GRUMPY RANT: NATO Summit. A humiliated continent. And Ukraine pays the price.

We Europeans must end our pathetic dependency on a country that – pretty much every second time – chooses total nitwits to lead their country. The answers lie in Bruxelles not Washington. (Wo)man up!

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

So, this morning the sun was shining, the birds were tweeting, my coffee tasted deliciously - and then I opened my laptop and saw the headline in the Kyiv Post.

I am reminded, at 05.40 in the morning, that we are dependent on a man that 95% of European politicians - if asked in private - would describe as a fool, a liar, a misogynist and things we cannot print here, a man they would prefer never to have to spend five minutes with. It made me want to go back to bed. But first I decided to check the rest of the news. I should not have done that. Up popped the Donald’s own post revealing the sycophantic messages he has been receiving from NATO’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte.

Later today, a former Danish government minister described to me Rutte’s love messages as “humiliating arse-licking drool”. That seems accurate and fair.

Donald Trump is loud, megalomanic, uncouth and uncultured, uneducated about the rest of the world. In short, a buffoon.

Of course(!), we Europeans know that not all Americans are like the Donald. That there are also cute, pleasant Americans - like the people in ‘Friends’ or intelligent ones - like the people in ‘Modern Family’. But the thing is that those ones very rarely make it to the top of U.S. politics and even rarer - or to quote George W Bush ‘even seldomer’ - get to run U.S. foreign policy and thus world security. Let’s face it, by 2028 (if Trump lives that long), the U.S. would have had total zeros as presidents for 16 out of the last 28 years.

As Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political philosopher, wrote: “America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” In other words, welcome to Trumpistan 2025.

In his travel writing and in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens described Americans as vulgar, braggarts, hypocrites, lacking refinement in social interactions, and with a preoccupation with material wealth over ethical considerations. Does it sound like anybody we know? (It is not known whether Dickens actually met Donald Trump😉) Although Dickens, like most Europeans, including myself, also liked ‘the energy’ of Americans.

Between 1942 and 1945, two-and-a-half million Americans served in Europe. 10% of them never came home. The massive American influx gave rise to the complaint: “oversexed, overpaid, overfed, and over here.” The U.S. soldiers were much better paid, and they had - in the eyes of the locals - lavish spending habits, their more outgoing and assertive nature irritated many, and was a strong contrast to the more reserved and poorer Brits. In France, for the same reasons, by 1946, the left-wing had started the campaign ‘US, go home.’

And this adds a vital factor in our stereotype of the ‘loud, annoying American’ - he was also richer than we Europeans. And so was his country. At least in the post-war years. And willing to pay for our security. Because most of Europe was broke after the war. And devastated.

When I was a kid during the Cold War, the NATO debates were pretty much always dominated by the word ‘burden sharing’. That much Mark Rutte is right about; all U.S. Presidents up till today have tried and failed to get us Europeans to pay for our own security.

It has been one of the few logical, intelligent things that Donald Trump has said - when he warned - using the words of President Eisenhower (1952-60) - that he would not allow Europeans “making a sucker out of Uncle Sam.” Well, Dwight, we actually got away with it for about 80 years.

But as a result, we Europeans have not developed - or rather, we have not kept up - our own militaries and defense production. So if Trump ‘goes home’ tomorrow - as he so often is threatening to do - Europe’s security and, more immediately and importantly, Ukraine’s, will suffer greatly, all experts agree.

That is why we are begging the buffoon to stay (and pay), and why the NATO Secretary General is sucking up to somebody like Donald Trump, demeaning himself for the sake of European security.

Let’s remind ourselves that this is a U.S. President who did not know the difference between the Baltics and the Balkans, who was surprised when told that Finland is an independent country, and who had to have article 5 of NATO - sort of the whole fcuking point, you might say - explained to him. Whose staff has basically stopped briefing him on foreign affairs, because he cannot concentrate long enough to read the briefings.

(These and many more funny = frightening ‘episodes’ can be found in the magnificent book ‘The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021’, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.)

Are we Europeans finally waking up? Putin’s invasion of Ukraine woke up some. But to be honest, Trump’s threat of a U.S. retreat from Europe has probably done more. Not least when he charmingly spluttered that he would, in fact, “encourage” Russia to attack NATO members who did not share their part of the cost of Europe’s defense.

The ones who ‘get it’ are the ones who directly suffered from Soviet occupation – the Balts and the Poles. People like Radek Sikorski and Kaja Kallas. The ones who don’t get it - at all - are the Mediterranean countries, content to enjoy their siestas in the shade of the U.S. security umbrella.

The bigger European NATO countries – the UK, France and Germany are - at first glance, at least - finally finding their feet, standing up to the Kremlin. Although in reality….? Take, for example, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer who ends every one of his oh-so-pro-Ukrainian speeches by beating his chest about his willingness to participate in a peace-keeping operation in post-war Ukraine. Which sounds great and brave - until Sir Keir adds that, of course, that can only happen under “the U.S. security umbrella”, thus rendering all his bravura utterly inconsequential, seeing as Trump has made it painfully clear that such an umbrella is not forthcoming.

Then there is the charming Frenchman, who - as the French always have done in NATO - goes back and forth. The only slight light – potentially – may be the new German leader. But let’s see.

For now, we are forced to beg the buffoon, suck up to him.

As Polish President Donald Tusk says:

“500 million Europeans beg 300 million Americans to protect us from 140 million Russians who, for three years, have been unable to handle 40 million Ukrainians.”