“I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the people who report to Putin to read that Westerners are outraged by what they’re seeing—outraged to the point of recklessness. Just as we’re wondering if Putin is insane, he should be wondering if we’re insane. When journalists publicly call to put the West at grave risk by escalating the conflict, they may well be proposing an insane course of action, but that is not a bad thing. A touch of insanity improves our deterrence.
We don’t, of course, want to overdo it. We don’t want to convince him we’re poised to launch a first strike. But if he thinks we’re insane enough seriously to consider a no-fly zone? Good.
And if his generals grasp that we’d be very happy to do business with them as soon as they take care of business, Czar Paul I style? Good.” (The final paragraphs of Part I of Claire Berlinski’s latest article in The Cosmopolitan Globalist; she continues her theme in Part II.)
So, what Claire thinks the west needs now is a leader who
– will strike Putin as reckless, maybe insane;
– will strike Putin’s subordinates as a guy who makes and keeps deals.
This is a job description tailored to Donald Trump. It’s very close to how he’s described himself over Russia and Ukraine. But this simply does not occur to Claire. Earlier in Part I, she says Putin interfering in US elections is one of the proofs he’s at war with us – as if Durham didn’t exist. She bewails the folly of Europeans running down their NATO militaries and running up their Russian gas bills, and (in Part II) says it proves how serious things are that Germany is reversing course on its army and its energy policy. And then she says
‘Trump could have been back in office in 2024 and then — goodbye, NATO.
It takes a special kind of TDS to praise Germany for doing what Trump told them to, damn them for doing the opposite till now, yet think Trump is the threat to NATO. (Even the BBC managed a sotto voce “as urged to by Trump” in one of their reports of the German volte-face.)
She ends,
I might be prepared to make some compromises with China right now — are you?
Compromise with Trump and his supporters? Absolutely not. To decent self-respecting cosmopolitan globalists, that is (literally!) unthinkable. Compromising with Xi, on the other hand, is distasteful – but realistic cosmopolitan globalists can and will think about it.
The thing that you’re missing about the Trump / Putin dynamic is not that Trump would go gung ho on Russia had Putin invaded, its that Putin wouldn’t have invaded in the first place.
The 2014 Coup / Colour revolution was sponsored by George Soros / the CIA / Victoria Nuland (State Dept) Their stated goal (amongst others) is to foster a colour revolution in Russia.
Trump put these nefarious actors back in their box. Nuland was fired. Trump, while firm with Putin, had no intention to continue with the globalists plotting.
When Biden was elected (right) Nuland was immediately restored to her previous position, and the countdown clock restarted.
The question is do the likes of Claire actually care about Ukraine, or just want to use Ukraine to fight domestic political battles by other means? If it was the former, it would mean challenging a lot of cognitive dissonance embedded in the liberal mind, whereas continuing to believe fanciful conspiracy theories is a lot more mentally satisfying.
As for ‘compromises’ with China, I’d love to hear more what she means by that. Not that it would go anywhere, unless compromise means handing over Taiwan without a fight. Otherwise I don’t think America can offer the kind of natural resources Russia can. And if India, Pakistan, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are at best lukewarm to America regarding Ukraine, China is not going to adopt an anti-Russian position on this.
I know Claire and like her but she does have a bad case of TDS. She also did not understand the dynamics underpinning Brexit at all.
Flubber – you are part right and part wrong.
You are correct that Mr Putin would not have invaded the Ukraine had Donald Trump still been Commander in Chief, after all President Trump deterred Mr Putin for four years.
But I believe you to be wrong about the CIA organising the 2014 Revolution in Ukraine – like Johnathan Peirce, I do not believe that the CIA could organise a p… up in a brewery.
Claire Berlinski once wrote a post for Samizdata. A rather good one I thought.
