It is probably the most common observation of every single generation. It is voiced more matter-of-factly at the peak of life, more melancholically at its dusk: “The world is no longer the same.”
Hardly news. The world has always been changing, without beginning, middle, or end—endlessly, from the inexhaustible purse of time. It changes not only because, for thousands of years now, it has happened to advance technologically, but also because every single generation rejects the previous one—or simply grows bored of it, along with its principles, admonitions, and aesthetics. Because it was born to claim many of the things to which the previous generation submitted. Humanity is in a constant state of rebellion.
But it is also almost always at war. In the history of humankind, peace has more often been the intermission—the breath we needed before the drums of war sounded again: “the drums of war are beating once again.”
Beautiful drums? In the era of Donald Trump—and certainly in his language, or rather in his somewhat pre-linguistic idiom—even that could be said: that the drums are “beautiful.” In the twilight of his life, the American president does not observe a changing world with melancholy. He changes it himself, conquest by conquest. The first year of his second term has brought what 80 years of postwar peace and 35 years of post–Cold War carelessness did not. What more will it bring?
The world—yes, this world that changes, however one looks at it and from whatever stage of life—has already been witnessing a political and historical phenomenon. In an effort to explore this phenomenon and this “one year that accelerated time,” as Christos Dogas said during the newspaper’s editorial meeting, To Vima spoke with intellectuals and experts. The 12-page feature we present today is not merely an assessment of Trump’s first 365 days in the White House, but also material for examining this change that is taking place—and which, in many of its versions, is violent.
Violent, but also “beautiful”? The way Donald Trump is changing the world leaves little doubt as to his purpose and his method. Trump’s goal is the planet’s resources, and his method is a form of business-style coercion: “Make a deal so I don’t take it all.” But what if, within this method and this purpose—which recognizes no principles or rules of international law—a new era opens for Venezuela without Maduro’s brutal regime? Europe, fractured in its relationship with America, has more or less answered: “beautiful.” What if a new era also begins for Gaza—not exactly as a “riviera,” but certainly without Hamas oppressing its people? Again, “beautiful.” And what if Iran is finally freed from its inhumane theocracy? Once more.
The world—or at least that part of the world that rejects, without asterisks or footnotes, the international fraternity of scoundrels—does not align itself with Trump’s method or his purpose. Yet it stands ambivalent toward the outcome. This, among other things, is what Trump’s first year brings: a world that changes so profoundly that Danes may end up paying tolls for Greenland, and an ambivalence on the basis of which Europe must redraw its defensive lines, build alliances, and reposition itself in the world.
It is a difficult exercise—one from which our country is not exempt. In a world that is changing, however it may be changing, there is nothing to do but work to define one’s own coordinates.
