“Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that parts of the Maga movement are embracing a form of Right-wing wokery, with their own dark conspiracy theories, cult of victimhood, identity politics, denial of reality, moral grandstanding, hypersensitivity and purity tests.
“In this vein, whingeing about trade deficits deserves to be dismissed as critical trade theory’, as Trumpian corollary of critical race theory: it postulates, nonsensically, that any shortfall must be caused by unfair practices, oppression or historic injustice. The ‘woke Right,’ a term coined by James Lindsay, is almost as much of a turn-off as the original Left-wing variety.”
– Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph (£)
He gives Mr Trump high marks on taking the fight vs DEI, some of the DOGE cuts (with a few caveats), and on energy policy (which in my view is Trump’s ace in the hole). But the broader point Heath makes about where he thinks Trump/Maga is losing it, including this nifty term of Heath’s, “critical trade theory”, is absolutely spot-on. It is, in my view, one of the big blinds spots of today’s populist Right and threatens to undo the good things that a Trump 2.0 might achieve, which would be bad not just for the US, but the West in general. As Heath goes on to write (and remember, he’s a pro-Brexit, free market chap, and not some obdurate Never Trumper), a course correction is needed. And Trump is not incapable of it.
In a typical 2025 day over 50% of front page news articles on the bbc, guardian and most regrettably the telegraph will be Trump related. The vast majority will not be positive.
An atypical sensible ruling by the Supreme Court (UK version, sadly not Roberts and Barrett) and an excellent if not exactly world-changing win for Arsenal FC have shifted today’s balance.
I’m sure there are more than enough articles already lined up to resume normal service tomorrow.
@John
Once a ‘narrative’ has been established it’s easy for the media and pundits to dip into the pool of already published material and post it ‘fresh’ with only a few edits. Rather like AI does, ahem.
Now if the established ‘narrative’ had not been the ‘actions of an out of control fascist’ but the reactions of those fearing ‘the end of the gravy train’ then we might see a rather different set of articles.
In spite of Johnathan’s best efforts, i just cannot get worked up about the tariff saga.
Leave aside the fact that it is not clear that tariffs have always been bad for the country imposing them: the fact is that obstacles to trade have never led to State collapse.
The growth of the State has led to most State collapses (apart from foreign invasion). That is why i am much more interested in DOGE than in tariffs. I only wished that Musk did not speak out of turn on tariffs, and on Ukraine.
In a typical 2025 day over 50% of front page news articles on the bbc, guardian and most regrettably the telegraph will be Trump related. The vast majority will not be positive.
The DT knows that what happens in the US – good and bad – tends to set the tone for a lot of the politics in the UK. I wish it wasn’t the case. But consider Nigel Farage and Reform; quite a lot of DT readers like Reform, or are small-c and large-C conservatives, and therefore are interested in the Maga “thing”, both as an inspiration and also as a warning.
What Allister Heath wrote was, in my way of thinking, all the more deadly because he acknowledged the good things that Trump is, or says he is, trying to do. But he’s also a danger to the very things he professes to like and support. He’s already made it more likely that the Liberals will retain office in Canada; the Australian right is damaged by association; I would not be surprised to see Farage and Co have a similar problem as well.
And then there is the US middling to centre-right voter who was concerned about a variety of issues, and who distrusted Harris and Biden. They may like what is happening on DEI, woke universities, immigration enforcement, but everything else is pretty much a negative. And the reports that due process of law on immigration are being flouted is a worry. The reputation of the US is in the toilet. Tourist visitor bookings to the US are in freefall.
On tariffs, they are not just foolish for the various reasons I give in other posts, but geopolitically, Trump is alienating allies and friends with whom he will need to form a coalition of friendly trading nations and so on in confronting China. Instead, he is in danger of undermining this. Xi is rubbing his hands – he cannot believe his good fortune.
Some of this is for the sort of folk who read the WSJ, Economist and frequent public policy conversations, and not the mass public. But this is filtering through into a sense that everything appears chaotic, angry, and a bit crazy. America comes across as cruel, mercurial and a bit mad. At some point, this has to stop.
I was under the impression it was Konstantin Kisin who coined the term “Woke Right” 😀
I doubt that, Reform are laser-like focused on domestic issues.
