The world has completed a 180-degree geopolitical U-turn in my lifetime, with most of the rotation coming in the last year under Donald Trump. I was born just after the Second World War, when the US was helping to prosecute the appalling war crimes of the Nazi leaders in Nuremberg. America was then on the side of democracy, the rule of law, peace and justice, along with Britain and most of the free world. This week, things have reached such a state that German President Frank Walter Steinmeier felt the need to give a speech in which he talked about America, Germany's most important ally, having “broken with the values it helped to create.”
Imagine that. A German statesman lecturing America on moral values and international law, and, let us be frank, most of the Western world nodding in agreement. It has been a terrifying journey of transformation for America from shining city on a hill to a cesspit of authoritarianism, depravity, violence and corruption.
GERMAN PRESIDENT STEINMEIER: “.. the United States has broken with the values that it helped to establish .. “.. we have now moved beyond the stage where we can lament the lack of respect for international law or the erosion of the international order; we are far beyond that, I believe.”— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 9 January 2026 at 09:15
Steinmeir’s aim, he said, was to “prevent the world turning into a den of thieves where the most unscrupulous take what they want, where regions and entire countries are treated as property rather than major powers, where even medium-sized states like ours are being pushed to the margins of history and where smaller and weaker states are left completely unprotected.”
Contrast that clear, simple message with Starmer's cowed silence and refusal to condemn anything that Trump does.
In the USA, this was the week when an Immigration and Customs (ICE) agent in Minneapolis shot a peaceful protester, a smiling 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, and casually walked away without a care, as if he had swatted a fly. There are plenty of clips of the video recorded by the agent, who claimed he feared for his life, and I won’t post one here because it’s truly upsetting and shocking.
Worse, the Trump administration immediately launched an attack, not on the perpetrator, but on the victim, Good was described as a domestic terrorist. Her killer was praised. The rule of law just died in America.
In the same week, the pace of America's descent into Hell seemed to accelerate, even that horrific incident was wiped off the front pages by Trump suggesting the US needs "ownership" of Greenland and he's going to take it one way or another:
Trump: "We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not because if we don't do it - Russia or China will do it. And we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbour." Russia is already a neighbour of the United States via Alaska.— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) 9 January 2026 at 21:14
The BBC reports this morning that Trump thinks the US needs to “own “ Greenland to stop China and Russia occupying it.
The twisted logic he is using is a green flag to China to adopt the same excuse, and for Putin, to carry on the fight in Ukraine to extend his border and Russia's sphere of influence. We are no back to Lord Palmerston's19th century gunboat diplomacy. In the end, this could mean just three world powers “owning” a third of the world each, a vision that Orwell predicted 80 years ago in his novel 1984.
Greenland is a NATO member that the US has a treaty obligation to defend, so by extension, it also means the US needs to “own” Europe, since Article 5 obliges the US to defend that as well and if "ownership" is a prerequisite for Trump to come to Europe's aid, we all have to become US citizens. In a year, we have gone from NATO’s most powerful defender becoming its most imminent threat.
Trump, who has resurrected the Monroe doctrine that allows the US a free hand to dabble with South America states as it wishes, is now talking like a 1930’s mobster about taking care of business, which in his case is a protection racket.
He has kidnapped the President of Venezuela, killing 80 people in the process, talked of stealing $4 billion worth of Venezuelan oil, apprehended tankers in international waters, said he would be honoured to take the Venezuelan opposition leader’s Nobel peace prize, and goodness knows what else.
And this is just the second week of 2026. Buckle up.
