As the dust settles after the White House incident:

It seems to me that the attempt by Vance and Trump to pressure Zelenskyy into submission and accept a truce or peace deal that grants all of Putin's demands not only "backfired". There is a sense that regardless how or if the relationships may be salvaged, Europeans have begun to acknowledge that the times of the transatlantic NATO alliance are effectively over. Sure, Trump may stick to Article 5 for a while. Or he may not. But to the Europeans it makes no sense to trust him or the U.S. any further. Because what sense does a military alliance make when you can only rely on it when a president of the Democratic party is in the White House? So Trump already killed that, to the great pleasure of Putin.

But that also means that there is no guarantee that in case of an attack on a NATO state in Europe Trump will think that Article 5 applies. And with such a withdrawal of the nuclear deterrence provided hitherto by the U.S., it's far more reasonable for Putin to start an attack on the Baltic states, on Moldova, or even Poland already this summer rather than wait three or five years until the European states have refilled their depleted arsenals.

Anyway, even though I think the chances for such a major war over Europe this summer is about 80% to 90%, we may get lucky. Or other things may happen instead, like Trump pressuring SWIFT in Belgium to reinstate Russia's access to this global financial exchange system. Or that he revokes all secondary sanctions and China starts providing Russia with military equipment (although that would take a while longer because the few railroad lines avaliable are already clogged by North Korean trash so that China would need a year or so to build a few more lines). In both cases, Russia could outlive the sanctions, the military shortages, and the war in Ukraine is then won by Russia.

Again, even if that happens, something else is already in the making: the forging of a new European identity. One that arises from opposition to Russia (which is already excluded from Europe) and by shaking-off this ingrained sense of existing solely by the mercy of the U.S. (as warrantor of security).

It is a European identity that stems from the surge in importance of the Eastern European countries, from Poland, the Baltic states, the South-Eastern European countries. An identity that insists on values like liberal democracy, rule of law, separation of powers, etc. Weaker in its mutual association than a federal state or even a confederacy, but still a union of nations sharing the same outlook. And that is new: It is a European identiy not fed by the past (of WW 2 and how to avoid another such catastrophe) but by a common interest of what to look for in the future.

Parallel to (or shortly after) the inception of this new European identity, a second major project may regain steam: the resurgence of the Union of the Mediterranean. Not as a cultural or infrastructure project – that's how German chancellor Angela Merkel watered it down – but as it was originally conceived by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak: as a political union of all littoral states of the Mediterranean Sea, a kind of "southern EU", strongly aligned with the northern one economically and politically. It would, e.g., include such antagonistic countries like Israel and Türkiye, effectively binding all countries and nations of a region that share a common history of 3.000 years.

Thus, should we in Europe survive 2025 and should the war in Ukraine at least not end to the benefit of Russia, then these are the two exciting developments that we may find already in the making.

That outlook gives me immense hope and helps me survive this current doom and gloom.

#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten