Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

Under New Management

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President Trump has wrapped up his trip to Saudi Arabia and the Western media is trying hard to ignore it. The main reason is they hate Trump, of course, but a secondary reason is they do not understand the importance of the trip. To them, it just looks like another foreign trip by a president. In reality it is a glimpse of how the large share owners of America Inc. are restructuring the company. The deals signed in Saudi Arabia are the first step in that restructuring.

For fifty years, the United States and Saudi Arabia had an agreement primarily centered around oil trade and the use of the U.S. dollar. The formal part of the agreement committed the Saudis to investing their profits from energy into U.S. Treasuries in exchange for American military commitments. The result was the Saudis priced everything in dollars, which led all other OPEC members to work in dollars, thus establishing the petrodollar concept.

The reason the dollar is the world’s reserve currency is it is backed with energy, the one thing everyone needs. The gold bugs like to say the dollar is “fiat currency” and is just colorful bits of paper, but that was always false. The dollar, like all real money, represents power. From the 1970’s to the present, the dollar represented the power of the United States and the power of hydrocarbons. Instead of money backed by shiny bits of metal, the dollar was backed by energy.

Another consequence of this arrangement is it provided an unlimited demand for dollar-denominated debt, especially treasuries. Because that debt is created within the American banking system, it made the United States the global bank. In effect, the petrodollar arrangement made the United States the world mint and the world’s banker, with the oil producing countries as the miners. With only one mint, it meant that the United States also controlled the mines.

This system has been under great pressure of late for a few reasons. One is the abuse of the system by the neocons in their foreign policy schemes. No one cared that much about using the financial system against small, nuisance countries like North Korea, but when the system was turned against big countries like Russia, one of the important mints, then people did care. The rise of BRICS as an off-dollar trading system was a response to the abuse of the system.

Another reason for the faltering dollar scheme is the Saudis decided to let the fifty-year-old agreement lapse. One reason for this is the abuse of the system by the neocons during the Biden years. The neocons were deliberately trying to destabilize the region in their war against Russia. This is not what the Saudis want. The other reason is the world is changing, and the Saudis need to adapt. They cannot continue to be a gas station in the desert. They need to diversify.

The biggest reason for the pressure on the petrodollar system is it hollowed out the American economy. It is not just the decline in manufacturing, which gets most of the attention, but also the decline in the nation’s infrastructure. This is becoming acute as the demand for electricity climbs. Artificial Intelligence may be oversold, but it is a real thing that will spike demand for electricity. Without trillions in new investments, the United States will not keep up with the world.

That last bit is the what the Saudi deal addresses. The Saudis are not going to plow their profits into treasuries, but into direct investments in the United States, while the United States provides support for Saudi Defense and infrastructure. This means the Saudis will be investing in American companies that are doing work inside the United States to build factories and infrastructure. The Saudis are not just a mint serving the American bank, but an investor in America Inc.

That is another thing easily missed about this trip. In the past, presidents went to Saudi Arabia to talk about military cooperation and the local politics. Business was delegated to Treasury and Commerce. The Treasury Secretary might make a trip to the region and meet his counterparts to discuss money. When a president visited these countries, money was not on the agenda. It was politics and the military situation in the places where America had stationed soldiers.

Notice on this trip that Scott Bessent was on the trip. Notice also that Bessent turns up in all of these foreign policy events. He led the charge on the so-called mineral deal with the Ukrainians. For the first time in a long time the bankers are now part of the foreign policy discussion. In fact, Bessent is involved in everything. He is part of the effort to root out some of the massive waste in government. What we are seeing is the return of political – economy to America Inc.

For several decades, at least, the managerial class has separated economics from politics, leaving the latter to the elected officials. Economics was too important to let the politicians get involved, so it was handled by experts. The result has been the perversion of economic policy. Instead of economic policy that benefits the people of the nation, we got policy that satisfied the theorists and the tiny minority that was able to arbitrage their access to the experts.

What this trip to Saudi Arabis represents is the return of political-economy where political decisions, including foreign policy, is measured against the standard of the national interests. Trump made that clear in his speech. He declared that foreign policy would no longer be about nation wrecking but about making deals that benefit the American people. Much as economics is being dragged from the abstract to the practical, foreign policy is being brought back to reality.

This trip also symbolizes the return of American Inc. The United States has never been a country in the traditional sense. It was always a business, something like a conglomerate containing many regional companies. The post-Cold War years were a monopoly phase, where managers stopped worrying about profits and focused on pet projects and social schemes. That time is done, and the company needs to be radically reformed to become competitive again.

Like all corporate restructurings, this one will fall far short of the dreams of the reformers, but whatever the result, it must be better than the alternative because the alternative is bankruptcy. In the case of empires, bankruptcy usually ends with the shareholders swinging from trees. The oligarchs of American seem to get this, which is why they are backing Trump and his turnaround team. Time will tell if American Inc. re-emerges as a strong company or a failed experiment.

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The Progressive Formula

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American progressivism in its current form can be summarized as an ideology that claims, “we must do A or B will happen.” The A in this formula can be just about anything and often flips from positive to negative. There are times when doing A reverses and the warning is to stop doing it. On the other hand, the B factor is always a negative consequence of the first term. Usually, it is a vague suggestion that it is not just bad but the end of civilization as we know it.

The obvious example is the weather. On the grand scale, the first term will be something like driving cars or heating our homes, while the second term is climate change, which means climate disaster. If we keep driving cars the climate will change in such a way that earth dies. They never make that second term explicit, but the extinction stuff is assumed. After all, climate changes all the time and has often been to our benefit, but that just muddies the waters.

