Reality is reality and perception is perception. Is It? I talked about this in a previous video. This is the continuation.
Okay. In the previous video, I talked a little bit about perception and reality. First about am I real? Yes, I am. And then about how Ukraine and Russia have to fight against what people perceive and or solidify what they perceive. Russia is trying to maintain the perception that they’re such a big and powerful force and Ukraine is trying to hold against it, saying, “Well, if Russia is so powerful, how come they’re not winning?” And there are reasons and we should trust in the strength of Ukraine.
Of course, not everybody understands that. And here we come, of course, to the United States.
Does the US support Ukraine? Yes. But it’s complicated.
We are in a very strange geopolitical situation. Europe and actually the entire West is under attack by a coalition of Russia, Communist China, and Iran, which includes their allies, Venezuela, and these may not necessarily be actively fighting but they’re supportive and supporting, and North Korea.
We’re not sure where India stands. India is coming out of its post-colonial situation trying to find its way. It has had long connections to the Soviet Union when it comes to military equipment, is thus in a little bit of a bind. China and India don’t really get along but no country can choose where they are. So you’ll see India do a little bit of this wave this way, wave the other way, to try to figure out how to maintain itself and to somehow sit this out while not being too much of a not a team player within the West where it actually is sitting.
You see that leaves the situation really at a point where we don’t know who’s going to negotiate for Ukraine in a neutral position. See, if we are aiming for a ceasefire and peace treaty, Russia isn’t speaking with Ukraine. Who could speak in Ukraine’s interest? Or who could speak as a mediator?
Maybe Turkey could. But Turkey’s perception in the West because of how President Erdoğan has damaged Turkish democracy—that’s a problem. And so we are seeing the odd scenario that the United States under Trump has taken the role of trying to be a negotiator, an arbiter, which means you have to be neutral, while at the same time very clearly supporting Ukraine and putting itself up against Russia.
But Trump and Putin are friends, you may say. No. Trump may think that his special relationship with Vladimir Putin can get him some kind of deal. But also, Trump wants this whole conflict over with because it stands in the way of deals. Because here’s the truth that nobody wants to say: oftentimes capitalism does not like war. Yes, you can make money with weapons, but there is more money made actually in peacetime, investing, trading, cooperating. War destroys all of that.
So if you think back at the times before capitalism actually won, there were many more wars because that was how business was done. Conquest, not trade. Trade stands to win when there’s peace.
And that is why there’s an interest in the United States for peace. The interest may be a little bit naively for peace under bad conditions, but the perception in the US in general is we don’t really know that much about other countries anyway. Sadly, not all Americans. Yeah. But the US is such a big country, it’s difficult to really understand how other countries work, how history means something completely different in Europe especially, but also other continents than in the US. That really is a different perspective. Let’s say it like that.
Now, the conflict we’re having right now is the United States is trying to be both arbiter and supporter of Ukraine. How do I know they’re a supporter of Ukraine? Isn’t Trump such a bad actor here?
The interest in Greenland tells you that Russia is not seen as a friend. Many presidents before had interest in Greenland. The current interest has to do a lot with Greenland being ideal as a first line of defense for both the United States and Europe. Same with Canada. Canada should be a more reliable partner. In my view, in the view of many others, it already is. But okay. Americans don’t have the best perception of Canada. And sometimes for good reasons, sometimes whatever.
Why would Trump go after Venezuela? Now, this has to do with taking Russian influence out of the world and weakening Putin. Don’t listen to the words, look at actions. Yes, intelligence sharing with Ukraine was cut off some time ago, briefly, and then it returned. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but the US cannot risk a weakening of Europe.
So if you look at this new security strategy, it really calls for Europe to finally defend itself and describes that the US will actually do what Obama said before, pivot to the Pacific, and it is also focusing more than it used to, but that it has always had, on its own hemisphere. Does this mean the US is giving up global power?
Well, Europe is still seen as a partner. It’s just seen as a weak partner. And so, here is now where the question of reality versus perception comes in. Before I talk about this, please like, subscribe, and comment. This helps a lot. Thank you.
I don’t believe that the US is giving up on its core interest in being a global power. And why I don’t believe that is these policies are temporary and the US benefits a lot from the global security arrangements protecting global trade and all of this. It all is in the US’s interest. So I don’t think anything there is changing. However, the perception is that it is, and here’s where the really complicated part comes in.
So, what does the perception of that security strategy in Europe tell us? It’s a long history here between the US and Europe when it comes to NATO. Who has denigrated NATO in the past? Was it Trump or the Europeans? Rhetorically, Trump has been talking dirty about NATO, and the Europeans have always held it up. But in practical politics, it’s been the US supporting most of the military and the military research and investment into NATO, and the demand that NATO members actually contribute funding at a certain degree that’s been made by presidents before Trump such as Obama, Biden, Bush, and others.
