Fatal Foibles of Imperial Ethnocentrics
The Napolitano Revolution
I noticed with interest yesterday that Judge Napolitano (formerly a judge, a Fox News commentator and, today, an information warrior in the world of alternative media) had emigrated for a few days to Moscow, along with some of his most frequent guests, Larry Johnson and, I think, Ray McGovern. The main purpose of this major but mercifully short-lived brain drain (I think the lights have already dimmed in Washington), is to attend a press conference on Monday by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov for a select group of journalists including, of course, the Judge.
How the world has changed, when one of the USA’s principal adversaries or competitors for global influence knows enough about how the world really works to know that Western mainstream media are truly poison. Or, I should say, are truly poisoned as I will recall in a moment or two, by all the CIA-USAID-NED-ThinkTank shenanigans and globalist, neocon claptrap that until very recently and still today control vast swathes of the information infrastructure and ecosystem of not just Western politics and Western Media - and I very much regret to have to say this - a good part of the Academic world. Not to mention, until around the birth of GWOT (global war on terror), the Global South and even the intelligentsia of Russia and China.
Today, a YouTube channel such as that of Judging Freedom, which is Napolitano’s outlet, can attract audiences of up to half a million (although I am not too sure how these are counted) and certainly enough to surpass much of the traditional alternative media among weekly magazines of political commentary, for example, and among many mainstream daily press and broadcasting media of America beyond the big cities. His channel gives voice to many of the foremost formidable and well-credentialled critics of US foreign policy (mainly), whose views and ideas - until the arrival of the Internet and social media - were pretty much invisible. I can complain, and I will complain, that the range is pretty narrow - mainly disgusted former members of the US military-industrial complex - but of its political significance there can be no doubt. Channels such as these every day more (cada dia mas!) bury their pick-axes in the crumbling facia and rafters of the Establishment media monopoly on orthodox thought.
Nobody who pretends to know anything about global affairs can retain credibility without frequent exposure to these and comparable outlets. So, finally, we will get media representatives who are capable of listening fully to what somebody like Lavrov (who in my view is now the world’s single most accomplished and intelligent diplomat) has to say. That is to say, really listen, not, as in the case of almost all mainstream foreign correspondents, with vision and hearing clouded by all the jejune presumptions, shibboleths and tailored misunderstandings of a Western neoliberal ideology, an ideology that suffuses their own consciousness and is constantly fed and amplified by the institutions that pay them.
Invisible to Europe, Invisible to Washington: The Real World
Well, talking about the takover of modern Western intelligence, culture, politics, mediaspeak, I noted with interest Napolitano’s enthusiastic comments earlier today about the vibrancy of Moscow.
I agree, and I would go ever further. I would say that you don’t have to spend more than a few days in the Moscow-Saint Petersburg axis in Russia, or the Beijing-Shanghai axis in China to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale and permanence of their history, cultures (including cultures of resistance) and cultural production. This is accompanied, of course, by the realization, by contrast, of the far smaller, inward-looking, self-congratulatory, vain, pompous equivalents that Europe can offer -including its desultory scatter of archaic and inane institutions of governance, including kings and queens.
All the soft power that is accrued by a century of adulation of “romantic” Paris (city of failed burgeois revolutions), for example, will be as nothing once Europeans are forced by history to become more generously educated in the authentic history of global affairs. This will be a first, the first time that Europe allows itself awareness of the appropriate weight and, along with the weight, the respect due, to the entirety of the EurAsian continent and to Asia, and to the Global South.
I could not help but entertain such thoughts as I watched this week the continuing evidence of the bankruptcy, silliness and, very likely, utter corrutpion of European elites. With some remarkable exceptions (people like Orban and Fico come to mind), Europeans seem only to know how to double down on folly. And of course they do this because that is the main lesson they have learned from the US neoliberal propaganda machines (think USAID once again) that first catapulted them to power, and which have feted them, and cuddled them and cossetted them with bouquets of fake gratitude for their immense, statesmanlike qualities and wisdom. Their counterparts in Moscow and Beijing, I believe, far from snickering at what are in fact courtly displays of puffed-upness and folly, are truly saddened and worried.
Monsieur Macron le Grand Clown
So, where are we with respect to the state of the world? In France, the poseur par excellence, Emmanuel Macron has suddenly awakened to the threat of a new Germany under Chancellor Merz. Merz is proposing a major German rearmament, to be made possible by allowing Germany to raise the debt ceiling for military expenditure pretty much infinitely. This measure will become the very seed of the death of this silly impulse in a new round of German expansionism. But is conditional on whether Merz can push this proposal through a crazy political manouver that involves resurrecting the deceased former government.
