It has been 50 years since Mao’s death, and his legendary satisfaction as a revolutionary for the “great confusion under heaven” continues to resurface. But this time, the revolutionary who enjoys it is not in China but in the United States. Its president Donald Trump dresses up as Jesus, excommunicates the Pope in his own way—who is also a compatriot, perhaps making him all the more unpalatable—makes and breaks friendships, opens wars and truces as it suits him.
Trump would have caused dizziness even to Mao. Now he primarily causes it to Western allies, as they have been called for about eighty years in the world divided at the Yalta conference by the victors of the Second World War. Allies whom the American president has evicted, also warning them not to even approach the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, which he had caused to close by bombing Iran but has just managed to reopen or even widen in exchange for who knows what. Perhaps historians rather than reporters will deal with this.
Because they do not clearly trust Trump’s unpredictable moods enough, quite a few “willing” European friends, both inside and outside the homonymous Union, met in Paris proposing to make the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz stable and secure, clearing its waters and guarding it with an internationally certified mission. They should never have done that, also fueling the fantasy of a new version of NATO, limited to Europe and no longer a “paper tiger,” as Trump has reduced it by protesting, ultimately, against himself. The American president warned the “outsiders” to stay away from the land and waters he manages.
The images arriving from Paris even at the White House must not have pleased Trump. Especially those of the embrace between French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who almost fell to the ground from the joy caused by some joke from the rediscovered friend. Then, probably worsening Trump’s moods, she posed for the official photo with the guest at the Élysée, winking her right eye. Both, moreover, savored, first him and then her, the thrill of public clashes with the American president. He might repeat with Meloni the treatment reserved for Macron when he revealed the content of some previous conversations to practically call him false, double-dealing, traitorous, and the like.
Certainly, it is hard work living in a world and with interlocutors like these. But unfortunately, there is no way around it. And one must try to survive it, avoiding being dragged back to the “Stone Age” like any Iran.
