This time we're the bad guys
The Europeans are nervous and for good reason. They've seen this before and they remember how it went down. World War Three could be upon us. And this time the US alliance with Russia is the problem not the solution:
The European Union is accustomed to crises. But it is probably safe to say that none of the 28 leaders who are gathering in Malta on Friday expected the crisis that has overtaken the agenda: the United States of America.
Like much of the world, the European Union is struggling to decipher a President Trump who seems every day to be picking a new fight with a new nation, whether friend or foe. Hopes among European leaders that Mr. Trump’s bombastic tone as a candidate would somehow smooth into a more temperate one as commander in chief are dissipating, replaced by a mounting sense of anxiety and puzzlement over how to proceed.
If many foreign leaders expected a Trump administration to push to renegotiate trade deals, or take a tough line on immigration, few anticipated that he would become an equal opportunity offender. He has insulted or humiliated Mexico, Britain, Germany and Iraq; engaged in a war of words with China and Iran; and turned a routine phone call with the prime minister of Australia, a staunch ally, into a minor diplomatic crisis.
This is not normal. But you knew that.
Throughout the campaign I would say to friends that if Trump won we would wake up to a different world. The post-war security arrangement that had kept the world from another horrific conflagration like the two that happened in the first half of the 20th century would be over. I never thought this was because Trump would "withdraw peacefully behind the walls of Fortress America." If you have any instincts about human nature he's obviously a megalomaniac. He believes America is the biggest and strongest and therefore has the right to run the world. And he has the mind of a 12 years old.
I don't think most people took him seriously or they assumed the Republican party would rein him in. But they are just as nuts as he is. So here we are. The natural response of the rest of the world will be to protect themselves.
From us.
And you cannot blame them.
.
