by Vincenzo Petrone
ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The Chronicles of the Davos Forum will remain engraved in the annals of the “rich and famous” but for the wrong reasons. The President of the United States had departed for the Swiss snow threatening fire and flames to annex Greenland but then announced already a few hours before landing, that no, all in all, parachutes would not send them. A few hours, according to Trump, the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte would guarantee him a “forever” agreement that will guarantee the United States over the centuries what they already have since 1951, under a Treaty. The U.S. can use Greenland to carry out air, naval and land defence activities. And they did it with the 16 bases that were there during the Cold War, reduced today to one by their choice. Two facts were enough to cool the President’s warfare. The firm opposition of France, Germany and Great Britain that were not allowed to be intimidated.Submitted in this firmness by Canada, whose Prime Minister gave Davos a truly masterful intervention, which became viral for its dialectical force and for the fact that in it there is the intelligent trace of an alliance strategy between the Western orphaned powers of America.
Equally effective, if not more, in provoking this eternal Taco, or Trump’s retreat, was the reaction of the strongly negative Wall Street indices on Wednesdays, only for the tension created by Trump with Europeans. In those same hours, from Congress at last 3 Republican Senators have publicly and loudly voiced, disallowed by Trump on the relationship with European allies. The bad mood, or rather Trump’s resentment towards Europe seemed even more evident in the statements ,subito after Davos and during the flight back to Mar to Lake, the most natural place for this phase of American history. Still under shock for the firmness of European refusal on Greenland and its Board of Peace for Gaza, Trump argued in a television interview that “America never asked anything about NATO allies and didn’t need it.” But the cherry on the cake came when he came to argue that in Afghanistan, for example, “the allies were far behind the combat front.” The little familiarity of the President with the data and with the truth must have betrayed him once again. First of all, because after the attack on the Twin Towers, the United States has invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Only country ever did. And because of the solidarity between NATO allies, Europeans and Canadians had hundreds of military operations in Afghanistan. Far from the front line, we couldn’t be.
Never, however, as a President of the United States who, as a young man, has twice enslaved the military service in Vietnam, in 1968 because he was at the University and in 1972 for a pathology never revealed that arzillo as it is we would have suspected that he had. Italy lost 53 soldiers in Afghanistan 31 of them in hostile operations, and returned home 723 wounded. In that war, 50 thousand of our soldiers from the three weapons and the Carabinieri have alternated in 20 years. Britain has lost 457 soldiers. In spite of their enormousness, for the moment, President Trump’s statements remain without the answer they deserve, in the capitals of the Alliance including Rome. The State Ragion leaves no choice simply because we are in the initial phase of the European rearmament and we are not for now far away able to defend ourselves without the United States. Which does not take away that on Greenland within two weeks, Trump demolished what was still standing in the Atlantic Allied building. The Governments of our capitals have only been able to take note that the statements, behaviors, and evil that Trump has put on display last at Davos, make the fracture between Europe and the United States more and more bloody. The rest is unfortunately diplomatic courtesy.
Yet, the tangle of interconnections created in 77 years of strategic, operational and technological integration between the NATO Forces is so tight and pervasive that separating European defense from the American one is a very delicate surgical operation that will last many years, perhaps a decade. And we will have to do this as soon as possible, unfortunately on the perseverance of the concrete threat constituted by the post-Soviet revanscism of Putin Russia. Naval, air and missile platforms, logistics, ammunition standards, intelligence, telecommunications. Separate yourself without being able to announce it and without losing the patient parala challenge of the next decades. Just think, for example, the F35 bomber fighter, which is now the backbone of allied air defense. This plane is actually an integral part of NATO command, control, intelligence, offensive and defensive operations and interoperability between allied units. Each time it takes off or lands it enters and exits from integrated control and control systems that exceed national borders. Out of a NATO logic, the F 35 loses most of its effectiveness. In the first days of a conflict from which the United States remained on the side, this formidable plane could probably be blocked on the ground by American sovereign decision.
And this despite the statements never very convient, of European politicians and military about the existence of a “switch” or “backdoor” that the United States can activate if they decide to in fact make the F35 of allied countries operational. Indeed, there would be no surprise if the European military commanders suspended the purchases of this plane and if the European Parliaments deepened the subject. So as to build its autonomy from the American military force, European countries will have to work as a surgeon who separates two Siamese brothers and must ensure that the intervention does not result in the death of one or both. At the same time, Europeans and Canada, Trump’s America leaves no choice. We can only follow the strategic line indicated in Davos by Mark Carney, that of a coalition of middle powers that join to defend themselves and to stem together, the anarchy that America is introducing in international relations. Because it’s anarchy. Trump’s claims on Greenland are particularly serious because they give legitimacy to Putin’s primary thesis to justify aggression against Ukraine. And above all, they can approach over time the realization of the Chinese threat to use the military force to take Taiwan and to egemonize the South China Sea.
For the first time in Europe since the end of World War II, Putin claimed to change borders with weapons and Trump threatened to use force to annex Greenland. And he did it almost exactly for the same reasons as Putin, i.e. for his own security and control needs of the countries on the borders.
The common element to Trump, Putin and Xi Jin Ping is a revisionism by Great Powers regarding the global balance created and maintained by America in the post-war period. In his primary interest. It is difficult for Beijing to escape the fracture between Europe and the United States and the uncertainty Trump has entered in the Aukus, the strategic agreement with Australia and the supply program of nuclear submarines in Canberra. And then, the roaring threats, which were then blank, in support of Iranian demonstrators that he himself incited to fight against theocracy in Iran, announcing that “help is on the day”.
The almost immediate front on tariffs to China as soon as Beijing has firmly branded the weapon of rare lands. And the idiosyncracy of Trump and his America for any institution that binds her to the rest of the West. And the obvious Trump complex for those he perceives as strong men, Putin, Xi, the Erdogans of this world.
Finally, the solar absence of intellectual processing, academic weighting and long-term strategic reflection in the extemporaneous statements of the President, in his threats and in his precipitous marches back. These are the foundations of Trump’s anarchy. There is no need to be catastrophic to fear that it is interpreted as a green light for Russian or Chinese dangerous imprudences. The first year of Donald J.Trump’s presidency will go to history not for making America great again, but for creating the assumptions and alibis for other people’s adventures that inevitably the United States will have to fight. And they will have to do so in their vital interest not to defend European negotiators who do not want to give it Greenland. An essential pillar of global American dominance was the extraordinary network of alliances that America has created and maintained in Europe, in the Far East and in Oceania. A multiplier of irreplaceable influence by a global power. Neither Russia nor China have it and they see with great interest the burned land that Trump is doing in the West and Oceania. It is hoped that the Head of Government of our Italy, one of the most loyal historical allies of the United States, will say frankly to President Trump that not even Italy can accompany him in the demolition of the multilateral institutions that are the pillars of the sky, the cathedrals of the international order. And that the United Nations is something. The Board of Peace is another.
* Ambassador a.r.
(ITALPRESS).
