By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-14 12:31:40 | Updated at 2025-03-14 15:03:25
2 hours ago
No historian could have watched US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month without recognising a 21st century version of the ritual public execution of a Roman gladiator. Trump gave the world a lesson in realpolitik when he told Zelensky: “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards … You’re gambling with World War III.”
Two weeks earlier, US Vice-President J.D. Vance stunned Britain and Europe by saying their biggest threat was internal, and attacked Brussels for stifling innovation with overregulation, underspending on defence and not pulling its weight in supporting Ukraine in the war.
At the Munich Security Conference, Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said the United States had gone from being perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent”. I see it as more like a capo dei capi (“boss of bosses”) telling his underlings to pay more for protection.
If Trump 1.0’s launching of tariffs and sanctions was China’s wake-up call, Trump 2.0 is Europe’s wake-up call: it can no longer take America’s defence umbrella for granted. Trump’s detractors may dismiss his actions and pronouncements as chaotic and destructive but his “Make America Great Again” initiative carries two clear goals – restoring America’s manufacturing prowess within a tariff wall and restoring America’s unipolar position.
Three years of carnage and destruction from the Ukraine war have provided four crucial lessons for Trump and his right-wing tech oligarchs. First, “forever wars” bleed the US fiscally and industrially, delaying its ability to focus on its peer rival, China.
Second, Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are leaders of small states that act as tails wagging the dog: they could commit the US to nuclear war with no upsides. For America to regain policy sovereignty, both leaders must be brought under control. The political survival of both leaders depends on continuing their wars, but that means making the US and Europe pay.