Utterly wrong. You are propagandised, it really is that simple. I know folk who were intimately involved with the 2014 Maidan revolt. I had the dynamics of how internal political pressure built up in Ukraine leading up to Maidan explained to me over many drinks in a variety of Kyiv bars by people actually involved. The killing of protestors, poisoning and imprisonment of opposition politicians… that is what caused Maidan revolt, not the CIA, who were at best a bit-part player cheering from the side-lines in the hope of justifying their budgets.
As I just said on another thread – the lies against President Trump just go on and on. For example, the article and cartoon in the Economist magazine this week was despicable – they really are scum.
In reality President Trump did the opposite of what Mr Putin wanted.
President Trump got government out of the way of American hydrocarbon (coil, oil, gas) production – the opposite of what Mr Putin and the ECONOMIST MAGAZINE wanted (so perhaps the Economist Magazine should print an cartoon of itself hugging Mr Putin with love).
President Trump built up the American armed forces – and fought against the “Woke” “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” (DIE) agenda to undermine the fighting spirit of the American armed forces. “I joined the army, inspired by the fight of my two mothers for LGBTQXYZ death-to-patriarchal-capitalist-America rights” is not the sort of publicity campaign that would have occurred under President Trump.
And President Trump took a hard line on the Ukraine – warning off Mr Putin. Ditto the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.
I’m amazed after two years of COVID you need reminding of this Perry, but anecdotes are not data
What a lot of the left/’respectable’ right can’t even begin to fathom is that Trump was often better at diplomacy than the foreign policy elite/’grown ups’. I think it’s absurd to say Trump was either a puppet of Putin, Xi or Kim Jong-Un, but the fact was that American relations with all three were better under Trump and have plummeted under Biden. One can’t prove it but I suspect that Trump-Putin diplomacy would have averted what is going on now. I’m sure he’d be still getting called a traitor or whatever, but there’d be probably no war (at least outside Donbas) and Ukraine would be safe.
On another point, I strongly doubt an alternative president would have been able to negotiate the Abraham accords. Either a democrat or more neoconservative Republican would have just got under the skin of the Arab states or Israelis, or likely both, and nothing would have been achieved. Basically anyone too wedded to elite paradigms of US foreign policy would have failed miserably. It’s interesting that under Biden the Gulf Arab states and even Israel now seem to be moving further away from American influence. I suspect as well as seeing Biden as weak they probably also find him a tiresome moralistic scold.
Trump was able to negotiate with the ‘bad’ people rather well. Or at least a lot better than the blob. And if that helps keep the peace then it’s a good thing.
Right back at you, old chap. I know people actually involved with Maidan. I did not read about them, I know them and listened to their accounts of what was happening not just when the Maidan revolt kicked off but before hand. That *is* data. These people were organisers, explaining the logistics of getting protestors to Maidan and keeping them there for as long as it took. They explained the details, showed me the routes the cars full of food (& rocks to throw at the cops) chose and the cunning deceptions used to get around checkpoints.
I know many online denizens hate to imagine things happen locally for local reasons with locals organising themselves to achieve local political ends in response to local political and social pressures: not as sexy as a cabal of Soros flunkies and CIA agents pulling everyone’s strings. Sorry to disappoint you.
Indisputable.
Although I was never a Trump fan, I admit I did end up far less averse to him over time. And I did enjoy how he made his enemies go insane.
I don’t know Claire Berlinski so probably am being unfair here but would I be right in thinking her views are largely boilerplate North American/western European bourgeois liberal?
Might be being unfair but those who brag about being ‘cosmopolitan’ tend to be protesting too much and can be really very parochial. See 99pc of UK ‘remoaners’ as exhibit A, and US democrats who wreck American relations with non-western countries as exhibit B.
I certainly call myself cosmopolitan but it does mean different things to different people. I think Claire has done some excellent commentaries about Islam and Turkey (she lived in Istanbul for some years), but she has certainly accepted a lot of “boilerplate North American/western European bourgeois liberal” axioms, with resultant impact on her views. Clueless about Brexit, just the conventional Guardian narrative really.
I guess everyone has their own motives but one does suspect whether the cosmopolitan label is being used to define one’s attitude towards the world or one’s attitude to their own countrymen.
