By Basil Fadipe
SOMETHING is wrong when it is wrong. it is not wrong only when it adversely affects us or those dear to us. It is wrong when it is wrong even when it may seem we have nothing to lose by its wrongness. Injustice anywhere, we are cautioned by Martin Luther king, is injustice everywhere.
If there is to be a lesson for Europeans from the recent Greenland kerfuffle, no matter the ultimate outcome, it is that Trump cannot be wrong only when his policies seek to harm or embarrass Europe or its allies.
It is wrong when it is wrong when the victims of Washington’s poor judgement may not even be remotely connected to Europe.
National or international laws are about exclusion of arbitrariness anywhere as the kingpin to the supremacy of law. The impulse of big powers to want to ride roughshod on the fundamental principles of the tyranny of law, keen on replacing it with the tyranny of whims or ambitions aimed at assuaging narrow or sectorian appetites or dance into misdirected national zeitgeists cannot be allowed free reign.
Those who are blessed with a voice must speak against such not necessarily because it rubs against our interests but particularly and instructively so when it does not.
There will always be Trumps, some worse some better but the world must always huddle behind the primacy of law and against the enthronement of aristocratic or Machiavellian self-dealing. A crisis must never be wasted. The lesson in Davos is precisely that.
My reluctant sympathy to Europe
I have had my eyes trained on Trump for nearly 10 years now, ceaselessly knocking him for being who he is and not being who he should be; for American presidency or American tradition or even its constant claim to exceptionalism, Trump’s crusade against Obama, deliberately peddling citizenship lies on him and willy nilly continuing to do so inspite of the facts staring him and the American people in the face was my first unsavory hint about the odious recklessness intrinsic to his character, the flawedness to his persona.
Over the years, his conduct in and out of the White House has merely deepened, not lessened that view.
But for the seriousness of his character flaws, it is tempting to gloat at my having been right all along in my assessment of him even when pundits closer to the ring thought differently.
Europe tried hanging on to his coat tails content to keep baulking endlessly at Putin, happy to have Putin isolated as the geopolitical bete noir, little knowing the real enemy was a wolf dressed as sheep amidst them.
Putin detests a NATO advancing in his direction, ready to commit his resources to resisting it the easy way or if necessary the hard. Europe would not listen. Nor the man of the moment … Biden. Both sides of the pond ganged up to deride him till provoked into war.
Isn’t it now a laughable irony that NATO (alias Washington) is now advancing on NATO, Greenland its first pick on the menu. Europe is fuming. The shoe right on the other foot.
International law or world order cannot be whimsical. Or it ceases to be law.
It is this particular hypocrisy that finally broke the camel’s back where Putin’s tolerance was concerned. Europe is having a taste of its own cuisine and very unhappy at its unpalatability.
Meanwhile, Trump has done little or nothing to exit the personality frame inside which have always had him ever since he popped up on the political stage. A very unpresidential entity. My sympathy to Europeans.
Fadipe. Esq.,Washington Post, wrote via: fadipeb@cwdom.dm
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