That gets to the other aspect of this formulation. The person or people involved assume that their normative evaluation of both terms is correct. They may be justifying their prejudice against A on the grounds that it leads to B, but they always assume that B is a bad thing that moral people should seek to avoid. You see this with climate change, which is recast as a moral condition, rather than an observation. It is a bad thing not a simple observation of earth’s behavior.

The Gaia worship stuff is easy, but it turns up everywhere, even in mundane things like foreign policy. For a few decades now the American foreign policy establishment has been warning that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, then it will be a disaster. It is in the title of this post at one of the Claremont sites. The post is a veiled argument in favor of going to war with Iran on behalf of Israel. The post is in response to another post on the subject that dismisses this progressive formulation.

What we see with Iran are two variations of the same theme. One is “If we do not do A then B will happen.” The other is “If they are able to do A, then B will happen.” Sometimes they are linked together to get something like, “If we do not do A then they will do B and then C will happen.” The point of this formulation is to avoid examining the second term. The debate must center on the first part, what we ought or ought not do, while accepting the general badness of B.

Again, the Gaia business is an easy example. Every debate on climate policy centers on that first term and never debates the second term. It is always assumed by all sides allowed in the debate, that climate change is bad. In fact, a condition of getting into the debate is that you accept that climate change is morally bad. Your reason for accepting Gaia as your lord and savior may be different from others who accept Gaia, but accepting Gaia is the only way into the debate.

Note that Spivak in his response to Dobson spends a lot of his time smearing Dobson as immoral or otherwise out of bounds. One point of the Spivak post is to anathematize Dobson and anyone who dares question B. Central to the claims of Spivak is that everyone must accept his normative claims about Iran going nuclear. That way, the debate is reduced to the ways to prevent it, since a nuclear Iran is assumed to be a disaster for the world.

It is the natural way progressives control public debate. This is the heart of the debate between those two posts on Iran. Dobson, the author of the post at the start of the exchange, is questioning the veracity of B. He is correct that there are no arguments to support the claim. The evidence we have says that if Iran gets the bomb, they will become even less aggressive toward Israel. We see this with India and Pakistan where nuclear weapons keep the peace.

Spivak, on the other hand, simply cannot accept Dobson’s questioning of B in the well-worn formulation, so he repeats all of the ways people have said, “If A then B” over the years regarding Iran and nuclear weapons. The reason for this is that any change in B invalidates the formula. Suddenly, A does not necessarily lead to B, which then causes a revaluation of the set of choices in A. It also removes the necessity of the person warning, “If we do not do A, then B will happen.”

If there are a set of conditions in which Iran gets the bomb, but like all but one other nuclear country, does not use it, then the debate over American relations with Iran shift from various forms of war with Iran to include peaceful relations with Iran. Suddenly, the war mongers move from being one voice in a choir preaching some form of war, to being war mongers in a room with people calling for peace. They lose their moral high ground and become the high-risk position.

In this regard, progressive ideology inherited the basic formula from Christianity but stripped it of all Christian references. Heaven is just the assumed destination if we follow the progressive formula. If we follow the tides of history, then we will reach the egalitarian paradise. On the other hand, if we do not stop doing a long list of things that meet the requirement of A, then some version of Hell awaits us. The reason our politics is so preachy is that it is dominated by preachers.

Progressivism is secular Christianity of the Protestant variety, which is why all progressive arguments reduce to “Repent or burn in Hell!” You must ride a bike to work, or you will burn in Hell for angering Gaia. We must make war with Iran, or we will burn in Hell for letting her get the bomb. The madness of America stems from the fact that all doors now lead to Hell. There are no choices in the first term that do not lead to the second term and the second term is always Hell.

It is why the antidote to progressive polemics is not facts and reason. Those facts neatly arranged in a chart do nothing to alter the basic progressive formula. Instead, the solution is a revaluation of the values contained in the formula. If the value of B is open to debate, then there is no debate over A. If any part of A is morally questionable, then B ceases to be a consideration. You do not defeat moral claims with facts, but with the dismissal of those moral claims by challenging the underlying assertions.

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Old Lessons

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Wednesday, April 23 was supposed to be a big meeting of Western countries and Ukraine in London where the Trump administration would make its final push for peace to end the war in Ukraine. The meeting was canceled due to the Ukrainians announcing in advance that they were not interested in any deal that would require them to make concessions. This prompted Marco Rubio to cancel the meeting, at least the portion involving decision-makers from the administration.

The lead-up to this now-canceled meeting has been a microcosm of how the Western political system now operates. For example, the period before the meeting featured stories in prominent nodes of the Western information control system about the secret details of the Trump plan. The sources for these stories were never mentioned, most likely because they did not exist. Instead, it was members of the Kagan cult, former Biden people, or schemers in the British government.

It was clear that these stories were coordinated as they all featured the same narrative and much of the same language. For example, they dusted off the old 2024 narrative of a freeze along the front line, something Russia has always rejected as both unacceptable and impossible to implement. The stories also all framed the deal as a major concession by Putin, the subtext being that he is now desperate for a way out of the war he started for no reason at all.

One point of these stories is something seen constantly in the West. There is the belief among the managerial elite that they can meme things into reality. If they just pack enough versions of their desired truth into the information control system, at some point this becomes reality. This has been repeatedly seen with the war in Ukraine, but it has been a feature of every major event. During Covid, they operated as if the news stories they made up were true for a couple of years.

One possible explanation for this is that a key pillar of the managerial state is the assumption that people respond to information, so if one controls the information, one controls the people. Since another pillar of the managerial state is that reality is made by people, it follows that one can control reality, or at least the perception of reality, by controlling the people through control of the information. The old expression, perception is reality, has become an article of faith among the elites.

Another part of this story illustrates how Western elites are only capable of thinking one move at a time. The reason for the media campaign was that they wanted the Russians to reject the deal, so they framed it as negatively toward them as possible, assuming the Russians would publicly respond. There was no thought given to the possibility of the Russians remaining silent. They simply assumed it was inevitable because this was a pleasing narrative to them.

