It’s been over a week since my last post, and I’ve been trying to make sense of the recent meeting between President Trump, his deputy JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Zelenskyj. The aftermath of this meeting has been quite shocking, and I’ve been searching for logical explanations or patterns. But the pace of appalling news is breathtaking. There is one message after another, and it’s hard to catch my breath or process everything. The recent activities of the new US government have turned the world upside down, and everything we thought we knew now has question marks. Is that a new concept of the land of unlimited possibilities?
But no matter how hard I try, I can’t find any clear logic or meaning behind it. If there is, it’s pretty depressing. My gut feeling is that the long-term consequences of this event will be significant, but my mind is still trying to make sense of it all.
The whole situation is incredibly confusing and overwhelming. That new world is no longer the world in which we grew up, and this is no longer the world in which we wanted to grow old.
Recognizing larger patterns helps find meaning.
Previous alliances are crumbling, and new power constellations are emerging. In recent years, the geopolitical lines of conflict seemed relatively clear – for example, between the USA and the EU on the one hand and China and Russia on the other – and recent developments point to a more unpredictable US foreign policy.
I could somehow logically handle this new fundamental structure of future disputes. However, the US president’s trade and customs policy has more than erratic features. His rhetorical announcement and withdrawal made the international financial markets stagger into a time of great uncertainty. The inflation risk rose, threats of trade wars determined the headlines, and he destroyed huge fortunes within a day or a few hours.
President Trump claims the Panama Canal will come under American control again. In his State of the Nation speech, he threatened to take Greenland in one way or another. And (this madness is reaching its peak) he repeatedly declared that Canada would become the 51st State.
Is that the new meaning of the land of unlimited possibilities?
We will discuss some of these developments here in the coming days.