THE POPE IS DEAD, ANTI-CHRIST IS ALIVE AND KICKING

Everything—literally everything, perhaps even the fate of our world—hinges on the necessity to assert the parallel between Ukraine and Gaza.

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(Picture: The General Zapped an Angel, Karel Thole, Oils, 1970)

The United States could end its efforts to resolve the Ukrainian conflict within days if there are no signs of progress, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned on Friday, April 18: “If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on.”¹ Rubio’s warning comes after the U.S. and Ukraine moved closer to clinching an agreement on a minerals deal on Thursday night. The cruel irony lies in the conjunction of these two facts. Trump justified the minerals deal by demanding that Ukraine repay the U.S. for the enormous amount of arms it received to defend itself against Russian aggression—so the deal was clear: we gave you arms, and if you want our help to continue, you have to pay for it. Now, the U.S. has indicated that it may “move on” and leave Ukraine’s survival in the hands of Europe, but it still wants to be fully paid by a war-torn and devastated country. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Trump’s “neutrality” in the Russia-Ukraine war is a façade: it clearly privileges Russia. While Russia continues its brutal bombardment of Ukrainian cities, Trump recently attacked Zelensky in much harsher terms than he used to express his displeasure with Russia’s continued aggression. The paradox is that Trump effectively ended the old Cold War, no longer treating Europe as an ally in fighting the Communist bloc, but he replaced it with something much worse. There is no space for global solidarity in his worldview.

It is against this background that we should interpret J.D. Vance’s recent charm offensive directed at Europe. When he professes his admiration for Europe and insists that Europe should become stronger and more autonomous, there is no contradiction between this positive stance and his scathing remarks about the lack of freedom in Europe a couple of months ago in Munich. What we Europeans are getting are two sides of the same coin: we should display more strength and autonomy, gain more military power—in order to defend Ukraine ourselves and allow the U.S. to focus on its main enemy, China, and to “freely” pursue other interests that fit the U.S. vision of a new world order.

In a recent interview for UnHerd,² J.D. Vance said that De Gaulle “loved the United States of America, but recognized what I certainly recognize, that it’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States”: “I don’t think that Europe being more independent is bad for the United States—it’s good for the United States.” However, the two examples mentioned by Vance are very problematic. “Just going back through history, I think—frankly—the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal.” In 1956, U.S. President Eisenhower forced London and Paris to back down from a military intervention to regain control of the Suez Canal from Egypt—this control was key to the countries’ economic and colonial interests. In short, Vance regrets that London and Paris didn’t ruthlessly pursue their colonial interests, coordinated with Israel, which at the same time occupied all of Sinai. Even the other example evoked by Vance is problematic, although it sounds more reasonable and potentially progressive: Vance said that “a lot of European nations were right” to have misgivings about the Iraq war and argued, with scant evidence, that Europe could have stopped it if it “had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up.” Behind this advice is, of course, the idea of keeping Saddam as an ally of the West against Iran.