This meant there was no backup plan. Instead, they had to have Zelensky preemptively reject the deal to avoid a public catastrophe. This last-minute cancellation is about buying time, which is another feature of managerialism. Western elites now operate as if time is always on their side. If they cannot shape reality to their liking now, then they just need to wait until reality comes to its senses. In the case of Ukraine, they remain sure they can outlast the Russians.

This sense of time probably stems from the fact that managerialism is a world measured in process rather than tangible accomplishments. Normal people measure their lives by what they have done. The managerial class measures their lives by the networks and processes in which they are a part. There is never any pressure to do anything in this world, so there is no need to worry about time. There can always be another meeting to discuss the things discussed at the last meeting.

This sense of timelessness has infected their approach to Trump. In his first term, the plan was to put the brakes on everything and wait until he either quit under relentless pressure or was removed. When he refused to go away, they peppered him with lawsuits, figuring time was on their side. Now in his second term, the court system is tasked with throwing sand in the gears to wait out Trump. The same thing is happening with the Ukraine war. It is endless stalling.

This is what gives the West the same feel as pre-revolutionary France. The ruling elite of France assumed they had time, which allowed them to avoid dealing with the serious problems facing the system. One reason for the radicalization of the masses during that time was the sense that no one in charge cared about the growing problems because no one could see any action to address them. The apparent indifference to what was happening became part of the indictment.

A similar situation happened at the end of the Soviet system. Gorbachev was something like Jacques Necker, in that he was in his position to fix the problems of the system, but the system refused to be fixed. His failure set in motion the process that toppled the Soviet system. Similarly, Trump exists because of systemic failure with the expectation that he can fix the system. Like the reactionaries of old, the managerial elite assumes it can wait him out.

Historical analogies are never perfect, and that is true here. The French elite, for example, understood the system’s problems. These were mostly smart, educated men with a deep knowledge of the system. The modern managerial elite is populated by mediocrities skilled only in the sort of scheming that is the basis of drama. They also possess a stunning lack of self-awareness. The people thinking they just need to wait out Trump also think they are loved and adored by the masses.

Wars tend to be what break dysfunctional political systems. That may be the case with the Ukraine war. Everyone assumes Trump lacks the resolve to walk away from this situation and leave the Europeans to work it out with the Russians. If he walks away from Project Ukraine, the managerial elite of the West will have a chance to learn that they cannot meme reality into existence and time is not on their side, or they will cling to these beliefs as they head to the dustbin of history.

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The Long Retreat Continues

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A funny thing happened when Netanyahu arrived in Washington to tell the Trump administration about how they would proceed with Iran.  The Trump side told Netanyahu that his longed for war with Iran was not happening. Instead, the Trump administration was starting talks with Iran concerning a negotiated settlement to their nuclear program and the sanctions imposed on Iran. When Trump announced this during the press conference, Netanyahu looked like he had seen a ghost.

Netanyahu was poleaxed because he was sure he had maneuvered the Trump people into a corner on Iran. He thought he had done the same thing with the Biden people, but instead of an American strike on Iran, the Iranians launched their own missile strike and the Biden people looked the other way. With Trump he was sure he had a president who hated Iran as much as he did, but it turns out that Trump was leading Netanyahu on so he could buy time to make a deal with Iran.

It is a good example of how the Israel lobby, which backs Trump completely, is not the same as Israel. The two sides frequently disagree on what is best for Israel, and the Israel lobby typically prevails in these disputes. Given the source of funding for the Israel lobby, this is logical. For American Jews, Israel is their symbolic homeland, but it is not their actual home. It is a place where they send their children for the summer after graduation or perhaps where they take an occasional family trip.

For the Israel lobby, an agreement that fosters peace in the region and ensures the long-term security of Israel is the goal. They do not share Israel’s aspiration for a greater Israel or of subjugating local rivals merely out of spite. The manner in which Israel has conducted itself concerning Gaza has been detrimental to the Israel lobby, as it significantly undermines support for Israel among average Americans. Israel now has the lowest approval ratings among Americans since the issue has been surveyed.

This is also another one of those examples of how the second coming of Donald Trump is much better than the first one. No one saw the reproachment with Iran coming until it was about to happen. This meant that Trump did not discuss it publicly and ensured it remained a need-to-know matter among his trusted confidants. Consequently, the usual suspects could not leak it to the media. All those people who lost security clearances are no longer conduits to the Washington Post.

We see the same thing with Russia. No one outside of Trump and a few trusted people know what is happening in those dealings. No one knew Trump was planning direct talks until they were announced by both sides. Even now, no one has the slightest idea what the two sides are discussing. Instead, the media runs nonsense stories like this one fed to them through Keith Kellogg by the neocons. Team Trump has kept everyone off balance regarding Ukraine.

The essence of all this is not a change in policy with Trump but a transformation in his approach to governance. For instance, Trump has never been fond of Netanyahu. Worse yet for Netanyahu, Trump does not trust him. Similarly, Trump never forgot that Ukraine was central to his impeachment. Trump always wanted to do a deal with Russia and has always got along with Putin. What is novel this time is that Trump is far more astute in how he navigates the den of vipers that is Washington.

Regarding Iran, there is also the reality that no military solution exists. This has been made evident with the Houthis. The days of launching volleys of missiles at an adversary and achieve its objectives is over. To address the Houthi issue militarily would necessitate an invasion and an occupation. A military solution to Iran would require a million-man army and the risk of destabilizing the oil markets. It is not entirely clear that the United States could accomplish this, even if the will existed.

