By John Ogunlela
“Once Germany rises, the world order has changed. China will start to take much more assertive foreign policy positions whole Americans will be sorting themselves out in a murky fight for their democracy. Japan will be left in a lurch – or it will team up with Europe. Britain will sit there regretting Brexit.”
The larger picture of what is going on in the United States will unfold in what the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel says in the coming weeks.
I’d like to predict this: Donald Trump is not trying to overturn the electoral college votes and seize the presidency. I think his ambition are beyond that right now.
He is aiming higher. He wants to seize the Republican party by the throat and control it over the next four years when he will solidify its new identity as a nationalist populist party not too different from the Nazi party of around 1933.
He will hinge his propaganda (his followers will call it an argument) on the need for a practical hostility to China. His message of division will sell and his following will grow – even in Europe – like a powerful malignancy.
His message to Americans will remain the need for a powerful and dominant America within a populist context. That view is selling well already.
Right now, white nationalist groups are busy recruiting in Texas, according to reports and are spreading anti-black lives matter printed materials. Some of their fliers denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement, attack Jewish people and invoke Adolf Hitler. It is unlikely to blow up into a major crisis but it is plainting a seed that Trump will spend the next year’s watering – with a grim implication for the world.
Look at what he is going with the Pentagon at this time – replacing steady, trusted hands with loyalists – and the most likely ramifications. He wants to preserve his influence over the military. He is emphasizing the military.
I am seeing the German government taking a long look at this trend and deciding on redefining NATO to prepare for what might come out of America. Germany will want to do two things:
1. Hedge against possible wild nationalism Nazi-style coming out of America. This it will do by urging a boost of defence budgets across Europe over the next four years to make NATO more independent on the United States. She has pitched his line of thinking at least three times as reactions to Donald Trump’s attitude to the defence of Europe. Right now, the thinking in Europe is that the lessons learnt in Trump must be carefully regarded and it must be assumed that another Trump might come. Trump hanging around will keep nerves in tatters throughout Europe.
2. The actual leadership of Continental europe in terms of defence will be decided upon and that will most likely mean a resurgent Germany. Once Germany rises, the world order has changed. China will start to take much more assertive foreign policy positions whole Americans will be sorting themselves out in a murky fight for their democracy. Japan will be left in a lurch – or it will team up with Europe. Britain will sit there regretting Brexit. Voters will probably drive Boris Johnson out of town and return the country to Europe in principle or Johnson will slave the country to the United States’ nationalist drift.
All these events will play out over the next four years. But first, we must listen keenly to what Angela Merkel says in the weeks to come.
