NEWS
Between two Autocrats
18-02-2025In my inaugural adress in 1985 at Leiden University, my theme was: Between Two or Against One ? At the time the answer was still clear. It is different today in Donald Trump's second term as U.S. President. What he announced to do, is clearly being done. Not in foreign policy only but much more dangerously in turning the American democracy into a new U.S autocracy.For us Europeans indeed a new and most dangerous change.The answer to my own question today is: between two autocracies. What the two autocrats Putin and Trump are up to is expansion of power and territory: Ukraine, Moldavia, Poland and the Baltic democracies on Putin's side and the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, Greenland and the Panama canal on the other,, Trumps side. The two autoccrats understand each other, but with little or no interest in peace and world order. Europe is in serious danger.
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The Illusions of Detente
Footprints of the 20th Century - Third EditionDescription
Since 1989, we refer to the whole post-war period as the “Cold War Era”. Such was not the case in 1968. At the time, the Cold War – in our perception – was behind us. We no longer felt to be in the midst of it. Europeans on the Western side of the Iron Curtain0 felt relatively at ease with Europe’s division. The era of Détente as we called it, was0 considered to be a fairly stable and long-lasting political condition, even after Soviet tanks crushed Dubcek’s socialism with a human face in Pragu