Instead, Trump has allowed the Israelis to believe that the Trump administration supported a strike on Iran’s nuclear and leadership centers. These stories were leaked to the media and then amplified by online geopolitical analysts. Meanwhile, Trump’s trusted advisors were utilizing backchannels to arrange direct talks with Iran, which occurred last week in Oman. There is a strong likelihood that Russia played a role in persuading the Iranians to attend the meeting.

What we may be witnessing are the results of a transformation in the Israel lobby and in Trump’s governing strategy. The same populist forces that spooked the oligarchs into supporting Trump’s political and economic reforms may have prompted the Israel lobby to reconsider its approach to Iran. If war is not an option, then another method must be found to secure Israel. The obvious solution is to resolve the Iran issue that has persisted for half a century.

In many ways Trump is the closing of a chapter in American history that started fifty years ago, and Iran is one part of it. The Iranian revolution was caused by the failure to manage the Israel issue properly. Fifty years ago, smart people warned about tilting to far in favor of Israel. The result has been fifty years of turmoil, including several major wars. That chapter in American history may finally be coming to close with the normalization of relations with Iran.

Of course, this is another indication that we are at the end of empire. Even if relations between the United States and Iran cannot be normalized, it is evident that the days of the American empire ruling over the region with absolute authority are over. The cost of empire has long surpassed the benefits to the American people, and that deficit is now disrupting domestic politics. What Trump represents is a dignified withdrawal from empire, rather than an ignominious one.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

European Apartheid

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The word “apartheid” is like every emotionally charged word in the English language in that the worst people abuse it. In South Africa, it had a real meaning, as it described a real system. The word means “apart” and described a system in which the ruling white population lived apart from the black population. In modern usage, it has come to mean any race-based social system. The “apartness” is not so much physical but more of a moral distinction.

The West may need to invent some new words for the multilevel sociopolitical system that is emerging, especially in Europe. The rule of law and equality under the law are being abandoned in favor of a system that is loosely based on American concepts of social justice and social vengeance. In the United Kingdom, for example, there is now a separate set of rules for the white population. Whites, especially white males, are now to be punished more harshly than nonwhites.

This is mostly a formalization of something that has existed informally since Tony Blair flooded the country with immigrants. If a Muslim were caught rioting or raping, he could get off with a warning in front of the right judge. A native Brit, on the other hand, could expect the maximum penalty, especially if he could be accused of holding the wrong opinions about things. This is very similar to what we see in the United States, except now it is formalized in UK law.

This is spreading all over Europe, and unlike the United States, it is eroding the entire concept of a rights-based society. For example, a woman named Lucy Connolly was sent to prison for three years for a Facebook post in which she protested the mass importation of hostile aliens. In the United Kingdom, the police spend their days scanning social media for unlawful posts by white Britons. Twitter is full of videos of police abusing white people for their speech.

The reason the Prime Minister is called “Two Tier Keir” is because he supports the two-tiered justice system that has emerged in the United Kingdom. It is a bizarre implementation of the apartheid system in that it has a separate legal system for natives and immigrants but also compels the natives to embrace the immigrants and their foreign ways. On Palm Sunday, Starmer was at a pagan shrine, celebrating a pagan ritual that happened to fall on the same day.

Almost forgotten now is Tommy Robinson, a street activist who opposes the importation of Muslims and other immigrants. He has been in jail for so long that people have forgotten about him, which is the point. No one seems to know why he is in jail, other than that he says things in public that the government says white people should never say, not even in private. In the United Kingdom, like many European Union countries, you can be sent to prison for private speech.

In fairness, the UK is not alone. Across Europe, the lights of liberal democracy have been extinguished. They regularly arrest and jail people for speech crimes, and they are now arresting opposition politicians. Marine Le Pen is the latest example. In Romania, they canceled elections until they could find a way to remove from the ballot the candidate most likely to win. The Europeans are quickly becoming the old Soviet Union, with better consumer goods imported from China.

What you see in Europe is a more subtle version of what is happening in the United Kingdom, and that is a racial divide in the law. Muslims in France do not have to worry about the police reading their social media posts. If you are a French farmer organizing a protest, you can be sure someone in your group is an agent of the state. The state does nothing about the flood of migrant crime but will throw a white YouTuber in jail for holding views the state says he is not allowed to hold.

America was heading down the same path, as the media and corporations were embracing these same authoritarian policies. Largely due to entrenched cultural opposition and the revolt of key oligarchs, this decline has been halted, and the new administration openly supports civil liberties. That speech by Vance was as much a signal to the American public as to the European political class. The days of de-platforming are over, so they claim.

The real test will be how the Trump administration deals with these countries that flagrantly abuse the rights of their citizens. Everyone understands that Asians have a different cultural tradition, one that does not include things like individual rights, the rule of law, and respect for public opinion. China is never going to be a liberal democracy, so there is no point in punishing them for it. The same is true for the countries of the Middle East or in sub-Saharan Africa.

Europe is a different matter. The only reason for the United States to care about Europe at all is that it is both the ancestor of our population and the source of the moral framework that defines the West. Europe has the same moral obligation to defend the ideals of liberalism as the United States. Clearly, the current European political class has no interest in maintaining liberal societies. The United Kingdom, in particular, is an egregious case, given its role in the evolution of liberalism.

During the Cold War, the United States had different relationships with countries firmly on the Western side than those on the communist side or not aligned. The starting point was always respect for the rights of the citizens. Even during the Cold War, the United States exerted pressure on South Africa to end its apartheid system on the grounds that it was a violation of Western morals. One can question the rationality of that, but at least foreign policy was on something of a moral footing.

If Trump is going to restore the rationality of American foreign policy, it must include a return to a policy of judging nations by how closely they respect our understanding of individual rights and liberties. If the United Kingdom wants favorable trade deals, for example, they must open their prisons and release their political prisoners. The same holds for the rest of Europe. Their prison system must be dismantled, and the laws penalizing speech must be repealed and condemned.

