Opinions #46/24

Attention all users of the airwaves and the internet. I mean, all of us. We are entering the most acute phase of media turbulence. The ongoing wars are on the eve of a tipping point. And the trial balloons, the runs forward, the hoaxes that already (also) characterize these conflicts are destined to multiply. We are already seeing them right after the election of Donald Trump. The sensationally returned tycoon is credited with different yet contradictory intentions as to what he plans to do with Putin, Zelensky, and Netanyahu. Nothing is indisputable, nothing is confirmed, but the excitement of “knowledgeable sources,” interested commentators, and anonymous sources is running at full throttle. Information and fake news. The story of the X times would like to unfold at the dizzying pace of video games. It doesn’t happen that way, but many pretend not to know it. And among them are also those national or supranational rulers – such as the outgoing or incoming managers of European institutions, firmly in power or on the verge of retirement – who are doing their best to try to thicken the fog shrouding the emerging diplomacy. Commitment to keeping support for Ukraine unchanged, as if Joseph Robinette Biden will remain in the White House for years to come. Or as if the election was won by his vice Kamala Harris. Or there is the green light without ifs and buts to the “Destroy Gaza” logic that has taken over the Israeli government. Or, again, the intention to settle the score once and for all with the ayatollah regime in Tehran. Just hypotheses, no certainty. But enough to create the kind of climate that, as Connor Echols wrote this week in the Washington Post, would like to take America back to 2003. To the kind of “nation-building” that led to the American disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it has undermined the moral leadership of the United States, so it is now unpopular in a vast world that goes far beyond, for example, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and BRICS. Trump hasn’t spoken out yet, but it’s already being interpreted. Forgetting, or pretending to ignore, that this time the main battle will be against the deep state, the strong powers that surrounded him during his first term and hounded him with the Democrats’ return to the White House. Instead, the ambition of a businessman who had everything from life and politics could be to find his place in history by breaking away from his predecessors. A president who stops wars, not one who starts them. As he essentially did during his first experience as Commander-in-Chief. And as he promised to do when he asked Robert Kennedy Jr. to step out of the campaign as an independent candidate and endorse him. The first item on Kennedy’s program was an immediate end to the war in Ukraine (the one in Gaza hasn’t erupted yet), on the basis that the USA bears the greatest responsibility for that conflict, for pushing NATO too far. All the way to “barking at Russia’s borders”: copyright Pope Francis. Going by the officially expressed previews, expectations may be different – at any rate. From what upcoming vice president J.D. Vance said on Ukraine. Or Trump’s son Donald Jr. about Zelensky and the “pocket money” he will no longer receive from Washington. Or Elon Musk on the end of the warmongering era, right after Trump and Zelensky’s phone call. Not to mention the very disappointing predictions for Kiev coming from important representatives of the Republican Party. All positions that will have to face reality are probably destined to be corrected. But meanwhile, the voices of those who hope otherwise are finding much more space on the airwaves and online. And there are a lot of them. Especially in Europe. A paradox of history, given the damaging impact that the mismanagement of the Russia-Ukraine dispute by major European governments has had. They could have prevented the use of weapons by supporting the administrative decision to autonomize Donetsk and Luhansk. Then they could demand the application of the Minsk agreements, which first Poroshenko and then Zelensky refused to do in the face of a threatening reaction from Ukrainian ultranationalists, the hard core of their own electorate. Berlin, Paris, and London, to name the continental heavyweights, still had a chance to stop the war in the weeks after Russian troops entered Ukraine: that was the time of the Erdogan-led Istanbul talks, which were derailed by some chancelleries in Europe when they were one step away from ratification. As documented last spring in investigations by Foreign Affairs and the New York Times. Now Europe, which was not supposed to be a vassal (those are Macron’s words), has found itself in an auxiliary position to America. “Sovereign and mature” Europe, which will face great powers – China, Russia, and the USA – that realize their strength. And instead, thanks to a war that wasn’t scary enough as it approached, we’ll see various national governments arbitrarily trying to limit the damage by dealing with Trump individually. Like Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Kingdom. And how Trump managed to get back on the cutting edge of the world (at least the Euro-Atlantic world) is explained in Andrew Spannaus’s analysis. As Mario Giro, who like few others continues to witness first-hand the crises and escalating conflicts, offers us bitter reflections on the future of a blazing Middle East.