The feeling one gets watching the reports on these UN meetings and speeches is that instead of nations facing up to the trump administration and taking meaningful action, the same pattern continues of tiptoeing around trump with meaningless statements of “concept” and “intent” that achieve previous little. So called leaders can speak to their hearts content but on the ground when it comes to consequential issues particularly about geopolitical challenges/threats no ones comes close to matching the US footprint in addressing these issues. So one might say that what used to be an alliance of intent/values (imperfect as it was) is now an alliance of necessity/weakness despite the devastating impact of such challenges and with a clever workaround; lets “mitigate” rather than “eliminate”. Make no mistake, donald trump is not the issue here, the issue is coming up with sophisticated yet lame answers (or more accurately “workarounds/excuses”) to real challenges he poses (not national or regional but indeed global); in other words its all about devastatingly poor leadership. Particular concern for me is Europe as a strategically positioned region yet most vulnerable to geopolitical challenges economically, political/ideological headwinds and of course in terms of regional/national security yet the conventional wisdom continues to be on expansion rather than the re-alignment of values/interests in pursuit of relevance – let alone dreaming of dominance – in these difficult times. It may be time for Europe to go back to basics in terms of form/consistency of the union rather than getting ahead of itself in matters related to expansion and other other distractions with a particular focus on this phrase I just thought of (small is agile/large is fragile); that should be the approach/philosophy. Well, thats my opinion.
Enjoy….