[BBC] "It must be a policy of the United States," President Harry Truman announced, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."
It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. At its heart was the idea that helping to defend democracy abroad was vital to the United States' national interests.
There followed two major US initiatives: the Marshall Plan, a massive package of assistance to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe, and the creation of Nato in 1949, which was designed to defend democracies from a Soviet Union that had now extended its control over the eastern part of Europe.
It is easy to see this as the moment that leadership of the western world passed from Britain to the United States. More accurately it is the moment that revealed that it already had.
The United States, traditionally isolationist and safely sheltered by two vast oceans, had emerged from World War Two as the leader of the free world. As America projected its power around the globe, it spent the post-war decades remaking much of the world in its own image.
Yet the fundamental assumptions on which the United States has based its geostrategic ambitions now look set to change.
Donald Trump is the first US President since World War Two to challenge the role that his country set for itself many decades ago. And he is doing this in such a way that, to many, the old world order appears to be over - and the new world order has yet to take shape.
A CHALLENGE TO THE TRUMAN LEGACY
President Trump's critique of the post-1945 international order dates back decades. Nearly 40 years ago he took out full-page advertisements in three US newspapers to criticise the United States' commitment to the defence of the world's democracies.
"For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States," he wrote in 1987. "Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?
"The world is laughing at America's politicians as we protect ships we don't own, carrying oil we don't need, destined for allies who won't help."
It's a position he has repeated since his second inauguration.
And the fury felt by some in his administration for what they perceive as European reliance on the United States was apparently shown in the leaked messages about air strikes on Houthis in Yemen that emerged this week.
Trump's own position appears to go beyond criticising those he says are taking advantage of the United State's generosity. At the start of his second presidency, he seemed to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Russia that Ukraine would not be granted Nato membership and that it should not expect to get back the territory it has lost to Russia.
Many saw this as giving away two major bargaining chips before talks had even started. He apparently asked Russia for nothing in return.
The United States' foreign policy is now driven, in part at least, by the imperatives of its culture wars. The security of Europe has become entangled in the battle between two polarised and mutually antagonistic visions of what the United States stands for.
Some think the division is about more than Trump's particular views and that Europe can not just sit tight waiting for his term in office to end.
"The US is becoming divorced from European values," argues Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
I would argue, rather, that it is Europe and Britain that have abandoned European (and English) values, and not merely turned their backs on America but repeatedly given us the cut direct — with mockery appended.
"That's difficult [for Europeans] to swallow because it means that it's structural, cultural and potentially long-term. "
"I think the current trajectory of the US will outlast Trump, as a person. I think Trumpism will outlast his presidency."
NATO ARTICLE 5 'IS ON LIFE SUPPORT'
The Trump White House has said it will no longer be the primary guarantor of European security, and that European nations should be responsible for their own defence and pay for it.
"If [Nato countries] don't pay, I'm not going to defend them. No, I'm not going to defend them," the president said earlier this month.
For almost 80 years, the cornerstone of European security has been embedded in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member state of the alliance is an attack on all.
In Downing Street last month, just before his visit to the White House, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told me during an interview that he was satisfied that the United States remained the leading member of Nato and that Trump personally remained committed to Article 5.
Others are less sure.
Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary in the last Conservative government, told me earlier this month: "I think Article 5 is on life support.
"If Europe, including the United Kingdom, doesn't step up to the plate, invest a lot on defence and take it seriously, it's potentially the end of the Nato that we know and it'll be the end of Article 5.
Precisely.
"Right now, I wouldn't bet my house that Article 5 would be able to be triggered in the event of a Russian attack… I certainly wouldn't take for granted that the United States would ride to the rescue."
If you are not for yourselves, who should be?
According to polling by the French company Institut Elabe, nearly three quarters of French people now think that the United States is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavourable views of the United States as well.
And yet Trump is by no means the first US president to tell Europe to get its defence spending in order. In 2016 Barack Obama urged Nato allies to increase theirs, saying: "Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence."
