The Internationalism

In current Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, appeasement stands for cowardly and illusory pacification, as exemplified by the Munich Agreement of 1938, which conceded to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia without stopping the march towards world war. Were Shigeru Ishiba, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz really, as has been said, the Neville Chamberlains of the tariff war, accepting appeasement on the 15% tariff in an ignominious surrender to Donald Trump's blackmail? And has Trump really revealed himself in Anchorage, Alaska, to be an appeaser towards Vladimir Putin? Was it, finally, only the firmness of the Europeans at the Washington summit which convinced Trump to remain as one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security? The plague of television and social media diplomacy feeds on simplistic and propagandistic images, but also consumes and contradicts them at the pace of a reality show. Thus, the Europeans, from servile subjects of the American president on...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 3 From the series European news On February 3rd, the new president of the European Council, António Costa, organised his first summit of the heads of State and government. It was an informal meeting dedicated to defence, with the aim of reaching a consensus on a synthesis that will be included in the new White Paper in April, and that will provide a basis for possible decisions at the official European Council in June. In the current context, however, it was also about “sending a signal to the president of the United States that the Europeans are prepared to increase military spending” [Handelsblatt, February 3rd]. British “reset” One unusual feature of the summit was the presence of Keir Starmer. For the first time since Brexit, a British prime minister was present at a meeting of the European Council. According to Le Monde, this could signal “the start of concrete negotiations on the topic of defence, against t...