Otherwise, the United States will be in the contradictory position of punishing China for its lack of Western values, while ignoring the grotesque violations of those same values by Europe. A sense of moral obligation has always animated American policy, for good or ill, and the primary moral obligation of America is the defense of the Western tradition of rights, equality before the law and respect for public opinion. America needs to break apartheid Europe, just as it broke apartheid South Africa.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

No Peace

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After a flurry of peace talks in Saudi Arabia, the Trump peace initiative regarding the war in Ukraine seems to have run out of steam. The last round of talks stalled over the conditions required to create a Black Sea ceasefire. The Russians laid out the conditions they would require, the conditions they agreed to in 2022 under the Black Sea grain deal. Ukraine flatly rejected those terms this time. The Europeans have also made clear that they will never agree to peace.

After Ukraine and the EU rejected the terms, Putin said some things that got little note in the West but were clearly a signal to the Trump administration. The first was at a meeting of Russian industrialists where Putin told them that despite talks with Washington, they should not expect the end of sanctions. The new world order, so to speak, is one in which the Russian economy will operate independently of the West and within the framework of BRICS.

That was a clear signal to the Trump people that ending sanctions was not a carrot and new sanctions are not a stick. The Russians have moved on from the old model where their economy was connected to the Western model. Despite the last three years, the West remains convinced that sanctions are working, and that Russia desperately wants back into the Western economic model. Until the Trump administration sees the folly in this, negotiations with Russia will go nowhere.

Another thing Putin said was in response to a question at a public event about the Trump effort to get a ceasefire. Putin said there will not be a Minsk 3. This is a reference to prior deals with the West over Ukraine. In Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, the Russians agreed to get trapped Western advisors in the war zone free of the Donbass militias in exchange for a peace deal that never materialized. In both cases, the West just poured more weapons into Ukraine.

This is a very sore subject for Russians. They see these prior deals as efforts to trick and humiliate them. When Trump publicly asked Putin to let the trapped Ukrainian troops in Kursk escape, it set off alarm bells in Moscow. It looked like the same old tricks from the Western tricksters. That is the reason Putin made a point of saying there will never be a Minsk 3. He was telling the Russian public and the Russian elite that he will not be fooled a third time.

That has led to two other things Putin said last week. One is he said the Russian army is ready to finish off the Ukrainian army. That is a bold statement, out of character for Putin. He has been warning of a five- or ten-year war since the West cancelled the Istanbul agreements. To now talk about a quick end of the war suggests that something big is on the drawing board. It could also mean the Ukrainian army is in far worse shape than is being reported.

This comment about the end of the war came with a comment about putting Ukraine into what amounts to receivership. Putin suggested that the post-war process would start with the removal of the Kiev government and put the administration of the country into the hands of a UN group. This caused Trump to call NBC’s Manjaw Crazyeyes and rant about being “pissed off” at Putin. He said he is planning to apply new sanctions to Russia in response to these statements.

What all of this points to is that the Trump peace initiative is dead. The Russians were willing to listen, but now that it is clear that Trump has no leverage over Ukraine or Europe, there is no point in continuing the charade. The war in Ukraine will end by military means and then maybe there can be a negotiated settlement. That was the point Putin was making last week. Whether or not the Trump administration understands this is unknown.

The Pentagon, on the other hand, at least the permanent elements, independent of the administration, does get this. They wrote a long, mendacious thriller for the New York Times where they blame the failure of Project Ukraine on the Ukrainians and to a lesser extent the Trump administration. It is a long post worth reading for no other reason than it is a great example of narrative fantasy. It is written like a spy thriller because it is mostly self-serving fiction.

If you want to know why Western politicians seem to be so clueless about so much, it is because they rely on the storytellers called the media for their version of reality. All over Washington, staffers for elected officials read that Times story, shocked to learn that the American military has been running the war from the start. Normal people have known this since day one because the internet exists and people use it, but elected officials get their reality from the media.

The main point of that work of fiction is to make clear that the Ukraine failure was not the fault of the Military Industrial Complex. All the weapons were, in fact, wonder weapons that totally crushed those primitive Russians. NATO tactics were the best and completely baffled those drunken Russkies. The people who brought you the F-35 want to make clear that when the Russian flag is in Maidan Square, it was the fault of the people who refused to let the American military win the war.

As an aside, if you can get past the self-serving fiction, the article reveals just how close we were to extinction. There were people willing to go all in on attacking Russia, which would have provoked a nuclear retaliation. Unsaid, but implied, is that there were people willing to go nuclear, maybe even preemptively. If the Trump administration is serious about changing foreign policy, a top priority must be hunting down those people and permanently removing them from society.

Putting that aside, what all of this tells us is that there will be no negotiated settlement to the Ukraine war, at least not until things on the battlefield change. Perhaps when the Ukrainian army begins to break in a major way, reality will get over the media firewall into the brains of the political classes in the West. Maybe the Trump administration understands this, maybe not. It does not matter because they are not in control of events, so they can only stand by and watch.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Changing Times

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Note #1: Behind the green door, there is a post about the massive Disney flop Snow White, a post about basketball, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Scan social media, comments on sites that still allow them, new media platforms like livestreaming services, and what becomes clear is that support for Israel in the United States is shifting. The days of “right-wing” influencers portraying Israel as the frontline of freedom are long gone. Instead, there is mostly indifference, with a fair amount of criticism. So-called left-wing influencers are aggressively antagonistic toward Israel, siding with the Arabs.

