Customs, lines on the map and another puzzles, that is why it is worth listening carefully to what Donald Trump and J. D. Vance say.
"This war is highly cruel. The field of furious combat, densely flying bullets, and frequently the only thing that stops these bullets is human bodies. The bodies of young people, the enormously advanced level of mortality. And it's a wonderful country, a wonderful land, a cultivated land, where bullets and another kinds of missiles fly. It's a pity this land is inactive unprotected. So I want all sides to sit at the table and to communicate."
Whose words are those? Pope Francis, who is accused of simmerism, if not "imperialist propaganda", for which he was repeatedly in the heat of criticism? Or possibly Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, known for his calls for a just peace, whose last year's gathering with the Russian president exposed to charges of contributing to the “moral collapse and bankruptcy of the UN”? No, the quote came from Donald Trump of late February 2025.
I am profoundly saddened by the fact that likewise empathetic words do not fall out of the mouth of the politicians who represent me. Unless I miss something, neither the Prime Minister of my country, Donald Tusk, nor Boris Pistorius, the Minister of Defence of Germany in which I presently live, nor Kaja Kallas or Ursula von der Leyen have said anything like that. They failed to make the human dimension of the war in Ukraine at the centre of their policies. Or the center of communication with citizens.
Their bodies, our bodies
However, EUtopia encourages me to take a deep breath and perceive calmly before reacting to anger and polemics [1]. It just so happens that little than a period after Trump's quoted statement, I was invited to Frankfurt am Main. I was to attend the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of 1 of the alleged death marches. Katzbach concentration camp was located at the Adlerwerke weapons mill there. His prisoners were led out of town at the very end of the war and were to scope another camps. My grandpa was among them.
A visit to Frankfurt reminded me that the bodies in which the bullets are buried were not just soldiers on the front. They are besides prisoners forced into slave labor, hungry, beaten, yet killed by a shot to the back of the neck erstwhile they no longer manage. possibly not in the first year of war, sometimes not in the second or third, but 1 day the minute comes erstwhile the dead and wounded on the front should be replaced in the back. Sometimes it is slave labour in colonies, or present in the so - called 3rd world, sometimes victims of occupied lands. These are the rules of war and its economy – a full of 20 million people worked for Nazi Germany alone!
Moreover, the bodies in which the bullets are buried are besides fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, partners or partners, children, grandchildren, or granddaughters. The closest survivors are suffering. Fears, scarred wounds, intellectual dysfunctions per generation. Postwar traumas we carry practically everyone on the continent: not only my father and I after Katzbach, but besides Tusk, Pistorius, Kallas or Von der Leyen – everyone in their own way.
Why, then, are European politicians so eager to turn our continent into a war economy, and are silent about it? Do they consider that possibly their own fears, more than the real possible of war on a continent scale, are the engine of their extremist action? Do they consult psychologists and not just war-torn generals about fear?
Against abstraction
I am afraid that my own politicians are giving the language of empathy to the American president. After all, we are asking them to draw from his resources, seeking the welfare of our war-torn continent.
My disappointment is directed, for example, to Kaji Kallas. Estonian politician had already claimed in 2023 that the intent of her, besides cultivated on my behalf, politics no There's room. "Our main task is never again to repeat what Russia has done to Ukraine". Listening to her statements at this year's Munich safety Conference, I tried to imagine precisely what that meant.
During the panel on the function of the UN in the multi-polar world, Kallas stressed the request to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. These are the pillars of global law. They are based on the global order of the planet after 1945.
We have good legal instruments, Kallas said, and transparent principles of coexistence between nations, but we deficiency the means to execute them. due to the fact that erstwhile individual violates them, like Russia in Ukraine, it's practically impossible to know what to do. Meanwhile, there can be no consent to women and children dying from bombs in their own homes. They must not be compared to Russians who only die as aggressor soldiers. Furthermore, Russia's attack on Ukraine is an existential threat to Europe as a whole, and it is known that under business it would not live well. ErgoYou gotta arm yourself and fight.
The problem is that present the Trump team, who speaks a completely different language, stands in front of this somewhat abstract talk from a privileged lawyer whose body is not exposed to bullets or even lives under any occupation. A language that, contrary to appearances, appeals to imagination and is close to many people in Europe too.
