Interesting & well written by Andrew Sullivan and worth a read: "Requiem For The West Trump and Vance have put a stake in the heart of the free world." "It’s not just the end of NATO, but a new

doctrine of US power. That doctrine now reflects Trump’s deepest conviction: that might is right, that weak countries should surrender to strong ones, and that this is in America’s interests, because

we are the strongest. Trump’s aggression toward Canada, Panama, Gaza, and Denmark is not just trolling the libs. It’s of a piece with his view that the strong should always control and bully and plunder the weak.”

What do you think?

Very interesting take by Sullivan: ‘More TDS from yours truly? But what other conclusion can one draw when the president cuts the Ukrainians and their European allies out of the dealmaking, has already conceded Ukraine’s conquered territory before any talks, insists that Ukraine started the war, that Zelensky, and not Putin, is the dictator, and is demanding reparations in advance ... from Ukraine, not Russia! The reparations amount to a US claim on 50 percent of Ukraine's mineral deposits forever. It’s the equivalent of “We’re gonna take Iraq’s oil.” It’s a form of imperial pillage. But it’s vintage Trump.’

And notice that this isn’t part of full negotiations with Russia. Trump wanted Zelensky to sign away half his country’s mineral rights to the US in perpetuity before he had asked anything of Putin. And he gave Zelensky three hours to read and sign it. Trump, of course, was incensed when Zelensky refused. This is how a Trump official described the mood: “We created a monster with Zelensky. And these Trump-deranged Europeans who won’t send troops are giving him terrible advice.”

Zelensky is a monster but Putin is our friend. As for concessions from Russia for its unprovoked violation of an internationally recognized border? None that I can see, apart from stopping the war. (If you want to read Vance’s underwhelming defense of what’s going on, check out his reply to Niall here.) Then the Russians get American sanctions lifted, re-entry to the G-7, vast new oil revenues, and a chance to take all of Ukraine next time.’

After what the president and vice president have said this week, it’s fair to say, I think, that NATO is effectively over. No one can even faintly believe that the US under Trump would abide by Article 5 to defend another member state. Trump has just told the Baltic states: you’re on your own now. If you resist Russian control, you’ll deserve what you get.’

‘“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest … The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny,” - Ronald Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, France on June 6, 1984.

It is a fascinating moment, isn’t it, when Reagan’s vision of the West is finally swept into the dustbin of history by a Republican president.

And that is the only solid conclusion one can make after this week of astonishing incompetence and madness. We only saw Donald Trump’s foreign policy darkly in his first term — constrained, as he was, by a handful of white-knuckled Republicans in the executive branch. Now we see it face to face. It’s a vision where international law disappears, great powers divide up the planet into spheres of influence, and the strong always control the weak. It’s Trump’s vision of domestic politics as well. And of life.

Control, plunder, gloat. This is the Trump way.

And to give the madman his due, something had to happen. Neoconservatism is long since dead — by suicide, of course, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the global position of the US after 1945, and then after 1989, is over and never coming back. There is simply no threat in the world that is equivalent to the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. Islamism was never going to replace them.

And so a retrenchment of the US position was inevitable at some point: a more judicious approach to interventionism, a greater balance with the allies, a pivot toward Asia and away from Europe and the Middle East: responsible, realist re-positioning. In fact, failure to do so when our debt payments now exceed our military budget would be asking for trouble.

Obama tried: deleveraging us from the Middle East, avoiding traps like Syria, focusing more on China. His position on Ukraine was instructive in this realist recalibration: “[T]his is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.” What we are witnessing now — as Washington’s support for Ukraine crumbles — is what happens when US promises run way ahead of its core interests and US public opinion, and we get caught funding an unending, unwinnable, unspeakably bloody war.

On this much, Trump is right. The Ukraine conflict is at a stalemate; the human toll is vast, unimaginable, and mounting every day; there’s no chance of repelling Russia from its current occupation — but there is some chance of driving a hard bargain to ensure a stable, new border and an independent rump Ukraine, with security guarantees against any future invasions from Russia.

And so I’ve always been in support of a tough peace negotiation that would have to reflect the facts on the ground. I was prepared for concessions from the West in the end, alongside some guarantees against future aggression. Even if it was realistic to understand that victory was impossible, we could still find a way to protect Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and remaining territory, keep the democracies aligned against Putin, and maintain the broad structure of the post-war settlement, alongside international law.

But that is not, it now seems obvious, the Trump position at all. What he is doing is not about making a tough peace deal with Russia, recalibrating NATO, or protecting Ukraine’s democracy. He is merely setting the terms of a new alliance and relationship with the criminal Russian dictatorship — directed against the European democracies.