Critical race theory is the idea that not only is America an irredeemably racist country but that its institutions are suffused through with racism. I mean it is complete bullshit, but that is the theory. However, let’s be clear, it wasn’t ALWAYS complete bullshit. For a lot of American history it was horrifically racist and racism did suffuse its institutions. We fought a civil war and many subsequent skirmishes to fix that and now that is no longer the case.
But, when it comes to trade especially trade with China, it absolutely is suffused with systematic bias against American trade. Of course trade deficits are not an especially good measure of this, but it is reasonable to demand that free trade be bilaterally free. Of course just as many union soldiers died on the battlefield to overcome the institution of slavery, so in any trade war there are casualties on both sides. Fortunately not too many dead bodies. But, as with every war, there is a trade off with short term loss, catastrophic loss perhaps, against long term gain. Is it the right thing to do? Any war should make us queasy, and this one certainly does me, but the simple fact is that the West in general and America in particular is right on the point of utter collapse and it needs to do something drastic.
I am honestly quite torn on this issue. On the one hand tariffs do not at all comply with my core beliefs in freedom of trade, but on the other hand it is simply the case that the whole western system is teetering on the brink of utter collapse, and something drastic needs to be done or we will all be left in a world devoid of the few freedoms we have left. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I have been convinced that the west will collapse in my lifetime and I have been making preparations in my life for that eventuality. I don’t mean cans of food in my basement, I arranging my affairs so I can get out of the west to a better country before it gets to bad. I see our host PdH moved from London to Prague, presumably for this reason, but I don’t know for sure, but that is the kind of thing I am thinking of — though I’d never move to an EU country. I am extremely curious to see what Trump can do. He is dramatically shaking things up. Is it enough of the right thing to save the west from its own self destruction? I don’t know, but something is worth a try, and he is the first President in fifty years to make a serious attempt to fix some of the very real suicidal ideas in the west and I’m willing to cut him some slack.
But, in summary, the parallel between CRT and critical trade theory is not a good one, because CRT is based on the idea of an injustice that largely doesn’t exist any more, whereas “critical trade theory” is based on an injustice that does exist, and is rampant.
“I doubt that, Reform are laser-like focused on domestic issues.”
So was Pierre Poilievre. All Trump would have do is go on about using economic pressure to make Britain the 52nd state and that would be the end of Farage. Trump has the necessary lack of restraint to do it, too.
“Leave aside the fact that it is not clear that tariffs have always been bad for the country imposing them”
Comments like this are the reason I can’t have nice things. Not only does every classical and Austrian economist, and most of the others as well, say that tariffs are worse for the country imposing them but all it takes is 3-5 minutes of serious thought to convince yourself tariffs are bad news. They won’t bring down the state or even cause a recession but they will make us, our children and our grand children, poorer than we’d otherwise be.
“middling to centre-right voter who was concerned about a variety of issues”.
In the US sufficient of the above were willing to give Trump a chance.
Here in the UK far too many chose otherwise.
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.
Which is why the dead party walking are still the official opposition, albeit in name only, for the next five years.
The US at least has a chance. Ours may have passed.
The destruction of American towns and cities – their reduction to a post industrial wasteland, and the rise of the People’s Republic of China from almost nothing, to an industrial power TWICE (yes TWICE) the manufacturing strength of the United States. Eventually manufacturing power means military power – this has been why the Dictatorship in China allowed privately owned industry from 1978 onwards, the “Four Modernisations” – the forth, the military, was not the least important – it was the MOST important, it was forth because it could only be done after the economy has been built.
All this is very serious – indeed may mean the end of the United States and of the rest of the Western world.
But instead of a serious examination of this crises, and it is a crises, we get talk of “right wing Wokery”, “critical trade theory” and “Conspiracy Theories” – as if the “Four Modernisations” from 1978 onwards was something that President Trump invented, and as if the destruction of towns and cities in Ohio (and other States) was a figment of Vice President Vance’s imagination.
President Trump may have the wrong solutions (yes he may have the WRONG solutions) – but at least he, and Vice President Vance and others, understands the existence of the United States, as an independent nation, is at stake.
The establishment, including the Corporate “free market” wing of the establishment, do not have a clue.
Free trade has consistently not meant tarriff-free trade(so all this pearl clutching about free-trade is wildly hypocritical) and furthermore the biggest issue for the USA is the rate at which their IP, especially industrial and science based IP(ie their patents) get ripped off by foreigners.
