Europe

In 1969, Charles de Gaulle told his friend André Malraux that America’s “desire – and one day it will satisfy it – is to desert Europe. You will see.” It has taken nearly six decades, but de Gaulle’s prophecy now looks uncomfortably close to fulfillment. After years of diplomatic effort to manage, placate and charm successive American presidents – and Donald Trump in particular – European leaders are coming to a grim realization: the United States is, at best, indifferent to their interests and sensibilities and, at worst, openly hostile to them. Some, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, still believe Trump can be cajoled, that the transatlantic relationship can somehow be salvaged.

I think it was Zadie Smith who I first heard point out that race is in America what class is in Britain: the conversation underneath every conversation. When I first heard that remark I slightly balked. Not least because one had rather hoped that class would be less of a thing in Britain in the 21st century. I suppose it is, although you do still meet people who treat the English language as though it is a minefield in which one incorrect vowel will suddenly take them out. But if the class stuff still lingers in Britain, the good news is that we now have the American race obsession too. For anyone who hasn’t lived in America, it is hard to describe just how permeated race is into every conversation in the culture.

It was the Viking, Erik the Red who, in AD 986, first saw Greenland’s potential. He wanted to colonize his newly-discovered island, and in a blatant piece of tenth-century spin-doctoring hit on a wizard wheeze to encourage other Norse people to come to this bleak, icy and remote corner of the unknown world: "In the summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found, which he called Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there if it had a favorable name." More than a thousand years later, President Donald Trump is proposing something similar. "It’s a large real estate deal. Owning Greenland is vital for US security... and economic security... It’s an absolute necessity and I cannot assure you that we would not use military or economic coercion.

Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a "reparations loan" backed by the €190 billion ($222 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale invasion. "Just as authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks," Zelensky told his European allies. "It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal." But after negotiations that went late into the night, Europe ultimately shied away from grabbing Russia’s money.

Ten days after Thanksgiving, news watchers were exposed to one of the more culturally incongruous images in recent history: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron beaming in front of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street, giving each other the locked-thumbs handshake familiar to African-American jazz musicians and professional athletes of the 1970s. Right on, brother! At that moment, according to Ukrainian media, thousands of Zelensky’s soldiers had been encircled by Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk (or Krasnoarmiisk, as it may well soon be renamed). Large gaps were appearing in the Ukrainian front, desertions were rising and Russians appeared to be opening a new front east of Kharkiv.

If I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off.  I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent decision to fine Elon Musk and his company X €120 million for “non-compliance with transparency obligations” has me nudging the minute hand closer to midnight. “Non-compliance with transparency obligations.” What do you reckon that means?

German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We can be dismissed only after a serious criminal conviction, we are exempt from social-insurance contributions and even our mortgage rates are lower. Such comfort discourages dissent. Yet, after more than 25 years as a pampered Beamter, I find myself overwhelmed, not by the teaching load or the students, but by the accelerating erosion of academic standards. Having taught English, history and Latin at four different Gymnasien, I have learned that challenging students is now frowned upon by both bureaucrats and politicians. Nearly all my colleagues agree that standards have plummeted.

Yesterday’s release of immigration figures by Britain's Office of National Statistics didn’t make for particularly pleasant reading. While net migration had fallen to around 200,000 in the 12 months to June, much of this was down to an unusually high exodus of people, with 693,000 leaving the country over the same period. Many of those leaving were under the age of 30. That news, however, seemed to prompt something approaching gloating over at the New York Times, which published a piece yesterday headlined: "The British Public Thinks Immigration Is Up. It’s Actually Down, Sharply." To labor the point, the piece was accompanied by a picture of anti-migration protestors in Scotland. The not-so-subtle subtext being: what a bunch of gammon thickos the anti-migration lot are in the UK.

Kyiv When is the price of peace ever fair? War does not determine who is right, only who is left, Bertrand Russell wisely observed. Very often conflicts come down to a numbers game – and on the numbers Ukraine is losing. Despite losing more soldiers, Russia is winning on the battlefield and unlike Ukraine hasn’t even begun mass mobilization.  Donald Trump’s proposed peace deal won’t turn the clock back on Ukraine's borders, or compensate Ukraine for Russian aggression and war crimes, or even punish Putin personally for starting a horrific and needless war that has claimed as many as 500,000 lives. If anything, the deal rewards him.  But Trump hopes his proposal will draw a line in the sand to stop the relentless bloodshed.

Who will pay for Ukraine’s war effort now the Trump administration has turned off the financial taps? European leaders have expressed themselves ready and willing to take up the burden, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen affirming that “if we continue to believe that Ukraine is our first line of defense, we need to step up our assistance.” Individual countries have come up with generous funding packages – most open-handed of all being Germany, which has recently pledged more than €3 billion in direct funding. But that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to what Ukraine says it needs.