Appalled at the treatment of President Zelensky by President Trump and Vice President Vance in the Oval Office yesterday, I cannot but think that their lack of expertise in diplomacy and politics was glaring; it was depressing and, above all, extremely worrying.
Why am I entitled to give my views: because, nowadays, the world is a small place; no country is remote; the international is local, the local international.
The fact is America has voted a hotelier to manage their country; where then education, foreign affairs, health, defence, arts and culture, welfare. His is a profit and loss mentality. His empathy with and understanding of ordinary individuals appears close to zero; how else can you account for his Gaza vision; to empty a region of the people whose home it is to create a Riviera for those wealthy like himself.
A man who has little grasp of the world as lived and experienced by the billions. The pettiness he showed in his interaction with Zelensky, who is engaged in a war in which death and destruction are all around, was mind-blowing. The issue of Zelensky’s clothing, which was appropriate for one leading his people in an existential struggle, was pitched out of ignorance; “he’s not speaking loudly” ‒ embarrassing, childish. He demonstrated the same lack of empathy for wartime heroism in his relations with John McCain; his reaction to those buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery ‒ ”losers”.
A Canny English Conservative, Margaret Thatcher, once observed, “The United States is a friend, but it is also a nation that sometimes forgets that its friends have their own interests and their own pride.” And a quotation from British historian, Paul Johnson: “The United States is a nation of immense power and generosity, but it is also a nation that sometimes confuses its own interests with the interests of the world.”
These quotations highlight important issues: those plainly stated and the questions and who, now, are Americas friends and is America still generous. These last two have only become doubtful with the arrival of Trump and Vance.
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