Trump: Agent of global chaos

Paolo Kernahan

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is taking his circus on a world tour; some are loving it, but more aren’t. The saying used to be, “What a week it’s been in US politics!” Those parameters have been shrunk considerably.

Americans are now processing incalculable amounts of “information” and “revelations” on an hourly basis from the White House, from a man who has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of dominating news cycles. The news cycle is now almost exclusively the spin cycle. The press briefings and news releases are theatrical, nearly comical gospels according to Trump.

Those, however, are eclipsed by the tweet-style headlines, many of which are from DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), which is (not) headed by Elon Musk. There’s also Trump’s stream of consciousness on his platform, Truth Social.

This slurry is unleashed in such volumes it’s impossible to fact-check it all. This is the goal: sustain a flurry of declarations, alleged discoveries, false assertions and grandiose announcements – sow them across fertile disinformation fields and watch the MAGA crowd take it from there.

That wouldn’t be a problem if Americans were the only ones grappling with this "new world order."

However, this Trump administration – the episode where he’s not really in charge – appears keen on sprinkling a fair bit of that chaos all around the world. And thus dawns the bizarre era of US insular expansionism: America first…everywhere.

When Trump first mooted the concept of a Gulf of America, there was laughter, because people thought, "This is just his way – saying stupid things to kidnap public attention"

Well, Google included the "Gulf of America" in brackets below "Gulf of Mexico| on maps of the area. The Associated Press has been banned indefinitely from White House briefings for refusing to acknowledge this new appellation. As time wore on, and painfully so, it would appear that this name change would be one of the more benign acts of this administration.

Vice President Vance was busy creating a gulf of his own – one between Europe and the US. Vance upbraided European leaders for what he decried as attacks on free speech. He offered succour to the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), a far-right party that’s a nod to Germany’s Nazi past – meeting with its leader and snubbing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Of course, Vance’s talk about free speech was all part of an elaborate disinformation scheme.

The AfD’s Alice Weidel was on prime-time television with other politicians when Vance was in Europe. The party holds several seats in the German parliament. So much for claims of free-speech suppression.

The US VP’s entreaties to the AfD were music to the ears of other far-right movements across Europe, where migration has spawned a wave of populism eerily reminiscent of 1930s Europe.

Vance kept mentioning US “allies,” but having broken with Europe and antagonising Canada, Mexico and many others, it’s hard to imagine who’s left…apart from Israel and other odd supplicant nations.

His fractious remarks were just the opener, though. The US has done a hard right on Ukraine. Zelenskyy is out in the cold, and Putin has been brought in. The US says Russia will keep the territory it has captured, and Ukraine will not be granted accession to NATO, thus ending the negotiations before they’ve begun.

Trump told reporters he had a lengthy, productive conversation with Putin. That would explain his parroting of Kremlin talking-points, declaring Zelenskyy a dictator because he won’t call elections – in wartime, no less.

Trump also suggested the Ukrainian leader is deeply unpopular among his people. “If he (Zelenskyy) isn’t careful, he isn’t going to have a country any more.”

Trump described as a dictator a man who was elected in 2019 with 73 per cent of the vote. He said this after speaking to Putin, who has been in power in one form or another since 2000.

The US President is looking for a “quick peace” in Ukraine at any cost to those involved. Simple solutions to complex problems are typically the product of one-dimensional thought.

At the very least, the US appears to have rattled a somnambulist Europe. That part of the world is now aware that the nation that drove the creation of NATO can no longer be relied upon for its big-stick diplomacy.

There are lessons for the rest of the world – the “new world order” as envisioned by this US administration should be rejoined with a strong repudiation of Western hegemony.

Rather than looking inward, it’s time to start looking to neighbours and other aligned nations to forge our own futures.