In Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the protagonist’s wife says: “Our lives are bombarded by coincidences.” In this way, human beings are relieved of responsibility for their decisions. Following the latest foiled assassination attempt against the President of the United States, Trump appeared before the media to state that political violence is, to some extent, normal and that the office of president inherently entails this risk. The unbearable lightness of coincidences, with no responsibility of one’s own.
Trump is creating a huge uproar around NATO by his own choice, not by chance. Let us remember: NATO was neither a European whim nor an imposition. Between 1942 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of young Americans lost their lives defending Europe’s freedom against Nazism. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union had occupied the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova. In exchange for formal independence, these countries were directed and controlled by the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party until 1991.
The Western reaction was the creation of NATO, in response to the risk that the USSR might expand even further westward. In France, Italy and Greece, the Communist Party was very strong and had a large following. Europe had to be rebuilt — that was the Marshall Plan — so as not to be vulnerable to communist harangues, and it also had to be defended. The latter task would fall to the United States through NATO.
This defensive organisation suited everyone. Some would rebuild; another would protect. The United States boycotted every European attempt to create its own defence system, arguing that we did not need duplication. In this way, it also sought to prevent the growth of a European defence industry and ensure that Europeans would always buy military equipment from the United States, which they do in 80% of cases.
It is unfair for Trump to threaten European allies with abandonment or to maintain that the war in Ukraine is a conventional war that concerns Europeans alone. There is something Trump seems to forget. The success of the European project is also a political and security success that transformed the European landscape, since, as “collateral damage”, it brought about the disappearance of the USSR and the insignificance of communist parties in Europe.
For Trump, events are coincidences whenever they benefit him and deliberate actions whenever they harm him. He complains that his allies do not help him in the war against Iran, even though the United States neither informed nor consulted them. The war against Iran does not meet any of the requirements NATO demands to justify defensive action. But Trump does not care about that. Only the ends matter.
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