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by Prof. Dr. Kai-Alexander Schlevogt
September 06, 2025
from
RT Website
Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 24 - Part 4 of a
Series on European
Defense...
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Prof. Dr.
Kai-Alexander Schlevogt,
a globally
recognized expert in strategic leadership and economic
policy, who has served as Full University Professor at
the Graduate School of Management (GSOM), St. Petersburg
State University (Russia), where he held the
University-Endowed Chair in Strategic Leadership. He
also held professorships at the National University of
Singapore (NUS) and Peking University. For more
information about the author and a complete list of his
columns, please click
here. |
Overloaded at
home,
White House
visitors from Old Europe
traded dignity
and honor
for elusive
security guarantees.
A suicidal
mission....
For what shall it profit a man,
if he shall gain the whole
world,
and lose his own soul?
Mark 8:36, KJV
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's White House bow on 18
August 2025 was a
masterclass in tragicomedy...
Not entirely surprising...!
Under the crushing weight of expectation,
the actor-turned-war-hero
merely reverted to form, falling back on his greatest skill:
performing at his own expense - eliciting
laughter even from
Thalia, the Muse of
Comedy...
It was not his antics - a tragic script performed
in comic form - that rattled the world, but the astonishing
spectacle of Europe's helmsmen, reduced to Zelensky's bodyguards,
trailing dutifully in their principal's footsteps:
Zelensky staged... Old Europe surrendered in
ignominious fashion...
Caught in a
rat race for security -
overstretched at home yet striving
to shield Ukraine - the leaders of
the old continent played meek
supplicants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The optics mirrored the ancient Greek rite of
hiketeía (ἱκετεία), in which
appearance reigns supreme, a lesson politicians never forget.
1. Old Europe
bleeds itself out in the White House - A Political Autopsy
Let us not be deceived:
The image of European leaders condemned to
sit outside Trump's office like petitioners in a monarch's court
(Figure 1) was an
AI-generated fake, ironically
circulated before the meeting even occurred.
Its release exemplifies the classic stratagem of
seizing a single manipulated instance to cast doubt on an entire
narrative - here, Europe's self-denigration.
Yet the unfolding spectacle required no
manipulation:
the humiliation was real...!
Figure 1
To set the stage for his power play, President
Trump arranged his high-ranking
guests - recast as pawns on a board - around a table where placement
spelled status and favor.
Zelensky's back faced the cameras; Trump,
predictably, commanded the frame, basking in the global spotlight.
In a theatrical display, the flamboyant US president, ever the
consummate showman, transformed the stately conference room - the
supposed epicenter of "high diplomacy" - into his personal televised
classroom.
In full view of the cameras, he summoned the foreign dignitaries one
by one, like hapless and reluctant pupils cold-called forward to the
blackboard to recite under their teacher's watchful gaze.
Before a single word could escape his guests' lips, Trump inundated
them with lavish praise for every superficiality - like
complimenting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's tan, rather
than his intellect - leaving critics aghast at the perceived
condescension.
This live episode conjured memories of Trump's iconic reality show
The Apprentice, a staged contest of candidates jockeying for
his favor.
Only his dreaded signature catchphrase - "You are
fired!" - delivered to boot contestants with decisive and ruthless
authority, was conspicuously absent... for now.
Astonishingly, the curtain had only just risen.
Europe's leaders, admittedly, did not clutch their superior's knees
as in the Greek rite of supplication.
Yet they participated in an astonishing
procession bordering on slapstick:
Cast as unwitting extras in a cheap
production, they filed obediently behind Donald Trump through
the power-drenched corridors of the White House (Figure 1) -
ceremony stripped of dignity, spectacle drained of honor.
Lo and behold, the grotesque parade of
subservience, evoking classic imagery:
Goslings waddling after their mother,
schoolchildren skulking after a headmaster, soldiers marching in
rigid lockstep behind their commander, careful not to break
formation - humiliation dressed as pageantry, each step
amplifying the grim spectacle of subordination.
The grand prize for Europe's slinking - and
sinking - dignitaries?
A privileged close-up of Trump's imperious
back...
Even though this demeaning theater - a macabre
carnival of power and submission, absurd in form, tragic in meaning,
and brazen in its imposition - was enough to rattle the foundations
of Europe's global prestige, the true horror, darker and more
relentless - Trump's version of St Bartholomew's Night - was
yet to strike, with nightmarish precision.
In a power move lifted straight from management textbooks, Donald
Trump, the self-proclaimed sovereign of the political realm,
compelled the leaders of Europe to perch like anxious subordinates
across the boss's resolute desk (Figure 2).
Figure 2
The guests' posture bore the anxious weight of ancient Greek
supplicants trembling before an unyielding idol, while the US
commander-in-chief radiated an ostentatiously nonchalant air -
impervious and triumphant on his own terrain - as if the world
itself were but a stage for his dominion.
As a Management Primer 101, consider this:
In stark contrast to relaxed, couch-style
seating, the across-the-desk configuration forces a subordinate
to face his superior across a literal and symbolic wall of
power.