The one place where enthusiasm for Israel remains strong is Washington. The Trump administration is cartoonishly pro-Israel, often coming off as a parody of the old pro-Israel stance among conservatives. The Republican Party is similarly over-the-top in its celebration of Israel, as if it worships Israelis. Senator Tom Cotton rarely speaks about his home state, preferring instead to focus on Israel. Even Democrats act as though Israel is their ancestral homeland.

In time, the events of October 7, 2023, may be seen as a turning point for Israel’s relationship with the United States. Rather than sparking another round of American-led violence in the region, it may prove to be the moment that bursts the Israel bubble. Until then, supporting Israel was the default position among the American public, with only fringe voices expressing opposition. Since that day, however, the public square has become a battleground over Israel.

Israel seems to be losing that fight. Young people no longer support Israel, and it is only among senior citizens that you see the old enthusiasm. More accurately, the old enthusiasm exists only with old white people who vote Republican. Demographics play a big role here, as the younger generations are less white. Of course, it also means that the actuarial tables are working hard against the pro-Israel position. In ten years, support for Israel will probably collapse.

This does not mean, as some suggest, that Americans are becoming antisemitic or that a dark historical figure is poised for a comeback. Rather, for an increasing number of Americans, the romanticized view of Jews has faded. Events from eighty years ago no longer shape their thinking. Jews do not hold a special place in their imagination, and as a result, Israel is seen as just another country. More and more, Americans are evaluating Israel through the lens of American interests.

One reason for this is the heavy-handed tactics employed after October 7 to bully Americans into siding with Israel. In this age of widespread mendacity, overegging the pudding raises suspicions. The outlandish claims made by people like Ben Shapiro quickly turned a tragedy into a conspiracy theory. Instead of sympathy for Israel, a majority began to suspect shenanigans. When they called it their 9/11, that seemed to confirm we were being conned yet again into war.

It is fair to say that the year following the attack was an example of disastrous public relations that alienated many Americans. Exaggerated claims about Arabs eating babies and scripted social media campaigns were quickly identified and debunked online. Then came the carpet bombing of Gaza, which struck many as monstrous. While Israel was undoubtedly the victim, indiscriminately bombing apartment buildings and hospitals is still seen as immoral.

The weird thing about the year of ham-fisted public relations is that it was as if the Israel Lobby forgot the internet existed. It was very much an old school media campaign, for a time when the media was four television channels and a local newspaper, not a time when Telegram channels have up-to-the-minute video from even the most remote places in the world. It was a media campaign run by old people for old people who still watch the nightly news.

There is also the fact that, for over a decade, anyone questioning official narratives has been branded as “Hitler.” On the one hand, this rhetoric enrages people. On the other hand, it has become a signal that kooks and crazies are about to create chaos. The Israel Lobby foolishly aligned itself with the unstable elements of the left, and now, it is tarnished by association with the same activists who toppled statues and caused societal unrest.

This complacency is another factor in Israel’s declining support. Since the 1980s, life has been easy for the Israel Lobby. Their critics were banished in the 1990s, so they merely had to issue press releases to get what they wanted. Over time, this made them lazy. Like all lobbying machines, they became focused on Washington, neglecting grassroots efforts. Now, their critics control the grassroots and the new media that inform the next generation.

A larger issue for Israel and its supporters is that the United States is a big country facing big challenges. Israel is a small country. Naturally, it cannot remain at the top of America’s priority list. Furthermore, the Israel Lobby represents only a tiny fraction of the American public. Minoritarianism is unsustainable—just ask Assad. The great tectonic plates of human civilization are shifting against the current Israeli paradigm. The so-called Jewish century is over, and both Jews and Israel must adapt.

Again, this does not mean that a historical villain is making a comeback or that Ben Shapiro will soon be selling tickets to concentration camps to keep the Daily Wire afloat. Americans are not naturally bigoted, despite demographic changes. It simply means that the dominance of the Israel Lobby and the victimhood culture that has shaped Jewish identity for half a century are fading. Like many aspects of the 20th century, these things will soon be relics of the past.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Masters And Slaves

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Note #1: Behind the green door, there is a post about why deporting anti-Israel protestors is a good start, a post about the dangers of the Ukraine tarpit, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here. I was also on the J. Burden show last week and you can listen here.

Note #2: Since we are getting signs of spring, it means it will not be long before it is hot, which means t-shirt weather. Just in time for t-shirt season, we have a new shirt for The Occidental Club, which you can buy here.

One of the stranger things about the first months of the Trump administration has been the reaction of Europe to his peace initiatives. The European “leaders” are, on the one hand, horrified by his peace push, and on the other hand they have rallied themselves to various schemes to stop them. The latest scheme is to create a peacekeeping force that they will insert into Ukraine, something the Russians have repeatedly said is a deal breaker and perhaps even an act of war.

On the surface this looks insane. There are about twenty million Ukrainian refugees in Europe with more trickling in daily. Social welfare rolls are now littered with refugees, who do not speak the local language, so they cannot work. Of course, the EU has been shipping Ukraine billions of Euros plus all its military gear. The war has become another factor eroding social trust and most importantly, trust in the political elite that insists the war must go on forever.

None of this makes any sense until you think about what it means to be in the European political elite in 2025. It means a lifetime of having been very good at winning favor with America or winning favor with the politicians close to America. The dominance of the United States since the war, but especially since the end of the Cold War, has turned the European elite into a slave class. They are the house slaves, who defend the master’s prerogatives against the field slaves.

The surest way to getting yourself exiled in European politics is to speak poorly of the Americans in favor of European interests. Even now, when they all agree Trump is a big meanie, they are obsessed with getting his attention in such a way that it reasserts their position as the loyal house slave. With respect to Ukraine, they feel like they have been sent out of the room as the master talks to another master. They all have their ear to the door, hoping to hear what is being said.

