Issue:
March 2025
Donald Trump has unleashed a diplomatic whirlwind on Ukraine, Canada and Europe. Japan could be next.
Feeling safe and comfortable? If the answer is yes, you are less likely to be in North America or Europe, where the havoc unleashed by Donald Trump’s January inauguration has rent the bonds of NATO and shattered the illusion of shared liberal values. If you’re in Japan, Taiwan or South Korea it might be wise now to batten down the hatches, before Typhoon Trump uproots the gingko and palm trees.
The new world disorder gate-crashed February 24.
On that day in 2022, Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with tanks, troops and air strikes. Assassination squads with orders to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky and his family roamed the streets of Kyiv. Vladimir Putin expected to take control of Ukraine within 10 days. Instead, thanks to the courage and determination of its people, and what Zelensky believed to be iron-clad commitments from American and European allies, the tide was turned. Over the next three years, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and millions of civilians displaced from their homes, but 80 percent of their country is free today from Russian occupiers.
With Russian drones and missiles still raining down on their towns and cities, Ukrainians might have expected Trump to at least send someone to attend the third anniversary ceremony held in Kyiv. None came.
The snub was ordered by Trump. Abruptly ending Putin’s diplomatic isolation, he had started Ukraine peace talks with the Kremlin that excluded Ukraine or indeed any European participation. He ruled out Ukraine joining NATO, as well as sending any U.S. troops to police a ceasefire and deter further Russian aggression.
Echoing Kremlin lies, Trump called Zelensky a “dictator” and claimed Ukraine started the war. His fit of pique was mainly triggered by Zelensky’s refusal to sign over half of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the United States. Trump claimed the deal was worth “$500 billion,” a sum more than twice Ukraine’s pre-war GDP, and almost as much, in today’s money, as the punitive reparations imposed on Germany after World War I. (Trump calls it is “payback” for Zelensky, “a modestly successful comedian,” having “talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion” to support Ukraine in the war. In fact, the U.S. has provided only $183 billion in aid, less than the $204.1 billion Ukraine has received from Europe).
Two NATO leaders who did join Zelensky in Kyiv for the war anniversary could fully sympathise with his testy parrying of Trump.
In January, Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, endured a “horrendous” telephone call with Trump after rejecting his offer to purchase Greenland, an autonomous part of the kingdom of Denmark. Frederiksen was so shaken by Trump’s aggressive and confrontational behaviour that she made a whistle-stop tour of European capitals to be sure of backing. It was Greenland’s vast and untapped mineral deposits that piqued Trump’s interest in the territory. The idea came from Ronald S. Lauder, a wealthy friend of Trump and heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire. Lauder was also among those whispering into Trump’s ear about Ukraine’s mineral stash.
Absurd as it may sound, Trump has also bragged about acquiring U.S. neighbour and fellow NATO member Canada. “I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state,” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was overheard telling business leaders on February 7. Coupled with Trump’s tariffs on imports from Canada, the imperialistic braggadocio sparked a nationalistic backlash in Canada, including boycotts of U.S. products.
While memorial flowers were being laid in Kyiv, a diplomatic dance was underway in the White House in Washington, with Emmanuel Macron of France trying to flatter and charm Trump into being reasonable. Trump insisted he still wanted Ukraine to pay back the “$350 billion”. Macron gently pointed out that it was Kyiv that deserved compensation from Russia for the immense damage and suffering they had caused. Asked flat out by a reporter whether he considered Putin to be a dictator, Trump refused to give a straight answer.
Meanwhile in New York, an event unprecedented in the 80-year history of the United Nations was unfolding. The United States declined to support European allies in condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and calling for immediate withdrawal of Russian forces and accountability for Russian war crimes. Instead, the Trump administration joined a group of countries that included Russia, North Korea, Belarus and Nicaragua in voting against the resolution.
Germany’s establishment has gained bitter experience of a breakdown in trust with the United States. During Germany’s recent election campaign, both Elon Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance were vocal in support of the far-right Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party that has links to neo-Nazis.
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Friedrich Merz, the man expected to be Germany’s next chancellor, told a post-election press conference. It was clear, he added, that the Trump administration is “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
The sudden loss of American military protection has jolted Europe out of a post-Cold War complacency. Countries like the UK are being put on a war footing to meet the menace from Putin’s Russia.
Inevitably, questions are being asked as to why Trump has switched sides to embrace Putin. Is Trump naturally drawn towards autocrats, or does Putin, the former KGB lieutenant colonel, have some special hold over him? Trump’s 1977 marriage to Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech-American model and businesswoman, brought him to the attention of the former Czechoslovak StB intelligence service. During the 1980s, the StB and KGB allegedly cultivated Trump as an “asset”. Christopher Steele, who once ran the Russia desk at MI6, assembled a dossier about Trump in 2016 that included salacious claims of sex parties in St. Petersburg and a tape of perverted acts with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel. Trump strongly rejects the allegations.
