His disorder is not of the psychopath who lacks all empathy but of the person who has all too much, but only for himself.
Though Trump would like to see the transatlantic alliance dead, it is too strong for any one leader to destroy. Better to ally ourselves with the transatlantic majority in Congress, to make any attempt to seize Greenland harder.
Traditional allies of the United States have, however, plenty of instruments to ensure it can be defused, while building up their independent military industrial base and armed forces.
Now this Bulgarian government appears to have overreached. Convinced it would not have to face the voters for four years, it had begun to show contempt for the people.
Preventing unseaworthy ships from passing through the Baltic with polluting cargo does not prevent Russia from navigating them. It just requires them to use acceptably safe ships to do so. But there’s a reason they have a shadow fleet that aren’t safe.
Neither side has been able to effect a decisive breakthrough in the land war, not least because neither is able to establish air superiority or deny their enemy the ability to supply their forces except at the smallest scale.
It is well known that Trump’s mind is moored to the 1980s, and has got hold of the idea that Maduro is a drug kingpin in the style of Panama’s Manuel Noriega who President George H Bush removed in 1989 after invading Panama.
Trump has pressured Netanyahu to at least publicly acquiesce to negotiations with Hamas and the eventual creation of a new governing authority to rebuild Gaza. Negotiations will take time and nobody is better at sabotaging negotiations than Netanyahu.
If Trump acquires power over the Fed, he’ll use it to avoid the interest rate rises it thinks are needed to control inflation.
Prime Minister Tusk and Foreign Minister Sikorski want to anchor Poland’s security in European and like minded democratic alliances, President Karol Nawrocki has put his faith in a like minded individual: Donald Trump.
Vučić would be well advised to start negotiating a political transition, so he doesn’t have to ask his FSB friends to spirit him away to share a (ground-floor?) Moscow flat with the Assads and Viktor Yanukovich.
And if most politicians use the attention their office brings to exercise power, Trump is different. He uses the power of the office to command attention.
Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party. He runs Article 7 – Intelligence for democrats. Machiavelli has taught us thata leader owes duties to his state, and the glory — these days we might say the success — of his state allows him, perhaps obliges […]
Bulgarian authorities made a number of arrests last week, supposedly on anti-corruption grounds. All those arrested were affiliated with the opposition.
So far the international reaction has been relatively muted – probably because of a lack of “bandwidth” and this has allowed the regime to consolidate its power.