Y’all totally killed off any chance of even weak conservative thought prevailing in any manner in your country for a decade or more, and all I can figure is that, out of jealousy, you’re looking to also kill the USA right wing.
Keep aiming at that “perfect”, though. I just know you’ll get there.
(It seems that ‘worse’ should be replaced by ‘bad’ to make sense.)
In theory, yes; and i agree with the theory (with qualifications that i won’t go into, here).
What i actually wrote is that it is not clear that, HISTORICALLY, tariffs have ALWAYS been bad for the country imposing them.
Not to mention that it is not clear whether the Trump tariffs will actually be imposed.
… And even if tariffs are imposed and turn out to be bad, i made it quite clear (for people who actually bothered to read) that i cannot be bothered, because i expect tariffs to be almost irrelevant in the Great Scheme of Things.
Also, what Paul Marks said.
That is probably the strangest take I have ever seen you write.
Fraser: you say something “drastic” needs to be done. Well, upending 80-years of alliances etc and practicing massive economic self harm, and then giving contradictory reasons and excuses for it, is certainly drastic.
It is also unlikely to deal with the underlying problems of massive spending and very low savings rates.
Bobby, don’t be a twerp. The whole point of the Heath quote is that he’s concerned that Trump is damaging the Right, and not just in the US.
Americans have been quite free with their criticism of the U.K. recently, and I share those concerns. The least folk can do on this blog, who’ve been following it for years, is return the favour. I want America to be successful and confident.
Snorri: you may not be worked up by tariffs, but Trump appears to be. It’s the nearest thing he has to an economic philosophy. It explains much of his thinking and approach. People on the MAGA side can’t have it both ways: claiming he’s a saviour and that he’s just toying with us as a mind game. These aren’t games.
If markets and economic conditions worsen I expect he will change course. And fresh rationalisations will be provided that this is all part of a cunning plan.
Paul, I assume you’re aware that the US makes as much stuff as it did when Nixon was president, just with fewer people. Back then, people were getting enraged by Japan, and West Germany. Now it’s all China’s fault. Even when there are grounds for complaint (IP theft on a massive scale) it’s way overblown as an excuse for the Rust Belt.
But a big part of the problem, as I noted in an earlier post, is that the US tends to subsidise consumption (mortgages, college tuition – forgiving student loans, or trying to; entitlement programs, etc); it has a puny savings rate, and sucks in capital and gets away with it – for now – because of the dollar’s reserve currency status. The US economy is still more dynamic than that of Europe, so European/other investors are happy to invest into the US (which by the way, expands the deficit).
These are choices that Americans, by and large, have made. These US has to face the fact that relatively speaking, other countries were going to make up lost ground after the disasters of war and collectivism. OK, China has not become more liberal in broad terms since giving up Maoist communism and is now a sort of autocratic place with elements of free enterprise. But it is still infinitely better than the horrors of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which ended in the deaths of millions. When China and places like India re-entered the mainstream global economy, this was always going to challenge US hegemony.
Johnathan:
What about cutting income taxes and public spending? What about moving away from the AGW consensus? Maybe they look irrelevant to you because they do not impact us foreigners DIRECTLY; but i estimate that, pretty soon, they will make tariffs look like a minor inconvenience, even to us.
In any case, what i was saying is that Trump’s “economic philosophy” is not very important in the Great Scheme of Things. More important is finding a way to destroy the Deep State.
Snorri:
What about cutting income taxes and public spending? What about moving away from the AGW consensus? Maybe they look irrelevant to you because they do not impact us foreigners DIRECTLY; but i estimate that, pretty soon, they will make tariffs look like a minor inconvenience, even to us.
I mentioned in the OP that I think Trump’s energy policy is his best policy; as for public spending cuts, let’s see what happens. Income tax: I would like to see what the Congressional Republicans (who seems to be a fairly inactive bunch at the moment), come up with. Some actual legislation would be nice so that all the executive orders Mr Trump signs off don’t get reversed just as fast by President AOC (god help us), to give one example.
I don’t know if tariffs are a “minor” thing; Trump wants to hit China and other nations with tariffs of more than 100% in some cases and the supply chains will take years to adjust. It explains why, already, there are carve outs being discussed for the likes of Apple, when Trump was confronted with how the cost of a new iPhone would more than double. But then if you have lots of exceptions and carve-outs, this means that the businesses with the best lobbyists win. That creates a new sort of favouritism and potential for corruption. I thought Trump intended to kill that off. Better a flat-rate tariff, than this. At least everyone knows where they stand.