By setting boss and underling in rigid
opposition, the seating arrangement reinforces formal hierarchy and
top-down control.
The physical barrier imposes a psychological distance that
discourages openness, stifles dialogue, and smothers the very sparks
of creativity beneath the suffocating blanket of rigid,
authoritative command.
Across this chasm, every posture and gesture is
measured, every word constrained, as the subtle theater of power
unfolds.
Functioning as a potent signaling device,
power-position seating casts a long shadow across any room.
By broadcasting authority with unmistakable
clarity, it can prove effective in performance reviews or
disciplinary meetings:
in most other settings, however, it tends to
backfire, creating distance and tension.
It is for this very reason that well-led
organizations typically steer clear of it, even in formal
interactions between superiors and subordinates.
When it comes to joint deliberation among supposed equals at the
highest echelons of global political power, such staged displays of
dominance become all the more ill-advised - causing damage beyond
mere optics by fracturing trust and collaboration in a dour
spectacle of intimidation.
The White House tableau of Europe's symbolic subjugation stands in
stark relief against an earlier scene when Trump himself appeared
dwarfed by the unflinching presence of a European leader -
immortalized in the iconic image of then-German Chancellor Angela
Merkel fixing him with a steely glare during the G7 summit in
La Malbaie, Quebec, on 9 June 2018 (Figure 2).
In that frozen instant, the unspoken hierarchy
was laid bare.
Remarkably, at the time, Merkel's spokesman shared this G7 photo -
unflattering to the US President though it was - on Twitter, an
audacity almost inconceivable in today's era of Trump's ascendancy.
The image spread virally across the globe at
once, searing Trump's humiliation into the global consciousness and
transforming a fleeting diplomatic moment into a lasting emblem of
European resolve and American embarrassment.
In a stunning reversal of roles - almost a revanche - pictures of
the humiliating desk-barrier scene, which any confident and
self-respecting leader would have shunned for its awkward and
mortifying symbolism, were this time proudly posted on the White
House Facebook page, emblazoned with the banner,
"Peace through Strength"...
With the well-established signaling function of
power-position seating in mind, the message left no room for doubt:
The images were meant to project Trump's
personal dominance, not the puissance that flows from equals
standing together in concert.
To add insult to injury, the US president,
who styles himself the "president of peace," abruptly ejected his
high-ranking European guests from the Oval Office mid-discussion,
sending them to wait in the Roosevelt Room while he conducted a
forty-minute personal call with Russian President
Vladimir Putin - a conversation
that could easily have waited until after the dignitaries had
departed.
The message could not have been clearer:
"Step aside, children - the grown-ups are
talking."
Even in the humblest of families, such an
interruption, absent urgent cause, would have been perceived as a
pointed slight; at the pinnacle of global power, it amounted to a
brazenly contemptuous affront.
Yet instead of storming out in protest, the diminished
European leaders held their tongues, allowing only the
rigidity of their posture and the tension etched on their faces to
betray the simmering disapproval beneath - every bodily cue
signaling, unmistakably, that they had been treated like pupils
expelled from class (Figure 2).
In this intricate play of events, contrast makes messages vivid and
unmistakable.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the
staggering extremes - and dizzying unpredictability - of Trump's
performative diplomacy...
Before the world unfolded a relentless stage
drama, in which every posture, gesture, and glance broadcast a
message as sharp as it is bewildering:
shocking, confounding, and demanding
attention...
On the one hand, the US president, ever the
political chameleon, compelled Merz, Macron, and their
colleagues to languish in the antechamber on 18 August 2025, their
humiliation on full display for all to witness.
On the other, Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin
at the Anchorage summit on 15 August 2025 (Figure 3).
At times, his conduct veered toward deference, as
when he spontaneously applauded his Russian guest, with the ultimate
reasons likely be known only to the American host.
Figure 3
The contrast in treatment and outcomes could not have been sharper,
meted out with the unerring, cold precision of a guillotine:
The sullen, listless faces of the belittled
European leaders, laying bare the sting of shameful public
humiliation, stood in stark relief against the foil of the
Russian president's radiant, almost triumphant smile.
Trump's ruthless act of forced juxtaposition
hammered the overarching message home with merciless force and
piercing clarity: honor for victorious Russia, disgrace for
vanquished Europe.
The differential treatment offered a glimpse of yet another, more
general distinction:
a sharp divergence in preferred diplomatic
modality and style.
As his elation and enchantment at the summit with
Putin made abundantly clear, Trump favors staged, personal bilateral
encounters over the slow grind of multilateral consensus-building.
The weight the 47th president attached to that memorable
Alaskan meeting with Putin was theatrically underscored in a truly
surreal moment:
Crowned with a baseball cap boldly
proclaiming "Trump was right about everything!", he proudly and
exultantly held aloft a photograph of the two statesmen at the
summit, bestowed upon him by Putin.
Not content with the extravagant display, the
enthralled US commander-in-chief went so far as to promise to
autograph the picture for Putin, as though the Russian helmsman were
a devoted MAGA fan.
