Humiliation and humility

Mr Trump has ushered in the age of humiliation. His method is to push around America’s friends rudely and publicly. He knows none of them can afford to fight back

- SHEKHAR GUPTA

The outrage over United States Navy’s sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena can be understood with one headline: Donald Trump has ushered in the age of humiliation, exclusively upon his allies, partners, and friends.

For us in India, the answer to this is another “H” word, which we will come to in a bit.

‘There’s also a simpler way to understand this, using the Indian truckers’ logic. Among the delightful lines you will read on the back of the highway trucks is: Aisa koi saga nahin, jisko humnein thaga nahin. In English, it loses flavour, yet, on best effort: There’s no relative (or someone really close), whom I haven’t swindled.

Substitute relative with ally/partner/friend and swindled with humiliated, and you get the picture. Mr Trump’s method is to push around America’s friends rudely and publicly. He knows none of them can afford to fight back, given traditional dependencies, as with Europe. Or relatively recent trust and linkages for India.

He’s often humiliated these countries’ leaders. He did earlier this week with Keir Starmer what he had done with leaders of Spain, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Ukraine, South Africa, France, neutral Switzerland, and counting. On Spain denying the use of its bases for the war on Iran, he said the US simply won't ask. With Denmark and Norway, respectively, there is Greenland and his Nobel. On South Africa, he bought into the Elon Musk mythology of a “white” genocide and his “love” of Zelenskyy we well know. That hasn’t stopped him, however, from seeking Ukraine’s help against Iran’s drone swarms now.

You can see two things, therefore. One, that Mr Trump can be pragmatic. He doesn’ttake his insults for his friends to his own heart. That he also expects them not to can be problematic. Europe is too dependent on him to complain. If you can’t defend yourselves, you bear humiliation stoically by one you've outsourced your security to.