Scott Boehmer

Tag: Russia

  • The Free World is Gone

    In early 2017, less than two months into Donald Trump’s first term as president, I published a piece of speculative fiction. Set during a then-imaginary second Trump term, it depicts a nightmare scenario in which American troops abandon Europe, the pro-Russia Alternative for Germany wins 20 percent of the vote in a federal election, and Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    My purpose in writing the story was to stir readers on both sides of the Atlantic out of their complacency regarding the parlous state of what used to be called the “Free World.” But it still didn’t prepare me for the series of events that began with Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference and ended with the humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance before TV cameras in the Oval Office. While many may view that two-week period as indistinguishable from the rest of the Trump era, future historians won’t: They’ll record it as marking an epochal shift in global politics potentially even more significant than the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It marked the end of an era — the era of the American-led liberal international order.

    James Kirchick

    Opinion: The ‘Free World’ Is Gone and There’s No Turning Back (Politico)

  • Trump against Zelenskyy

    Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader.

    Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

    EU’s top diplomat: ‘The free world needs a new leader’ (The Hill)

    We are perilously teetering towards a global disaster, one that few seem to fully comprehend. Today’s obscene spectacle in the Oval Office, where the President and Vice President of the United States berated the leader of a sovereign nation fighting for its survival, is not just a diplomatic misstep. It is a stark warning that we are perilously close to the collapse of the post-World War II international order.

    Mike Brock

    This is an Emergency (Notes From The Circus)

    Why did they hammer him? Because they don’t want Americans to view Zelensky as a hero. That view will complicate Trump’s plan to surrender Ukraine to Putin. Trump is ready to give Putin everything he wants. And then carve up the world.

    Make no mistake: Putin’s aggression will not end with Ukraine. By giving in to Putin, Trump is inviting him to invade Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland — and then the rest of Eastern Europe that used to be under Soviet and Russian control.

    Trump wants Canada, Greenland, Panama, and much else.

    Robert Reich

    Today’s disgusting scene (Robert Reich)

    If you want to watch the entire meeting, C-SPAN has it available. If you want to jump to where it goes off the rails, that starts to happen around 38:20 after a reporter asks President Trump a question about how some people see him as too aligned with Putin.

    Full Meeting between President Trump, VP Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Oval Office (C-SPAN)

  • On the Side of Autocrats and Fascists

    It seems that we now live in an America that is more likely to throw its support behind autocrats and fascists than to align with our long-term democratic allies.

    European leaders should end the isolation of far-right parties across the Continent, US vice-president JD Vance has said.

    The comments mark an extraordinary embrace of a once-fringe political movement with which the Trump administration shares a common approach on migration, identity and internet speech.

    The address stunned and silenced hundreds of attendees at the Munich Security Conference, a forum where top-level politicians, diplomats and analysts had gathered expecting to hear US president Donald Trump’s plans for ending the war in Ukraine and Europe’s defence against a rising Russian threat.

    Mr Vance singled out his German hosts, telling them to drop their objections to working with a party that has often revelled in banned Nazi slogans and has been shunned from government as a result.

    Jim Takersley, Steven Erlanger, and David E. Sanger

    European leaders left in stunned silence as JD Vance harangues them over approach to far right (The Irish Times)

    Mr. Trump’s remarks late on Tuesday, when he sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war, have now fortified the impression that the United States is prepared to abandon its role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

    It was a complete reversal of historic alliances that left many in Europe stunned and fearful.

    Catherine Porter and Andrew Higgins

    Meeting Again in Paris, European Leaders Try to Recalibrate After Trump Sides With Russia (The New York Times)

    Make no mistake. The Trump-Vance-Musk regime is not only undermining democracy in the United States. It is also laying the foundation for undermining democracies around the world.

    Since the end of World War II, liberal democracies have stuck together — led by America. On the opposite side have been authoritarian states, led mainly by the Soviet Union, followed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, by Russia and China.

    But all this is rapidly changing. Both Russia and China have morphed into oligarchies, run by small groups of extraordinarily wealthy people.

    America has also been moving from a democracy to an oligarchy — and is doing so at lightning speed under Trump, Vance, Musk, and their billionaire buddies.

    The new poles of international power are coming to be global democracies versus a global oligarchy. The United States is emerging on the side of global oligarchy.

    Robert Reich

    The Trump-Vance-Musk-Putin plan (Robert Reich)