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The writer is an FT Antricting Editor, Chair Center for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and with IWM Vienna
Listening to our vice-central era in Munich and watches the consequences of successive Parliamentary elections, I reminded East Berlin in 1989 and the collapse of the Communist Regimens in Eastern Europe. It was in the last weeks of the Soviet Empire in Europe Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist Soviet leader, told his jeopardy in the wrong side of history and “dangerously waiting for those who did not act in the real world”. The vacation makes a similar language, telling Europeans that they are the wrong side of President Donald Trump. But this message is not in anticipated effect.
It is known that the radical lead list of Germany will die in LINKE, and not long distance for Germany, is the primary beneficiary of social media posts on social media. Other unexpected consequences are that Friedrich Merz, probably next by Chancellor, changed all night from an ancient European disguise. Merz directly, Merz declared her willingness to fight for freedom of europe from the US.
The Trumpian revolution has changed the nature of European politics. Under two months of the New House administration term, European political scene has been a combat between Trump-alming revolutions. Now we are for the Far right to justify Trump’s anticipated tariffs on Europe, and to ask Europeans to follow Washington’s Leadership In foreign policy. On the contrary, the mainstream parties act as defenders of national sovereignty hoping to move support by appealing to national interest and national dignity.
Munich Conference also ends the usual debate about whether Trump should be granted carefully (meaning, not literally) or literally (not serious). Now we know he should be taken seriously and literally. As Vladimir Putin said the Russian president, the appropriately observed, Trump “is not simple to say what he thinks, but he says what he wants”. His comments about Greenland Control or Panama Canal represents not to sign, but purpose. The US president is convinced that America’s strategic interest is located in Canada in the 51st state of the US. He strongly believed that he could separate Russia from China, and he blamed the “deepest American condition to prevent him from reaching his first term.
In this context, Europeans wasted precious time to reflect on what Trump plans for Ukraine and complain about non-negotiating table.
Taking Trump rights needed first and most importantly know that it is a revolutionary government in Washington’s power, at least one organized as a imperial court. The uprisings have no detailed plans. They run to timetables: meet the moment; Do not first take project measures. It is unclear what the Trump wants to achieve his Putin negotiations, but he wants to achieve something too big, and he wants to reach it rapidly, so fast.
What Trump offers Putin not only the hope of the end of Ukraine’s war in terms of the terms of the terms in favor of Moscow, but a large bargain to reinder the world. It includes America’s presence in Europe, and also in the Middle East and Arctic. Trump plays Putin that Russia is rapidly sorted by mundane and Moscow regain the condition of a good power lost in the 1990s. Trump hopes it’s convincing Russia to imitate the Chinese alliance. The US denial of a single vote to judge Russian aggression in Ukraine is shocking even some of the most passionate admirers of the President. But it was meant to attract the Kremlin that the American leader was willing to do uninhabited – and changing the world that Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev were molded in late 1980s.
What happens with Trump’s revolutionary dreams is a different question. It is one of the ironies in history that Russians greeted Trump’s determination to risk the world with a great enthusiasm in Gorbachev nearly 40 years ago. What is Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister in Russia, saying today is not different from what Dick Cheney is, the security of the US in 1989: “We need to watch over our country’s security.”
George Orwell has already passed the “all revolt failures, but they are not the same failure”. What kind of failure does Trumpian revolution, do we not know. But what history is taught us is that the best strategy is not to prevent revolutionaries but to hijack their revolution. To do this, European success usually depends not in the ability to resist but showing a talent to be surprised. Can Europe find a way to benefit from not on US-Russian negotiation table? Should Trump leave to own his great peace plan for Ukraine and implement it?
At one time with a lot of crisis as far as the present, there is a valuable resource for weak party standing: political imagination.