More TDS from yours truly? But what other conclusion can one draw when the president cuts the Ukrainians and their European allies out of the dealmaking, has already conceded Ukraine’s conquered territory before any talks, insists that Ukraine started the war, that Zelensky, and not Putin, is the dictator, and is demanding reparations in advance ... from Ukraine, not Russia! The reparations amount to a US claim on 50 percent of Ukraine's mineral deposits forever. It’s the equivalent of “We’re gonna take Iraq’s oil.” It’s a form of imperial pillage. But it’s vintage Trump.

And notice that this isn’t part of full negotiations with Russia. Trump wanted Zelensky to sign away half his country’s mineral rights to the US in perpetuity before he had asked anything of Putin. And he gave Zelensky three hours to read and sign it. Trump, of course, was incensed when Zelensky refused. This is how a Trump official described the mood: “We created a monster with Zelensky. And these Trump-deranged Europeans who won’t send troops are giving him terrible advice.”

Zelensky is a monster but Putin is our friend. As for concessions from Russia for its unprovoked violation of an internationally recognized border? None that I can see, apart from stopping the war. (If you want to read Vance’s underwhelming defense of what’s going on, check out his reply to Niall here.) Then the Russians get American sanctions lifted, re-entry to the G-7, vast new oil revenues, and a chance to take all of Ukraine next time.

At the same time, the vice president went to Europe to tell the democracies that they were suppressing free speech and needed to stop if they wanted to continue to be friends with Washington. Vance is right about Europe’s free-speech problem. But let’s just note this is not a condition Trump has ever placed on Putin in order to be friends.

In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites. The goal now is to replace those elites with Moscow-friendly governments, bent on repatriation of illegal migrants. Hence the stunning endorsement of the AfD by Elon Musk — the second most powerful man in the Trump administration.

After what the president and vice president have said this week, it’s fair to say, I think, that NATO is effectively over. No one can even faintly believe that the US under Trump would abide by Article 5 to defend another member state. Trump has just told the Baltic states: you’re on your own now. If you resist Russian control, you’ll deserve what you get.

It’s not just the end of NATO, but a new doctrine of US power. That doctrine now reflects Trump’s deepest conviction: that might is right, that weak countries should surrender to strong ones, and that this is in America’s interests, because we are the strongest. Trump’s aggression toward Canada, Panama, Gaza, and Denmark is not just trolling the libs. It’s of a piece with his view that the strong should always control and bully and plunder the weak. This is Ukraine’s real crime to Trump. They dared resist absorption by a bigger, stronger neighbor. That’s why Trump had contempt for the protestors at Tiananmen Square:

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.

Or, as he said on another occasion: “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.”

The logic of this might-makes-right worldview is why Trump believes that the US should now own Gaza. By which authority? he was asked. “By US authority,” he answered — meaning, of course, not US authority (we have none in Israel) but US power. Trump is clinically incapable of understanding any system of mutuality, because he cannot tolerate being anyone’s equal.

The replacement of international law with spheres of influence based on power alone means, in turn, that the US will have no case against China’s future absorption of Taiwan, Russia’s re-occupation of all of Ukraine and the Baltic states, or Israel’s looming ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank. My own view is not that the US could have continued its current course indefinitely; but that any retrenchment should have kept the architecture of international law and support for liberal democracies, as much as we could. Trump has effectively thrown in the towel; and handed large swathes of the world to Putin, Xi, and, to a lesser extent, Netanyahu — the only world leaders he respects and understands.

This means, it seems to me, that the idea of the West is now over. By the West, I mean the idea that the democracies that beat the Nazis and outlasted the Soviets were and are instinctively America’s friends — “We were with you then; We are with you now,” in Reagan’s words — that the world is divided between autocracy and democracy, and that although we need to deal with tyrants realistically, and accept limits on our power in this new multipolar world, we are still emphatically the leader of “the free world.”

Those three words — “the free world” — mean nothing to Trump and never have. And he has now fatefully told the entire world, including our former allies, that this is America’s position now as well. He has updated Reagan with these words: “We were with you then. We see no reason to be with you now. In fact, we’re siding with a dictator who threatens you.”

This is a Rubicon, I’m afraid, that cannot be fully uncrossed. But I have a feeling that the American people, including many who voted for Trump, will see this new alliance with Putin against a beleaguered, little democracy with the same disgust and nausea that I do.

This is who Trump is. But it isn’t who Americans really are. I have faith that the West, now mortally wounded, can yet survive Trump and Putin, and re-emerge at some point. But it may be a dark, dark few years before the dawn’s early light breaks out again.’

___

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