The big issue is spending, and that means the big three entitlement programs on health, and pensions. I see that there is already a bit of chatter on Social Security and what might happen. This is the issue that the Democrats will try and get hold of. The problem is that Trump and the MAGA folk aren’t clear on this. During the election, entitlements were clearly marked as off the table.
More than a decade ago, Paul Ryan, then a leading GOP figure in Congress, tried to put entitlement reform on the agenda. He met with massive resistance and abuse. He made mistakes, but at least he had a try. For that matter, George W. Bush broached partial privatisation of social security during his 2000 election campaign, if I recall.
Destroying the “Deep State” needs to be done not just by EOs, but by Congress enacting legislation and regaining many of the powers that should not have been given to the Presidency in the first place.
And lest any Americans think I am a Brit shoving my oar in, we need to do much of this in the UK too. As for Europe, oh boy….
Well yes, Snorri, those are the bit Trump is doing that we really, really like & have said so. But that doesn’t change some other stuff being bonkers. That is why I find Trump so depressing: the bad stuff will be used to discredit the good stuff by the Deep State.
I agree with bobby b, people are happy to criticise Trump because not EVERYTHING he is doing fits their view of ‘how things should be’. And thats despite them agreeing with virtually everything else he’s doing. All these articles and comments are the same ‘Well Trump has a point about A, B and C, and I agree with him there, but now he’s doing D I can’t possibly support him!’.
It seems to me that many on here would be happier being intellectually pure sat on the sidelines decrying a Harris presidency while it destroyed the US, than diluting their intellectual purity supporting a Trump one thats trying to save it. After all another US president can always revoke tariffs and go all free trade crazy again if he/she wants, but if the Left destroy the US there ain’t no coming back from that. IMO Trump is all the Right (globally not just in the US) have, so its either support him, or be wiped out.
Johnathan, Perry (and everybody else):
I see nothing controversial in your latest comments.
But let me remind you once more of what Johnathan wrote:
In view of this sweeping statement, i claim to be immune from your implicit accusations of whataboutism. I am simply claiming that JP is too focused (though not exclusively) on one aspect of Trump’s economic policy; and i interpret JP’s claim, that it is Trump who is obsessively focused on tariffs, as projection.
No, my problem is some thing of the things he is doing are either idiotic or vastly counter productive. We have the astonishing sight of SAAB now offering to sell the latest iteration of Gripen with Rolls Royce EJ230 rather than General Electric F414G engines in response to USA now being seen as at best neutral rather than an ally to many nations. I have *no* problem with Trump pushing NATO to get off their arses & spend more, but not-very-veiled threats to the national security of two NATO nations is not how I’d have gone about it. Likewise, even if you spin the tariffs as negotiating ploy one week, then next week Trump suggests the tariffs are because a trade deficit is self-evident proof USA is being screwed somehow… yeah, right. And then US govt refuses to even condemn a civilian massacre a few days ago conducted by Russia in Ukraine because reasons…
These are not small problems to be handwaved away. Yeah, dig out the Deep State. Cool. But the global economic & political shocks from the other stuff are building a much bigger dragon to be slain in the probably not too distant future.
How would you have gone about it then? The Americans (not just Trump) have been asking nicely that the Europeans stop sheltering under the US umbrella while contributing the square root of f*ck all to its defence themselves for 30 years now, and got precisely nowhere. When Trump 1.0 told the Germans not to rely on Russian gas they laughed at him openly. Some ‘allies’ they are. Moochers more like. Being an ally is a two way street, and the Non-US parts of NATO have been taking the p*ss for far too long. Whatever rough treatment they are getting now they deserve IMO, its more than balanced by the liberties they’ve been taking for 30 years. NATO have been dead as a genuine defense collaboration for years, all its been is a bunch of small and medium sized nations leaching off a big one. All Trump has done is make its death clear for all to see.
Trump is your best bet to roll back the tide of the Left throughout the Western world. If you don’t support him, warts and all, he, and any future for the West, is toast.
Perry: I myself have cautiously criticized Trump’s Ukraine actions myself, while noting that we are not in the endgame yet.
