Trump is an aggressor, plain and simple

While the snowflakes peacefully float down in front of my window, the world is again in turmoil. Just today, I finished writing a technical article that I worked on since several days, but it was overshadowed with a bitter taste due to latest events.

To punt it bluntly, after stealing oil tankers like pirates and bombing ships, the latest stunt of Trump was basically “Let’s kidnap the president to better plunder Venezuela’s oil”! Of course, he won’t call it like that. It’s “for freedom” and to “fight drugs”. But heck, do it in your own country! This is a military putsch in another country, and has nothing remotely to do with democracy. Venezuela’s has the largest oil deposits in the world and Trumps is eying the gas pump.

Sadly, the whole world only watches, criticizing it but too weak to oppose the bullying of its American big bro. I’m kind of ashamed that Europe and in particular Germany had such a low key response regarding this aggression. It’s like looking away to preserve one’s own self interests. They probably also don’t want to get on Trump’s nerves because they depend on US, including their help in Ukraine. I just hope this greed and madness won’t escalate further.

I also noticed during the writing of the technical article today, that Europe is extremely dependent on US. Not in the usual sense because of trading, supply chains, military and the other usual metrics, but “technologically”. Everyone here uses Windows, Google, Apple, Amazon, ChatGPT, GitHub, WhatsApp, US Cloud infrastructure and services. Pull the plug and nothing works anymore in Europe. It’s not like China/Russia who have strategic alternatives for almost everything, from their Search Engines, Chat Apps to Alibaba Cloud and such. Pull the plug there and they’ll adapt after some disruption. That is a geopolitical dependency that is kind of never considered geopolitically despite it appears to me as the huge showstopper. We are great allies all the time after all!

Now I may sound paranoid, but I think that in this new quickly evolving era, it’s time for Europe to become more technologically independent, to not suffer the whims of its American big bro. Sure, we are “allies” and I think we will always be. But this technological dependence is also a way to exert pressure and control, whether it’s “America first” tariff negotiations or to coerce Europe in some way. And who knows how it will be in ten or twenty years from now. If we don’t want to get the shorter end of the stick, I think it makes sense for Europe to also invest and use other European technological alternatives. I always considered myself as a “world citizen” so it saddens to speak like that, truly. I also thought the era of peace and reason was upon us …but somehow the political world seems to be going nuts.

Let’s hope for the best, peace and love!