FOREGONE CONCLUSION (Othello,III.3.426)

The worst years might still end with a requiem, or some form of closure.  Not 2017 which, in the United states, ended in the garbage bin. There is no redeeming quality to be found in these past months. They have been booby-trapped in a  camouflage of lies, noise and, more dangerously, a vile determination disguised under the mantle of chaos. The total parody which has overcome normality might look like a clown's fair but it is in fact an assault against all accepted civilized norms.  The Bannon/Miller duo from hell are an affront to aesthetics and sophisticated norms. They are in fact as brutal as their historical '30s counterparts, willing to punch and dismantle for the sake of a vindictive nihilist agenda. They found in the lazy, inflated, Fox News junky president the perfect vehicle for their "rampage". 

Since most of the world is (still) in some form or another linked to the US, these international relationships have all come into an accelerated vortex.  Most Europeans shrieked from this American chalice, coming so fast after Brexit. Authoritarians everywhere saw a brother-in-arms in the White House,  dislodging everything America stood for in the past. China could hardly believe its luck when Trump quit the TPP and left the keys to Asia under the doormat. Putin counts his blessings. Canada and Mexico are trying to overcome what will be the unhappy ending of the NAFTA threesome. Africa is being returned to the "huts" and Australia is being pushed into China's hands. After less than one year, Trump is the king without clothes, happy to rule over his 35% (now)  deplorables.

Europeans have not come up with a viable alternative for this pathological American leadership.  Neither Germany (for roots in its constitution), nor France's Macron (victim of  Europeans' envy) is able to assume a European alternative that is not mortgaged. President Macron is certainly the most innovative, unusual statesman in the EU. He is likewise admired and resented. He has been called Jupiterian but is probably more Napoleonic (without the wars) in his ambition and reformist zeal, and for his impatience to get things done. Merkel is a more cautious politician and the workings of this indispensable duo will be more difficult than in the past. Age counts.

Nevertheless, a new generational European model will be more attractive than the current Atlantic mariage de raison. It would be self-defeating to turn one's back to America but it would be equally absurd to follow the Trump disaster for reasons of former solidarity.  Everything opposes this American administration to Europe, be it in Asia, the Middle East, Africa or....Europe. The EU needs to speak loud since its philosophical interests do no longer coincide with the short-sighted "America First" of this self-centered, obese America. The EU is certainly not a strategic equal but it can become again an appealing counter-weight in a new world order in the making, wherein other partners are going to play a major role and might opt for distance from the former great power.

The main difficulty will be that in the Trump administration, uneducated impatience has too often won the battle over diplomatic temperament. Many problems were made worse by resorting to brutal, unilateral, poorly improvised measures. Few dispute that Jerusalem is already Israel's capital. This does not preclude a formula wherein the Palestinians can realize their own claims under the umbrella of a shared international guarantee. By recognizing Jerusalem now without a collateral for the future, the tensions become only messier. The Iran deal is far from ideal and there is much to be worried about it. Nevertheless the buffer so created is working and the former personal relationships born in Vienna between the US and Iran  could as well have explored other disputes and human rights abuses, which under the current circumstances, might worsen further. Trump's tweets on Iran today show again the unwelcome outcome of a situation wherein the president finds himself with no real diplomatic alternative, reduced to his game of tweets like some brooding adolescent. Isolation leads too often to misguided appreciations. Revisiting the nuclear deal would split even more the US from its partners in the agreement and would further discourage North Korea from venturing into any arrangement with a volatile partner.The Olympic games might even give Pyongyang an ouverture which outclasses the US.  The list goes on, from trade to climate, from migration to aid, from gender equality to gender diversity, from NATO to the G7, from snubbing allies to karaoking autocrats, from mistaking a Hollywood set-like welcome for an embrace.

No, 2018 will not be a better year.  Probably Mexico will elect AndresManuel Lopez Obrador as its next president. Such a choice would put a clone of Maduro on the most important US southern border. The unrest in Iran comes at the worst possible time, when Trump might have to decide to certify the nuclear deal on life support . The EU will not take lightly the US sympathy for the crypto- fascist undertone which prevails in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Latvia, Croatia and Poland.  Besides, Trump's mendacity regarding NATO's burden-sharing is hard to swallow when one fully realizes that America is in Europe now less for reasons of former solidarity than for the need of a line of first defense (as is the case elsewhere, in Asia or Qatar). The fight against ISIS will be remembered as one of the more indiscriminate and inept. It is hard to celebrate the liberation of cities in Syria and Yemen reduced to rubble with civilians being killed or on the run to nowhere . At least the bombing of civilians in Dresden and the use of the atom bomb in Japan at the end of WWII were seen and felt as a tragedy !

The post WWII order is no longer and what is left needs repair before it becomes irrelevant. Unfortunately its main architect has left the construction site. The Security Council, the IMF, the World Bank need to change if they want to remain relevant. The new challenges, their reach, and their consequences need a direct involvement of  countries involved and ignored. Sometimes the talks in NYC's Security  Council recall more the former Trusteeship Council wherein countries were spoken "over" rather than "to".  Presidents G.W.Bush and Obama shared a common view regarding the new challenges--often in Africa--which figure again too frequently as a footnote in the agenda, wherein the "usual" marginalizes yet again the "urgency".

James Baldwin wrote in the mid sixties :" Domestically,we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and, internationally ,for many millions of people,  we are an unmitigated disaster." Yes, things will get worse before they become better...