‘Erratic’ is an accurate but wholly inadequate word
to describe the approach of the current US President to world affairs in
general and the war in Ukraine in particular. He’s technically correct to say
that Zelensky could easily end the war, although that does rather skip over the
fact that the way of doing so would amount to complete surrender. To the extent
that Trump has any sort of coherent view of the world, it is that ‘might is
right’; the most powerful countries have the absolute right to dominate the
rest. It was well put in an article
in the Guardian this week about the EU by Rafael Behr, when he said: “It is
as obvious to Trump that Moscow has a seigneurial right over Ukraine as it is
that he should be allowed to decide who governs Venezuela and who sells its oil”.
And while Trump’s ideology beyond that might be non-existent, revolving as it
seems to around the goal of self-enrichment, the same doesn’t necessarily follow
about some of those around him. As this
report suggested, Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was this week
extolling the virtues of ‘Western civilisation’ and effectively arguing that we should
rediscover the values of exploration and conquest, and that the powerful have
the right to exploit resources and conquer others.
Underpinning the alleged ‘special relationship’, and
indeed the whole idea of a US-led alliance of ‘the West’ is the claim that we
have a set of ‘shared values’, although it isn’t always clear to me whether the
‘values’ driving UK governments are those precious shared values or some other
set of unique and special British values. Or what the difference is. Part of
the reason for confusion is that whichever it is, those values are rarely
spelled out in words, probably because if they were set out in black-and-white
on a page, it would rapidly become obvious that they were not actually the
driving force behind anything. A rhetorical appeal to a vague set of shared
values turns out to be a great deal easier than defining what those values are.
Who’d have thought it?
The bigger question is whether, and to what extent, continuing
to pretend that the rest of the western world at some level shares the same
values as Trump is helping or hindering world peace. Those who maintain the
pretence – assuming that they’re intelligent enough to admit to themselves that
it is a pretence – would probably argue that they need to do so in order to try
and retain some degree of influence. They assume – or merely hope – that it
will all be over in another 2 years or so, and we have to ride the storm in the
meantime. Such motives would be honourable, even if misplaced. At what point,
though, do we simply admit that the US has gone rogue, and that it is likely to
continue to be rogue under Vance, Rubio or another Trump? And having admitted
that it has gone rogue, what do we do about it? I don’t have answers to any of
that, but I don’t see answers coming from anywhere else either. Worst of all, I
don’t see any serious debate about how to develop a response, in the absence of
which we are doomed to live in a world where might rules.
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