Nor was President Obama the first Democratic president to say so. The malfeasance and mockery — and promises that soon they’ll start to fulfill long-signed treaty commitments — are practically ancient.
HAS A 'FRAGMENTATION OF THE WEST' BEGUN?
All of this is great news for Putin. "The entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes," he said last year. "Europe is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into the chaos of challenges such as migration, and losing international agency and cultural identity."
In early March, three days after Volodymyr Zelensky's disastrous meeting with Trump and Vance in the White House, a Kremlin spokesman declared "the fragmentation of the West has begun".
'WE FORGOT THE LESSONS OF OUR HISTORY'
Of history, period. And mocked those who remember.
One of the great challenges Europe, in particular, faces from here is the question of how to arm itself adequately. Eighty years of reliance on the might of the United States has left many European democracies exposed.
Britain, for example, has cut military spending by nearly 70% since the height of the Cold War. (At the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, Europe allowed itself a peace dividend and began a decades-long process of reducing defence spending.)
"We had a big budget [during the Cold War] and we took a peace dividend," says Wallace. "Now, you could argue that that was warranted.
"The problem is we went from a peace dividend to corporate raiding. [Defence] just became the go-to department to take money from. And that is where we just forgot the lessons of our history."
The prime minister told parliament last month that Britain would increase defence spending from 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027. But is that enough?
"It isn't enough just to stand still," argues Wallace. "It wouldn't be enough to fix the things we need to make ourselves more deployable, and to plug the gaps if the Americans left."
Then there is the wider question of military recruitment. "The West is in freefall in its military recruiting, it's not just Britain," argues Wallace.
"At the moment, young people aren't joining the military. And that's a problem."
Y’all not only mock America, but you mock your own militaries. Why would your young people put their lives on the line for those who abuse them?
But Germany's new Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said Europe must make itself independent of the United States. And "Europeanising" NATO will require the build up of an indigenous European military-industrial complex capable of delivering capabilities that currently only the United States has.
Others share the view that Europe must become more self reliant militarily - but some are concerned that not all of Europe is on board with this.
"Where we are at the moment is that the East Europeans by and large, don't need to get the memo," says Ian Bond, deputy director, Centre for European Reform. "The further west you go, the more problematic it becomes until you get to Spain and Italy."
Masters of Seduction shows the way!
Condensed from the book Masters of Seduction
(Plus Vital New Facts)
MASTERS OF SEDUCTION
Beguiling Americans Into Slavery and Self-destruction
#2
'Cornerstone of European security'? Really now. More like the cornerstone of the Euro welfare state. They haven't yet begun to pay their own keep in the slightest.
US out of NATO, now as in get an 'effin wiggle on boys. While we're about it they can take the UN with them.
Today he served as the Senior President (the Alterspräsident) at the inaugural meeting of the twenty-first Bundestag — a role awarded to the parliamentary representative with the greatest seniority.
Since the nineteenth century, the Senior President was simply the oldest member of parliament, but in 2017 the cartel parties of Germany changed the rules, awarding the Senior Presidency instead to whomever has the most parliamentary experience. They did this to prevent the office of Senior President from accruing to anyone from Alternative fur Deutschland.
According to the traditional, pre-2017 rules, the 84 year-old AfD representative Alexander Gauland would have acted as Senior President today. The reforms have happily spared us that profoundly undemocratic fate and granted us the eminently democratic Senior President Gysi instead. We should all be very grateful and also relieved, because the Senior President gets to chair the Bundestag until the election of a proper President, and he also gets to give a speech. You can only imagine how a cryptofascist like the elderly ex-CDU politician Gauland might use these prerogatives to abolish democracy and establish the Fourth Reich all within the space of a few hours. This is literally how democracies die.
[News with Views] RFK, Jr.’s cousin, John F. Kennedy, Jr. called out Biden as a "traitor" in 1994 in a letter found among the FBI’s Washington DC, field office. John-John’s plane went down in 1999. This was the most revealing part of the recent "reveal", to me anyway. Bar none.
