Saul Steinberg’s “View of the World from Ninth Avenue” cover. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here’s a good piece from John Cassidy in the New Yorker. It explains why the Trump Administration’s problem can’t be resolved by firing the marketing team and hiring some external consultants.
Six Reasons Why the Trump Reset Won’t Work – John Cassidy – The New Yorker
I wonder how long Americans will put up with America being the laughing stock because of Trump?
Thoughts?
English: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. The photo shows a part of a public photo documentation wall at Former Check Point Charlie, Berlin. The photo documentation is permanently placed in the public. Türkçe: Berlin Duvarı, 1989 sonbaharı (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dr Alf brings us a series of complex conundrums, which herald events which in some ways are almost Biblical in nature.
What is brewing is a reordering of the old tectonic plates of big power politics and projection, caused partially by Brexit and partially by Trump.
The ‘5 eyes countries’ which share intelligence are seen by themselves as cousins because they share the same monarch are part of the Commonwealth and have fought in every World War and significant conflict together since 1914 except for Vietnam.
For Americans, Australians are brothers, the British tiresome allies with good soldiers, and the rest cousins for whom mutual defence is natural. Germany has always been the master of Central Europe since the mid 1800s when she started to rearm through to the period when the Kaiser ordered the Keil Canal to be widened so that E boats could sail through.
The fear of America and Britain has always been that Germany would then form a rapprochement with its old enemy the Russians to create a massive economic and military rival.
Thus it suited America and Britain to have a divided Germany with the Western part sitting within NATO where Germany, which they never fully trusted could be watched and controlled.
Germany never saw itself as one of the 5 “cousins”(America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK) and now because of Trump’s remarks, Jared’s silence and the silence of others, Germany now sees itself as a “Great Power” again, wanting to be taken seriously. It will build a European Army and it will work harder and faster on building relations with Russia. Merkel will drive this process for a time but will be replaced and whoever comes after her will have to deal with demographic and manufacturing voids by employing automation, robotics, AI and workers in Eastern Europe, rather than Middle Eastern and Muslim migrants.
May will win her election with a tiny majority and then mess up the negotiations with the EU so that the UK will rejoin EFTA. Trump could well be impeached or driven from office, leaving his daughter Ivanka free to make a run in 2022.
China will watch and wait and Vladimir Putin will smirk and say that this is nothing to do with him.
Dr Alf's Blog 