Suddenly a bit 1939. Good read.
The horizon may be closing fast, but thank you for opening ours, Patrice.
dah
On Mon, 29 Sep 2025, Patrice Riemens via nettime-l wrote:
Hola Aloha, always good to read somewhere something I had been thinking - and
saying in my circles - ever since the advent of Trump 2.0 ...
Cheers to all - but, no, it doesn't look good at all. The horizon is closing
fast.
p+7D!
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Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/28/trump-putin-europe-1939-us-russia-ukraine-liberal-democracy
Trump and Putin are carrying out a pincer movement on Europe’s democracies.
Suddenly, it all feels a bit 1939
Forget the US president’s seeming volte-face on Ukraine this week: he and Putin
fundamentally agree that European liberal democracy is the problem
By Simon Tisdall
Sun 28 Sep 2025
For many people in eastern Europe, August 1939 may not feel that long ago. That
was the moment Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union secretly agreed to
partition Poland and forcibly subsume the sovereign Baltic republics and
Finland into their totalitarian “spheres of influence”. The world knows what
came next.
Now the question arises: is it happening again? This time around, it’s Donald
Trump’s United States and Vladimir Putin’s Russia making the big geopolitical
power-play – and, once again, all of Europe is potential prey. Notwithstanding
last week’s sparring over Ukraine, the two leaders’ core aims appear closely
aligned.
Physical subjugation of the European continent is not a Trump objective
(unlike, perhaps, in Venezuela, Canada or Greenland). But US efforts to
dominate the continent through political interference, ideological subversion,
economic blackmail, unregulated big-tech predation and the projection of
conservative, Christian nationalist cultural beliefs amount to much the same
thing.
Putin’s methods are cruder, yet his agenda mirrors Trump’s. He will not let go
of Ukraine. He is intensifying, and leveraging, the Russian military threat,
from the Baltic states to the Black Sea, including in Moldova, Romania and
Georgia. Russian hybrid warfare – sabotage, cyber-attacks, online trolling and
disinformation – is now a fact of daily western European life.
Trump, failed coup leader, and Putin, indicted war criminal, are not in formal
alliance, yet. They have not agreed a 1939-style Molotov-Ribbentrop
non-aggression pact. But there is extensive common ground. Both despise
European liberal democracy, equal rights and multiculturalism. Both are
viscerally hostile to the EU. Both hanker for past imperial glories; both
reject UN “globalism” and international law. Their anti-democratic
ultranationalism nurtures foul ideas of ethnic and racial supremacy that most
Europeans had long consigned to history.
Trump makes no secret of his desire to normalise US relations with Russia.
This, he claims, would lead to vast, mutually beneficial money-making
opportunities. When he complained last week that Putin has “let me down”, he
was not so much talking about his embarrassing Alaska peace summit flop but
about the Russian president’s refusal to cut a deal and cash in.
Trump’s supposed pro-Kyiv shift typifies his pinball policymaking, which
ricochets randomly from one wacky idea to another. It will not endure. His
warning that Russia faces “big economic trouble” was his way of pushing Putin
into doing business while leaving Ukraine and European Nato members to manage
the long-term Russian threat alone.
The US president is urging others to cut off Russian oil, but the US itself
does nothing. Promised tougher sanctions are all talk. He refuses to resume
direct military aid to Kyiv, or punish Russian incursions into Nato territory.
In this context, his prediction that Ukraine will somehow regain all its lost
territory is cruel mockery.
Trump and Putin’s political pressure campaigns are mutually reinforcing. Both
support European hard-right, populist-nationalist parties and politicians. In
February, the US vice-president, JD Vance, directly intervened in Germany’s
election, siding with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. Trump’s
backing for the Polish presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki may have helped
the conservative nationalist score a narrow victory.
Similar Russian influence campaigns, plus dirty tricks and alleged vote-buying,
have marred elections in Romania and Moldova, which goes to the polls this
weekend. Will Trump and Putin conspire to ensure a hard-right populist succeeds
Emmanuel Macron as French president in 2027? It’s a legitimate worry.
Both leaders exploit Europe’s open societies, stirring political pots and
promoting favourites. In Trump’s case, one such is Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s
rightwing prime minister. Another is British anti-migrant populist Nigel
Farage, the quintessential useful idiot. In Putin’s case, it’s pro-Moscow
leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico.
The most obvious manifestation of hostile US economic pressure is Trump’s
unilateral tariffs, which foreshadowed the summer’s risibly lopsided EU-US
trade deal. American big-tech’s £31bn UK investment, announced during Trump’s
quasi-regal state visit, carries a whiff of neocolonialism. Buying British is
fine. But are US billionaires buying Britain?
Putin is even less subtle. Deniable cyber-attacks cripple key European
industries and institutions. An undersea communications cable or gas pipeline
mysteriously ruptures. Drones force the closure of airports. Undocumented
migrants are directed across EU borders. Online scams proliferate. Methods
vary. Yet the economic warfare waged on Europe in tandem by Moscow and
Washington is real.
A disturbing report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and
European Cultural Foundation claims the US is waging a broad culture war
against Europe. Yet its central finding – that Trump is promoting political and
ideological allies while simultaneously trying to sideline and divide the EU –
applies with equal force to Putin’s Russia.
The defence of “free speech”, mounted by Vance during his infamous Munich
security conference attack on Europe’s supposed retreat from “some of its most
fundamental values”, is a key cultural battleground. And here is another
convergence. For Trump and Putin, speech is free – if they agree with the
speaker. But not otherwise. (Ask Jimmy Kimmel, or the late Alexei Navalny.)
Trump and Putin: two clowns resembling Laurel and Hardy – except their gags are
not jokes.
The ECFR report optimistically suggests the dual assault from east and west is
drawing Europeans together. Yet, as ever in Europe, what’s lacking is urgency
and strong, united leadership. What’s lacking is clear understanding that this
US administration, no longer a trusted friend, is turning into an outright
enemy; and that the Russian bear, a species once thought extinct, is back with
a vengeance.
The evidence grows. So does the threat. Planned or not, Trump and Putin –
like-minded, amoral, authoritarian apex predators – are working together, or at
least in parallel, to undercut European democracy, security, prosperity and
progressive values. It looks like a concerted pincer movement. It feels like
1939.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
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