If you’ll remember (or, if you’ve read of it) the slain President John F. Kennedy’s son’s plane "came down", in the Martha’s vineyard area in 1999, killing the President’s son, wife and her sister. The official cause? "Spatial disorientation" from flying at night, or so said the NTSB, which even then apparently didn’t need DEI to be a Deep State tool. The press of the day hustled to say that John., Jr. was an amateur pilot, etc., etc.
Rumors had been circling that the young man, "John John", was thinking of running for the Senate in 2000. The world’s memory of him, saluting his father’s casket as the horse-drawn caisson bore the slain President through the streets of DC to his final resting place, made a powerful spring-board to election.
After John-John’s death, Hillary Clinton was elected to that same Senate seat in NY. Remember when she suddenly moved there? Lots of us still do.
Just as Oswald was murdered before he could talk, so has killing anyone who gets in the way of the Globalists become a deadly pattern. Even Oswald’s killer was immediately taken out. There have been many more. I’m sure. Hillary’s list will always haunt me.
Now, it becomes easier to understand the strange handling of the supposed "lone gunman" in Butler, PA who was shot and left to rot on a rooftop before his body was hauled off. Somehow the attending officials left things as vague as possible (social media accounts, foreign connections, appearances in Black Rock commercials, guns owned and their sources, parents hiding/protected from involvement, etc., etc.). Then, the subject of an attempted assassination of a former and possibly future President, was just dropped.
The deadly pattern was to have continued, of course, with the murder of Donald Trump on July 14, 2024, but God interfered. I will believe that always.
In August, 2024, RFK, Jr., our current Secretary of Health and Human Services, son of JFK’s brother, Bobby, surprised many when he joined in support of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2024 election. Kennedys had been Democrats from the get-go; none had ever strayed to Republican support! The Kennedy clan squawked loudly.
RFK. Jr., I believe, did not need the recent reveal of the "unredacted" (THAT didn’t happen, even this week) reports on the death of his uncle to know the truth — that the Deep State protects their own and murders their way to power.
I believe that RFK, JR., may have carried this knowledge all his life. He was 45 yers old when his cousin’s plant came down in 1999. He may well have known John, Jr.’s thoughts about Joseph Robinette Biden, revealed in the latest document dump.
I believe that our Bobby, Jr., had Biden and the Deep State clearly defined.
When he saw the Butler assassination attempt, it struck too close to home.
In August, 2024, RFK,, Jr., suspended his own Presidential campaign and joined forces with Trump. RFK, Jr., wanted to do everything in his power to avenge the deaths of his father, uncle and cousin. He didn’t need the release of any documents. He grew up with what they said.
This is just what one Kat’s sniffing has assembled out of the dust of all that has gone down since 11/22/1963. We still trusted our government then. Mostly. We had a lot to learn and we STILL DO.
One thing we know for certain: The Deep State has NOT changed its deadly plans. They still want us to shut up and sit down. They still want us to "own nothing and be happy". Our Constitutional government gets in their way, and they will do anything and everything to win.
God bless RFK, Jr., God bless our President, God bless our nation and its people.
#1
There is no particular good reason to believe that the "assassination papers" are complete, accurate and/or unmolested by political motives since being covered up since 1963. Operatives of various sorts have had 62 years to mess with the record.
#4
A former longtime Department of Homeland Security official, described as a whistleblower who penned a book criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of terrorism, was found dead Friday morning in Amador County, authorities said. Philip Haney was identified as the man found dead adjacent to Highways 16 and 124 near the city of Plymouth. Haney, 66, was found on the ground with a single gunshot wound, according to two news releases from the Amador County Sheriff’s Office.
[Breitbart] During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Greg Kelly Reports,” President Donald Trump stated that his tariffs will “probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be very tough on people.”
Trump began by saying he doesn’t want “too many exceptions” to the tariffs.
He added, “I know some people are saying, oh, do you think it’s too much? Well, they’ve been doing this to us for many years, whether it’s China or India or Brazil or so many other places. And all we’re going to do, it’s reciprocal, we’re just going to be reciprocal. In fact, I’ll probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be very tough on people.”
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
