BIG JOB GOES BEGGING
I notice one title still being optimistically attached to President Trump in coverage of recent Nato discussions is that of “leader odf the Free World”. In my opinion, this is now looking increasingly inappropriate and ridiculous.
The expression “free world” was first coined during the Cold War to describe collectively the non-communist, democratic and benevolent nations of the time. The US, as the then dominant military power, quickly named itself leader of this Free World. However, since then, things have dramatically changed; we are now living in a multi-polar world where the right of the USA to claim such leadership has become highly questionable because of its government’s morality.
Empires fall because of crises in morality, and watching this happening with the USA’s empire of influence is distressing, for the USA is, at heart, a benevolent nation made up of kind people.
However, since the My Lai Massacre defined the ethical morass the USA fell into in Vietnam, we have since witnessed Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, extra-ordinary rendition, water-boarding, endemic police racism, refugee children separated from their mothers, and so on. There is surely a moral dimension to such Free World leadership — it can never be just about who has the most tanks or nuclear weapons.
We have also witnessed US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change accord, which the rest of the world continues to honour. The US also pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal which has seen the UK, Germany and France working together to prevent its collapse.
Finally, Mr Trump now threatens to withdraw the USA from Nato. This all now begs the question, “Who now really leads the Free World?”
In 2015, Time magazine in the USA boldly declared Angela Merkel to be the “Chancellor of the Free World.” Perhaps this showed that the US relalised even then that Mr Trump was not to become de facto leader of the Free World simply by becoming US president.
That is because the focus of such leadership moved quickly to somewhere else in a more civilised and less chaotically-governed Europe, whether Mr Trump in his parallel universe realises it or not.
Andy Phillips