But I’d like to make sure that the two NATO nations receiving “not-very-veiled threats” to their national security, are Canada and Denmark (Greenland, really).
In which case, i agree that, to put it mildly, Trump was not at his best as a negotiator.
I wrote that there is nothing controversial about Johnathan’s and Perry’s latest remarks. I had in mind major controversies: there is still some room for disagreement. In particular, JP wrote:
It could be argued that:
(a) Some of those powers did not belong to Congress, but to the States, or to the people.
And
(b) Those powers were not given to the Presidency, but to the Deep State; which is an active enemy of the Presidency, except when the latter supports its agenda (eg Obama) or is just a front (eg Biden).
As for practical solutions: DOGE is a novel strategy for dealing with the Deep State, and looks promising to me. In the long term, i believe that a joint effort by Congress and the Presidency is needed.
Simply threaten to leave NATO unless they jack up expenditures. But yes, threatening the sovereignty of Canada & Denmark means NATO is now functionally dead anyway, so there is that, not to mention making USA of dubious value as an ally for pretty much anyone anywhere that isn’t Israel (such as Australia or Japan for example). If Trump’s intention is to see a militarily stronger western Europe along with motivating western nations to seek enhanced political & economic links elsewhere to deal with the threats they face (meaning China of course), well… he is well on the way to “job done” I suppose. Personally I’d rather that not be what happens.
@Jim
Trump is your best bet to roll back the tide of the Left throughout the Western world. If you don’t support him, warts and all, he, and any future for the West, is toast.
I think this is right, though for sure you don’t need to support the warts. There are definitely things Trump is doing that I’m not a fan of. But politics is a package deal. And Trump is quite simply the only package that has any chance whatsoever of rescuing the west from oblivion. Jonathan and Perry might well be right about tariffs, they definitely make me queasy, but it is a lot more complicated than a trivial economics professor analysis. So maybe in the end Trump will not avert the collapse of the west. But he is the only game in town that has any hope of doing so. Like I said before, if your boat is sinking you might as well try to swim to shore, even if the water is full of sharks. A small chance of success is better than a guarantee of collapse.
“Simply threaten to leave NATO unless they jack up expenditures.”
Ah yes that’d work sooo well. All the rest of NATO would do is promise to spend lots of money (that they don’t have) and then hope that a more sympathetic US President would follow Trump, at which point they could backslide gracefully. The point of a threat like yours is a) you have to give the other side time to make good on their commitments (time which neither Trump nor the US has) and b) there’s never a good time to actually pull the trigger, and always a good reason to ‘give them a little more time, this time it’ll be different’. It is after all exactly what the Non-US bits of NATO have been doing for 30 years, promising but not delivering.
No, IMO the only thing that would make the rest of NATO actually act on shoring up their defence capability is if they are suddenly sh*t scared the US can’t be relied on to defend them. Then rampant self interest kicks in. While they still trust that the US will always ride to their rescue then they’ll backslide just like they always have done.
Indeed, it’s a great idea! That’s the bit of what Trump is going that needs to be emulated everywhere.
There’s a little Inner Drama Queen in all of us. But I still think the result in the UK puts the lie to “we’ll starve out the Tories until they see the light.” I don’t think the UK will see a light for a long time now.
And . . .
I subscribe to everything Fraser Orr has written about the parlous state of the West, and specifically of the USA. We’re in tough shape.
Had Harris won, I think I, too, would be writing off our chances for a decade or more.
Trump won – but by a small margin. (Everyone talks about his Huge win, but it seems bigger than it was because he won a lot of small state electoral contests by slim margins.)
And the supposed Republican Congress – isn’t. The R’s may technically hold the chambers by small numbers, but not by enough to pass anything. So, whatever Trump can accomplish will be shaky until he can do enough to cement some results in place.
And, as usual, every person on the right who disagrees with any portion of what he’s doing is giving cover to all of the squish R’s in Congress to step back in their support of Doge, and the other worthwhile things Trump is pushing.
Is he perfect? Hardly. But this is one of those stupid times in history where I think it’s more important to not give the Trump critics any support, even if it means gritting my teeth at times.
Would I enact tariffs? No. But would I willingly trash what Trump might accomplish over them now? No.
It’s the insistence on the perfect killing off the good. It’s why the ratchet always, always goes to the left.
And, what Jim said above.
