Trump the second

“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” (If you want peace, prepare for war) comes from De Re Militari by Publius Flavius. Today, this phrase is relevant for our country, the EU, NATO and former Soviet republics, all of which face the looming threat of sharing Ukraine’s fate.

The cause for the anxiety and sense of urgency has been upgraded from the level of subliminal threat before the US election to one of panic and extreme fear of a potential nuclear war with Russia following Donald Trump’s election and crazy actions undertaken since his inauguration.

Why Trump and his trusted fascist-like closest followers, Vice President JD Vance and multibillionaire Elon Musk, started to orchestrate the breakdown of the pre-existing world order, based on interdependence of nations in a rule-based set of relationships that governed the world after World War II, is very difficult to understand.

Is it a megalomaniac vision of a new world led by three great dictators in China, Russia and the US? Or is it a misunderstanding of history by repeating the appeasement that Neville Chamberlain had made towards Adolf Hitler, which Winston Churchill had clearly disagreed with and chided him for and which led to the start of the greatest war ever fought since the start of modern history?

Or is it plain greed? Is Trump eyeing the financial windfall from the dissolution of NATO and the personal profits of rare earth minerals in the land grab that Trump is trying to achieve in Ukraine before a peace treaty is even signed?

The parallels with history are chilling. The same type of threats of forced deportations to take over Gaza and now even threatening to kill all Palestinians without a peace treaty are scary.  Just deporting them all and taking away their land to build a Trump Riviera was already reminiscent of Hitler’s or Stalin’s forced deportations but the threat to kill them all is sounding more like the holocaust to me.

How will Vance or Musk explain this? Is it cost-cutting or is it greed? Whatever the reasons behind Trump’s so-called peace-making, it is clear that he dreams of getting a Nobel Prize for it; that will be the day.

And what about his claims over Greenland, Panama, Canada and the tariffs introduced against the rest of the world? Crazy and maniacal to some but explained away as normal and longstanding US isolationist policies by others.

We were warned during his first term but, even though the EU and the European NATO members saw what would potentially come should Trump win a second term, the EU did nothing or very little.

I had written an article in 2019 thanking Trump for giving the EU the opportunity to reform itself by creating a stronger, more independent EU but that opportunity was wasted. The EU should have expelled a number of countries like Hungary and Slovakia, which are anti-EU and pro-Russia. It should have eliminated the veto system and removed tax haven and tax evasion in member states. All others willing to be part of the new EU, with a strong independent defence with a nuclear deterrent from France, would form a new Union.

The democratic and constitutional lovers in the US must awaken before it is too late- John Vassallo

But they failed to act and carpe diem, as the Romans would say. This is what they should be doing without further delay.

Now, the fear and the reality of Trump II faces us all with a much more threatening reality. Our future and that of our children is at stake.

All other threats like global warming and migration become almost irrelevant now that our very existence is at risk.

We must, as the new incoming pro-Europe CDU Chancellor in Germany, Friedrich Merz, said recently, “do what it takes” to build up a credible European defence, a nuclear deterrent of our own, independence from the US and an EU that functions without vetoes.

The EU must concentrate on its economy and its values to be able, with its 450 million citizens, and together with the UK, to challenge China, Russia and the US.

Moreover, there are another six billion citizens in the African, Asian and Australian subcontinent and in South America and Canada who probably do not wish to see a world carved up by three megalomaniac and dictatorial leaders.

That is not the world we built up after World War II. That is not a world built on democratic principles with respect between nations. There is also one-half of the United States which will soon realise that what Trump is doing is reminiscent of what Hitler did when he was elected.

As soon as he became chancellor, Hitler toppled the institutions, attacked minorities and, under the arguments of cleaning up the economic mess that followed World War I and the Great Depression, took over the state to create a dictatorship.

The present situation in the US has all the elements of the Weimar Republic, and it is up to the democratic and constitutional lovers in the US to awaken before it is too late.

The EU appears this week to have taken the chance to show that it does not pander to tyrants and that it has learnt its lessons of history.

Carpe diem Europa, it’s now or never.

John Vassallo

John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.