Deficiencies
When Trump claims that the border between Canada and the US is just a line on the map, the obstruction is understandable. But at the same time, do we, citizens of Europe, callback something? How was the border between Ukraine and Russia drawn? Between Poland and Ukraine? Between Poland and Germany?... Isn't it by drawing a line on a map, by stacking with elites, dictators and apparatusists arrogantly floating above the heads of the inhabitants? Are Tusk, Pistorius, Kallas, and Von der Leyen, referring to the integrity of the geopolitical order after 1945, forgetting this? Is this the state for which we would die in another European war? About what I think J. D. Vance was talking about in Munich, wondering precisely what we want to defend by preparing for war. What is the affirmative imagination of our world, asking which motivates efforts in the name of security? Who and where formulated specified a vision?
Many European citizens are asked akin questions, Vance said. And they formulate opinions that sometimes make the rulers uncomfortable. In the meantime, there is no safety to be hoped for if the power suppresses the uncomfortable convictions of its own citizens. In democracy, their needs are important, not even the most crucial institutions or codes.
To be honest, I am profoundly ashamed that it is simply a politician like J. D. Vance who must remind us of this. I felt this shame peculiarly powerfully erstwhile Boris Pistorius appeared with the repost. I did not hear in his speech the readiness to reflect or even to listen, even if not to Vance's words, to my own citizens. Pistorius started by insulting himself. Vance defies German democracy and cannot be tolerated, he said.
Many uplifting words have been given about the quality of the state strategy in which the minister has just campaigned. An example of this quality would be that the press conferences of the German government are hosted by media representatives who, as he said, spread Russian propaganda. He didn't specify which 1 he meant. He besides did not mention that many media are banned in Germany and that citizens of this country cannot legally usage them.
Goodbye to the puzzle
It is worth going beyond the mix of fascination and horror that Trump &Co has. And to point out that the imagination of a better world, any progress, must face the problems on which Washington is presently building its political language.
This is what EUtopia is encouraging. For example, to halt fleeing into ultra-conservative technocraticism and to cover up the harsh standards of global law. To note that we are wasting time in the trenches of the Holy Trinity, while Trump and his crew bargain our language of profound change. The changes that the people of our continent and the planet urgently need.
Trump kind of put a mirror under our noses. What do you see in it? For example, since 1945 we have de facto arranged with the planet of the neo-autocratic puzzle. Meanwhile, many people in and outside Europe present feel that they are not comfortable with it. They are becoming little and little assured in specified a decorated world, and as many polls show, they will escape alternatively than fight if there is simply a threat. Billions spent on weapons will go to the mud due to the fact that fewer people will want to usage this weapon.
And about self-deception
The puzzle, visible in the mirror, is besides a realization that in fresh decades we have cheated not only about the politics of alleged large powers and their heirs, but besides about our own, as beneficiaries of this neo-autocaratism. due to the fact that erstwhile it was about Southeast Asia (Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc.), the mediate East (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, etc.) or Latin America, we allegedly did not question "democratic values". We were willing to test each another by committing terrible crimes.
The American president simply continues this policy. This time, however, besides for us Europeans. And sometimes he talks about it bluntly. due to the fact that whether we like it or not, Canada and Greenland are examples of relics of European colonialism, to which we have just closed our eyes.
Isn't Canada present a derivative of the imperial wars of France, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the murmuring business of human resources and nature, including land and human trafficking on a gigantic scale (Hudson Company, Louisiana, Alaska etc.)? That I will not mention the bordering genocide of the alleged first nations. And Denmark? This seemingly quiet, progressive country over the last century has broken apart with pain from Iceland and the Faroe Islands, but it clings to Greenland, where rather late the power has forced the Innuitki to sterilize.
Progressive Aggravation
In this light besides existing in the heart of the alleged Western borders, political and economical systems have questionable social legitimacy – if at all. Our modern planet is primarily a product of 2 and a half centuries of blood that cost hundreds of millions of lives, hectolitres of blood and countless broken résumés. Is this legacy worth a safety guarantee? I think we request something else: EUtopia encourages effort and yet starts to talk about a full fresh world.
Trump's mirror is so an chance to work on negligence. By introducing duties and exacerbating emigration policies, the U.S. president is trying to hinder the mobility of people and goods. Unless there is 1 common political and economical area (including Canada and Greenland in the US). Yes, you are. But it can besides be noted that the Pan-American community was the dream of virtually all anti-colonial movements from far north to deep south of the continent. Washington uses the tragic defeat of these dreams. A disaster to which European obstruction has contributed.