That does not strike me as a sound negotiating tactic, as it is all-or-nothing. As in poker, they might call your bluff.
Even worse, some allies might comply, while others call your bluff. What do you do, cave in to the latter, or betray the former?
Much better to tell them that they have to increase defense spending, or else there will be unspecified consequences. Then, after a decent interval, impose tariffs, w/o telling them that they are linked to defense spending. When they come begging, bait-and-switch to get them to increase defense spending; and import more fossil fuels from the US into the bargain.
This, please note, is not an endorsement of annexation of Canada and Greenland. Although a major political rearrangement of North America might not be a bad thing, in the long term.
Oh I think USA threatening Canada & Denmark means only an idiot believes that now. If Ukraine fall, there will be a larger war in Europe within 10 years, probably less, and I very much doubt USA will be involved, just as Europe will not be involved with the Sino-American Pacific war that’s probably coming.
We’re not going to war with Canada or Denmark.
I can’t believe I had to type that.
“Oh I think USA threatening Canada & Denmark means only an idiot believes that now.”
Hmm, I wonder if that was the aim all along……and even if it wasn’t, its certainly had that effect, so the sabre rattling can’t be all bad.
There’s nothing like a bit of self interest to make the recalcitrant suddenly get their arses in gear.
Likewise, but I’m a great believer that when someone threatens to use force, you need to realise they might make good on that threat at some point & it behoves you to act accordingly, be they Muslims, Russians, or the US government.
It’s back to that idea that Trump should be taken seriously and not literally. We elected a man who is . . . weird. Bombastic. Inscrutable.
We elected him because we’ve not been well-served by normal, even-tempered, carefully-speaking business-school drones. He won because he’s a disrupter. Disrupters do weird stuff.
And, maybe worth a read: https://archive.is/UXdQU
(WSJ)
That is only true if EUrope does not heed Trump’s advice to spend 5% of GDP on defense; in which case, we EUropeans have only ourselves to blame. (Collectively: do not blame me!)
But i do hope that our American friends will be kind enough to help us in smoothing the transition.
Quite right!
And that is the communication strategy that is needed in this day and age; at least in the Anglosphere.
I regard the US behaviour over NATO’s defence obligations the equivalent of parents going tough love on a ne’er-do-well child. One that has for years sponged off their parents, constantly promised to do better, to get a proper job, to move out of the family home, to stand on their own two feet, but that has always failed to make good on their promises, and instead frittered away their time and efforts on fripperies and self indulgence. In order to shock the child into action you have to change the paradigm, remove the backstop of parental assistance in a way that seems brutal at the time, but that is actually in the child’s best long term interests. And most probably the parent would still help the child if some catastrophe befell them, out of the blue, but in order to shock them into action it has to be made to appear that all promises of assistance have been irrevocably withdrawn.
I suspect that if the Russophobes are correct and the T-90s started to roll into NATO territory, the US would indeed come to Europe’s aid. But the fact Europe can’t now be sure the US would help is the genius of the tactic – Europe MUST now look to its own defence.
not to mention making USA of dubious value as an ally for pretty much anyone anywhere that isn’t Israel
For now yes but take Trump out of the White House and an America led by Obama, Biden (in name only) or whoever the Dems come up with in 2028 was and will be anything but an ally to Israel.
Thank heavens Elon, Big Balls and the rest of DOGE have defenestrated USAID and its multi-billion “off balance sheet” funding of some truly vile middle-east types as opposed to the Democrats unashamedly transparent shoring up of Iran * and its endlessly nascent nuclear programme.
* summed up perfectly by Obama shipping pallets of banknotes totalling £1.7bn to Iran in order to get around the highly effective US driven sanctions which had isolated it from the international banking system. Even Captain Louis Renault would have balked at that level of hypocrisy.
You could have put a full stop after ‘ally’.
In my opinion, Carter, Obama, and “Biden” were easily the worst US Presidents, ever, from the point of view of America’s allies, the best from the point of view of America’s enemies.
Russia has serious problems – already a small island in a border river has been claimed, and taken, by the People’s Republic of China.
“It is not an important place, no one lives there, and we need Chinese continued support for the war in Ukraine” – that is the thinking behind Moscow not making a fuss about this – but the island could be a choke point concerning travel to other places along that river, and it sets a precedent, a very dangerous precedent.
