FATE NO LONGER SMILES ON US, EUROPEANS

A spectre is haunting the world.

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The second line of the Ukrainian anthem - "fate/luck still smiles on us, fellow Ukrainians" - sadly no longer holds, and, much worse, we should extend this retreat of luck to Europe itself: fate/luck no longer smiles on us, fellow Europeans. The situation is now so serious that the same old points should be repeated again and again – maybe these points will find more echo today when the crisis has broken out openly. To anyone who follows our media, it is more than obvious how Trump's new administration threw our time out of joint in inner as well as external politics – but why should Europe precisely be the one chosen to set the time straight? The reason is not just that it seems to be the big loser of Trump's new global politics.

Some of us still remember the famous beginning of The Communist Manifesto: "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies..." Could we not use the same words to characterize the status of "Europe" in today's public perception? A spectre is haunting the world - the spectre of Eurocentrism. All the powers of old Europe and of the new world order have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Farage and Putin, AfD and Orbán, pro-immigrant anti-racists and protectors of traditional European values, Latin American Leftists and Arab conservatives, West Bank Zionists and Chinese 'patriotic' Communists..."

There is a profound similarity between Trump's attacks on the triad of environmentalism/PC/LGBT+ and the conflict between Russia and Europe. That is to say, one should ask a simple question: which civilization today fully encapsulates the triad attacked by Trump? Only one: European civilization as the latest form of Enlightenment. In an interview back on July 15, 2018, just after attending a stormy meeting with EU leaders, Trump mentioned the European Union as the first in the line of "foes" of the US, ahead of Russia and China - what Trump tries to do is to dissolve European unity, and his efforts find an echo in more and more European states (Hungary, Germany, Austria, UK...). During the Munich Security Conference, the first act of US vice-president JD Vance was to launch a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration, and running in fear from voters' true beliefs. He openly questioned whether current European values warranted defense by the US.

"Europe" is today a terrain of ideological and political struggle; many ideas of Europe compete and are in a kind of superposition: the conservative notion of Europe as a space of Christian sovereign states; the technocratic vision of Europe as an economic unity; etc. So which Europe bothers Trump as well as the European populists? It is the Europe of transnational unity, the Europe vaguely aware that, in order to cope with the challenges of our moment, we should move beyond the constraints of nation-states; the Europe which also desperately strives to somehow remain faithful to the old Enlightenment motto of solidarity with victims, the Europe aware of the fact that humanity is today One, that we are all in the same boat (or, as we say, on the same Spaceship Earth), so that others' misery is also our problem.