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.