FLASH
Shkruar nga Ben Wallace
In the world of the US president and his vice president, facts are fiction and fiction is fact...
Let me paint a vision for a new era. Donald Trump and JDVance mean it in everything they say. They truly believe that Russia is not a threat. They are sincerely convinced that the US should leave NATO, and they want to take Greenland from Denmark one way or another.
For them, only powers like China, Russia, and the US matter in this world. Britain is treated as a strange exception from Europe. The sovereignty of others is of no importance. And they may be right. The suppression of political opponents, judges, and free media is more than acceptable in the cause of “America First.”
In the world of the Trump-Vance duo, facts are fiction and fiction is fact. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are about to sign an agreement to extract minerals from the occupied Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Intelligence data is no longer being shared with Britain and its Five Eyes friends, but with our enemies.
The US will withdraw from European bases. America First means “payback.” MAGA sympathizers believe every fake news story from Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and multiple social media platforms. Ask yourself this: If America shuts down, who will benefit?
Who will cheer for the destruction of NATO? I assure you that ordinary workers in the US, and no one else in the West, will benefit from this. The real beneficiaries are Russia, China, and extremists around the world who have seen the US as their number one target for decades.
So their target is not Europe but “Uncle Sam.” Putin, a man who has spent his entire life fighting the West, has not suddenly decided that Donald Trump is his new best friend. Nor have he and his inner circle forgotten their thirst for revenge for 30 years of humiliation after the defeat of the Soviet Union.
For more than a decade, Russia has been fomenting the divisions we are seeing unfolding today. During the Black Lives Matter unrest of 2020, Russian manipulation centers deliberately exaggerated both extremes of the debate on social media. Division was what they encouraged, and what they achieved.
Across another ocean, China will be delighted by the possible disintegration of the old world order. All the things that made America great, and rich since the end of World War II, are potentially on the verge of extinction. Beijing now has few obstacles to a swift attack on the Taiwan Strait.
I don't know if the worst-case scenario will come true. We should all hope that it doesn't. Perhaps Trump understands that everyone will lose if "America First" is just another phrase for isolationism. Labeling all friends as "unpaid passengers" and demanding "debt forgiveness" is creating rifts among allies that will be difficult to heal.
I also hope that we on this side of the Atlantic don't forget that America is more than the next president, and as painful as it is to hear such attacks fueled by the ignorance of JDVance, that's not what most Americans think. These are troubling times, however.
A far cry from the days of Reagan and Thatcher. The danger for all of us is that the new occupants of the Oval Office are not very informed. JDVance's statements are grossly inaccurate and show that he believes everything he reads on social media.
Recently, an American tech billionaire told me that Britain and the US would not have a special relationship because “we are trying to regulate social media.” I responded by saying that it was the refusal of American social media platforms like Twitter to help British authorities when I was a minister that led to massive recruitment by 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 are making it weaker and more divided. Rather than undermining his government’s policies, perhaps Peter Mandelson could help enlighten MAGA and some of the officials in the new administration on the real facts.
This is a very important task, one that needs to be done behind the scenes, not on America's television screens. I believe that while many of us still have the freedom to express our anger at what Donald Trump is doing to our friendships, Keir Starmer is right to take a softer approach.
Trump 2.0 should be gently educated, not reprimanded. Now let us judge him by his actions, not by the bold statements that always mark the beginning of any government's work. We must hope for the best, but also prepare for the worst. / Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Daily Telegraph"
*Note: Ben Wallace, former UK Defense Minister in Boris Johnson's government.
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