American power and influence now ebb in Europe

The predictable, but fearful, consequences of the Trump betrayal

Tom Hoefling

Donald Trump has for decades misrepresented NATO and our relationship to it.

Two world wars sprang from a militarized Europe in the last century, wars that cost tens of millions of lives and left many nations in ruins.

There were moments of doubt during both those terrible wars about whether freedom could ever be recovered and defended in the West. Part of the reason for those doubts had to do in large part with the reluctance of the United States to get involved. The result hung in the balance repeatedly until the New World did indeed finally come to the rescue of the Old.

And then, for a generation, another set of despots, this time communists instead of fascists and Nazis, ruled with an iron fist in the East, keeping hundreds of millions of victims under their vicious, godless bootheels, while brandishing the nuclear sword at a war-weary world.

At any time, we could have fully rearmed western Europe as a response to the Soviet threat, but instead we chose to shoulder the heaviest financial and military part of the burden of fighting the cold war ourselves. Why did we do that? Because our rightful fear of the Russians did not completely outweigh our reasonable fears of a rearmed, remilitarized, dominant Europe. Memories of the carnage perpetrated across the European continent, twice in the space of a generation, were still very fresh.

Divine Providence, American and NATO vigilance which culminated in the wise policies which were acted upon by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the steady, courageous resistance of the people of eastern Europe, and just plain old internal rot, finally brought down the Evil Empire headquartered in the Kremlin. Millions of people, from Berlin to Vladivostok, were finally able to breath the clean air of freedom.

But only briefly, until the ascension of Vladimir Putin in Russia, and the revival of what is essentially the same old wicked dictatorship in the Kremlin, albeit in a slightly different form.

Ex-KBG officer Putin hated America and NATO, hated the fact that the Soviet Empire had crumbled, and sought to reconquer, or at least subjugate, republics which had managed to extricate themselves from the embrace of the voracious Bear.

I won't go into all the details of the violence Putin has perpetrated on his neighbors since he was handed power more than a quarter century ago. His brutal invasions of Chechnya, Georgia, and especially Ukraine, are well-known to all.

In 1987, Donald Trump visited the Soviet Union, a trip almost certainly arranged and made possible by the KGB. Upon his return to the U.S., Trump spent $130,000 on full-page newspaper ads in New York critiquing our defense of the West before going on CNN and attacking the very existence of NATO.

He has very consistently groveled to the Russians ever since, most notably at the feet of Vladimir Putin, after his rise to power.

Much of the financing for Trump business enterprises for years came from Russia. ("We have all the funding we need out of Russia." - Eric Trump, 2014)

There is overwhelming evidence that Putin helped Trump win the presidency in 2016. (https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/russian-interference-in-2016-u-s-elections and https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl)

During his first term, Trump acted like a whipped puppy dog in Putin's presence when they met in Helsinki. Trump publicly claimed to believe Putin rather than our intelligence services concerning Kremlin meddling in our elections.

Trump 1.0 also talked about leaving NATO, which has been the bulwark of the West for three quarters of a century. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html)

And now, here comes Trump 2.0. In less than a month back in office, he and his manifestly unqualified and unprepared toadies - men like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Vice-President J.D. Vance - have done everything except collapse the western alliance. They've been in Europe this week basically surrendering every important point to Putin. (https://apnews.com/article/nato-ukraine-us-hegseth-trump-russia-a3ca747b102cae6737436596444a32d0)

This at a moment when Russia teeters on the verge of internal ruin. Their economy lies waste. Sanctions, weak as they are, have taken a hard bite. A large proportion of their best equipment lies shredded and rusting on Ukrainian battlefields. And nearly a million Russian men are either dead, wounded, or missing.

But the words and actions of Donald Trump and his minions in recent weeks, culminating in this week's Munich Security conference, have revived Russian hopes. The champagne corks have popped in the Kremlin as Trump has maneuvered to help Putin. At this hour, Trump even seems to be signaling that he intends to remove sanctions on Russia, which in my view would be treasonous to our country and to freedom.

You just can't get around the fact that Trump has been busy betraying our friends and allies in Ukraine. You can't get around the fact that Trump has put Putin puppets in the highest defense and intelligence positions in our government. Tulsi Gabbard? Kash Patel? Pete Hegseth? J.D. Vance? Seriously?

Trump has spent the last three weeks threatening our friends and allies with a trade war, or even, in some cases, with invasion, with nary a cross word for our adversaries.

But, all of this is the background for my main point:

Europe is now uniting, as their leaders come to the clear understanding that with Trump in power the United States can no longer be trusted as an ally or as a bulwark against the Russian threat. With Trump in the White House America can no longer be trusted to be the linchpin of NATO, if NATO still exists by the time Trump's historic betrayal comes to its full fruition.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is now the de facto leader of the free world, yesterday in Munich called for the formation of a European army.

He has made it quite clear that he is not going to allow Trump to bargain away the freedom and sovereignty of the Ukrainian people to the war criminals in the Kremlin.

Zelensky, yesterday: “I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never."

And he has been clear that he will not sign over the mineral resources of his country to Donald Trump, as Trump has demanded.

And so, no matter how events play out in the East, American power and influence now ebb, while European power rises.

More than ever before, we must trust in God, and in God alone, because we certainly can no longer trust our government to do what is right and good on the world stage. And the consequences of this Trump-created chaos are going to be dire, for the whole world. Of that you can be most sure.