Magats_Love_NHB
Let It Burn!
Trump and Vance aren’t clever, they’re clueless: The US administration seems wilfully naive to the existential threat we face from Putin and his murderous regime
Trump and Vance aren’t clever, they’re clueless
The US administration seems wilfully naive to the existential threat we face from Putin and his murderous regime
www.telegraph.co.uk
Donald Trump and JD Vance mean everything they say. They mean it when they say Russia isn’t a threat. They genuinely believe that the US should leave Nato and they want one way or another to take Greenland. That only China, Russia and the US count. Britain is treated as a quaint exception to Europe. Sovereignty of others doesn’t matter. Might is right. Oppressing opponents, judges and the free press is acceptable in the cause of America First. Facts are fiction and fiction are facts. Putin and Trump sign mineral extraction deals in the occupied Donetsk region. Five Eyes intelligence is shared not with Britain’s friends but our enemies. The US withdraws from European bases and pulls the drawbridge up.
America First means “payback”. Maga believes every piece of fake news from Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and multiple social media platforms. If America turns insular, ask yourself: who benefits? Who will be cheering a fractured Nato alliance?
I assure you the US blue collar worker won’t benefit, nor will anyone else in the West. The real beneficiaries of such outcomes are Russia, China and extremists around the world who have seen the US as their number one target for decades. It isn’t Europe they are after, it’s Uncle Sam. Putin, a man who has spent his whole life fighting the West, hasn’t suddenly decided Donald Trump is his new best buddy. Nor has he and his inner circle forgotten their thirst for revenge for 30 years of humiliation after the defeat of the Soviet Union.
For over a decade now Russia has been stoking the divisions we see being played out today. During the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, Russian troll factories deliberately magnified both extremes of the debate on social media. Division was what they encouraged and division is what they got.
Across another Ocean, China will be gleeful at the potential dismantling of the old world order. All the things that really made America great and rich since the end of the Second World War are potentially on the bonfire. There’s not much now standing in the way of a clear run across the Taiwan Strait.
Now I don’t know if this worst case scenario will come to pass. We must all hope it doesn’t. Maybe Donald Trump realises that everybody loses if America First is just another phrase for isolationism. That branding all your friends “free riders” and demanding “payback” creates wedges between allies that will be hard to mend.
I also hope that we on this side of the Atlantic don’t forget that America is more than one single President and that hurtful as it is to hear such ill informed attacks from JD Vance, it is not what the majority of Americans think. But these are worrying times.
We seem such a long way away from the days of Reagan and Maggie. The danger for us all is that the new occupants of the Oval Office are not very well travelled. JD Vance’s statements are wildly inaccurate and seem to suggest he believes everything he reads on social media.
I was recently told by a US tech billionaire that the UK and US won’t have a Special Relationship because we are trying to regulate social media. I pointed out that it was the refusal of US social media platforms such as Twitter to help the UK authorities when I was Security Minister that led to so many being recruited to ISIS and Al Qaeda.
The irony is that the very social media platforms that Maga seeks to use to make America great are actually the platforms that make it weaker and divided. Instead of undermining his own Government’s policy perhaps Peter Mandelson could help enlighten Maga and some of the office holders in the new administration of the facts. This is vital work to be done behind the scenes, not on the TV screens of America.
I believe that – while many of us have the freedom to express our anger at what is being done by Donald Trump to our friendships – Sir Keir Starmer is right to take a softer approach. Trump 2.0 needs to be gently educated not berated.
Let us now judge Trump on his actions, not the bold and sweeping statements that always mark the beginning of any Government. We must hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