Although British I’ve worked abroad for a while and one meets a number of British expats who style themselves as cosmopolitan but upon further questioning, it’s more of a status label to define themselves as being superior to the ‘thicko plebs’ back home. This has exacerbated of course since Brexit. Spending too much time with such ‘cosmopolitans’ makes one sorely miss the ‘thicko plebs back home’. They are nowhere near as annoying, patronising or self-deluded.
Yet again – the CIA could not organise a p… up in a brewery (they are useless). The idea that they organised the 2014 revolution in Ukraine is absurd. Perhaps once they were fearsome – but not these days.
As for George Soros – he throws money around to anyway who says they are in support of “progress” and an “Open Society”.
A lot of the money that Mr Soros throws about ends up in the hands of Marxists who would skin him alive (and, no, I am not using a figure of speech).
Far from being the ruler of the world – I suspect that Mr George Soros is a senile wreak-of-a-man.
His son appears to be more Marxist than liberal – but the son also appears (from what I have seen) to be a person of below average intelligence.
Well I am a Brexit voting cosmopolitan, Martin 🤣
Perry: I am sorry, but you still under-estimate delusional insanity.
Wasn’t the whole thing triggered by Ukrainians preferring a deal with the EU to a deal with Russia, though?
(Hard to believe that it takes the CIA to make the Ukrainians think that the EU is the lesser evil.)
Sure, that is indeed the very root underpinning all of this: a majority of Ukrainians looked at (and often visited) Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic nations and saw their prospects for jobs and prosperity being very much better with a western orientation. The attraction was not NATO but rather the EU.
But the actual Maidan revolt was triggered by the very heavy handed way protestors and opposition politicians were being treated.
LOL. Yeah, damn those CIA puppet masters showing the Ukrainians the higher standards of living in the surrounding EU nations 😀
Have to wonder if Putin sees a difference.
The European Union policy of throwing money at Eastern Europe is not sustainable.
Indeed the European Union is not sustainable.
Here is a novel idea….
How about an independent sovereign Ukraine.
Not the WORDS “independent” and “sovereign” – the reality of being independent and sovereign.
Not a “choice between masters” – but rather actually being free.
Neither Moscow or Brussels.
In Chicago certain large charitable foundations ended up under the control of Marxists such as “Bill” Ayers and his friend Barack Obama (yes – that Barack Obama).
Does this mean that the rich men who set up these charitable foundations were Marxists?
No it does NOT.
Institutions, such as charitable foundations, come under the control of Collectivists (because Collectivists are very good at “office politics”) – regardless of the intentions of the rich men who created the charitable foundations.
I was reading Berlinski’s Part II after comments here, and I was struck by the idea that perhaps the re-election of former President Trump in 2024 was in fact part of Putin’s thinking.
Rather than “goodbye NATO” it would have been “goodbye Russian expansion” and Putin decided to strike before that happened?
AOG:
That is quite likely, but even more likely, i think, is the hypothesis advanced by Niall Kilmartin in an aside in a comment he made somewhere on this site: Putin is worried about the midterms.
If the Republicans gain full control of Congress, then they could drive down the price of energy and enable the EastMed pipeline. Then Putin could not finance his war.
Also, the 3rd in the line of succession to the Presidency would no longer be Nancy Pelosi…
I think her Part II was really rather good. But I do disagree with her that Trump demanding other NATO nations actually pay their way means Trump 2024 = Goodbye NATO.
@AOG,
If your thinking is right, then Putin seems to have more faith in the integrity of the US elections than I do.
‘I’m amazed after two years of COVID you need reminding of this Perry, but anecdotes are not data’
One anecdote is only a datum but two anecdotes are (by definition) data.
Donald John Trump wanted to save the United States – he may not have known HOW to do so, but he really did (and does) want to save America.
The people behind Mr Biden and K. Harris have nothing but hatred for the United States – and for the Western World in general.
If is pointless giving economic, or other, advice to people who WANT you to be suffering.