Few things, in the field of international relations, are
more daunting for a world leader than an Oval Office
press conference with Donald Trump. They are often
bruising affairs for the visitor: Ukraine’s Volodymyr
Zelensky getting practically mauled for not expressing
enough gratitude; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
being described as “difficult”; Prime Minister Mark
Carney having to continually reiterate that Canada is
not for sale. So Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae
Takaichi must have sat beside Trump on March 19
with some trepidation. Trump, ever bullish, did not
disappoint when he quipped in response to a Japanese
journalist who asked why the U.S. had not warned
its allies it was going to strike Iran on February 28:
“Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why
didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” Takaichi’s
expression said it all, with the comment setting the
tone for her three-day state visit in Washington.
As Europe confronts the
unresolved shadows of empire,
a Belgian court has opened the
door to what may become the
continent’s most consequential
colonial-era criminal trial.
Judges in Brussels ruled
that Count Étienne Davignon, a
93-year-old former Belgian diplomat, can stand trial over the
1961 assassination of Patrice
Lumumba—the first prime
minister of what is now the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
The March 17 decision
marks the first time a former
offi cial of a European colonial
power will stand trial for alleged
criminal complicity in a political
assassination committed during
the colonial era. It came a day
after Spain’s King Felipe VI
acknowledged that his country’s
conquest of the Americas.
Lumumba, 35, was executed
by Katangan separatists backed
by Belgian interests, after being
overthrown just months into
independence. Belgium has
acknowledged some culpability
before. A 2002 parliamentary
inquiry concluded that the state
bore “moral responsibility” for
the circumstances leading to
the killing, but no one was held
criminally accountable.