‘We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline’, said US Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference. And he added: We will ‘renew the greatest civilization in human history’. So his message is: The empire is back”!

The strategic decision of the European countries to stand unconditionally by Israel despite the genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza and the occupied West Bank can be difficult to understand. It greatly damages the European countries' reputation in the Global South and among their own populations. It smacks from afar of double standards, and one would have to be blind not to see that. The talk of "European values" comes across as what it is: empty talk.