Opting out of global leadership

 Scenes from a world that is leaving post-America behind:

President Sheinbaum of Mexico and Prime Minister Takaichi of Japan strenghtened their countries' trade and investment ties when the two leaders met on April 20. One concrete step was Japan's agreement to import 1 billion barrels of Mexican oil, a resource which, as we know, is at a premium these days, what with the Iran war. 

Iran is making some cheddar with its control of the Strait of Hormuz:

Hamidreza Hajibabaei, the deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, claimed that Iran, not the United States, was now making demands after the first revenues for newly implemented tolls on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz were deposited into the state's central bank.

"We have control over this Strait," Hajibabaei said during a public gathering in the western city of Kuhdasht via ABC News.

"If the United States continues on its current course, no vessels will pass through the Strait of Hormuz," he added. "We are not engaged in negotiations -- rather, we are making demands."

The Very Stable Genius's attempt tp get back in Georgia Meloni's good graces after their falling out over the Pope is falling flat:

The suggestion that Iran should be replaced by Italy at this year’s World Cup drew a mix of embarrassment and apathy from Azzurri fans on Thursday, with Italian media reminding readers that the idea has a very familiar feel.

President Donald Trump’s U.S. special envoy Paolo Zampolli told the Financial Times that he made the suggestion to the U.S. president and FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

“I’m an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a US-hosted tournament. With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion,” said Zampolli, an Italian-American who is Trump’s envoy for “Global Partnership” but has no official connection with the World Cup or Italian football.

. . . Italy’s main sports news websites have given the story only a passing reference.

Sports Minister Andrea Abodi told the Italian news agency La Press: “Firstly it is not possible, secondly it is not appropriate ... You qualify on the pitch.”

Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti went futher, saying the idea was “shameful.”

Leading Italian coach Gianni De Biasi told Reuters it was an unlikely proposal with any theoretical Iranian absence logically filled by the team behind them in their qualification group.

“Furthermore, I believe Italy doesn’t need Trump’s support on an issue like this. I think we can manage on our own,” he said.

The Navy Secretary is out, in the middle of the biggest US naval blockade since World War II.  

If the post-American government is going to go full-tilt socialist, why is it sinking its (our) dollars into Spirit Airline (to the tune of a 90 precent ownership stake), which has been a losing proposition for many years now?

Mark Carney isn't playing the VSG's games. And what the hell is an "entry fee?"

Canada is not just sitting back "taking notes" or instructions from the Americans on trade talks after White House officials complained publicly about irritants in the Canada-U.S. relationship, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday.

The prime minister said he's focused on eliminating U.S. tariffs that are hurting key sectors such as steel and aluminum.

"You know what's an irritant? Fifty per cent tariff on steel, 50 per cent on aluminum, 25 per cent on automobiles, all the tariffs on forest products," Carney said during an exchange with reporters in Ottawa on Thursday.

"Those are more than irritants. Those are violations of our trade deal."

Carney also said he had never heard of an "entry fee" Canada would have to pay to start talks with the White House on renewing the continental free trade pact.

“I don’t know where the talk of an ‘entry fee’ is from," he said. "It's certainly not coming from me. It’s not language I’ve ever used, and it's not language I've never heard from the president of the United States."

The claim of a rigged election was the page open in the VSG's playbook in late 2020 into 21, is again with regard to Virginia's redistricting vote  (which is irony-rich since he was the one who stoked the whole redistrict-in-mid-decade push) and will surely be how he reacts to a lot of midterm races this November. 

Exit question: When all this is considered in sum, is American leadership something that could ever be restored? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, in Ukraine

 Peruse the front page of any news aggregate or scholarly world-affairs journal these days and it's likely to be preoccupied with the latest Middle East developments.

Let us not forget, however, that Ukraine continues to be subject to this on a regular basis:

Russian missiles and drones destroyed homes, burned buildings, and killed civilians in Ukraine's major cities in a mass overnight strike on April 16, killing at least 17 and injuring over 100 in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. 

The overnight assault marks one of the deadliest Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians of 2026.

The Air Force later said Russia launched a total of 19 ballistic missiles, 25 cruise missiles, and 659 drones during the attack. 

