Brit the fawning to the Establishment is ingraned with their mother's milk; they ALL want to be lord fauntleroy.
    Worry not because we ARE the permanent launch pad, I include "our" submarine nukes cos the targetting HAS to be agreed withthe USA, for the atomic weapons that HAVE ensured peace in most of Europe since WWII! You've only got to look at Ukraine to see what another petty little man (with a practiced killer walk Ha-Ha-Ha) will do IF we let him. Oh we DID let him murder at will in London and Winchester and play games with our "systems"! Where are the "grown-ups" when we need them???
    ATB
    Joe

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more