Confronted with the reality that a new Europe, without a US comfort blanket, will no longer be able to convince itself that it is “unified” and will one more time face France’s old enemy, a gruesome Phoenix from the ashes, the spectre of the German Reich. Macron has leaped forward (entirely unasked for and unwanted) to seize leadership of Europe by offering it “protection” (= annihilation) generously sharing France’s comparatively “independent” nuclear armory with the rest of Europe - bringing Europe under the French “nuclear umbrella.”
This will involve putting French nukes in all European countries. Not too many of them, of course, because France has only 290 nuclear warheads and will want quite a few, I suspect, in a bid to ensure that Notre Dame does not go up in flames more than once in a decade. All these installations, it goes without saying, can be hit multiple times by Russia’s far larger armory of nuclear weapons. In the event that French aggression actually was seen by Moscow to require a nuclear-level response, my expectation is that Russia will first choose non-nuclear weapons such as the Oreshnik that nonetheless can create comparative damage but without the radiation.
Macron’s talk of a French “nuclear umbrella” is ludicrous public relations, which is pretty much all European leaders know how to do. Neither French nor German self-importance will create anything remotely close to the weaponry they would need if Russia actually was to invade Europe (which it wont, unless Europe one days decides that annihilation is in its best interest, and provokes Russia to that point).
This is because:
(1) These European nations (and I will lump Britain with them for the purpose of this discussion) do not have the money (only 23 or 32 NATO countries can even meet the 2% threshold of their GDPs to waste on NATO “protection”);
(2) They cannot undertake the political risk of degrading even further the quality of life of their citizens for such a pointless war by tearing apart the welfare states that have afforded their elites legitimacy since World War;
(3) Their armies are small. Merz is day-dreaming when he talks of building up German army strength to three million men;
(4) Their different states and cultures, and their varied capabilities for weapons production are too hopelessly idiosyncratic to enable effective coordination of production, planning, logistics and execution. They cannot offer economies of scale that are equivalent to those available to China, Russia or the US.
(5) And it looks as though they can no longer depend on the US even to honor its obligations under NATO (Trump says that Europeans will need to spend much more on their defense if they are to expect anything from the US) even as many European politicians and commentators now worry that the US is about to come out of NATO and abandon Europe (I think this fear is overdone).
Macronic megalomania has put even Sir Keir Starmer to shame. The UK has no independent nuclear weapons other, perhaps, than the ones on Trident submarines and even then the British probably do not have the authority to fire them independently of the US. Besides, nuclear submarines are not quite the kind of nuclear umbrella of which Macron so proudly boasts.
The French-British plan for Ukraine in the event of a US pullout of NATO is for deployment of its air power, using all of 220 or so Europe’s readily available fighter jets (from a total non-US NATO air force of 2,000+) and commencing the construction of more (delivery date, with a lot of luck, being 2030). These will, at once, be target practice for Russians, whose air power has been under-tested in this war of drones, and may welcome the opportunity, finally, to shine.
Riyadh isn’t USAID-land
The chances that the US will indeed take this path, I surmise, are higher if and when the talks between the US and Ukraine that are said to have been arranged in Riyadh for within the next couple of days, are completed.
It is very difficult to discern any real hope of peace in anything that is currently going on. If the teams meet in Riyadh or in some other Saudi Arabian town (anywhere in the desert will do, far away from the USAID-corrupted political elites of Europe), they will not, apparently, include Zelenskiy, at least not beyond some kind of opening event. This is likely explicable on the grounds that the Americans know that nothing can be negotiated with Zelenskiy who, apart from being one of nature’s greatest assholes, wants neither a ceasefire, nor peace.
Americans (Witcoff, Rubio and Walz?) may be able to squeeze something out a Ukrainian team (under Zelenskiy’s chief of staff Yermak?) that looks like it could be a ceasefire - given any number of conditions - but without approval by Zelenskiy or ratification by the RADA.
Russia will not accept any ceasefire that falls short of a comprehensive and durable agreement.
Besides, what is achieved if the US signs a mineral deal with Ukraine, inserting US property rights into the heart of Ukraine in a way in which both Trump and Zelenskiy have admitted constitutes a kind of “security guarantee?” How does that make Russia any more inclined to seek peace with Ukraine? Or to settle anything with the US?
And how does it stabilize the world against the threat of nuclear war? Russia might well decide to speed up its advance, consume more mineral-rich territory before US mining corporations have had a chance to pack their toothpaste.
And, as I have from time to time been arguing in this space, the fundamental, the greatest, problem here is one of lack of trust.
