‘Once In A Generation Moment’

In the end Donald Trump didn’t need to pull the US out of NATO. He just changed sides.

Hardline MAGA supporters at a rally in Ohio in 2018. The shift away from a cold-war antagonism towards Russia has been stoked among Trump and his apologists for years, so it’s not like we didn’t see the events of this week coming. But the time for trolling is over. As is, finally perhaps, the Republican party as we knew it.

Before Donald Trump was elected to a second term, there were plenty of observers who thought he would move to pull the US out of NATO. In the end he didn’t need to. He just changed sides.

The effect of upending the post-WW2 generation of western democratic order was the same, sending European allies scrambling to re-invent their defence policies and the beleaguered people of Ukraine coming to terms with what many saw as a vindictive US President’s “absurd” characterisations of their nation, their leader and the war they have been fighting since Russia invaded three years ago.

A week that began with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying Europe now faces a “once in a generation moment” in considering its future security without the US as a reliable ally, led to two emergency summits in Paris aimed at galvanising a European response, before ending with an escalating back-and-forth between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky as a US delegation met with Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia.

With Germany holding elections this weekend, when Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron arrive at the White House in the next few days, they’ll encounter a US President who may have already dismissed any contribution they might make to his endgame, especially with Washington and Kyiv seemingly approaching a “deal” on rights to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, in part, according to the Trump team, in recompense for past US military support.

Stephen Collinson sums it up at CNN:

“As with [Trump’s] plan to relocate all Palestinians out of Gaza so the US can build a “riviera” of beach resorts, the president’s motives appear to be rooted more in extracting the best potential monetary return for the United States than in equitably solving a murderous conflict that endangers the world. Trump is reflecting skepticism among his base voters toward the tens of billions of dollars of military and financial aid that the Biden administration sent to Ukraine after it was illegally invaded by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces three years ago. But Trump’s transactional approach represents a shattering of foreign policy values pursued by the United States for decades, including the principle that mighty nations should not invade smaller ones, which Washington enshrined in the United Nations charter.

“His pressure on Ukraine, the victim in the conflict, is also a hardline effort to take advantage of a nation in its darkest hour. While Putin has carved off large chunks of its territory, Trump seeks a large slice of its mineral wealth at a knockdown price. The “deal” looks rather like a form of extortion that Trump tried on Zelensky once before — floating military aid as an incentive for him to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, which led to Trump’s first impeachment.”

The Economist called this week “Europe’s worst nightmare”, saying the full implications have yet to sink in

As for Europe, cornered now partly by its own failure to anticipate their predicament and belatedly grasping for relevance, it’s going to be a delicate – and dangerous – balancing act with no universally acceptable outcome. In a detailed analysis for the FT, Keir Giles from Chatham House ponders the continent’s collective defence options:

“Promises of peace for our time, bought through appeasing an aggressor with the territory of its European victim, will do little to reassure those who have observed Russia’s preparations for further war. There can be few doubts that in the absence of credible security guarantees from the US, a respite from the grinding attrition will allow Russia to rebuild its land forces faster in order to resume fighting sooner — whether in Ukraine or targeting a Nato member state…

“[C]redible European deterrence of Russia is key to avoiding disaster. Europe has seen huge investment in countering terrorism by individuals and groups. What it needs now is also investment in countering state terror of the kind delivered by Moscow…

“NATO’s decade-old spending targets measured as a percentage of GDP in a way now serve as a distraction from the problem. They still have some utility as a measure of shame for those governments unwilling to meet their obligations to keep their countries and their citizens secure, such as the UK. But GDP targets only measure input, not output: and by now, what that spending actually buys is a far more urgent criterion of military relevance.”

And there have been even more dire warnings about where an as-yet unclear end game could lead the world.

Just as Britain’s quaint notion of being a “bridge” between Europe and the US has already been washed away, Trump’s “vision” of – ironically – a Reaganite concept of peace through strength may yet devolve into chaos through weakness.

Seven years ago, during his first term, Trump infamously tweeted that “They’re laughing their asses off in Moscow”. It’s a pretty good bet they have been this week too. It’s surely not long now before one or other of his compliant staffers nominates him – yet again – for the Nobel Peace Prize he so craves.

Cold War Steve rarely misses the mark (Feb 16)

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Seriously, Who’s In Charge Here?

