First of all, I’m not a Republican or a Democrat; I do not even live in the USA, but what we saw today in the Oval Office left me extremely concerned.

President Zelensky went to meet with President D. Trump and his vice J.D. Vance to negotiate a possible peace agreement or even bigger American support for Ukraine’s defensive effort. However, things went terribly wrong.

A Cornered Man

It left me speechless to see the way J.D. Vance pushed Zelensky to a tight corner, demanding him to be thankful (as if he wasn’t enough) for the American support and later suggesting that Ukraine “doesn’t have men” to fight this war. This last part was dubious. It may be interpreted as if J.D. put in question the manly capacity of the Ukrainian men, as it could also mean Ukraine has not men in a number large enough to keep fighting this war. Anyway, it was enough to make fingers point everywhere and the people around sweat cold.

But what impressed me the most was that the talk was geared in a way as if Ukraine was responsible for the war and that it depended exclusively on them to end it. Hey, Ukraine was invaded! They did not start this war; Putin did! If there’s a person on this planet who could end this war, this person is Putin. He just needs to withdraw his troops from Ukrainian soil, and the war would be over in the same minute he did it.

However, I felt that especially Vance cornered Zelensky—a man who is under the pressure of seeing his people being attacked and slaughtered every day—and accused him of unreasanable things. It looked like he intentionally wanted to dessitabilize him to later portray him as the bad guy while Putin drank whisky and laughed at the entire situation in Moskow.

Peace? No More!

This way of charging the victim as responsible for the aggression is opening a terrible precedent: It will encourage other powerful countries to do the same and bully their smaller neighboring countries. Up to this day, just one thing prevented most of them from doing it: the Pax Americana (the American Peace).

In the old days of the Roman Empire, Rome enforced peace throughout the empire using their soft power, and it was called the Pax Romana. Nowadays, who does it (or did it) is America, using not only its soft power but also offering a military “umbrella” to cover and protect smaller countries against their enemies. This created a time of relative peace since the end of WWII, assuring allied countries that they could count on America to defend themselves against any possible external agression.

The End Of An Era

Well, now it looks like this era is over. America wants to mind only its own business and not get into other nations problems. However, fate reserved this role for America. We may like it or not, but the world needs a “cheriff in town.”

With America leaving its allies alone, or worse than that, accusing them for the aggression they are suffering, the rest of the world will no longer rely or trust in Washington for their defense. This may look good to the eyes of the regular American taxpayer at first, but it will bring with it a much expensive bill to be paid in the near future.

The world will seek another “cheriff” to guarantee peace and will find none. Then we will witness a global arms race, with countries investing heavily in weaponry and, even worse, developing their own atomic bombs. That would be terrible but reasonable; Ukraine would not have been invaded if it still had its nuclear arsenal. Besides that, we will see new military alliances coming into play, creating more tension in certain regions of the world, like east Europe and Asia.

We are witnessing history in the making, and I fear the next chapters of this book will not be fun to read.

---

Feel free to leave a comment below!