What the Trump/Vance Administration understands is that “Russia” is not really the main threat – the People’s Republic of China is the main threat, both economically (the so called “Free Trade” is a PRC political warfare tactic – and people who think this is the Free Trade that Adam Smith or A.L. Perry supported are away with the Elves and Pixies) – the problem with Mr Putin is that he has sold out Russia to CHINA, or more specifically to the Communist Party Dictatorship that controls China.
Mr Putin has also formed a very dangerous alliance with Islam (hence the constant attacks on Israel on Russian television – especially international Russian broadcasting) – he gets manufactured goods (including military ones) from China and a lot of his new soldiers from he largely Muslim Central Asian Republics. This is totally ignored by the Western establishment, who are terrified of being called “Islamophobic”.
The “Russia-Russia-Russia” obsession of the international Western establishment takes attention away from the real sources of danger.
It is not Russians who are taking over the world economy (under the false pretense of “Free Trade” – the modern version has nothing in common with what Adam Smith or the other great economists advocated) it is the People’s Republic of China Communist Party Dictatorship which is doing so – and for military reasons, once it has other nations by the throat economically, it can do what it likes with them (and what it wants to do is bad – very bad). And it is NOT ethnic Russians who are taking over Western European cities – it is other ethnic-cultural (religious) groups entirely.
But the Western establishment (for example the Economist magazine) just screams “racist” or “Islamophobe” at anyone who tries to warn them.
As for Mr Putin – he has sold out Russia, the Russian people. Economically, politically, and (in the end) demographically.
That the Russian people (including Russians living on the shores of the Pacific – just like Americans living on the shores of the Pacific) are Europeans is denied by some – who pretend there is some fundamental divide between Russians and other Europeans (there is not – people who, for example, deny that Rachmaninov was a European composer, or deny that Moscow and St Petersburg are European cities, are wrong).
If the Russian people (NOT Mr Putin – the Russian people) are not allied with – then Europeans everywhere will lose. Whether that be in British Columbia, Germany, Britain, the United States, Australia – or where ever.
There is one planet.
Defeat in, for example, Vladivostok, the city of Yul Brunner, is just as much defeat as defeat in London or Vancouver or Sydney, or Berlin or Brussels.
For the governments of (for example) Germany, France, Belgium and the United Kingdom to pretend that Russians are the threat to their cities, ignoring what is really happening in their cities (and towns now) is bizarre – utterly bizarre.
Then you fundamentally do not understand why USA dominated & indeed created NATO & the west for so long. It wanted to be the global hegemon & that was the cost. It was not defending Europe out of the goodness of it’s heart, it was defending it’s sphere of influence. And now thinking has changed in the USA, so no…
…I very much doubt that. And on the credit side of Trump’s indiscriminate Godzilla-like trashing of the post-WW2 security realities that actually created “the west”, Europe will indeed have to become capable of dealing with Russia (which is purely a matter of will, the one thing many parts of western Europe are short of). And we’re only Russophobes because we actually understand Russia, it is the self-styled “Russia realists” who are living in a fantasy 😉
No, not really Paul. You have never understood the reality of Russia, even when commentators immersed in the accursed place lay out what you have got wrong. Putin is as Russian as Russian gets, he not an anomaly, he is what Russian leaders look like, a product of Russian political and social culture through and through. There is a good reason so many Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs and Baltics call Russia “Mordor”.
If that were the case then why did the US not dissolve NATO the moment the USSR collapsed? Its raison d’etre (as you define it) had gone. No USSR, no Soviet (or Russian) threat to US global hegemony, no need to defend Europe from the T-72s any more. Close the US bases, go home, job done. But they didn’t. For 30+ years they stayed. Why? Because deep down there was still the feeling that Europe was where the US originated from, and they felt obligated to stay. If they’d be 100% hard hearted about it they’d have gone by 2000 at the latest. There was far more emotion involved than you suggest.
You have actually made my point for me. USA did not leave NATO because USA still aspired to be the global hegemon & a Europe dominated by the USA very much serves that objective.
A weaker Europe at the side of the USA serves that objective, but frankly so does a stronger Europe at the side of USA, which I thought Trump also believed, right up to the point where he threatened Canada & Denmark, thus indicated if he did hold to that during his first term (for example warning Germany to spend more on defence & not depend on Russian energy), he does not seem to think that now.