Clay Bennett for the Chattanooga Times Free Press

It was almost like an SNL parody of a light beer commercial. “At the end of a long day’s asset stripping and deconstructing the administrative state, there’s always time for bro-bonding…”

The co-presidents sat this week for an interview with Sean Hannity at Fox News. It was, as Tom Nichols wrote at The Atlantic, “an hour of conversation among three men who have no idea how American democracy works.”

“If there is a headline from the interview, it is that the president of the United States feels that he requires the services of a multibillionaire to enforce his executive orders. Trump complained that he would write these “beautiful” executive orders, which would then languish in administrative limbo. Musk, for his part, explained that the president is the embodiment of the nation and that resisting his orders is the same as thwarting the will of the people.”

Meanwhile, CPAC, the annual hardline lovefest, kicked off on the one month anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, featuring an almost throw-away salute from Steve Bannon, throw-away speeches by Liz Truss and Nigel Farage and some kind of freak-show skit with Elon Musk and a chain saw, before ending with the President himself taking a typically Trumpian victory lap. David Smith wrote at The Guardian:

“Drunk on power, Donald Trump spent Saturday afternoon before adoring fans, boasting of his victories, taunting his enemies and casting himself as America’s absolute monarch, supreme leader and divine emperor rolled into one.

“The president bragged about pardoning hundreds convicted of crimes in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, describing them as “political prisoners” and “J6 hostages”. Some of them were in the room, chanting “J6! J6!” and shouting “Thank you!”. They have gone from prison cells to being CPAC’s newest celebrities.

“Trump also boasted about killing diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, denying the identity of transgender people, yanking the US out of the Paris climate agreement and sending undocumented immigrants (“monsters”) to Guantánamo Bay. He hailed Elon Musk’s evisceration of the federal government, including the international aid agency USAid.

“Each time, the crowd cheered.”

And Trump has increasingly leaned into the idea of an imperial presidency with himself as ruler, from quoting Napoleon to the White House posting this image:

The confirmation of Kash Patel to run the FBI will do little to dispel fears about the agency being used as a vehicle for retribution. While, once again, the cruelty is the point.

A disoriented GOP under Trump now appears to be a fundamentally unserious and primarily performative party. But it’s still unclear what the Democrats are, or, despite growing public protests, how they move their message forward from here.

It was another week of confusion amid DOGE’s reorganisation – or steady dismantling - of some of the basic mechanisms of government.

Even before the White House talked about absorbing the US Postal Service into the Commerce Department there were more high-profile resignations at the top of the SSA and the DOJ, the “accidental” firing of USDA officials working on countering bird flu and much much more…

And with DOGE set to start looking into the Defense Department, Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, together with other senior officers, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to hold that position.

Since everything inevitably revolves around money, Trump appears to have backed the idea of some kind of refund or “Doge dividend” – undoubtedly with checks bearing his signature like Covid payments – so we’ll probably see how voters’ priorities stack up then. Assuming, that is, they’re not among those losing their jobs.

As LSE prof Jonathan White reminded us this week, it was Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote that “the people feel much more than they reason.”

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But Hey, Wherever You Are, Baseball’s Back…

Thursday saw the first game of Spring Training, at Camelback Ranch in Glendale between the Cubs and Dodgers, a preview of Opening Day in Tokyo on March 18. It was also the first game with MLB’s new automated balls and strikes challenge system .

Saturday was the first day all 30 teams were in action.

For the perfect combination of the two worlds in which States of Play exists, check out Norm Eisen’s post at The Contrarian. That’s quite an impressive line-up of big hitters.

As per usual these days, there will be changes as the new season gets under way. This will be the final year for MLB’s partnership with ESPN but Joe Buck will be back in the booth for Opening Day, while a fifty-year-old internal club rule was finally overturned.

Maybe the Yankees’ most famous former beard came down on the side of “tradition”.

Young catcher Joe Cosgrove was here in Northern Ireland recently conducting youth coaching clinics, in a trip organised by the Irish-American Baseball Society. Although I wasn’t able to go along in person, I was proud to be among the many financial sponsors of Joe’s trip. The Irish Wolfhounds play two exhibition games against Germany in Tucson this weekend, ahead of Germany’s qualifiers for next season’s World Baseball Classic.

Finally, shifting gears to hockey, Canada’s victory in the 4 Nations tournament this week took on an added dimension due to the heightened animosity prompted by the US president. The Athletic reported that “There had been five total fights in best-on-best international tournaments before there were three in nine seconds last Saturday.”

A Canadian friend posted this, and I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Here we are, indeed.

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