So I see Trump's protectionism as the following message: natural materials and consumer goods should not decision freely between countries erstwhile people cannot do so. In the position of EUtopia, it is another stolen dream. due to the fact that a better planet is the mobility of people at least to the same degree as products of global economics.
Following this lead, you can recover your own progressive cause: if the full planet joined the US, there would be no tariffs or borders, we would have 1 taxation system, 1 wellness care and unlimited natural resources. And no war would endanger us. And the next election for president of the United States of America would most likely not be won by Donald Trump anymore.
Between Mexican Utopías and EUtopia
Contrary to appearances, progressive policies with akin momentum are possible. Early that year, I spent 3 weeks in Mexico. I have implemented projects in the field of EUtopia, but besides watched the political practice of Claudia Sheinbaum, president of Mexico, and Clara Brugada, the head of the City of Mexico of the erstwhile mayor of Itzapalapa, 1 of the city's most hard districts.
Mexico's policy towards Trump is evidently a subject for another occasion. However, I was greatly impressed by Sheinbaum's reaction to the first announcement of the introduction of duties on cars imported from Mexico to the United States. Has the president been in danger of a customs war? Did she insult herself? Nope. In her first instinct, she invited the heads of global automotive companies to a meeting. She proposed that we search a compromise that would be in the interests of all concerned. Responding to the dreary dissipation of the self-sufficient state that Trump is trying to seduce, the Mexican president's message is close to EUtopia: let's build bonds and scope to the resources of collective wisdom.
Clara Brugada belongs to the same organization as Sheinbaum. Regardless of the turbulent global situation, it continues its spectacular social policy. Its main nonsubjective is to improve the quality of everyday life of residents. The flagship plan of Brugada from the time of Itzapalapa are called Utopías.
Utopías is now 16 built from zero integrated civic centres. erstwhile a individual has a problem, is not able to cope with something in his life, or just wants to have a good time, he can go to 1 of Utopías. Women will find a peculiar offer for themselves. Not only will they take advice from a doctor or a scientist without a problem, but they will besides give good care to children or older people, and they themselves will benefit from sports, educational or even spa activities.
The profoundly participatory character of Utopías can be seen on the example of workshops with... cooking. Everyone can take part in them and learn to cook in a more balanced, healthier and tasty way. In order to stay as close to your regular life as possible, you request to bring your ingredients. A nutrition expert or expert conducts classes, and we take the prepared dishes with us. In this way, household members discover fresh ones, while remaining on the ground of what is known. And next time you can discuss the effects and adjust the next steps.
At the micro level, therefore, Clara Brugada's policy message goes hand in hand with Sheinbaum. It shows that autaryka is simply a dream, and a good country is 1 that helps build social ties and values their value.
As for me, I'm very impressed. And I would like European politicians to show akin respect for us citizens. To avoid the arrogant belief that they knew better and got utilized to the resources of collective wisdom. They defined their objectives and activities in constant communication with us citizens, both locally and globally.
Fowls known and unknown
Trump spoke of bodies and bullets respective minutes before the outbreak of the celebrated mouthpiece with president Zelenski. It's hard not to get upset. We are not utilized to witnessing specified high-level conversations. But again, the mirror. Who of us has not utilized a akin speech toward our parents, children, friends, or friends? And what did the talks look like in Versailles in 1919, erstwhile the independency of Poland was confirmed, but Ukraine was no longer? Withdrawal of designation of the Polish government in exile in July 1945? There were no cameras.
And did anyone always talk to millions of people from Ukraine and Russia sent to war or suffering from it, due to the fact that a tiny group of older functionary masters – presidents, prime ministers and oligarchs – and respective functional ladies felt that they preferred war alternatively than talking to the fallen? This is truly upsetting to me. due to the fact that even the most impertinent conversation is better than killing.
Let me remind you what I wrote in the spring of 2022 in Rzeczpospolita: There's no fair war. War is not a tool for solving anything. It is simply a evidence to the bankruptcy of political elites who cannot or sometimes do not want to keep peace. So before they send us to war, let them take work for their fiasco and go first to fight.
In the spirit of EUtopia, I encourage you not to quit political language of dreams. I even propose that we show a small gratitude to the American president – he seems to be delicate to it. erstwhile the appreciated will be bathed in his happiness, we will usage time to make the conditions for the planet as a good place and put them into practice.
[1] The comprehensive dossier of EUtopia can be found on Deutsche Welle World's Polish editorial website (https://www.dw.com/en/eutopia/t-69498066).
