This week I introduced John B. Judis’s recent and thought-provoking essay about Donald Trump as an Hegelian “world-historical figure” to Swedish readers, in a column for the media start-up 100%. I agree with Judis’s essentially neutral thesis that Trump is carrying what Hegel called the Weltgeist, unwittingly setting loose forces that have reached historical inevitability—just as Napoleon’s victory at Jena in 1806 heralded the decline of the old German order and the rise of legally unified nation-states in Europe.
My own addition is an example of the kind of inevitable—and irreversible—development Trump is setting in motion: the return of nuclear deterrence as a serious option in the security debates of smaller countries. What follows is a translated extract:
With considerably less tact than every president since Harry Truman, Trump has made clear that the prescence of American forces in Europe is not eternal, and that …