What we are seeing is the result of long subjugation. When one people come to dominate another people, the subjugated will inevitably look to survive and that means finding leaders who are good at currying favor with the master. After the war, Europe was a mess and needed the United States to stave off communism and rebuild the economy of Europe. After the Cold War, the United States was the lone superpower, and Europe became its chief flunky.

It is why there will be no European Donald Trump anytime soon. The idea of such a character terrifies the typical European, who has been conditioned since birth to look up to the house slave. Since a Donald Trump like figure must come from the field slave population, this sort of figure is not just feared by the European house slave population but despised by the field slaves of Europe. They would rather been hacked to death by a machete wielding African than taste freedom.

This also explains the absurdity of the European political class. It is a freak show of carnival acts rather than people with some idea how the world works. You see the same thing in the United States among the black population. Every black congressional district has a ridiculous person as the representative. The newest version is Jasmine Crockett, a representative from Houston, who had to learn how to sound like a ghetto queen in order to rise up the ranks.

The reason Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers had to hire the actor Barry Soetoro to play Barak Obama was that the black community is not able to produce such a figure, so they had to manufacture one. The reason Obama has so quickly disappeared from the conversation is that he was always just an actor playing a role. The show ended and he left the stage. Like a typecast actor, he can only play this role and no one has much interest in the character, so he has sunk into obscurity.

We seem to be seeing something similar with other minority communities in the United States, despite the demographic changes. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is a fast-rising Asian politician, but she is also an Asian version of Maxine Waters. The reason anyone knows her name is she is willing to perform in front of the cameras, aping the most absurd politics of upper middle-class white people. She is the East Asian version of the Sambo, dancing for her primarily white audience.

A main difference between the minority populations in America and Europe is the United States is actively trying to set Europe free. If Trump could do it, he would leave Europe entirely but he will settle for a reduced role. No one is seriously thinking about creating a black homeland or Asian homeland in America. The Trump administration actively talks about Europe standing on its own two feet again. This is why the current European elite is in such a panic. They do not want to leave the master’s house.

The question with regards to Europe is can it regain itself and do so in a way that does not require the great powers to supervise it? The glimmer of hope is the nationalist parties emerging, but they are often as clownish as the establishment. That or they exist to prevent an alternative elite emerging. Nigel Farage is an entertaining political clown whose main role is to prevent any sort of organized resistance to the nation-wrecking policies of the UK political class.

The answer may be that Europe will have to go through a dark age, so to speak, before it can produce a genuine alternative elite. Given the current demographic trends, what would emerge would be non-European. Alternatively, the nationalist movements gain power and simply ruin the existing political elite and their slave mentality. There is a period of chaos, like the end of communism in Russia, that provides the conditions for a new elite to emerges to rule Europe.

What we see in Europe and America is a good example of how success sets the conditions for decline. Conquering people makes them into dependents and eventually, their dependency becomes too much to carry. The United States is about to cut the Europeans loose for this reason. What suffering comes from the newly liberated house slaves of Europe will seem unfair to them, but three generations of dependency are the cause, not their impending liberation.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Whither Europe

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In the 2016 election cycle, the majority of the American people signaled that they were done with the ideological politics that had reigned since the Cold War. While Trump did not win a majority in the general election, the election as a whole, including the primaries, made clear that the public was ready to move on. The way to view the last three election cycles is as a long struggle by the public to drag the economic elites out of their isolation and back into politics.

That is what we saw in 2024 and what we are seeing now. What is happening in Washington is both revolutionary and just the start. The cutting of government payrolls is one part of a bigger change in how America operates. The United States is about to end its empire phase and return to being a big powerful country. It is a long overdue transformation that has been made possible by the economic elites realizing things had to change if they were going to remain elites.

Left out of this is what it means for Europe. The issue of Ukraine, for example, has the Europeans on the sidelines, muttering mad ideas to one another about how they will get along as American vassal states without America. They are drawing up grand schemes for re-arming Germany and developing their own nuclear arsenal, so they can pretend Brussels is an imperial hegemon and the political classes of the European states can continue as dysfunctional flunkies.

It is strange to see the Europeans, both their media and their politicians, carry on as if nothing has changed. In the United States, the talk is about the DOGE audits and making deals with the Russians and Chinese. In Europe they are locking people up for speech crimes and looking under their bed for you-know-who, when the closest they will come to seeing him is in the mirror. Suddenly, Europe is a land of poor people wearing yesterday’s fashions.

The problem is most obvious in British politics. The Economist had a cover featuring British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Winston Churchill. The motivation behind it is the British elites are still suffering from the 1938 disease that used to rage in the United States until the antidote of the 2024 election. If they had made Starmer look like a guest at Studio 54 it would have been less cringe. British politics is a mess of yesterday men looking for a reason to exist.

This post in the Spectator about Nigel Farage inadvertently gets at the problem faced by the Brits and all of Europe. Farage is a generational talent in terms of democratic appeal, but he is worthless as a politician because he accepts the fact that he lacks elite support, especially support from economic elites. As a result, he is always getting close to the important issues facing his people, but he always pulls up just as he is about to engage directly and candidly with them.

What you always sense with Farage is that he desperately wants an invite to the cool kid’s table, so everything he does is aimed at keeping that option open. He could give the ridiculous fops on the continent a tough time, but he never levels the same charges at the local fops, because that would mean giving up forever the chance to sit with them at the cool kid’s table. He may not like their policies, but the dream of being accepted by them still controls his actions.

It is why he is always negotiating with himself when it comes to issues like immigration or Ukraine. Nowhere on earth is there a majority in favor of immigration and in most places, even the thoroughly demoralized portion of the population wants an end to the open border’s madness. This should be a trillion-dollar bill on the ground for Farage to pick up, but he just cannot do it.  He gets close, but always has a reason to leave it there, staring up at him.

