Europe's Tantrum, First Day at Pre-School (Revised)
Sanctioned Not Detained
A recent claim by Dima of the Military Summary Channel indicated that Zelenskiy had given an order for the detention of former Ukrainian President and leader of the opposition, Petro Poroshenko. This appears to have been an overly dramatic account. Reuters reported on February 12 that Poroshenko had said that Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council had adopted sanctions against him, and he accused political rival President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of being behind the move.
The sanctions on Poroshenko include an asset freeze and a ban on withdrawing capital from the country.This is not the first time for such conflicts between Zelenskiy and Poroshenko. Other than former Ukrainian military commander, Valerii Zaluznyi, now serving as Ukrainian ambassador to the UK, Poroshenko is among the most likely candidates to unseat Zelenskiy in the event that elections are ever again held in Ukraine.
At the School Gate
Zelenskiy will likely be more acutely concerned than ever about rivals for power at this juncture of Ukrainian history, as doubts swirl as to the viability and even the very survival of the state.
The war against Russia has never actually been a Ukrainian project but rather an imperial project of the US, supported by its European vassals, in a vain attempt, conveniently spelled out in the 2019 RAND report to “Extend Russia,” a project foisted on Ukraine in the Maidan coup d-etat of 2014. That was the product of what today practically everyone recognizes as conforming to all the contours of a Washington CIA-USAID-NED funded NGO-galore operation, with the spicey addition of neo-fascist Banderites and their snipers to supply muscle.
But now, unexpectedly, Mummy Washington wants to get on with her own career in West and East Asia, and has dragged Ukraine and, with it, all of Europe, kicking and screaming to the school-gate.
Here, they are all going to have to learn how to get on without Mummy and grow up to be strong, independent young men and women, who are not afraid of talking to, even doing deals with and possibly, who knows, getting chummy with what Mummy Washingon had once told them was the big bad bogey-man (Russia).
Of course, along the way they are going to have to throw out many of those old favorite comfort blankets, teddy bears, and pink bath mats (all those softie European elites who looked cuddly but never actually returned the love).
Those comfort blankets are indeed looking very soggy today, very upset with Mummy and throwing tantrums. The Brussels Blankets are looking especially out-of-sorts.
The War Has Ended
The war, as I say, was never, ever, a good-faith exercise. Ukraine was never, ever going to get into NATO so long as it was at war, and as long as NATO members worried that its accession might drag them into bankruptcy or worse.
Post-Soviet Russia was never seriously regarded as a threat to Europe and even less to the US. Quite the contrary, Russia’s intelligentsia had almost been entirely suckered into believing the collective West’s own heroic stories about itself. They were eager to join the club of such a civilized, well-dressed civilization and fell over themselves apologetically when they worried that, just maybe, the collective West was taking things a tad too far when, despite earlier assurances, NATO kept creeping slowly and surely to Russian borders whereupon Russia’s neighbors started accepting US “defensive” (=offensive) anti-missile systems (to protect Europe, they said, from those fantatical nuclear-obsessed Iranians, though the Iranians did not actually have a single nuclear bomb), and staging aggressive annual military exercises whose supposed enemy was clearly Russia.
When Russia protested, the collective West pretended that Russia was just being a silly billy and paid no attention, nonchantly signing up to agreements they knew were smoke, like Minsk and, later, Istanbul, hiding their giggles at the Russian behemoth who they were planning to take to the cleaners once and for all.
In the conviction that Mummy Washington was every bit as warm and cuddly as her Hollywood romantic comedies, Europe happily threw almost all its military wealth into the Ukraine scam, it enthusiastically sabotaged its own economy by sanctioning cheap Russian oil and gas, and signing up to far more expensive US (and Russian) LNG, cheering on the slaughter of Ukrainian men on the battlefields and demanding that even greater numbers be sacrificed in this noble cause.
All the while, Mummy Washington was there, smiling gayly, throwing in heaps of cash and jewellery to the merry bonfire, showing her European vassals how to do it, even as she sternly reprimanded them that they needed to throw in more, much more, if they wanted to be grown-up boys and girls.
Will the European vassals get over their tantrums? Or - as it might seem in the light of the hysteric stenographic media reactions today to Trump’s decision to actually talk (horror!!) to his adversary, (promising at the very least a better understanding of the issues) as opposed to his predecessor, The Demented One, who did not talk to his adversary at all, who had no good intelligence and no understanding whatsoever - are the vassals hardening and doubling down?
Now, what is it that they would be hardening down on?
