Donald Trump wants a Europe in chaos – a sure sign for Britain to shore up its democracy |
The new threat is so dizzyingly bizarre that Europe, and especially Britain, is slow to believe it. The US declares itself our enemy. Europe emerges as its main adversary in the US national security strategy. Russia is its friend, not us. Everything that looked solid since the second world war is turned upside down; the land of the free becomes the destroyer of democratic values. Appeasement fails.
He may ramble, but Donald Trump speaks plainly. He means what he says, and he hates everything European. Except its emerging “patriotic” parties, which he wants to support. His strategy warns of “civilizational erasure”, claiming Europe will soon “become majority non-European” and parroting the racist conspiracy known as the great replacement theory. Describing Europeans as “weak”, “decaying” and “destroying their countries”, with “real stupid” leaders, Trump responded to the question of whether they would still be allies, in a Politico interview, with a hint of threat: “It depends.”
Note this: the official US strategy says that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism”. He is what he is, in plain sight. No more pretending his fickle ways can be reversed. He appears to back the EU’s nativists, which his strategy suggests are “political allies”. Why wouldn’t he? British politics is already under threat from Russian and Chinese hacking and interference, as in the case of Reform’s former Welsh leader – who has been jailed for taking Russian bribes. Expect electoral threats from the US from now on. Trump regards Europe’s vain struggle to protect itself – via its