US President Trump
holding up a
photo of the 2025 Anchorage summit
with Russian
President Putin,
White House, 22
August 2025
© Chip
Somodevilla / Getty Images
Only in Trump's absence did the plurality-based diplomatic paradigm
preferred by Old Europe, the ideal of equals deliberating
international affairs in collective council, rather than a single
sovereign holding court, briefly take shape - during the informal
multilateral talks between Vladimir Zelensky and his European
colleagues at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on
18 August 2025 (Figure 3).
In a world otherwise dominated by a single,
looming presence, it was a fleeting stage of precarious parity,
where power was shared, words flowed freely, and the shadow of a
domineering figure was, for once, lifted.
2. Old Europe's Ritual Suicide - A
Mysterious Riddle
In Greek antiquity, a supplicant's plea in a sanctuary could
gain weight through the menace of suicide...
Long centuries on, a chilling parallel to this
dreadful calculus emerged:
the ritual collective self-slaughter of
Europe's elite in the grisly bloodbath at
1600 Pennsylvania.
In the final reckoning, the mystery persists:
Why did European foremost leaders - figures
such as the German Bundeskanzler, the Président de la
République française, and the British Prime Minister - cede
to a catastrophic self-immolation that would make Bismarck, De
Gaulle, and Churchill writhe in their graves?
Zelensky's clowning was
predictable...:
Europe's abject surrender was the dramatic
revelation - striking with such ruthless force that even
Clio, the Muse of
History, and
Melpomene, the Muse
of Tragedy, seemed to reel in astonishment.
It stands to reason that the obsequious
supplicants in the White House were propelled by a tangled
web of motives, with emotion pulling the strings.
Which particular threads, laid bare under
excruciating scrutiny, proved decisive?
Were the visitors steered by an overabundance
of caution, frozen by fear, enslaved by cowardice, or seduced by
its cunning masquerade - the artful illusion of acting shrewdly
by declining to act boldly?
The anatomy of their weakness remains a
riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma:
certainty stays maddeningly out of reach, as
so often happens when probing the roots of human frailty - just
as elusive as European courage in this day and age.
Yet the eye-watering outcome of Old Europe's
collective, politically suicidal self-abasement and
self-enslavement during their pilgrimage to the White House is
beyond dispute.
For starters,
Merz,
Macron, and the rest of their
retinue proved utterly ineffectual before
Trump.
Predictably, the strongman, norm-shattering
and merciless, did not comport himself as a typical benefactor
would toward his supplicants.
One may suspect that the US president was
unfamiliar with the ancient reciprocative code of supplication,
or with the penalties for failing to honor one's obligations...:
In ancient Greece, a potential benefactor who
withheld protection from a rightful supplicant lost both honor
and moral legitimacy - and risked the wrath of the gods...
By his very nature, the titan in the White House
bows to nothing but strength and resoluteness,
scorning all else:
when presented with surrendering troops, he
reverts to instinct, taking no prisoners...
And yet, the emissaries offered nothing but
fawning displays of weakness, a spectacle of servility so extreme it
defies belief, leaving one to wonder how seasoned statesmen could
mistake 'sycophantic ingratiation' for 'influence'...
While accomplishing nothing of real, tangible value, the members of
the servile delegation from Old Europe - dealing exclusively in the
coin of obsequiousness - sacrificed their own dignity and
honor...
To make matters worse, they likewise desecrated
that same most precious and existential form of intangible capital
belonging to the nations they were meant to serve.
Offering the inner core of both themselves and
their countries at the altar of implacable might, they compounded
their self-inflicted wounds, layering disgrace atop
oncoming economic ruin.
As a corollary of their infamy,
Europe's foremost leaders squandered their political capital
at home - above all, credibility - while forfeiting the last
vestiges of global soft power - rooted in respect once
accorded to them - and, through timidity broadcast to the world,
eroded even their capacity to deter.
Astonishingly, they deepened their disgrace by gaining nothing
in return, not even the iron-clad American security
guarantees - the much-vaunted "backstop", borrowed from cricket and
baseball, where it denotes the final line of defense - for Ukraine.
To grasp the magnitude of this double calamity,
consider the reframed Marcan challenge of dreadful import:
For what shall it profit a nation, if it
shall lose not only the world, but its very soul...?
***
To Conclude
When an actor dons the clown's guise, it is
art; when leaders take his cue, it is decay.
The notorious 18 August White House visit,
far from any midsummer night's dream, has made it abundantly clear
that,
the time for political pantomime is
over, its folly exposed for all to see - leaving nothing
but the shadow of lost dignity and honor...
Instead, the disoriented and floundering
navigators steering Old Europe's contemporary anti-Russian course
must forge a smarter, more inventive strategy to escape the
dysfunctional rat race for security
and prevent the coveted protection of war-torn Ukraine from slipping
like smoke through their fingers.
The silver lining after Europe's catastrophic self-gutting in the
Washingtonian halls of empire consists in this:
By virtue of necessity, the quest for a
fundamental, sustainable solution concerning the optimal global
order must now proceed from the head rather than the bowels,
banishing folly and instincts to the annals of history.
Previous columns in the series:
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