Trump’s New Direction for World Peace Worth Trying

By Roger L Simon

Remember “The End of History”? That was a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama.

If you don’t recall it, don’t feel embarrassed. It’s beyond laughable now. History, er, continued. Among other items, roughly a million have died in the Russo-Ukrainian War, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the Hamas psychopaths have returned us to primitive times by, among multiple atrocities, squashing babies with their bare hands.

But Mr. Fukuyama, whose name was once bandied about but has become obscure for obvious reasons, is far from alone in dreaming of a utopia that never occurred—and under normal circumstances never will. .

I thought of him briefly today while listening to the Donald Trump-Emmanuel Macron White House press conference.

Between the lines, maybe not so far between, the two, despite ritual shows of comity, had radically different approaches to solving the world’s problems.

The French president–like most of Western Europe, the entire US Democratic Party and a large portion of the Republican– had the old traditional one, put sufficient force in place to hold off expansionist Russia.

It’s not that Trump opposed that. He just didn’t comment on it, because his approach was something different.

He seeks to interlock with Ukraine and, surprisingly, Russia in business to such an extent it would be against everyone’s financial interest to get belligerent.

Both countries have remarkable amounts of resources that in the modern AI world the technologically superior US could use. The Europeans also could use them. All kinds of reciprocity is possible.

The Europeans, in their own way, have already realized that to some extent by making their aid to Ukraine in the form of loans. Biden, or whoever made his decisions, just blindly donated billions to Zelenskyy that are now nearly untraceable.

Trump is demanding, apparently with some success, that this massive amount of US taxpayer money be recompensed through the US partnering in Ukraine’s ample natural resources–lithium, rare earths, copper, graphite and so forth.

Particularly in regard to Russia, even though the Soviets were our allies in WWII, this approach is quite astonishing.

Who would have thought, other than Mr. Trump, to interlock our economy with theirs? Nevertheless the president has already mentioned that, after a genuine peace, such a possibility would be on the table.

He is obviously dangling this out for Vladimir Putin who has much to gain from this, beyond the obvious relaxation of sanctions. We are still the world’s largest economy with the most advanced technology.

Russia is the world’s biggest country—11% of the total land mass—with the most natural resources, so we have much to gain from them too.

Left out of this equation is the ever-expanding China that has of late increased its ties with Russia. It’s possible that beneath this strategy is an attempt to weaken those ties, to drive apart this alliance. It has been done before.

Oddly, Trump’s approach has some similarity to China’s Belt-and-Road program through which China has made economic inroads in Panama, among many other places .

The dissimilarities between our cultures, however, is massive and obvious. The ends would be different.

This approach also mirrors Trump’s suggestion about Gaza, to send the Palestinians, or most of them, elsewhere and turn the territory into a kind of Mediterranean resort. That has been universally rejected by almost everyone, including the Arab states that have shown no interest in accepting more Palestinians.

And yet, at this point, no one else has come up with a genuine suggestion on how to end the Gaza War, certainly not those Arab states that, as usual, have offered nothing.

Europe, also as usual, is silent, except to criticize Trump for wanting to turn Gaza into a playland for the rich, thus allegedly making life worse for the poor, supposedly starving, Gazan civilians, the “starving” being a calumny that has been exposed now multiple times.

As for suggestions on how to solve the situation, the Europeans, their countries almost all teetering from Islamic invasion, have nothing to say.

What we are being left with is the proverbial rinse-and-repeat. Nobody sane should want that.

Only Trump has a suggestion—for Russia and Ukraine and for Gaza.

For now, I say—give him a chance. He seems to be the only one willing to take one.

ANOTHER MATTER

DELIBERATELY MISCONSTRUING AfD

I have been meaning to write for some time of my adamant dislike of the ubiquitous use of the term “far-right” to describe various political figures and/or their ideas or parties.

This malign epithet is nothing more than propaganda fueled either by ignorance or, more likely, a deliberate will to slander and obliterate the competition.

The recent success of the AfD in the new German election is an illustration of how wrong-headed this is. Branded as Nazi-like nationalists, they are led by a woman, Alice Weidel, who is an out lesbian married to a Sri Lankan. In Nazi Germany she would have had a one-way ticket to Auschwitz.

Whatever its past, AfD is now another party like those proliferating in a Europe that is finally over the bureaucratic EU that has served them so poorly. Those parties oppose the overwhelming, largely Islamic immigration that is making the streets dangerous in practically every European country with the exception of those that directly experienced communism (Hungary, the Czech Republic, etc.) and know better.

Those of us who are older and visited Europe, with wonder and sometimes with envy, in our youths, know that it is no longer the same place.

We should be supporting these parties to reclaim the Europe that gave us Western Civilization, not tarring them with “far-right” nonsense.

The same thing is true here domestically when we see organs like Breitbart.com regularly characterized by the AP and others in the same manner, when a decade or so ago the ideas promulgated on those sites would have been seen as centrist almost to the point of banality. Now they are characterized as outrageous “far-right.” How absurd and how totally dishonest.

As I have said before, language counts. Change is happening. Hold firm.

 

First published in American Refugees