FLASH
Shkruar nga Joschka Fischer
The United States owes its status as a superpower not just to strength but to a unique combination of material advantages and Enlightenment values. With his reliance on hard power and rejection of all constraints on his authority, Donald Trump represents the opposite of everything that made this country great...
US President Donald Trump is acting decisively to reshape the North Atlantic region, even at the cost of destroying the transatlantic West. Trump and his advisers believe that alliances like NATO are a burden and that “only America” will achieve true greatness.
Yet when you look at the administration’s record over the past year, you find only evidence of self-destruction. Notable examples include the undermining of democracy and the rule of law at home; the creation of new de facto alliances with authoritarian rulers like Russian President Vladimir Putin; the attempt to create a world order of empires based solely on force, without binding rules or multinational institutions; and the destruction of long-standing alliances and trade relationships.
What has always distinguished the United States, from its founding to its rise as a global superpower, has been its deep roots in Enlightenment values. The Founding Fathers were fully committed to Western humanism and a reasonably drafted constitution.
The institutions they created have made the United States more successful than any other nation founded in the modern era. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution begins with the words “We, the People,” in a form that resembles the pluralis majestatis (“royal we”) previously reserved only for monarchs.
The assertion of popular sovereignty implied by those three words was a deliberate provocation and a powerful symbol of the revolutionary challenge that the new American democracy was making to absolutist rule elsewhere in the world.
Of course, throughout its historical rise, first as a continental power in North America, then as a world power, and most recently as the global superpower of our time, the United States has always displayed the dual character of imperial power and democracy based on Enlightenment values.
The initial acceptance of slavery in the Southern states stood in permanent and incompatible tension with the commitment to equality and inalienable rights, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and sanctioned in the Constitution.
But for all its flaws, the United States has never defended itself by force alone. Its rise to global hegemony rested largely on economic dominance and its geographic position between two great oceans—advantages that played a key role in its military victories in two world wars and its triumph in the Cold War.
However, it was the combination of material power and the universal appeal of Enlightenment values that made it possible for America to rise to its current heights.
With his reliance on hard power and rejection of any limits on his authority, Trump represents the antithesis of everything that made the United States great.
Under his destructive rule, a superpower with immense economic and military might is sinking into irrationalism, egocentric nationalism, and official violence. As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, the world's oldest democracy faces an existential challenge from a single man bent on imposing absolutist rule.
At stake is the American republic itself and everything it has ever stood for. In its place is emerging a corrupt oligarchy, dominated by billionaires with imperial fantasies of world domination and feverish dreams of colonizing distant planets and achieving immortality.
Constitutionally protected civil liberties are giving way to pervasive surveillance and control, carried out by private companies like Palantir. Those who protest and resist are at risk of persecution by masked federal officials who are virtually immune from prosecution.
World-class universities and research institutions are under increasing financial pressure, and freedom of speech seems to belong exclusively to those in power.
The “Land of the Free” is increasingly resembling the former communist Eastern Bloc to outsiders. In foreign policy, America’s closest and most loyal allies, like Denmark, are becoming adversaries simply because they are resisting imperial claims to their sovereign territory. For Trump and his circle, aggressive warmongers like Putin are not the problem.
Rather, the problem is the Europeans, especially the European Union. It sounds absurd, but it is the truth. Trump is carrying out a major overhaul of everything that has made the United States great for decades: a functional separation of powers, an open labor market, a university system that has attracted the best minds from around the world, and a value system based on tolerance, reason, and universal rights.
MAGA is not only destroying the transatlantic West, but also the very foundations of American power. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue to need the United States to confront some of our greatest shared challenges. Sadly, the United States itself may become one of them./ Adapted from "Pamphlet", taken from "Project Syndicate"
Note: Joschka Fischer, former Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 1998-2005.
Perveç Europes se vlerave njerezore e dekokratike, SHBA-te nuk eshte se jane te preferuar nga kombe te tjera, perfshire Ruset, vendet Arabe ku ka rreth 36 vjet qe luftonj ne Irak,Afganistan, Siri Pakistan , etj, vendet Aziatike, perveç Korese se Jugut. Edhe ne Ameriken Latine e Qendrore nuk eshte se jane shume miçesore. Atehere shtrohet pyetja, pse kjo strategji e SHBA ndaj Europes. Nderkohe qe kjo e fundit i besoi çdo gje SHBA.
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