Like everyone else outside Russia, I watched Saturday morning's shitshow between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in horror. Sure, the US had already thrown Ukraine under the bus, demanding that it accept Russia's theft of land - but there's a difference between that, and berating someone in front of the world for refusing to surrender to a genocidal invader. With this, the Trump regime - and the US Republican Party - has made it crystal clear which side it is on. And it is not the side of democracy and human rights.
Fortunately, Europe seems to be stepping up. And they've also got the message - also sent last month, but not really believed because it was a reversal of 80 years of policy - that the US will not defend them either. And that even if there is regime change in the US, no future US regime can be trusted ever again on anything. And now they've got that message, they can move forward on building a European defence alliance serving European priorities, rather than just being an adjunct of the US. Which almost certainly means less European involvement in American imperial wars in future (great for Europe, bad for the USA, which will have to do all its own dying. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind).
It should also be focusing minds here. Because if the US won't defend Europe, it sure as shit won't lift a finger for Aotearoa (assuming they can even find us on a map). The AUKUS partnership they are trying to tempt us into is worthless. In fact, given their explicit support for tyrannical regimes and of global corruption, we should be regarding them as an enemy, not a friend. And we should be withdrawing from the Five Eyes, rather than continuing to feed intelligence to a corrupt and hostile threat to global peace.
Meanwhile, the US is now openly threatening to withdraw from the UN. Which is terrible: the withdrawl of fascist states from the League of Nations was one of the reasons for its failure to prevent the Second World War. OTOH, if they're going to do it, we can't do anything about it, and at least there's a silver lining. Because the UN has a veto problem, and one of the major impediments to fixing it is... the US veto. If they leave, then it is at least an opportunity to fix that, and the world should refuse to let the US back in unless they accept it.
