Our current path and the crossroads we face: Barbarism versus Civilization

To see the latest revisions and corrections, please refresh your screen.

What is amazing is not that Trump’s performance of “ceasefire negotiations” led to nothing, but rather that Trump was able to capture so much attention from a docile press which repeatedly failed to remind readers that Trump is a Russian asset.

Start your story with that obvious fact, and everything else makes sense.

Of course Trump didn’t apply any pressure to Putin. Of course Trump didn’t impose any new sanctions on Russia or join Europe in its imposition of new sanctions on Russia.

What did we expect from our president who is a well-known “Russian asset”?

Europe and Ukraine and the rest of the civilized nations in the world are beginning to understand they cannot count on the United States to join them in a civilizational struggle to defeat Russian aggression, Russian war crimes, and Russian efforts to undermine international law and the U.N. Charter-based international legal order.

Continued U.S. intelligence cooperation with Ukraine is absolutely essential. Continued U.S. military arms and other military support is also extremely important.

If either fails to continue and Russia continues to make progress on the ground in Ukraine, European support is likely to include the provision of German Taurus missiles to Ukraine (range: 500 km), and if Ukraine starts to lose big time on the battlefield we are likely to see the deployment of troops from individual NATO countries within Ukraine.

The Europeans are starting to understand that Russia poses a mortal threat to European democracies governed by the rule of law.

Just as in the war with Nazi Germany, we are in an existential struggle between civilization and barbarism, a world where human rights and the laws of war are respected, on the one hand, and a world where aggression, war crimes and massive crimes against humanity are the norm, on the other.

In a word, we are in a struggle between civilization and the rule of law, and pure barbarism.

As in World War II.

Trump is an important player in this drama, at least in the short term.

But the struggle is much bigger than Trump. As the victories of pro-democratic leaders in Canada, Australia, Poland and just this last weekend in Romania suggest, democratic forces are gaining strength in a number of countries.

We must now look to Europe and other countries for leadership in the struggle for democracy and the rule of law, not to Donald Trump and the current American regime.

We are at a crossroads.

One road leads to maintenance of the U.N. Charter, international law, the goals of democracy and the rule of law, and our current civilization.

The other road leads to a breakdown of international order, increasing anarchy, arms races and war, increasingly grave human rights violations, and the abandonment of the laws of war (international humanitarian law).

On this second road, amid growing international anarchy, the chances of the world dealing effectively with challenges to our very survival, such as climate change, are virtually nil.

On this road, in short, we face a descent into the barbarism of Hitler, Stalin, Putin, and so many other murderous tyrants in the past.

Which road will America take?

***

About the Author

James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.

He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.

At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Recent Books by the Author

James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.

James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.

Support the newsletter and the Author

We encourage you to join the community that supports the Trenchant Observations newsletter and the author’s books.

You may sign up for a free subscription to the newsletter. But to receive all of the content as soon as it is published and to support the newsletter, please upgrade to a Paid or Founding Member subscription. To do so, click on the “Subscribe now” button below.

You may also make a contribution to help support the author and his books directly by sending a Zelle or a wire transfer. For further details, please contact the author at jrowles93@gmail.com.

Alternatively, you may respond to the author’s Go Fund Me appeal by clicking on the last button below. The funds take one-two weeks to get to his bank account, and are subject to a fee (2.9% plus $0.30).

There is a new title for the GoFundMe appeal —”Restore American Democracy Fund - Support Engaged Writers”.

I am uploading a revised description of this appeal, GoFundMe will pause this appeal while the compliance team reviews its content, It may take a couple days for the compliance team (humans) to “unpause” the appeal so that it can again accept donations. In the meantime, you may make a contribution by Zelle as explained above.

We greatly appreciate the donations of those who halve already contributed.

Finally, in addition to subscriptions and contributions, you can buy the books listed above, read them, and send me your comments and reactions.

Trenchant Observations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

1