Twelve missiles and 20 drones hit 26 locations across Ukraine, and debris from interceptions hit 25 locations.

In the first attack on Kyiv in over a month, at least four people — including a 12-year-old child — were killed and 48 others injured overnight in Kyiv, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 26 of the wounded were hospitalized, and that among the victims are emergency medics and children. 

Elsewhere in Ukraine, the overnight Russian attack killed at least nine people in the southern port city of Odesa and killed at least four people in the central-eastern city of Dnipro, the local authorities and the State Emergency Service reported.

This is a direct result of the West's moral compass being wobbly from the time Russia launched its assault in February 2022. The Biden administration was skittish about sending what was needed to repel the assault. Europe had not yet gotten a clue as to how it needed to step up, and rogue actors such as North Korea and Iran were all too happy to help Russia. Then along came the Very Stable Genius and that supremely shameful dressing down of Zelensky in the Oval Office, as well as the Alaska "summit" with Putin the following August.

But ironies abound. Yes, Ukraine is still subject to the kind of horror described above, but the shape of a new alliance structure is coming into view:

President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Rome on April 15 for talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, continuing his diplomatic tour across Europe.

During the visit, Zelensky underscored the need to strengthen Ukraine's air defenses and said that Kyiv and Rome are "working out the specifics" of an upcoming drone deal.

"Italy is very interested in developing joint production, especially in the drone sector, in which Ukraine has become a leading nation in recent years," Meloni said during a joint press conference with Zelensky after talks at the Chigi Palace.

Zelensky urged closer air defense cooperation among European partners, offering Ukraine's expertise in countering drones and missiles.

"We all need a truly effective defense system that can protect against any threats. War has changed," Zelensky said.

Meloni reiterated Italy's support for Ukraine and called for increased economic pressure on Russia, specifically through the EU's 20th sanctions package, currently blocked by Hungary.

The two leaders further discussed Kyiv's efforts to join the EU, the EU's 90-billion-euro ($105 billion) loan for Ukraine, the battlefield situation, and the U.S.-Iran conflict.

As part of his official visit, Zelensky also met Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale Palace, who underscored the "deep friendship" between Italy and Ukraine, the Ansa news agency reported.

And that visit comes on the heels of a rift between Meloni and the Very Stable Genius:

 

For years, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy enjoyed leverage as the right-wing leader who could bridge the gap between Europe and President Trump.

This week, though, she seems to have decided that Mr. Trump is a bridge too far.

After suffering major political setbacks because of her association with Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Italy and seen as the cause of rising gas prices, Ms. Meloni seized on an opportunity to extricate herself from a relationship that had grown domestically and internationally poisonous. After Mr. Trump launched a broadside on Monday against Pope Leo XIV, Ms. Meloni rallied to the American pontiff’s defense, saying, “I find President Trump’s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable.”

Mr. Trump, clearly jilted, lashed out at Ms. Meloni, saying in an interview with an Italian newspaper on Tuesday that he hadn’t talked to her “in a long time,” was vexed by her lack of participation in the war in Iran and was “shocked by her,” adding, “I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” He responded to her “unacceptable” criticism by snapping, “She’s the one who’s unacceptable.” On Wednesday, he added in a television interview that with Italy, “we do not have the same relationship.”

 One hears a lot about how a newly motivated West, minus the United States, is still no match for the military and economic might of the US, but that kind of depends on properly sizing up that motivation. Carney, Starmer, Macron, Merz, Tusk et al know, as the Trumpists like to say, what time it is.

And Ukraine has remained strong enough through this ordeal to emerge as a sought-after vendor of drones, even in the Middle East. And these days Zelensky is forthrightly saying that Ukraine ought to be in NATO.

For all the sober analysis of the current state of all this. there's something to be said for being on the right side of the dynamics from a moral standpoint.

A lot of time and opportunity have been lost so far in the Ukraine situation, but there's a palpable push for those with the most at stake to do the right thing now.

That's to be encouraged.

