The international order, which was based on rights and rules, no longer exists, and we have entered an era that is instead governed by the naked exercise of power. Germany must adapt and reenter the realm of hard power—undertaking large-scale military rearmament, overhauling its armed forces and intelligence services, and sustaining support for Ukraine for as long as necessary.
This is a chilling article. I’m hearing the Königgrätzer Marsch as I’m reading.
It’s not wrong, though. Trump shattered the illusion/ laid bare the lie to the rest of the collective West, of the US being any kind of virtuous entity.
Even when we were bombing Iraqi kids daily in to assuage GWB’s ego, or drone striking Afghan farmers so Obama could claim we were ‘winning’ the GWOT, most Americans and Europeans really bought into this idea of the moral superiority of the Neoliberal World Order (the aforementioned “international order”), when it was only ever a veneer maintained to generate consent by citizens for the US and European governments to do as they liked.
Now Europe is beginning to feel the same fear of US aggression that the Global South has been feeling since the start of the Cold War, and lots of them are going to react accordingly. Hilariously, despite the author acknowledging that many Europeans see the US as a threat, the authors still seems to think this reaction is purely about confronting other threats, probably because they don’t want to admit we’re the baddies.
I can only hope this “coincidental” upswing of ethno-nationalism is an extinction burst as the old neo-liberal world order implodes upon itself. The European right wants to go back to the old ways, but I’m not sure the scale of production of state-of-the-art drone technology is in “Western” hands anymore or could possibly be. Hopefully sober voices prevail so we as a species on this planet don’t have to learn the hard way who is the best at mass killing nowadays.
This is a chilling article. I’m hearing the Königgrätzer Marsch as I’m reading.
It’s not wrong, though. Trump shattered the illusion/ laid bare the lie to the rest of the collective West, of the US being any kind of virtuous entity.
Even when we were bombing Iraqi kids daily in to assuage GWB’s ego, or drone striking Afghan farmers so Obama could claim we were ‘winning’ the GWOT, most Americans and Europeans really bought into this idea of the moral superiority of the Neoliberal World Order (the aforementioned “international order”), when it was only ever a veneer maintained to generate consent by citizens for the US and European governments to do as they liked.
Now Europe is beginning to feel the same fear of US aggression that the Global South has been feeling since the start of the Cold War, and lots of them are going to react accordingly. Hilariously, despite the author acknowledging that many Europeans see the US as a threat, the authors still seems to think this reaction is purely about confronting other threats, probably because they don’t want to admit we’re the baddies.
I can only hope this “coincidental” upswing of ethno-nationalism is an extinction burst as the old neo-liberal world order implodes upon itself. The European right wants to go back to the old ways, but I’m not sure the scale of production of state-of-the-art drone technology is in “Western” hands anymore or could possibly be. Hopefully sober voices prevail so we as a species on this planet don’t have to learn the hard way who is the best at mass killing nowadays.