Day 89
Disgusted.
Dirty.
Ashamed.
For an entire afternoon, most of us felt it. Still do now.
The mobster-like bullying and language:
Open trash talk and ganging up you’d expect from high schoolers.
Lies and disinformation:
The knowledge that Zelensky is showing up amid years of brutal war, and that Trump did all he could to avoid serving.
The “deal” itself—the US swooping in like a vulture, trying to swipe minerals as protection money. Expressly taking advantage of the vulnerability of a former ally. Here’s the NYT Bret Stephens’ take:
The wholly unqualified Vance talking down to Zelensky with such disdain—when the man wasn’t even fit to be a US Senator.
And do you know what Zelensky said that triggered the outbursts?
He told them that Putin had violated prior ceasefires. That’s what offended them! And it also happens to be 100% true.
A true disgrace.
Indeed, a day of infamy.
But the deeper shame is that the big picture is becoming more clear, as hard as it may be for Americans to believe or accept.
The grotesqueness of yesterday made it more clear than even the prior lunacy around Canada and Greenland and Panama: In the global battle between western democracies and rogue, corrupt and lawless autocracies, the US has switched sides.
Autocracies vs. Democracies
What are the sides?
As Anne Applebaum explains In Autocracy, Inc., and as I summarized once before, the leading autocracies in the world today work in concert with one another against a “common enemy.”
“That enemy is the democratic world, ‘the West,’ NATO, the European Union, internal democratic opponents, and the liberal ideas that inspire all of them. These include the notion that the law is neutral force, not subject to the whims of politics; that courts and judges should be independent; that political opposition is legitimate…[etc.] [T]he leaders of Autocracy, Inc. know that the language of transparency, accountability, justice and democracy will always appeal to some of their own citizens. To stay in power they must undermine those ideas, wherever they are found.”
But their battle goes beyond internal relations within nations. Ukraine is the starkest example: they are pursuing a “conscious plan to undermine the network of ideas, rules and treaties that had been built into international law since 1945, to destroy the European order created after 1989, and most important, to damage the influence and reputation of the United States and its democratic allies.”
A long-term and core part of the autocratic strategy is to undermine the “rules-based order” (respecting human rights, democracy,, boundaries, etc.) that has generally guided international relations and replace it with Russia’s and China’s desired order—one guided by nation’s “right to development” and unquestioned internal “sovereignty” that trumps universal values, human rights and the rule of law.
Within the world they are building, the loose alliance of autocratic-leaning nations “all agree to recognize one another’s ‘sovereignty,’ not to criticize one another’s autocratic behavior, and not to intervene in one another’s internal politics….If the old system was designed to inculcate the ‘rule of law,’ [the autocracies are promoting] ‘rule by law’—the belief that law is whatever the current autocrat or ruling leaders says it is…”
And amid this broader battle they have waged for years, Russia considers Ukraine the central front: “It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like.”
Trump Switching Sides
If Trump’s Canada and Greenland pipe dreams were a chaotic signal of his support for this global autocratic project, his and Vance’s antics yesterday—the words, the tone—were the far more direct proclamation. The demand for mineral rights (advancing our own “right to development” just as Putin would), the refusal to criticize Putin—either for his international aggression or his internal autocratic behavior—the willingness to reward Putin’s attack with new land, all come right out of the autocratic playbook.
And the fact that Vance was there with him made clear this wasn’t just Trump being his chaotic and imbecilic self—this was coordinated in advance. A staged escalation of tensions against the democratic government all Western allies have sided with, and yet another gift to the autocratic government that brutally attacked it.
So coordinated that later in the day, other Cabinet secretaries marched forward, also bowing down to Trump:
And then came the immediate threat to end support, because Zelensky didn’t genuflect amid the ambush:
Russia no doubt saw this for exactly what it was. They have a new ally in their battle against Western democracies.
And western/NATO allies did as well. The tweet below captures all the statements of support sent Ukraine’s way following today’s fiasco:
And of course, this comes only days after Trump declared the EU to be hostile to the interests of the United States—another embrace of the autocratic side against the world’s democracies.
Add it all up: the United States has affirmatively chosen to join the side attacking democracy—willing to ignore international law, attack allies as you would enemies, engage in aggressive behavior, rewrite history, demand resources and territory that don’t belong to us, all to pursue the same “right to development” and aggressive “sovereignty” that Russia, China and other nations have used to justify their most disturbing actions.
Applebaum concludes one chapter in Autocracy Inc. with the words: “A world in which autocracies work together to stay in power, work together to promote their system, and work together to damage democracies is not some distant dystopia. That world is the world we are living in right now.”
Folks, we aren’t just living in it now.
With Trump and Vance in charge, we are now one of those nations working with others “to damage democracies.”
Everyone else has figured it out.
Yesterday, a whole lot of Americans figured it out too.
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