 

A silly foreign policy in a deadly serious world

 So Vance, Kushner and Witkoff return empty-handed from Islamabad, the Very Stable Genius orders a US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz (and I'm not the first to point out the absurdity of the US closing the strait that is already closed by Iran, and which was open to all the ships of the world prior to the VSG starting the current war), Israel is on the same footing it went on prior to previous attacks on Iran,  polls in Hungary don't portend an Orban win, despite the blatant endorsements of Vance and Trump, and the VSG spent last night enjoying himself at a UFC fight. Marco Rubio was in attendance, too.

 For that matter, I don't think I've seen the VSG congratulate the Artemis II crew. If he has, he was low-key about it.

I came across a National Review article this morning that made a compelling case for widening one's scope beyond this panoply of developments:

There is a comfortable orthodoxy settling over editorial boards, university seminars, and policy conferences from Ottawa to Brussels. It goes something like this: Donald Trump broke the international order, the United States is an unreliable partner, and the remedy is diversification — toward China, toward the BRICS bloc of emerging economies (including players like Brazil, Russia, and India), toward anyone who is not Washington. This narrative is not merely incomplete, it is dangerously wrong, and the countries indulging in it are squandering what little time they have to prepare for a world that is about to change in ways that ...

The author, an expatriate American living and teaching in Japan, says the bigger dynamics we ought to consider include AI, and the sclerotic regulatory climate in Canada and Europe.

I respect his perspective, but, as is so often the case with a certain kind of sober-analysis piece I run across, it underestimates the impact of the VSG on post-American politics, the shaping up of new dynamics on the world stage, and the setting of precedents that future generations will take for granted at its own peril.

The guy is so clearly out of control, and his contempt for the rest of the West is getting increasingly egregious. His ha-ha-you-don't-know-whether-I'm-kidding-on-the-square-or-completely-serious style of posting on Truth Social or bloviating to reporters has the rest of the world, malign and good-faith alike, shaping events without waiting around for post-America.

Europe appears determined to sidestep the US in the effort to tailor its defense apparatus to 21st-century needs. Ukraine has already proven itself as a solid vendor of drones to several Mideast nations.

I pray, of course, about the current state of affairs. There are signs, such as the aforementioned polls in Hungary, that the good, right, and true can prevail over the bad, wrong and false, but I'm not counting on post-America to be a needle-mover, at least on the side of the former.

Dare to compare

 The Very Stable Genius's take on where things stand re: resolution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

President Trump jabbed at Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky Friday — blaming him for a lack of progress in peace talks to end Russia’s nearly four-year invasion.

“Zelensky is going to have to get moving,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for North Carolina.

“Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky is going to have to get moving. Otherwise, he’s going to miss a great opportunity.”

Russia's take:

 As the United States renews its diplomatic push to end Russia's war against Ukraine, Moscow is making something clear: its position has not changed.

While U.S., Ukrainian, and Russian officials met for trilateral talks in January and again in early February — with another round expected next week — the Kremlin has used the same period to restate its position.

As Washington speaks of momentum and narrowing gaps, Russia's most senior officials have publicly dismissed key elements of the proposed framework.

There would seem to be a gap in expectations.

 

Well, let's see . . .

. . . in the past week , there's been 

The National Prayer Breakfast

at which Trump called Thomas Massie a moron who "loves voting no"

and rehashed for the zillionth time the 2020 election, served up in a word-salad meander about his ego

and employed  his signature usage of brand-burnishing third-person reference to himself to serve up a little totalitarianism with the faithful's hash browns, saying, "If you do say something bad about Trump, I will change my mind and I will have your tax-exempt status immediately revoked."

The standoff between Poland and post-America

in which US ambassador Tom Rose cut ties with lower-house-of-Parliament speaker Vlodzimier Czarzasty to placate the loyalty-demanding Very Stable Genius, who got hurt feelz because Czarzasty didn't support the nomination of the VSG for the Nobel Peace Prize

The Obamas-as-apes video

made by the same guy who did the airplane-dumping-poop-on-a-No-Kings-rally video a while back.

The revelation that

[t]he Trump administration asked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for the Washington region’s Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station to be named after President Donald Trump in exchange for releasing the federal funds required to build a long-delayed tunnel between New York and New Jersey, multiple sources told NBC News.

