Making Europe Great Again and the law of unintended consequences.

You can’t easily escape the irony of how the actions & plans of Donald Trump, and Russian President Putin, have had exactly the opposite effect to those intended.

In Trump’s case, his apparent inability to understand that tarrifs are paid by the country imposing them would be laughable if the policy was not so damaging.  What he clearly never intended was to push other nations into forming trade alliances. He is reported to have threatened higher tarrifs on nations that agree deals without his involvement, indicating that he, or one of his advisors, have figured out what might happen.  These new trade alliances will make the USA increasingly irrelevant to world trade & history.  Trump’s insanely high tarrifs on China look likely to facilitate a huge trade deal between China and Europe that would sideline the USA long after Trump has gone.

With regards to Putin, his first victory was Brexit, the clear hope (as expressed by his Quislings in the Brexit Party) was to weaken the UK and split Europe, triggering the disintegration of the E.U.  If you don’t beleive this, consider the words of the former Russian Ambassador to Great Britain who said after Brexit: “We have crushed the UK to the ground, they are on their knees and will not rise for a very long time” – it was a battle won for President Putin.  

The long term plan was confirmed by the Brexit party, who boasted that when the UK left the European Union, others would follow and the E.U would collapse; of course the reality is that other nations saw the self inflicted damage that Brexit caused to Britain’s economy and decided “no thanks”.

This is where Donald Trump enters the story again. His hostility to N.A.T.O and friendship with Putin made European leaders wake up to the reality that they could not rely on a Trump led America. This is a good thing. What Trump didn’t expect, when trying to bully European leaders into spending more on defence, was that when doing so, they would be using the money to buy European and not American made weapons and equipment.

He complained about the money spent on defending Ukraine, but didn’t seem to realise that this money was spent in the USA on American built weapons.  Money to defend Ukraine is now being spent in European nations including the UK. Trump also threatened to sell ‘downgraded’ versions of American made equipment and aircraft, with the immediate result of the cancellation of $billions in orders for the F35 fighter bomber; I ask you, who the hell is stupid enough to buy watered down equipment? Once again Trump has turned ‘Make America Great Again’ into Make America irrelevant.

UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have taken the lead in in moving Europe towards a self sufficient status on defence and support for Ukraine. In a ridiculous statement to the UK House of Commons, former Brexit Party leader and now Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage, tried to claim that Starmer could only do what he did thanks to Brexit. He had conveniently overlooked that France is still an EU member and was able to achieve the same as the UK in acting quickly. I suppose that you can’t blame Farage for trying, god knows there have been precious few Brexit benefits (none actually),  but this claim earned him well deserved derision in the House of Commons.

The Finnish President Alexander Stubb praised Sir Kier for his leadership and stated ‘’the UK is back’’ – not the post Brexit outcome that Russia had hoped for I suspect.

Circumstances and events have given the world a chance to reset relationships and trading partnerships, while the USA is busy making itself irrelevant. There can be no doubt that the UK, and most other nations, took what appeared to be the easy route of ‘letting the USA take care of it’; this has been a major mistake as we are discovering now.  

America is currently busy infringing human rights & due process to keep M.A.GA extremist supporters happy – innocent people are being sent to what is essentially an American Concentration Camp in El Salvador. 

Americans will have to live with their shame in a future ‘Post M.A.G.A’ world.

And so European leaders now have the chance to “Make Europe Great Again” and the UK (in or out of the EU) will be a major player. We must be cautious though, as here in the UK the Reform Party are pandering to the same prejudices as Trump did, and Trump proved that, as long as you get petty and prejudiced people waving little flags and believing that they are better than others simply by being born white and British / American, they will turn a blind eye to illegal acts and the evils of racism. It happened in 1930’s Germany, It’s happening right now in Trump’s America and only fools would pretend that it could not happen in Britain. 

OK. Repeat after me:

Make. Europe. Great. Again #mega