Donald Trump at his press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, January 7, 2024 (Evan Vucci/AP)
EA on International Media: From the Capitol Attack to Trump 2.0
Ukraine War, Day 1,050: Trump Backs Kremlin Over Kyiv and NATO
I joined Ireland’s RTE Radio 1 on Tuesday to analyze the rambling, incoherent, and often bizarre press conference of Donald Trump.
Listen to Discussion
Trump stole headlines by threatening military action to seize the Panama Canal and annex Greenland from Denmark, and economic pressure to make Canada the 51st US state. He said “all hell will break loose” in Gaza if Hamas does not release around 100 hostages before he returns to the White House on January 20.
Trump also said the “Gulf of Mexico” must be renamed the “Gulf of America” and uttered a lot of nonsense about the economy, migration, and the environment.
So is Donald just playing the bully? Is he trolling? Is he trying to divert the news cycle, given his sentence on 34 felony counts will be announced on Friday?
Or is he just unhinged?
I’m trying to avoid saying the word unhinged, but he is working with hinges which are not those that you and I work with.
What it means is that there’s going to be no coherent approach to the major issues that are facing America and the world.
Why the EU fell into line with Washington on China is something I don’t understand. The two may share grievances towards China over trade policy and intellectual property. But China is no military threat to the EU.
I don’t think these are Trump’s own ideas. It seems the US is trying to compensate for its relative and absolute decline by sacrificing its allies (vassals). A strategic defeat in Ukraine and economic turmoil in Europe could result in the implosion of NATO and the EU. Maybe the US trying to grab what it can. There is a lot of nervous talk in the US about great power rivalry in the Arctic, rare earth minerals, and the need for accelerated industrial capacity to maintain competitiveness and global dominance. Canada and Greenland factor into this. China is interested in Arctic trade routes, and Russia has more ice breakers than the US. China’s increased trade activity and foreign direct investments in Latin America are making Washington nervous, which may explain Trump’s plans for the Panama Canal. So, I think great power rivalry and US decline are at the center of this.
The thing that baffles me is the lack of strategic thinking in Brussels and EU capitals. The EU does not feel threatened by China. And what will the EU do when the US wells run dry and Washington procures more of its pricey LNG for itself? President Biden has already signed into law restrictions on drilling which some experts say will be difficult for Trump to reverse.
“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” — Henry Kissinger
A ton of very relevant content can be found at https://www.oneearthonechance.com.
I believe you have the word worldview misspelled as WorldView. That is not correct.