A kinder interpretation is that Trump is not Putin’s most useful idiot, or a corrupted stooge, but clever practitioner of a Kissinger-esque Realpolitik, intended to drive a wedge between Russia and China by wooing Moscow, while simultaneously redeploying firepower from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, helping to contain China and deterring a move against Taiwan.
One obvious flaw in this cunning strategy is that Putin is an inveterate liar, who has broken nearly every agreement he has ever made and has little incentive to burn bridges with China, after achieving his goals of weakening Ukraine and dividing NATO.
Another concern for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea is mounting evidence that Trump too cannot be trusted. It’s not just the way he has pulled the rug from under Ukraine and America’s NATO allies. It’s his admiration for China and its leader Xi Jinping. During last year’s presidential election campaign, he declared “I want China to do great. I love China.” Of Xi, whom Trump invited to the January inauguration, Trump said: “He’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” Of Xi’s indefinite rule: “He’s now president for life. And look, he was able to do that. I think that’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give it a shot someday.” As for Taiwan, Trump has sounded a sourer note, accusing the island democracy of stealing America’s microchip production, and last year telling Bloomberg “Taiwan should pay us for defence” as “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”
Then there’s Elon Musk, now permanently at Trump’s side after forking out $277 million to back his presidential campaign. The world’s richest man has been put in charge of deciding the fate of hundreds of thousands of U.S. federal government employees, an appointment without any official status, or Congressional scrutiny.
Musk’s wealth is largely tied to Tesla stock, and Tesla’s biggest factory - in size and productivity, and accounting for most of the company’s global deliveries and profit - is in China. The Shanghai factory was built with $1.4 billion in soft loans from state-owned banks, and between 2019 and 2013, the Shanghai government taxed Tesla at a much-reduced rate of 15%. Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, the Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, has condemned Musk for “chasing Chinese dollars” and having “shamefully supplicated China’s communist rulers”. He has a point. In 2023, Musk was quoted as telling the Chinese foreign minister that “the interests of the United States and China are intertwined like conjoined twins.” That same year, he compared Taiwan to Hawaii, arguing that it is “an integral part of China” and “the U.S. Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force.” In a 2022 interview with the Financial Times, Musk delighted Beijing by saying Taiwan should become a special administrative region zone of China, like Hong Kong.
At his meeting with Macron, Trump voiced the same fear as his predecessor Joe Biden, that the Ukraine conflict risked “World War Three.” If the risk of escalation is so great with Russia, whose war economy is said to be only a year away from full-blown crisis, how credible is American protection of Taiwan from attack by powerful China? Once Trump has semiconductor fabs set up in Texas and Arizona, might he give up on defending Japan, and leave Taiwan to the mercies of Beijing?
In a world of transactional, America-first diplomacy, it’s everyone for himself. Without an American nuclear umbrella to protect Germany, Merz has suggested hosting French fighter planes carrying nuclear bombs of the force de frappe. Japan and South Korea each have the capability to go nuclear and will likely be dusting off their own missile plans. In Europe and East Asia, countries will emphasise developing their own defence industries at the expense of buying from America. European countries are drawing together, and Canada must be scouting potential partners to replace the fraying cord with the United States. As ever, China will be eager to fill the cratering pax Americana. Japan and its neighbours will have sensed these new dangers and opportunities.
An X detox for the FCCJ?
Under the ownership of Elon Musk, the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has hosted content of an increasingly toxic nature.
In January, I proposed to the Board that the FCCJ terminate its account with X. Among the reasons I cited were Musk’s use of X to campaign for the extreme right throughout Europe, in particular his endorsement of the AfD in Germany, and decisions by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and Le Monde to quit X.
The EFJ said it could “no longer ethically participate in a social network that its owner has transformed into a machine of disinformation and propaganda.” Maja Sever, the EFJ president, added “The social media site X has become the preferred vector for conspiracy theories, racism, far-right ideas and misogynistic rhetoric. X is a platform that no longer serves the public interest at all, but the particular ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies.”
On January 20, Le Monde ran a lengthy editorial by its director Jérôme Fenoglio. He wrote: “The billionaire has transformed [X] into an extension of his political cause, a form of libertarianism increasingly close to the far right. He has turned it into an instrument of the pressure he wants to put on his competitors or on Europe's social-democrat governments ... the intensification of Musk's activism, the formalization of his position within the Trump power apparatus and the increasing toxicity of the exchanges led us to come to the conclusion that the usefulness of our presence weighs less than the many suffered side-effects.”
The FCCJ has since joined Bluesky, an alternative platform, while retaining the account at X. Dan Sloan, FCCJ president, says the club “will continue to consider whether X deserves to host the FCCJ”. The FCCJ General Membership Meeting, on March 27, will give members the opportunity to discuss the issue.
Peter McGill was president of the FCCJ from 1990 to 1991.