Guess the Kennedy Center and the Institute for Peace didn't satiate his appetite for self-glorification.

Dizzying, I know. But do not become inured. This is way outside the parameters of anything we could define as having experienced before.  

 

 

And everybody's going to get on his or her particular high horse, and thus does post-America edge closer to atomization

 Re: the Don Lemon arrest, the hot takes are coming fast and furious.

Everything from

“They arrested Don Lemon. This is horrifying. I don’t care what your political beliefs or leanings are, what journalism outlet you represent, this absolutely cannot stand,” she argued.

to 

“LMFAO! Couldn’t happen to a more deserving faux ‘journalist’ who helped terrorize women and children. TIME TO PROSECUTE!” wrote Daugherty.

Megyn Kelly does ask us to consider a valid hypothetical:

“For those saying this is criminalizing journalism, journalists don’t get a pass when breaking the law just bc they have a mic,” submitted Kelly. “If I accompanied ppl storming an abortion clinic harassing/scaring/’traumatizing’ the crying women while saying ‘But I’m a reporter!’ I would absolutely have been charged under any Dem admin.”

There's more at the link and a lot of it is pretty ripe. January's not even over and we can be sure that it's going to be a year of dug-in heels, extreme narratives and a backdrop of fear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post-America has opted to be one of the world's bad actors

 I decided LITD was the appropriate place for this rant. Perhaps some nuggets from it will find their way into a Precipice post, or two or three. 

But I'm not ready yet to frame my reaction to recent events in a nicely laid out argument with a singular theme and perhaps some clever metaphors.

No, presently, I'm horrified and enraged. 

There's no longer any question that the United States, under its current "leadership," has rent asunder not just the transatlantic alliance but the commonly held notion of Western civilization.

The Very Stable Genius imposes a ten percent tariff - that's ten percent above and beyond present tariffs - on any nation that doesn't back the VSG's insane designs on Greenland. 

So the European Union - and this is a good move, but it's sad that it's come to where it became necessary - has forged a free trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc - Argentina, Brazil. Paraguay and Uruguay (and probably new bloc member Bolivia. Europe now views post-America as the kind of nation around which it should do an end run, rather than embrace as a partner.

In Copenhagen,  the normally unruffled Danes made a statement:

The crowd, which included parents with small children as well as older Danes, wore hats in the style of Trump’s MAGA caps but scrawled with “Make America Go Away,” and waved Greenlandic flags and signs saying, “Hands off Greenland.”

And check out how this country is reacting to these tariffs:

 Russian officials welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs on NATO allies over Greenland, with Kremlin economic negotiator Kirill Dmitriev claiming on Jan. 17 that the move signals the "collapse" of the transatlantic alliance. 

Trump earlier said that Washington would impose 10% tariffs on NATO allies — France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Finland — until the U.S. reaches a deal to buy Greenland. He has threatened to acquire the island "one way or the other."

"The transatlantic alliance is over," Dmitriev wrote on X, mocking European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and urging European leaders not to "provoke" Trump.

And now - sheesh - we're back to sending hints about Canada:

 President Donald Trump is privately ramping up his focus on another target in the Western Hemisphere, increasingly complaining to aides in recent weeks about Canada’s vulnerability to U.S. adversaries in the Arctic, according to two U.S. officials, a senior administration official and three former senior U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

As Trump’s advisers work toward his goal of acquiring Greenland, the president has privately grown more exercised about what he sees as Canada’s similar inability to defend its borders against any encroachment from Russia or China, specifically arguing Canada needs to spend more on defense, the officials said. They said his push has accelerated internal discussions about a broader Arctic strategy and potentially reaching an agreement with Canada this year to fortify its northern border

The VSG is also creating a "board of peace" to oversee Gaza reconstruction. In a characteristically self-aggrandizing move, he'll be the chair. 

If a country wants to sit on the board more than three. years, it will have to pony up to the tune of a billion dollars.

And into what kind of fund or account will this bit of lucre be deposited?

The draft also reportedly suggests that Mr Trump would control the money himself, and that it would allegedly go towards rebuilding Gaza.

