Worryingly, without Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country is still thick in its three-year-long war with the bigger neighbour, Trump has made overtures to do a peace deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, sending Europeans scrambling to convene emergency security summits to secure their eastern flank. Or perhaps they also have to start securing the western flank, starting with Greenland, which Trump wants to buy — perhaps with investment returns from Gaza beach properties.
Up till Jan 20, the United States of America, the most powerful military and economic might ever, was a force for democracy and human rights. For eight decades after winning World War Two, it supported multilateralism in climate, healthcare and global regulation — and ostensibly free trade. This is seemingly because the US has not confirmed judges on the World Trade Organization for several years already, leaving them unable to listen to any cases that China is taking to it on US tariffs.
Now, barely a month since his return, Donald Trump, together with his “bro” Elon Musk, in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has stirred everything from reintroducing plastic straws to withdrawing from the World Health Organization to defunding USAID. By doing so, they have literally starved poor people, chopped off teams responsible for national parks and soldiers manning strategic defences. They have also undermined American soft power.
