Europe should remember that before Greenland there was, and is, a Gaza

Folks who know me are aware that I am no diplomat; the only piece of diplomacy I know is that one should take a quick, and long, walk in the forest if one has forgotten to wish the wife on one's wedding anniversary.

But even such a geo-politically challenged individual can figure out what is happening today in the year 1AT (After Trump): the new global order looks like a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean, with Western 'leaders' being made to walk the plank by a Captain Barbossa in the White House. And guess what? I'm happy about it all, because they deserve it.

One strategically placed, massive lump of ice in the Arctic has exposed the leaders of the countries of Western Europe, or the European Union, for the cynical hypocrites, racists, spineless transactionalists and colonists that they really are.

Trump's threats and moves on "acquiring" Greenland (something he has coveted since his first term) have the Melonis, Starmers, Macrons, Freidrich Merzs and Von der Leyens now running around like headless chickens, screaming that the global "rules-based order" is in danger and that Trump cannot violate the territorial sovereignty of another country.

But that is exactly what all these morally defunct charlatans have been doing for the last three years in their fawning support for the genocide being waged daily in Palestine by the USA and Israel.

The USA has always been a predatory state — remember the 'war against Communism' in Vietnam, Bay of Pigs in Cuba, the toppling of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (1960), the coup against Mossadegh in Iran (1953), the ouster of Manuel Noriega in Panama (1989), the more recent attacks on the sovereignty of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya?

Remember also the support it provided to the savagery of tyrants like Pinochet and Somoza? But it did all this 'legally' — building consensus, obtaining approval of its own Congress and the United Nations — in order to maintain the fig leaf cover of a rules-based order.

In Gaza and Palestine (and most recently in Venezuela), however, it discarded even this minimum vegetation of an excuse, giving all of us a sense of where it was ultimately headed — unilateral domination by force, grabbing of resources (oil, land, minerals) by replacing the rules based order with a 'might-based order'.

For the last three years, it has allowed — nay, enabled — a bloodthirsty Netanyahu to murder half-a-million Palestinians, continue with a planned genocide and forced displacement of millions more, convert the lives of survivors into a living hell with no food, water, medical aid or education. It provided this Zionist Mephistopheles with billions of dollars of funding, weapons and munitions and the veto cover in the UN.

And Europe did nothing — yes, the same Europe which is now so concerned about the rights of 56,000 people in Greenland. Like the 7 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have no rights? Or is it that they don't have white skin? Or that Mediterranean beachfront real estate is more profitable than the frozen permafrost of Greenland?

Actually, it's probably not correct to say that the EU marionettes did nothing while 200,000 women and children in Palestine were being slaughtered by Israel.

No sir, they were actually quite busy — holding innumerable conferences where only proforma noises were made over bagels and coffee, sending more weapons to Israel, concluding even more trade deals with the Zionist country, blocking every move in the UN to stop the destruction of Gaza and the usurpation of Palestine, cautioning Greta Thunberg against breaking the maritime siege of Gaza but doing nothing to help her in her relief efforts (actually, Ms Meloni did consider giving her a naval escort but then decided that it was safer to go back to writing her autobiography), praising Trump's Gaza 'Peace Plan' (they would all naturally get a slice of the Mar-o-Gaza on the Mediterranean.

In retrospect, one should not be surprised that Western Europe dipped its hands willingly in the blood shed by Israel and successive US presidents in Gaza. It was perhaps constrained by its own colonial history, by the guilt of its own genocide and persecution of Jews in the past, by its latent racism. It did nothing.

And then Venezuela happened. It did nothing.

But now, the monster it had nurtured is knocking on its own doors and it has no defence — moral, legal, or military. The United Nations cannot help because these same countries have fenestrated it with Trump's backing. They have no sympathisers or support in the Global South, all of whom have, at some time in the past and the present, been exploited by these partners-in-crime of Trump. In Greenland, Europe now has to deal with a psychopathic president in an advanced stage of dementia, a mafia boss, a capo di tutti capi whose ideology is based on extortion, theft and violence.

The tables have turned for Western Europe, the hunter has become the hunted, in a way, and it does not know how to deal with it. It has always sided with the USA-Israel axis in their illegal attacks on the Middle East and Afghanistan and Venezuela. For years, it has sown the wind and now, with Greenland, it is time to reap the whirlwind.

And worse is in store for it. As Ed Luce, editor of the Financial Times, told Karan Thapar in an interview this week, Europe is on its way to irrelevance. The world is headed for tripolar status, with the USA, Russia and China carving out and controlling their own backyards. There will be no place for Europe at the high table: it can cluster around its little 'pond', bemoan its lack of conscience and spine, and continue (in the apt words of Mani Shankar Aiyar in another context), its "snivelling in the shadows of power".

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Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com