The recent United States military intervention in Venezuela has reopened a fault line running through Europe's heart — one that has simmered for decades but remains poorly understood in much of the West.
While politicians, pundits, journalists and social media users across the continent almost universally condemned President Donald Trump's actions as violations of international law, the reactions that followed exposed a profound chasm in perspectives, rooted in fundamentally different lived experiences.
In Western Europe, outraged commentators layered ominous warnings onto their condemnations: "Trump is setting a precedent." "The US is emboldening Russia." "What if Moscow escalates now?" "What if Putin captures Zelensky next?"
These concerns, framed as reasonable attempts to defend the international order, triggered a wave of indignation across Eastern Europe — not at the condemnations themselves, but at what many perceived as historical amnesia amid Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine.
For societies enduring three decades of Russian violations of international law, such warnings felt like insults born of ignorance. Many Georgians are claiming on social media that while Trump violated the law, if someone brought down the influential, pro-Russia mogul Bidzina Ivanishvili, they would only be happy. And, most of all, 'don't lecture us about international law,' they argue, since we have been subject to its violation for decades, with Russia occupying 20% of the country's territory and Georgian refugees displaced for over three decades.
Similar sentiments rippled through Belarusian online communities, where many openly hoped longtime dictator Alexander Lukashenko might one day share Maduro's fate. Ukrainian responses were the most revealing: they staunchly defend international law as the bedrock of their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet Western speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin might "now" escalate — after dozens of assassination attempts on Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky — struck them as darkly absurd and profoundly detached from reality.
Russia has long deployed coercive and violent measures against Ukraine: an ongoing invasion, targeted assassinations, mass civilian casualties, forced deportations, the kidnapping of twenty thousand children and widespread destruction of infrastructure. Some 20% of Ukrainian territory remains occupied. Against this backdrop, Western fears that Trump's actions might suddenly lower Moscow's threshold for aggression felt belated, if not entirely misplaced.
This disconnect has revealed something profound about Europe's split consciousness.
Eastern Europeans aren't defending Trump or rejecting international law; rather, they are expressing exhaustion with what they see as Western Europe's selective memory, performative shock and periodic alarm.
The 'precedent' worrying Western commentators was set long ago by Moscow: in Georgia, in 1992–1993 and, again, in 2008; in Moldova's Transnistria, in1992; and in Ukraine's Crimea and Donbas regions in 2014, followed by the 2022 full-scale invasion. What the West often framed as "secessionist wars" or "civil conflicts" were, to those affected, blatant state aggression — textbook breaches of international law met with statements of 'deep concern,' rather than sustained or meaningful action.
This willful myopia, this habit of ignoring systematic violations while fretting over hypotheticals, has shaped today's world. Had the West confronted early violations not as isolated crises but as an escalating pattern — and acted decisively — the landscape might look different today. Tolerating impunity at Europe's edges normalised bent rules, hollowed-out norms and resurgent power politics. After all, the Trumpian erosion of the international order didn't emerge in a vacuum — it stems from earlier failures to defend it when it still seemed optional.
Looking ahead, confronting this reality necessitates more than renewed declarations of principle. It requires Western Europe to engage seriously with Eastern Europe's lived experience — an experience shaped not only by trauma, but by hard-earned clarity about how unchecked violations evolve over time.
Viewing the world through this lens doesn't weaken the commitment to international law. Instead, it strengthens it by grounding norms in historical accountability and practical enforcement. Only by acknowledging this shared but uneven history can Europe hope to develop a unified and credible response to future challenges — one anchored in realism, consistency and early action, rather than in belated alarm once the damage has already been done.
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