America alone

Tech billionaires watch markets fade away
as Europe builds capacities at home.
Horizons dwindle where they're free to play;
America's increasingly alone.
"The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith has taught
expands when parties all cooperate.
What's hard to make, is often better bought;
high tariffs will impoverish the State.
Three generations, we secured sea lanes
and Europe trusted we'd hold perils back.
But now that Putin's avid for Ukraine
his vassal Trump's been told to just retract.
Enablers, focused wholly on their stocks,
have conned our Ship of State right onto rocks.

faith

Mark Carney spoke in Davos to the crowd
who knew they had to formulates a plan
to bypass Trump who spews such crap aloud.
They need to line up with a better man.
A new world order, shutting Trump outside
must be in place before the pending crash.
A global trade-web's not quickly contrived
when old alliances break in a flash.
O Canada! We turn our eyes to thee.
Last  bastion that won't crumble into dust
where citizen and immigrant breath free,
and Europeans still invest their trust.
Our glory days as hegemon are shot,
and only Trump takes pride in what he's got.

useful idiot

LePen deems Putin's land-grabs no concern
to Frenchmen facing crises of their own.
Another generation's yet to learn;
all Europeans share one common home.
The Baltics know their fate's wed to Ukraine.
Forever on their guard, ex-soviet
republics know appeasement's stark insane;
the Munich lesson's not one they'll forget.
Soft-pedalling anti-Muslim rhetoric
she plays the grown-up option to Zemmour.
As much as bankers' toadies make us sick,
she's plunging ever deeper in this sewer.
The Kremlin's meddling in our governance
looks eerily familiar now in France.

crunch time

The Czarist empire Gorbachev renounced
still beckons Putin when he dreams at night.
Ukrainians see plainly they'd be trounced
if they can't count on NATO in the fight.
The"European Project" that's quashed war
three generations (leaving Balkans out)
can't go on doing what it's done before
should old allegiances forswear their clout.
But solidarity against the Bear
who'd eat the smaller neighbors, one by one,
is growing firm as if out of thin air
to lend Ukrainians resolve, and guns.
If Biden'd just concede that Putin lies,
he might do something more than compromise.

piracy II

the pirate raid that Lukashenko staged
won approbation from his Kremlin boss.
All Europe slammed the borders in outrage.
But Putin scores this triumph worth that cost.
Now, landlocked Belorussians must look East
For food, for fuel, or any form of Trade.
Still, no one's sanctioning the Russian beast
who underwrote the scheme, and gladly paid.
The dream of Europe unified's a threat
to one who craves the empire of a czar
But only Moscow's eager to forget
the horrors of a continent at war.
Where Biden sees a world in need of change,
Vlad Putin seems increasingly deranged.

stupid woman

Theresa May's state barque has run aground.
So Tories get to find a better man.
But now, they're flirting with that BoJo clown;
the party manifestly has no plan.
It's time insurgents cast off the Old Guard
and find a steady hand to helm this boat.
A second referendum's in the cards,
but still, it's Parliament that gets to vote.
Bob Mercer still aspires to pull the strings,
while using others to conceal his hand.
His dalliance with May's a sterile fling;
deliv'ring nothing got her flatly canned.
The European Project's not dead yet.
But nothing in its future's firmly set.

whither Europe?

The European Union posed a threat
to Putin's dreams of new hegemony
he likes  them separated, and in debt
a fertile field to sow autocracy.
Macron proposes something more, instead
a fiscal union, feeding one shared till.
Kant's League-of-Nations dream just won't stay dead;
the reverie of Peace is hard to kill.
Two visionaries fight for Europe's soul.
American hegemony's long past.
Our troops pay rent, but aren't in control;
last year's alliances are fraying fast.
The Monetary Union's just phase one
of something wholly new beneath the sun.

Perpetual Peace

John Bull votes "leave!" and Parliament's aghast
no threat to sovereignty was ever real
but Brussels wants divorce proceedings fast
to get some closure on the Brexit deal
save for the Balkans, Europe's been at peace
three score and ten since the UN was formed
as city-states united to form Greece
diplomacy--not bullets--is the norm
the European Project feeds the dream
that nations could agree to foreswear war
but now that project's lost a lot of steam
that hope's more distant than it was before
a New World Order struggles to be made
but Boris Johnson took us retrograde

allegiances

the English proletariate's aggrieved
at policies set by the One Percent
and so they voted Britain ought to leave
and sever trade-ties to the Continent
but Scots are loathe to see liasons fade
they're Europeans no less than they're Brits
since Adam Smith, staunch champions of Trade
rewarding not just resources, but wits
United Kingdom's in for a rough ride
Leviathan's been taken down a peg
is this the wound that leaves the thrones untied
the body politic shorn of one leg
the centre cannot hold; thing fall apart
a great unravelling had petty start