Illustration: Mountain PeopleThe contradiction was fatal: If the Ukraine war ended with a peace deal, it would be hard to sustain this economic pump-priming. Part of the capital Trump needs to consolidate his vision of a G2 world structured around the Washington-Beijing axis is now contractually obligated to flow from Europe westward. Trump’s acquiescence to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has triggered a flood of Chinese exports to the EU. In the G2 world, the imagined global village is a gladiatorial arena where the EU and the UK now wander aimlessly. A new, harder, colder world order has been erected on the grave of European ambition.
