NATO : IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END (TALLEYRAND)

The NATO meeting looks like some other Gunpowder plot with Trump in the role of Guy Fawkes. It makes Hitler's Munich moment look almost benign. It would be interesting to guess what the ugly American might have said to Prince Charles. After all, he has good tips regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

More seriously, this London "happy birthday party" is a disaster. It is especially a bad omen if this American season in hell might be prolonged by four more years of outrage and dismemberment. The spat between Presidents Trump and Macron has laid bare fundamental political differences, which can always be expected--be it in a minor tone--but it also revealed mutual loathing.

Yesterday's alliance is no longer.  If re-elected, Trump might well choose to leave it. The man is totally devoid of moral and philosophical fibre. As others before him dealt with ideas, he sits deep in the mortar of his cheap construction empire, indulging in his nouveau riche illusions of grandeur.

Unfortunately, the acceleration of the Western sunset benefits only Putin. The mystery of his hold over Trump remains unanswered. While the Russian is a sophisticated observer of the cyclones which affect balance of power and history, the American is a clueless psychopath. Hence his inability to strike a "normal" conversation which might navigate abstraction or ideas.  He needs triggers in order to engage. They are not hard to find for the ones who seek a quick response to their calculated and calibrated indulgence. 

European traditional partners are used to the former level  playing field and are not tempted to lower the mutually agreed standards of yesterday. The second Iraq war continues to be an existential and strategic mistake which is hard to forgive. The current piling up of transgressions and affronts only reopens old wounds and prejudices. Unfortunately this is not a Jane Austin novel.  There is nowhere in these United States a Darcy to be seen.  Accordingly, it will only get worse.

Trump and Putin might as well have their little Yalta. After all, the United Kingdom chose the role of an island over the responsibility of a player. On the continent President Macron might feel that intelligence can be a solitary hazard. I hope that the ones who fear the "four more years" prediction might be proven wrong, but the prevailing American Zeitgeist is one wherein short-term parochial egoism trumps every other uplifting ambition.

The new pharaonic NATO building in Brussels might as well consider the EU as its next tenant,  in case.   Keep it in mind.