So Europe knows how to talk a good game. The US knows how to actually follow through and then talk trash a little bit if it doesn’t happen on the other side too. Two exceptions of course on the European side. Some of the Europeans have supported the US in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether you agree with those operations or not is immaterial. But they have been allies.
So now where do we stand? Europe has to continue to prepare to have its own military capacity within NATO. That’s what the document aims at.
There are also these discussions about where Europe may run astray when it comes to democracy, freedom of speech. And here the Americans really do have a different understanding of freedom of speech and it’s much wider than Europeans typically think.
It annoys me and frustrates me to no end that some of the current members of the US administration seem to have the idea that the Alternative for Germany, AfD in Germany, is a legitimate partner. Well, they were democratically elected. Yes. But that party is full of people that are more on the very, very right-wing extreme side, down to one of them being legally designatable as a fascist, Björn Höcke.
And so do you really need to support those people? On the other hand, the idea to ban parties like that, as it is being discussed in Germany, does not look very democratic. But again, Europe functions differently than the US and maybe Europe needs to explain that better.
Apart from that though, the American side has every right to define how they spend their money. And it’s only fair to tell the Europeans to spend more money on defense and to actually take care of their part of the world.
That being said, the perception in Europe right now is horrifying from an American perspective. And you could ask how much of that is really Europeans putting up that shtick to say, well, you know, maybe if we complain enough the Americans will notice we don’t have to pay that much. Okay, some of this may also be growing pains because you have to actually invest budget items into that now, into defense.
However, I am reading article after article, commentary after commentary, listening to politicians talk in a certain way that makes the United States look like the enemy of Europe. Now, this is insane. However, it is being promoted by a perception of this national security strategy that is not helped by how the current leadership in the United States talks to and about Europe.
You cannot just focus on hard power. You need to focus on soft power. That actually is the more long-lasting impact.
Here’s the proof for that. Yes, Alexander the Great conquered most of the then-known world, known to them. He wasn’t Greek. He was Macedonian. But people think it’s Greek, a Greek empire that he built. But apart from that, Greek hard power historically hasn’t been that impressive. Sparta and Athens had at it for a while and weakened themselves, but overall Greece is not really known for huge military success apart from Alexander the Macedon, not really Greek in that sense, but the cultural value we draw from Greece, from Athens—all of this is soft power and it’s one of the prime inspirations for not just European but global culture.
Greece in turn draws a lot of inspiration from Egypt. The Egyptians were a military power, but they were not like the Roman Empire. And they eventually got conquered by the Macedonians and then by the Romans again and then by several waves of Islamic conquests, first Arabic, then later Turkish and so on.
We are not looking at Egypt because of its vast military history, although it was there. We’re looking at Egypt because of the culture, of the soft power. This idiotic Ozymandias poem describes the pyramid of Khufu. You know, Khufu achieved his thing. He built that pyramid or had it built. Egypt towers over any other culture in the human imagination globally.
You could even argue that the Egyptian belief in the Pharaoh influenced Rome when Roman troops conquered Egypt and Caesar and then later Octavianus really reflected on that god-kingdom. That’s when maybe that’s when Augustus really had the idea of becoming Augustus. No longer republic, but empire, not by a living god, but a person that would eventually ascend to become a god. The ideological component, the soft power, that’s what survives.
We don’t know how powerful the Inca Empire was or the Mayans or Aztecs. We know that they lost eventually, but we are still fascinated by them because of their culture and the ongoing soft power of their culture which shapes the modern nations that are successor states to these empires.
Germany began in 1871. It’s the first time a German empire was built. Yeah, you had some kings that could be called German, but they were mostly tribal Saxon in the case of way back then in 900 something. I should know these dates. I’m sorry. I’m a bad German by now.
Then Germany prides itself of beating back the legions of Varus in 9 AD under Arminius or Hermann der Cherusker, German, who actually grew up in the Roman Empire, was a Roman military officer, completely culturally Roman, and he then went back and kind of Germaned it up. But the term German doesn’t even describe the word that Germans use. Germans use the word Deutsch to describe themselves. German is the Greek and Roman term.
But those tribal Germans, they’re not the same as today’s Germans. And the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t really German or Roman or whatever, Holy either. All of this was culture, soft power.
Most European nations as you see them today, with the exception of France and England, Spain, Portugal, they are modern creations. Their soft power precedes their actual power. And so if we see the perception of American foreign policy now, we see a very dangerous decline of American soft power because of this new security strategy. Not because of what’s in it necessarily but how it’s being perceived.
And this is where the danger lies. And this is what should have been thought about before, which needs to be corrected now. Fix the soft power breakdown of American power because otherwise we’re heading for disaster because even though we are talking here about perception, perception can become reality.
Ceterum censeo Ucrainam esse defendam. Слава Україні!
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