En, enligt redaktionens uppfattning, bra beskrivning av hur Europa (åtminstone ledargarnityret och etablerade media) uppfattar hur USA (Trump) agerar.

Wolfgang Munchau March 10, 2025  

“And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new.”

Once again, Stefan Zweig got it spot-on. He understood the strategic complexity of a game in which just repeating known moves doesn’t necessarily result in victory. The puzzle changes with each move you make — and your opponent’s response. This understanding is central to his novella The Royal Game, and it has significant bearing to our current political moment: Zweig’s characters bear an uncanny resemblance to  certain of our geopolitical actors.

His story takes place on a ship travelling from New York to Buenos Aires in the Thirties. One of the passengers is the reigning world chess champion. He is described as uncouth, semi-illiterate, the opposite of intellectual; he’s a transactional type who is only interested in money, but endowed with the singular talent of being able to win chess games by just looking at what’s happening on the board. His opposite character is a cultured intellectual, Dr B, in many ways the better chess player. Unfortunately, Dr B has never played against a real opponent. He taught himself to play while in solitary confinement, from a book. Having memorised all the games detailed in the manual, he then attempted to play them in his head. When two play against each other, Dr B is tormented by the world champion, with his irritating, unpredictable moves. He’s not playing according to the formulas Dr B committed to memory. Inevitably, Dr B folds.

What is Zweig trying to tell us? That to triumph at chess requires anticipation. It is not merely about logic. There are people who try to play intellectually, who have a capacity to memorise entire games and then try to repeat them. But then there are intuitive geniuses like Zweig’s antihero, who hasn’t memorised anything: he just knows how to exploit his opponent’s mental weaknesses. Remind you of anyone?

I have heard Donald Trump being described as post-literate. He has no understanding of European history, and confuses all-important details, like who started the war in Ukraine. Nor does he really care when he gets things wrong. When he expressed regret at his statement that the EU was founded “to screw the US”, he was only apologising for what he described as a “bad word”.  It is a complete waste of time trying to fact-check what he says.  What we should be doing instead is trying to anticipate his next move.

But we Europeans seem to have an institutional incapacity to think two steps ahead. As a result, we aren’t asking the important questions: such as what capabilities does Ukraine need to win the war? Where are the bottlenecks, and how can we fix them? What are the end-game scenarios? What would be an acceptable second-best outcome? What does it mean to win, or to lose?

Instead of strategic game, we Europeans have principles.

Läs fortsättningen på Unherd.