Russia cannot trust Zelenskiy, who twists and turns from day to day but hardly ever stands far away from a goal of wanting total victory over Russia. Russia cannot trust any of the Europeans or the US, who together staged the coup d’etat in Kiev in 2014, and who have reneged on agreements time and time again since that time, and who deliberately provoked Russia into invading Ukraine in 2022.
I have consistently argued from the very beginning that there was no other choice for Russia. It had to invade because it knew that the West was determined to force it into a war anyway (see RANDS Extending Russia, 2019); that Zelenskiy’s administratrion constituted a major threat to Russian security - Zelenskiy offered the West everything it needed to stage military exercises targeted on Russia; Zelenskiy was begging the US for nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil; Zelenskiy was amassing troops for the purpose of crushing the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The UN was wholly corrupted by the US neocon stooges planted throughout its machinery.
International law may condemn the invasion of sovereign territory. But international law is clearly insufficient for adjudicating gross military provocations to violence that constitute a genuine security threat.
So, almost certainly, the Saudi talks will get nowhere. They may seem to do so for a short while before the truth of the situation is revealed (including an utterly resolute Zelenskiy and an irrevocably skeptical Russia). They will collapse because, fundamentally, neither party wants a ceasefire. Zelenskiy and his colleages would prefer to die in combat (so much more fun than being subject to a Russian war crimes tribunal and subsequent imprisonment or hanging).
Russia is content just to keep edging westwards, draining Western armories in a war of attrition.
Trump has no hope whatsoever that any inducement he offers Russia or any threat he extends to Russia will have the slightest impact on Sino-Russian friendship. This is solid, because as every American leader keeps shouting to the world: we will get China; and either before, or immediately after China, we will get Russia!
Comic books are not hard to read. Russia and China know how to read.
Trump may dangle the promise of sanctions alleviation before Putin in the hope that this might persuade Putin to enter negotiations with Zelenskiy. I think Trump would be better off paying attention to those who say that elections in Ukraine must come first, that they must come now. Dangling sanctions and other bribes is not going to impress Putin, who has been telling the world for some time now that he will be content only with real solutions that address the fundamental problems and offer lasting remedy.
Nor is punishing Putin by adding new sanctions going to have a significant impact, if any impact at all. Trump seems to be pushing his objective of getting Zelenskiy to agree a ceasefire, and working on this at a faster pace - as far as know, and we dont know much - than the US is talking with Russia. That is not the right order of things.
Dreaming of Yalta: Those Were the Days
The right order of things is for there to be a Yalta 2 style process (yes, I know, I am hailing Yalta for its symbolic significance not for its actual importance) between, for starters, the US, Russia and China.
Europeans are not serious people and nobody should encourage them to attend yet more meetings or to keep chattering incessantly amongst themselves.
A Yalta 2 would establish a framework for a new global order, which would be thrashed out at a second remove by the 3 great powers, together with the UN and the BRICS, and perhaps only then, Europe (but probably not even then).
As progress towards a new global order progresses, Ukraine, unburdened with Zelenskiy, and without the highly improbable alternatives of Tymorshenko, or Poroshenko, or Zaluzhniy - damaged, stale goods each and every one of them - might conceivably (if it has not been entirely taken over by Russia by that time) find it is in its best interest to negotiate a “rump Ukraine” finale.
Trump and Rubio and some others in their entourage have embraced a more accurate narrative about the start of the Ukraine conflict. This is a surprising show of actual intelligence in Washington. But where is there any evidence that Trump or any of his people have a real vision of US interest and global interest that goes much beyond the transactional idiocy of pampered billionaires?
And this objection to the sanity of optimism is manifested in the insanity of Gaza and the Middle East. Those who relish the thrilling choreography of Trump’s “feint to the left, feint to the right” manouvering, are not paying sufficient attention to how this works when the “feint to the right” is an exuberant arming of Israel for regional war and genocide on four fronts (Gaza, West Bank, Southern Lebanon, Southern Syria), support for the forcible displacement of two million - already historically abused people, the Palestinians (and this number will grow significantly), and a gruesome Kushner horror movie beach paradise for billionnaires on the Eastern Mediterranean.
Yes. So Trump, in that banal Hollywood eloquence of mediocre Westerns, is telling Hamas to hand over all remaining hostages, dead or alive or, if they don’t, they will all be DEAD. And he is telling the Egyptians: screw your silly Arab League plan, we are going to rebuild Gaza without any Palestinians left on that land. The only language of Trump is the $10 billion he has entrusted to Israel since coming to office less than two months ago. That is the only Trump we need to see to know there is nothing good here.