The Danger From The West
We knew about the danger coming from the East but didn’t see it coming from the West.
In Europe, we’ve known for quite a while that Russia poses a clear and present danger to our territory from the East. We suspected we’d have to ramp up our military spending to handle that danger when Donald J. Trump took office as President of the United States, but little did we know that Trump himself would also threaten European sovereignty from the West, directly and indirectly.
We’ve all heard Trump’s threats to take Greenland from Denmark, either through economic or even military pressure. There are other islands that are more or less a part of European kingdoms that are even closer to the US mainland. With the obtuse renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, Trump has shown an interest in an area that is mighty close to French, Dutch, and British overseas territories. With his provocative claim on Panama Trump is reaching further south than islands like Martinique, Aruba, and the Cayman Islands.
But, not to get ahead of the situation – things are going fast enough as they are – there are more pressing matters that warrant European nervousness. As Trump passingly suggested that Ukraine “may be Russian someday”, alarm bells went off all over Europe. If that were to come true, the aggressive Russian army would be less than a day’s drive from Paris, a ten-hour drive from Berlin, and a mere five-hour drive from Warsaw. The thought alone is almost too much to bear. That’s perhaps the reason the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote such a heartfelt plea to unite America and Europe to face the many common threats from the autocratic axis consisting of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. His plea falls on deaf ears in and around the White House.
If anything, the current White House is driving an even bigger wedge between the two historical allies on both sides of the Atlantic. It already started when Vice-President Vance rattled some cages at the A.I. summit in Paris, telling Europe that the US will dominate A.I., and that Europeans should get out of the way with their hindering rules. So much for friends amongst each other.
This jab turned out to be only a modest prelude to the damning speech he spewed at the Munich Security Conference. The Vice-President of the US lectured European politicians – he specifically singled out the Germans – about how they shouldn’t shun the extreme right, and about how we Europeans should embrace disinformation. Apparently like Americans already do.
Even more urgent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security. That’s a step or two beyond pushing European NATO allies for more defense spending – it’s the blunt message that Europeans will have to deal with the belligerent Russian war machine all by themselves.
As it turns out these last few days, Trump and his team really don’t care what Europeans think. Trump wants a deal with Putin to end the war in Ukraine, and he’ll do anything to get a great deal. A great deal for him, that is. Even trying to force Zelensky to simply hand over half of Ukraine’s rare earth metals in exchange for the military help that has already been spent. Mind you, most of that spending went right back into American coffers, since American money spent on weaponry and ammunition is always spent on American weaponry and American ammunition. And a great deal for Putin, as it seems, since Trump already gave away any leverage he possibly had before any negotiations took place. According to Trump and his team, Ukraine should give up the parts of their country that the Russians are occupying, and Ukraine should also give up ever becoming part of NATO.
Trump perhaps sees a great deal for Putin as a great deal for himself as well, somehow. It wouldn’t be the first time powerful nations secretly signed agreements to carve up another country for their own benefit. Examples are plenty – take, for instance, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement to secretly divide the Ottoman Empire between the British and the French, or the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that included a secret protocol to divide several European countries between Germany and Russia.
An even more poignant example of an agreement made between powerful nations – out in the open at that time – is the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Germany, Britain, France, and Italy, decided that Czechoslovakia had to surrender their Sudetenland to Hitler. This decision was made specifically without Czechoslovakia at the table. All this to appease Hitler, and prevent war.
Poignant, because now, in 2025, Munich is again the scene of betrayal of a country not at the table when decisions are made. It was in Munich that the Americans announced that they would talk with the Russians – and only the Russians – about ending the war in Ukraine. Europeans surely weren’t invited to Riyadh, and Ukraine only when the first talks were already done. All that is left now is for the rest of the world to find out what the horrible outcome of this secret pact will entail.
If the Munich Agreement of 1938 has shown us anything, it is that it did not appease Hitler, and it did not prevent war. Nor will the Riyadh Agreement of 2025 appease Putin, nor will it prevent further war.
In his latest press conference, President Trump gave in even more to Putin by parroting his ludicrous claims that it was Ukraine that started the Russian invasion somehow, saying, “You should’ve never started it.” Putin and his comrades must have been rolling on the floor with laughter when they heard this. This victim-blaming at its worst is only going to make it so much easier for Russia to start new invasions – for instance, making a move on the Baltics. And what to think of China, with its eye on Taiwan?
In a new post on his own social media, Trump even called Zelensky a “dictator”, and that he “better move fast” or he won’t have a country left. Trump is all but handing Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter.
And yet, with all the direct and indirect threats to European safety, I still think the biggest threat lies in the decay of what America used to be. It’s a bit what Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski said in his letter, “In a moment of crisis, other nations expected America to come up with a solution.” That’s what I grew up with as well, during the eighties and nineties. In movies and in real life, we could always count on America to do the right thing. Or, at least, that was the impression. That feeling already changed with Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and has been slowly declining ever since.
With the first election of Trump, we in Europe thought Americans must have had a momentary lapse of sanity. But now, with his reelection, we know better. Looking at these first few weeks of madness – happening mostly inside the US, despite the sometimes crazy rhetoric outwards – we must know better. If Trump allows a non-elected billionaire outsider to rampage through the halls of the US government the way Elon Musk does, with his little rogue DOGE gang, and the president himself signs one outrageous decree after another, we cannot deny anymore that no heartfelt plea will restore what is being torn down so swiftly and resolutely.
Democracy is swiftly dying on the West side of the Atlantic, and we in Europe must consider the dire consequences. We will have to face the Russian juggernaut on our own, and – when the time comes – we might even have to face another, even bigger, behemoth from the West.
Patrick Heller,
February 19, 2025.