The pretext for the crisis over Ukraine with Russia was always fake; it was, in short, provoked, and provoked over a very long period of time, and provoked to the point that Russia was left with no sensible option other than, seeing the direction in which things were going, taking pre-emptive action while Russia still could.
The enraged European vassals, therefore, want to harden down on a myth, something that has no substance, no grounding in reality. And if they are stupid enough in this endeavor to arm their vengeaful petulance in further aggressions and further provocations, they will indeed create the very monster they fear.
Because Russia will then be forced, without Mummy Washington’s skirts for her vassals to hide under, lash out, lethally, against the most pernicious and annoying of these scamps.
The self-sabotaging intensity of Europe’s bitterness over Russia even raises the question as to whether the destruction of Ukraine might actually be their aim, or at least the aim of those European countries who could most benefit from helping Russia take Ukraine apart.
Or is it the aim because Europe’s shameful defeat over Ukraine will become the standard-bearer for the cause of a new, more centralized, more authoritarian European Union with vaster powers than it now has, powers to raise its own funds, to people and weaponize its own armies, suppressing the fractious little member-nuisances whose silly and falacious claims to sovereignty over all this time have stood in the path of the great heroic white-haired Goliath of this new kingdom? None other than Ursula von der Layen.
Perhaps JD Vance’s reproval yesterday of Europe’s Liberal Authoritarians, those that Ursula preeminently represents, may put a spoke in this wheel. He chided them for their resort to all kinds of censorship in the pathetic endeavor to protect themselves from views they don’t agree with (simply not woke enough, my dear), and their refusal to acknowledge that just because their wars are at the heart of global migration crises this does not mean to say that their own domestic populations have to be saddled with the hosting of millions of their victims, or that opposition to immigration is fascist.
Trump, Vance and Hegsteth Hijinks
Mummy Washington Trump is tired of this silly game of Neocon Biden’s, started by her first husband; she wants to play different games in fresher places with other, cooler kids.
So what is she saying? She is telling the European vassals to just grow up, goddamit! At some point you guys have to get out of the house and start out on your own. and the sooner the better. Did you expect me to be around forever? You’ve got to look after yourselves. If you’re afraid of a bully, slap him around before he slaps you, if you can.
But let’s be clear and less poetic: so far, nothing, repeat nothing whatsoever, has been agreed by Trump and Putin, other than that they are making relatively nice, and talking about talking. Even Saudi Arabia isn’t fixed yet, to my knowledge.
If they start talking beyond that 90 minute phone call it will be talking just to see whether a settlement is even achievable.
With Kellogg, nothing would have been achievable, his terms so far out of alignment with reality - the reality of Russian strength on the battlefield; the size and strength of the Russian economy; the overweening volume and modernization of Russian weaponry; the strength of Russian allies (especially, in effect, China); Ukraine’s political and military weakness; European posturing, dithering and fractiousness; US post-hegemonic anxiety.
With Vance, Hegsteth, Witcoff, comes a revised agenda, one that is somewhat more convincing and entailing the principles that:
A return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is unrealistic;
US NATO partners have to pony up 5% of their GDPs, and if they cant afford it, too bad because they are the ones who have to carry the burden of their defense from now on;
The US will scale down its troops in Europe; after all, how much longer does Europe expect to be occupied?
The US will not provide security guarantees to Ukraine or to Europe, since obviously that would be sure to bring the US back into a conflict that it wants out from;
Ukraine cannot realistically become a member of NATO now and perhaps never;
The US will not put troops on the ground (well, Vance wobbles a bit on that but who will take him seriously?) nor has any reason, by the way, to put its air power at Europe’s disposal;
US and Russia can sort it all out between them, if a deal is possible at all, and in their own good time may allow Ukraine and Europe into the process for just a peek - remember Paris (North Vietnam) and Doha (Afghanistan);
And even while Musk helps Trump set up a somewhat more impressive “Iron Dome” for the US (which Reagan never achieved, while Israel’s is clearly prone to “flooding” by drone and other missles), Trump talks (is he a commie or what?!) about denuclearization, making a deal with Russia and China whereby everybody cuts their military spending in half so that the savings can be spent “on other things.”
This last cold blast of momentary sanity after 80 years is almost too much to bear, if “other things” mean better living conditions for all.
And sure, while Trump’s obsession with China as the preferred focus of US attention seems to align with at least the destination point of neocon strategizing, Trump is not (yet, at least) promising to promote Taiwanese independence from Beijing.
Pre-Biden Trump was all about being chummy with Russia so as to drive a wedge between Russia and China. Post-Biden Trump faces a world in which Russia and China are in effect joined at the hip, and he is now driving a wedge between the US and Europe.