And it seems this board's scope of mission will be more broad than just Gaza:

. . . the text of its charter, which does not mention Gaza but stresses the need for a “more nimble and effective international peace-building body”, suggests its scope would be far broader, and that the body — which will be chaired by Trump himself — could be used as a rival to the UN.

“The Board of Peace is an international organisation that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict,” the charter says, according to a copy seen by the Financial Times.

“Durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.”

On the home front, so far, it's been what we'd call federal agents, employees of the Department of Homeland Security, that have been sent to post-American cities, but now we're talking soldiers:

Some 1,500 active duty Army paratroopers have been put on alert for a potential deployment to Minnesota, according to two defense officials.

The soldiers are from the 11th Airborne Division, based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, one of the Army's premier infantry formations and a frontline force in the U.S. military presence in the Pacific, positioned to help deter China. The division is also the military's leading formation for Arctic warfare.

One official said the president had not made a final decision on whether to deploy two battalions. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Don't get so overwhelmed by the momentum-gathering cascade of events that you become inured. 

Fully let in, as painful as it might be, that post-America is one of the world's bad guys now. 

So what is to be done? 

I really have nothing concrete beyond not acquiescing. Resist what the country has been transformed into. It's not going to get easier to do so. Quite the contrary. It's going to require an increasing amount of courage.

Okay, that's pretty much it for right now. 

For one thing, I just ate lunch and I don't want to lose it. 

 

 

 

Well, why not? It's still late in the day

 Hello, everybody. As you can see, I haven't posted here since March.

I have stayed busy over at my Substack, Precipice, which has a fair number of subscribers and is where I post longer essays that tend to be about a wider range of topics.

I started Late in the Day a few years earlier (LITD, 2012; Precipice, 2019), and the intent has been to invite the public to fully grasp what has happened to this formerly recognizable thing called the West. I do a fair amount of that at Precipice as well, but LITD has always been a bit more topical and the posts more link-rich.

I guess what prompted me to wade back in over here is that I'd like a place to less formally gather my thoughts in response to each - or at least many - of the developments comprising the torrent of abrupt history-making whenever the mood strikes me. A place to feel my way toward inspiration for other projects.

Let's see; the last post I did here had to do with the Jeddah talks regarding Ukraine. 

What a ten months it's been since then. Putin still has no interest in any kind of peace settlement. In fact, he's upped the savagery level of his missile and drone attacks. 

There's the related issue currently on our plate of the Very Stable Genius's blathering about Greenland with random capitalizations and uses of quotation marks and the thank-you-for-your-attention-to-this-matter sign-off that characterize his social media posts. It’s yet another example of this ha-ha-am-I-kidding-on-the-square-or-deadly-serious “presidential” style that we’re saddled with. But it definitely has Denmark, and Europe generally, alarmed and discussing various what-if scenarios.

The bottom line in that arena is that the post-1945 international order is no more. We're back to spheres of influence. Brute force. (Hell, Stephen Miller says so.) 

Venezuela? Sure, as an isolated development, it's great that Maduro has been captured and deposed. But let us consider that newly sworn in president Delcy Rodriguez is a Chavista through and through. As is interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who wields a blunt instrument, literally, in the country's government.  And collectivos are boarding public buses and demanding that passengers hand over their phones so they can check for signs of support for Maduro's ouster. Then there's the VSG's clear indication that oil is his first priority. That's how Vance is thinking of it, too. 

There's the situation with ICE in Minneapolis. I've watched some of the video. It does look to me like Renee Good was steering her car to the right, away from the agents. From what I can tell, they had options other than shooting her in the face. Is it true that she was a cause-y lefty with an edgy lifestyle? Sure. But she was an American citizen and her life is as precious as that of any other of God's children. And now both sides have dug in their heels, have glommed onto hard and fast positions that will brook no nuance.

So things will probably get increasingly confrontational between ICE and people on the streets of post-America's cities. And not only will the question of how to humanely address the situations of long-time residents from elsewhere who have lived productive lives in the US continue to get sidelined, more actual citizens will surely get caught up in the ugliness. 

Anyway, I think I'll start chiming in here again with some degree of frequency. 

I've been kind of missing the place.