Your Questions Resolved (UpDate)
Q:
Are we closer to peace today?
A:
Are you on opioids?
If the US wants a temporary reprieve from its conflict with Russia it is to more effectively pursue its war with China and this is an existential war for continuing US global hegemony.
Peace in Ukraine? You have a lot of money to burn? If not, don’t bet on it.
Why? First of all this is the moment in the cycle of the conflict in which Trump suddenly turns 180 degrees and becomes spoiler.
Q: Might this happen again?
A: Yes, if the neocons under Rubio and Senator Graham and the like regain the upper hand domestically. Yes, if Europe pulls out the stops, keeps bombing more international tankers carrying Russian oil, seizes Russian frozen assets, increases the flow of arms to Ukraine, sends its own troops to Ukraine and and threatens action designed to provoke nuclear war. The US has to renter the conflict.
A: But what about that lovely lunch in Moscow yesterday for smilie Steve and Zombie Jared? That meant nothing to you?
A: The meeting yesterday means nothing other than both adversaries are intrigued with the other and wondering how they might be in bed.
The US was not even represented in Moscow, since Witkoff and Kushner have no authority to decide anything, and Putin respects only authority. At best, they could conclude there is scope for a longer conversation. Putin won’t object to talk - he likes talk because he is quite good at it - but he is a trillion light years away from giving up on Russia’s core objectives. And he knows that China is a far more powerful, trustworthy, empathetic and enduring ally than agreement-incapable US will ever be.
Q: Are European leaders stupid enough to provoke a Russian nuclear war?
A: France may have wasted quite a lot of money restoring Notre Dame.
Q: I thought Macron, Merz and Starmer were all deeply unpopular?
A: So what? Just because they complain that everyone else is autocratic or authoritarian does not make these regimes meaningful democracies. Just playgrounds for plutocrats. Look at how they worship the petty tyrant of Kiev, the Jewish neo-Nazi Zelenskiy - whose presence, I note in sadness, yesterday has left a very bad smell in the country of my birth. No wonder Smilie Steve did not show up to tell him what a jerk he is and will now continue to be.
Zelenskiy right now is looking orphaned by Trump while Step-Dad Europe is lavishing him with what few millions of dollars they can still find under Ursula’s bed. His country is bankrupt; his army a zombie force; anti corruption agencies will soon be knocking on his door; Ukraine’s international reputation sinking to Israeli and European levels.
Q: Is it time to be critical of Putin and nominate Trump for a peace prize - any peace prize, anywhere?
A: Trump has not achieved any peace, anywhere but he has established a Department of War: India and Pakistan are not at peace; Rwanda and the Congo are not at peace; Russia and the Ukraine are not at peace; and a constantly violated (500 plus violations so far by Israel) ceasefire in Gaza by no means suggests peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Maybe a little peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia as a prelude to more US-Israeli war on Iran.
Putin meanwhile has played an extraordinarily careful and complex game for 4 years that attrites Ukraine and the West to the point that Trump braggadocio notwithstanding the US is at its weakest in decades. Russia and China together could launch a war against the West tomorrow and win but neither has te appetite.
Putin: there is no other world leader that can match him. Has he made mistakes? Of course. Is there a military leader anywhere who has not made a mistake or two or three in a 4+ year old war?
Q: Should Putin now become more proactive and decapitate Kiev leadership, Brussels leadership, London leadership, Washington leadership?
A: I can see how one could be very, very tempted.
But Macron has a few nukes of his own and Putin must be fond of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Then again, Macron is fond of Paris; Merz is fond of Berlin; Ursula can presumably tolerate even Brussels; and Starmer can hardly be indifferent to London. Trump is OK on Washington just so long as Florida remains intact.
But they will all go, the more likely in a pre-emptive strike of the kind mooted by NATO but more likely to be effected by Moscow, under the grave duress of European stupidity, but with a wider and more nuanced set of tools.
Q: Is there any relationship between the Ukraine and the Venezuelan crises?
A: Of course there is. Everything acquires bargaining chip potential. If the US acquires Venezuela then it controls the global oil market and prices for oil, and this can create real difficulties for Russia.
Russia may be looking for target practice for its Poseidon.
Q: But it’s all going to be OK in the end, right?
A: I’ve got some great fentanyl to sell you from Ecuador (or was it Colombia?); it certainly didn’t come on any Venezuelan fishing boats.
Q: Surely you’re not saying the US is a fascist regime?
A: You mean a regime that glories in lawlessness; forgives and rewards the guilty while harassing or murdering the innocent, and torturing the weak and vulnerable; engages in genocide and supports genocidal allies; turns its attention away from allies who invade other countries and bomb their citizens; regards criminality as shrewd business; openly mocks legal process, mobilizes loyal ICE-like armies, and asserts supremacy of the King of the White House while judicial and legislative arms of government pretend to be blind and suck up to the Yellow God?
Good Lord! Nothing of the sort.