Funny how things work out.
The issues to be addressed in any forthcoming talks are massive and fraught with the possibility of collapse: who is going to participate in the talks, on what issues, with what remit; where will the new borders be drawn; what kind of peace-keeping force will be necessary to secure a demilitarized zone; Ukrainian demilitarization and denazification; withdrawl of sanctions; and a new European or global security architecture.
And, meanwhile, on the battlefields, Russia has completed its second consecutive night of all kinds of missile strikes across Ukraine, including Kiev, with little evidence of Ukrainian air defense left to protect it. In Kursk, Russian forces are in the center and south of Sudzja; they have entered the town of Selivko, which governs Ukrainian supply lines to Sudzja and are positioning themselves for a strike on the supply routes from Ukraine to Ukrainian forces in Kursk. In Pokrovsk Russian forces appear to have retaken at least some of the territory around Kortnyi and Pischanne.
West Asia
I shall write at greater length about West Asia in a future post. For the time being, my expectation is that we will see a further handover of hostages (3) by Hamas tomorrow, Saturday, and that the ceasefire will continue for a while longer. This may not please Netanyahu who says there will never be an end to the genocide (whose total official number, almost certainly a grave undercount, is approaching 50,000) for as long as Hamas remains in control of Gaza.
The second phase of the conflict is supposed to include a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the release of all hostages and talks on rebuilding the devastated strip (some sources say this will come with a bill of $3 trillion).
All Netanyahu and his cabinet want is extermination and the second phase wont bring them that. So it would be a miracle if we get that far.
In the West Bank, too, Israel is creating “facts on the ground” with the recent, forcible displacement of at least 40,000 ((Nassar).
Nor should we ever overlook the issue of gas deposits in the Mediterranean and their role behind Israeli eagerness to get rid of the Palestinians. For a more comprehensive review of the scale of international competition for oil and gas see Michel Cossudovsky here: (Chossudovsky)
For an interesting and novel take on the disastrous and tragic UN mishandling of Palestinian interest in 1947 see this from Stefan Moore (Moore).
I note with some interest the argument that Trump, by laying US claim to Gaza, however outrageously, is indicating a willingness to underline that Gaza is not, in fact Israel’s to give, and through a US presence on the strip the US will prevent Israel from populating Gaza.
I suspect this theory belongs in the company of other speculations that desperately seem to need to attribute some deep, almost unearthly, yet ultimately benign cunning to Trump.
I think such demonstration might more easily be accomplished through camouflage less reminiscent of Hitler and more mindful of Gandhi. But, hey, yes, I could be wrong.
Perhaps the only way of dismantling this lying, thieving structure of power that has settled incubus-like on Washington for the past forever, is by lying and thieving. I am absolutely not holding my breath on that one.
In Syria, unelected and Turkish-backed Jihadi neocon leader of a terrorist invasion, Jolani, in the midst of a deteriorating situation of national poverty and vengeful, warring jihadi militia, is seeking support from Russia which is helping it through a banking crisis caused by a shortage of banknotes. This has choked the supply of money to the banks and the ability of clients to withdraw money from them.
Russian bases in Syria are suddenly looking more secure than they have been for quite some time.
In southern Syria, Hoda Matar (Matar) reports that Israeli forces have now entrenched themselves on a seemingly permanent basis in 14 or more settlements. He writes that Israel has targeted and destroyed huge sectors of Syria's conventional military capacity, invaded deeper into Syrian territory, taken control of additional land in the buffer zone and beyond, including on Mount Hermon. They continue to fortify their military presence, constructing runways and erecting military outposts and bases. In the 14 Syrian villages of this area, the lives of more than 35,000 people are now dictated by the Israeli military, with curfews, roadblocks, and house raids.
On Iran, see this interesting analysis by Akbar Ganji on the implications of what must soon be the transition to a new Supreme Leader: (Ganji). For The Cradle, Kit Klarenberg (Klarenberg) discusses the latest revelations of Western covert interference options in Iran:
“With millions funneled into secretive initiatives, the US aims to infiltrate civil society, manipulate political participation, and engineer unrest, all while keeping its Iranian beneficiaries in the shadows.
“A bombshell leak reviewed by The Cradle exposes the depths of Washington’s long-running campaign to destabilize the Islamic Republic.
“For years, the US State Department’s Near East Regional Democracy fund (NERD) has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into covert operations aimed at toppling Tehran’s government – without success. Details on where this money goes and who benefits are typically concealed. However, this leak provides a rare glimpse into NERD’s latest regime-change blueprint.”