Rising transatlantic tensions can have dangerous consequences

The inclination of British tabloids to be a law unto themselves has been grudgingly accepted in the Anglosphere. At the same time, it is also recognised that they have their finger on the pulse of public opinion. The headline writer of the tabloid that described the US vice president as ‘J.D. Dunce’ was probably reflecting the hissy fit in Britain over one of the Yale-educated Hillbilly’s cutting asides. Referring to the bellicosity of many European powers, Vance had indicated that Ukraine would be better off conceding an American stake in its economy than banking on the security guarantee “from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.” mediumhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOKZ6hbE6_MAdmittedly Vance didn’t name either France or the UK, the two countries that are seemingly ready to re-enact the selfless defence of Belgium and Poland against the autocrats in the previous century. But his calculated snideness hit the bull’s eye and provoked the desired outrage. In an earlier age, the hordes of Yankees descending on Europe were mocked for being “oversexed, overpaid and over here”, but the geniality of cultural difference has been overtaken by something distinctly nasty ever since President Trump began his second innings last month. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the US and Europe no longer inhabit the same strategic space as before. At the heart of the growing estrangement is the American conviction that the European nations are a bunch of freeloaders. The need for Europe to contribute a fair share of NATO membership has been a bipartisan American demand for at least two decades. Trump, who has specialised in blunt speaking, was perhaps more insistent than his pre-2016 predecessors. However, given the absurd levels of European govt spending on welfare, some hard talk was imperative. In 2014, the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer had estimated that despite accounting for just seven per cent of the world’s population, European countries spent half of the global outlay on social welfare. The quantum of spending a decade later is unlikely to have declined, given that Germany, through its misplaced benevolence, invited a million or more asylum seekers from all the conflict zones of Asia and North Africa. What is remarkable about this influx into the EU is not merely that the anxieties of the native population were peremptorily brushed aside, but that steep fines were levied on countries such as Hungary for refusing them entry. mediumhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dNv9tH0dkUVance made himself unpopular at the Munich Security Conference by pointing a finger at Europe’s warped priorities and its celebration of post-national woke dogma. A German minister publicly shed tears over the growing separation of values between Europe and America, but he didn’t contest the validity of Vance’s plain speaking. At the heart of this European exceptionalism is a fanatical belief that it has a monopoly over goodness. Consequently, Vladimir Putin is demonised for his attack on Ukraine three years ago, quite forgetting that Russia’s antipathy to the creeping encroachment of NATO on its borders was not very dissimilar to the stand taken by the US against Russia’s deployment of missiles in Cuba. With anti-Russia sentiments shaping the narrative, the entire history of why Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine see themselves separate from Kyiv has been brushed under the carpet. Instead, a spurious projection of single-minded Russian expansion into the erstwhile Warsaw Pact countries has been contrasted with European benevolence. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who isn’t exactly a model of rectitude, has been conferred a saintly halo by European leaders and a hawkish commentariat. mediumhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCpUEirHlwAmong President Trump’s big crimes is his failure to be convinced that only one side in the Russia-Ukraine war has a monopoly over goodness. His perception that this is a needless war that America should extricate itself from has been countered by an astonishing display of sanctimonious arrogance and entitled snobbery. The European elite’s barely concealed disdain for the impulses driving MAGA’s support base in the US has triggered a retaliatory offensive by the Trump camp. The perception that the hawkish Eurocrats in Brussels and pretentious leaders of the ancien regime are a bunch of windbags, puffed up by American largesse, may well be a caricature. Unfortunately, unless the distortions are rapidly corrected, they acquire a momentum of their own, with undesirable consequences for everyone. The circumstances are undeniably very different, but there are lessons to be learnt from the steady deterioration of relations between Britain and Germany in the convoluted journey leading up to the horrible 1914-18 war. America and Europe, it is said, are bound by shared values. But King George V and the German Kaiser also happened to be first cousins. When distrust takes over, blood ties can so easily be replaced by blood spilling.