The Death Of Atlanticism As America Goes Full Rogue 🪶 The White House Ambush And The New Axis Of Evil – Trump, Putin And A.N. Other

By AM Tuesday, March 4, 2025

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Barry Gilheany ✍ What appeared to be a pre-planned ambush of President Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the Oval Office by Donald Trump, the Orange Haired Ogre, and his even more loathsome sidekick – the Bearded Slug, VP - JD Vance last Friday has delivered the mortal blow to the 80 year old transatlantic military and security alliance between the United States, Canada (before its becomes the 51st state!) and the democracies of Europe (including it must be said the dubious pseudo-democracies of Hungary and Turkey). 

Despite the obsequious statecraft of President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer in trying to placate the mercurial occupant of the White House to keep him onside for any Ukrainian peace deal optimistically to be underwritten by an American security guarantee, it was the bullying id of Trump which won out over all the adults in the room. For not only did Zelenskyy refuse the role President Benes of Czechoslovakia was forced to play in 1938 at the behest of Hitler and Neville Chamberlain, Trump’s Art of the Grudge meant that no agreement was ever going to materialise. Zelenskyy’s refusal to play ball over Trump’s phone call to him in 2019 requesting that he supply incriminating material on the business activities of Hunter Biden in return for US military assistance in order to weaponise it against his 2020 Presidential Election opponent, Hunter’s father Joseph and which led to Trump’s first impeachment put Zelenskyy into the box marked “Unforgiven”. But not even that predictor of Trumpian pathology could have prepared experienced diplomats and commentators, never mind, the casual television viewer for the cruel evisceration of a war time leader who stayed with his family and compatriots, risking his life, after the unprovoked invasion of his country by a draft dodger and his partner in diplomatic crime.

Nauseating though was Trump’s previous description of Zelenskyy as a dictator and Vance’s criticism of Europe’s “enemy within” at the Munich Security Conference while remaining silent on Russian aggression, the ritual humiliation of him; the talking over and shouting him down; the preposterous accusations of “lack of gratitude” for US aid as if he was an ungrateful child who does not know what is good for him; the suggestions that Ukraine was responsible for its own invasion; the rubbing in of Ukraine’s perilous position (“you do not hold the cards”); the accusations of “disrespect” towards the White House as if Ukraine was a vassal state of the US Empire not a proud and independent nation and so obliged to genuflect to the Emperor from a man who has trashed every single institution and convention of decency and respect since entering politics was a spectacle that stunned even seasoned Trump watchers and which is creating such revulsion that may be serving as a lightning rod for an anti-Trump movement in the US if the reception that Vance received from hundreds of protestors at his family vacation ski resort in Vermont shouting “Go ski in Russia” is indicative of anything.[1] 

In an inversion of the political and ideological allegiances generated by the Atlantic Alliance, Ukraine is becoming a mobilising agent; a signifier; a nodal point for the besieged ideals of liberal democracy potentially uniting most sections of left-liberal opinion from pro-EU Rejoin sentiment in Britain to Ukraine Solidarity campaigns in trade union and civil society movements with traditional conservative defence perspectives from figures like John Bolton, former US National Security adviser. Could we be seeing the remnants of the anti-Vietnam War 1968 generation; of the 1980s generation that opposed Ronald Reagan’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras and homicidal regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala and even the anti-Iraq War and War on Terror generation of the 2000s aligning the remnants of the foreign and defence policy establishments of the Cold War era that they so bitterly opposed?! 

In the opposing camp are the resurgent Alt-Right parties and movements (and in the cases of Hungary and Slovakia leaderships) for whom Trump is the lodestar and Russia a keen backer in Europe and the remnants of Marxist Leninist or hard left anti-imperialist movements such as the UK Stop the War Coalition whose reflexive anti-Americanism leads to their support for Russian revanchism but for whom America’s retreat into isolationism and likely abandonment of NATO must be creating more than a few degrees of discombobulation and cognitive dissonance.

But for now, Ukraine, Europe and the junior partner in the trans-Atlantic relationship, the UK, have just a blow torch message of what exactly America First means. As I write this, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is holding a summit of European leaders aimed at securing *lasting and enforced” peace in Ukraine in the hope that some form of peace proposal on Ukraine can be put to the Trump administration, enabling a ceasefire and extraction of minerals in Ukraine in return for US support for a peacekeeping or peace making force there. Trump is resisting calls to fully commit US military support to guarantee and Ukrainian peace deal but has suggested the closer economic ties and an agreement on rare earth metals access between Kyiv and Washington would, in effect, function as a security backstop.[2]

But what would this sort of deal look like? Early versions of the mineral deal between the US and Russia which has gone through multiple drafts. Early versions demanded that Kyiv give Washington $500bn (£400bn), with the proceeds paid into a 100% US-controlled fund. Supposedly managed Washington and Kyiv, Ukraine would contribute 50% of future proceeds from state-owned mineral resources “to promote the safety, security and prosperity of Ukraine” For Trump, this represents “payback” for previous American military assistance and is “very fair". For others, it represents a mafia shakedown not least because the proposal, if realised, would allow the US side to sign a similar agreement with Russia and start digging without a cessation of hostilities. So such an agreement does not encourage Russia to cease its aggression nor does it contain security guarantees for Ukraine.[3] But the crucial question, which for all his insistence on the centrality of the US support for the coalition of the willing to support whatever peace deal emerges that he has assembled Keir Starmer and his foreign and defence policy team must have gamed, what happens if Trump does not provide the security guarantees that he is banking on.

In the UN General Assembly, the United States voted with Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Israel against a motion condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine. Although this was a symbolic vote with no legal effect, there is a much greater symbolism at play. In plain sight and in plain documentation, the United States voted alongside four serial violators of UN resolutions, one of whom is a self-proclaimed enemy of “US imperialism” and part of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”; another a remnant of Soviet era totalitarianism; another a serial aggressor and the other, though still a functioning democracy, risks becoming a pariah state like the other members of that quadruple due to its far right populist nationalist government and vengeful and domicidal response to the appalling pogrom committed on its territory on 7th October 2023. 

This vote along with the open support expressed by JD Vance for far-right opponents of liberal democracy and allies of Russia on the continent of Europe such as Victor Orban’s illiberal pseudo-democracy in Hungary and the AfD party in Germany upends all the assumptions of the now vanished post-1945 international order. The United States headed by Agent Krasnor aka Donald J Trump in subservient alliance to Russia, is an ally and sponsor to the nationalist, anti-EU and now anti-Atlanticist European far right; a network of future Quislings which to misquote Samuel Johnson proves that “nationalism (not patriotism) is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. What other rogue regimes or tyrannical would-be superpowers in a BRICS orbit girded by crypto currency will Trumpian America or, who knows, a Republic of Gilead or reborn Confederacy rump of a former United States of America broken by civil war? Whether Europe stands alone or not against Putin, defence spending needs to be ramped up to at least 3% of GDP in each European country. But rather than slashing overseas aid budgets, time to rework Keynesianism for the 21st century and drain the financial swamps of Londonograd.

References

[1] Daily Mail.

[2] The Observer, 2 March 2025 p.14

[3] Audrey Kurkov Humiliated at the White House. What do we do now? Guardian Journal. 1st March 2025 p.1

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.