Comment by Evgeny Dainov:
In the first days of the new year, we found ourselves in a new world. This is not Aldous Huxley's "brave new world" - in a sense, we have already experienced it in portions. The current new world is terribly old, dusty, provincial and stupid. This is the world of the 19th century, which ultimately produced two world wars.
The Dangerous "Donro Doctrine"
After Donald Trump abducted Nicolás Maduro from his bedroom with a brilliant military operation, the American president published the triumphant "The Western Hemisphere is Ours". And he explained that he was restoring the "Monroe Doctrine" from 1823. At that time, this doctrine tried to protect the 13 American states, poor and completely rural, from the encroachments of the giant European imperialist countries. In its genesis, the doctrine was defensive and fell away when the United States became a world power. Today, this doctrine, renamed "Donro" (?), is rather stupid, cowardly and dangerous.
For 80 years, the United States was not a regional, but a world power. It was the United States, through the network of treaties around the world, through the international institutions and laws created after the war, that was the power that maintained that world order that led to the longest period of peace and the fastest enrichment in human history. Today, the President of the United States announces that America is retreating to its vilayet. The Yankees are returning to their villages.
The new "spheres of influence"
It is obvious that on the world map that Trump carries in his head, the globe should be divided into several large pieces, controlled by the strongest in the respective regions. The Americas - for Trump, to do whatever he wants there, Asia - for Xi Jinping, Eurasia - for Vladimir Putin. From a world of civilizational order, in which the small are protected from the arbitrariness of the big, Trump proposes to move to the sad old world, in which the big crush the small.
This is exactly Putin's vision for the last 25 years. This is his model of a "multipolar world", in which there are no equal laws for all, and things happen the way the strong want them to. But that's not the problem with the "Donro" doctrine, although playing along with Putin is shameful in itself. The problem is that the "Donro" model is impossible today. The world today is not the same as it was in 1823.
The idea that from now on the US will do whatever it wants in the "Western Hemisphere" is impossible, because by withdrawing from the world stage, Trump looks weak and ridiculous. Imagine: you were the main hooligan in the big city, in the big arena. You go back to the village and start showing your muscles in the square. What do your fellow villagers think? It's clear: "He was the big deal there, with the big guys. If he comes back here, then he's no big deal anymore." And they won't obey him. They'll mock him and make fun of him. He is a former great.
The rest of the countries will take advantage of the weakness of the United States
This is already happening in the Americas. Canadians are integrating into the EU at the speed of light, just to get rid of any dependence on the United States. Mexico, without beating around the bush, is creating a new system of economic relations with the Canadians, which goes by sea to bypass the wild American hinterland. There is no chance that Brazilians, slapped with 50 percent tariffs because of a whim of Donald Trump, will respect the United States or do what Washington tells them. Even the remnant Maduro regime in Venezuela will not do what the State Department tells them. Such regimes are predators by nature and unmistakably smell weakness - in this case, the weakness of the United States, which has turned its back on the great world arena.
This American back will prove to be a magnet for all the enemies of the United States around the world. If America has prevented you from harassing and plundering your population and killing your neighbors for decades, how can you not kick it in the kidneys now that it has turned its back on you?
China has even fewer chances of dominating the Asian area. Will the Indians obey Xi's orders? The Australians? The Indonesians? Or the Vietnamese, who back in 1978 beat up the Chinese army that tried to invade their territory?
And the idea that Europe, with an economy 14 times larger than Russia's, will obey Putin is downright ridiculous. The Russians are failing to subjugate Ukraine, which they planned to seize in a week, let alone crush the rest.
The United States opened the door to darkness
Of course, both Xi and Putin (and other lesser versions of them) will exploit the sudden American retreat from the world stage. Kicking the Americans in the kidneys could involve a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or a Russian invasion of Moldova, Georgia, or Estonia. But the long-term division of the world into three major spheres of influence is unlikely to happen.
The question is: Who will now defend the idea that there can be an order in international affairs that protects the small? That there can be an order in the affairs of nations that prioritizes the interests of the many weak over the greed of the few strong? That a civilized way of life is preferable to savagery and barbarism? Americans have been doing this since at least the time of President Theodore Roosevelt. They stopped doing it and opened the door to darkness.
Has Europe's hour come?
As I have been writing more and more often in recent years: this is Europe's hour. In the coming darkness, Europe has the opportunity to become that "shining city on a hill", an example and inspiration for all, that the United States was. Europe can and must resolutely reaffirm the Enlightenment, to paraphrase Kant and say: When we remove from humans all the signs of group affiliation - class, gender, occupation, religion, color, language - what remains are humans as such. They are equal in that they have reason and are able to distinguish good from evil. And they know how to build their lives on the basis of reason and goodness, and not on demonism and evil.
This is Europe's sphere of influence: to maintain order, peace and light so that all countries in the world that want to live in peace, democracy and comfort become its allies. To have an alternative to becoming vassals or victims of their wild and ferocious neighbors. To this end, European leaders must explain this to themselves, then to their citizens and finally to the world.
People are not as stupid as Trump, Xi and Putin imagine them to be. People know how to choose between good and evil, peace and war, freedom and slavery. The important thing is that someone - Europe - shows them every day that this choice is possible.
If this happens, the day is not far off when even Americans will choose to return to the bosom of civilization and light. As Anne Applebaum wrote recently: "Most Americans continue to believe that their country is the embodiment of something more than greed".