What Farage lacks is the backbone that comes from elite support, especially from the economic elite. The reason for that is the indigenous economic elite of the UK was transformed into a local office of American Inc. It could act only with the permission of the bosses in the main office, who for decades were happy to leave things to the managers, both at home and abroad. The result is that the economic elites in Europe have the same managerial mindset as the managers.

The problem can be seen in the list of “British” billionaires. We must put “British” in quotes because the man topping the list is Gopi Hinduja. Number three on the list is Sir Leonard Blavatnik from Ukraine. Fifth on the list is Lakshmi Mittal. This feature of the British economic elite is shared on the continent. What passes for the European economic elite are people who gained their opposition by doing business with the Americans by the rules of the Americans.

The reason the UK is becoming a garbage island is because the “owners” have no connection to it. The servants of those “owners”, huddles in the swanky neighborhoods of London, define themselves by their opposition to the British people. The people of the British Isles got better treatment from the Vikings. The reason Farage can never get elite support is because the elites have no interest in a populist, nationalist message, so Farage reduced to being a charming rumpswab.

There are other forces at play, but all of them have their roots in the fact that Europe has been under American rule for eight decades. The reason Farage cannot be the UK Donald Trump is that Farage is not a member of the economic elite. Trump is a billionaire and sees himself as an equal to the billionaires. His perseverance over the last eight years won over the economic elite. Such a thing is not possible in the UK or on the continent, so they cannot produce their version of Donald Trump.

This does not mean things are hopeless in Europe. In fact, the United States suddenly joining the rest of the world in the 21st century is setting the stage for Europe to finally escape the 20th century as well. It will require a longer and more painful process, like what Russia experience after the Cold War. The reason is Europe will need to rebuild its institutions and develop its own elites. That can only happen when America finally kicks Europe out of the imperial nest.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

A Weird End For A Weird War

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Note #1: Last Wednesday was the third edition of a show I am doing with Paul Ramsey every Wednesday at 8:00 which you can watch live on Rumble and YouTube and, of course, watch at your leisure after the fact.

Note #2: Behind the green door, there is a post about Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress, a post about driving in Hell, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Note #3: Since we are getting signs of spring, it means it will not be long before it is hot, which means t-shirt weather. Just in time for t-shirt season, we have a new shirt for The Occidental Club, which you can buy here.

The war in Ukraine will go down as one of the stranger conflicts in American history, mostly because it has been a phony war. That is, the American government spent most of the war pretending to not be part of the war, while supplying the Ukrainians with hundreds of billions in war material. With a new administration bringing realism back to foreign policy, the end of the war promises to be strange as well. While the end is known, the path remains a mystery.

The story over the last few weeks has been the squeeze the administration has put on Zelensky to get him to agree to peace talks and agree to sign over the country’s natural resources as compensation for the hundreds of billions in aid. The process has revealed to the administration that Zelensky is an unreliable partner in a peace deal, so his future is now limited. You cannot make a deal with a guy that no one trusts, so whatever peace comes to Ukraine will not include Zelensky.

You see this with the peace talks coming this week between officials from the Trump administration and a Ukrainian delegation. Saudi Arabia is hosting the talks, and one man has been told not to attend. That man is Zelensky. Not only was he excluded from the meeting, but he was also barred from traveling with the delegation. Zelensky had planned to just hang around Saudi Arabia during the talks. Clearly, these meetings are about life after Zelensky.

The main point of the meeting is to find out if there is any support in Ukrainian politics for a peace deal. Getting rid of Zelensky is not a great challenge. Finding a replacement is not a great challenge. The issue is finding a new leader who can sign a peace deal without the country collapsing into turmoil. The Trump administration needs to find someone that can act as an interim leader, get the political factions to accept a peace deal and then hold elections.

If elections were held today, the most likely winner would be the former commander of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zaluzhny. While he has the respect of the army and the respect of the public, he is tightly tied with the ultranationalists. There are a lot of pictures of Zaluzhny posing next to iconography reminiscent of a certain period in German history, because he is extremely fond of that time. That means he is probably not a reliable option as a peaceful leader of Ukraine.

Another option is Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch who got rich in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He first got rich in the candy business, which earned him the nickname of the “Chocolate King.” He also owned media companies, natural resources firms and manufacturing concerns. He has lost a lot of his power over the last five years as Zelensky consolidated his own power in Kiev. Poroshenko is also an outlandishly corrupt figure with ties to the ultranationalists.

Another option is Yulia Tymoshenko, who made some headlines in the West when she briefly became the face of the “Orange Revolution.” She is the leader of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) political party and strongly anti-Russian, but she has been a critic of the war and Zelensky’s handling of it. She is an oligarch as well, having got rich in the energy business. This earned her the nickname “The Gas Princess”, which may be one of the better nicknamed in politics.

Within Ukrainian media, the betting favorite at the moment is Tymoshenko for the simple reason that she does not have the ultranationalist baggage. She has her own party outside the Zelensky machine, and she seems willing to strike a deal. It may also be easier for a woman to sell peace to the public. There are millions of wives and mothers of men who have been killed or maimed in the war. That might be enough to overcome opposition from the ultranationalists.

A major challenge to finding a replacement for Zelensky is Europe. The scheming ladies of Brussels view Zelensky as an essential part of their scheme to turn the EU into a replacement for NATO. This is why they are offering him unconditional support for his efforts to scuttle any peace deal with Russia. Then you have individual leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who are trying hard to make Zelensky seem like the most honest man in Europe.

Further complicating matters is the condition of the Ukraine army. They are now being routed in the Kursk region. Thousands of their best soldiers are now trapped in a cauldron with no chance of escape. Thousands of others have surrendered and thousands more have died fleeing toward the border. An army low on morale, hearing that its main benefactor wants a peace deal, is not going to respond well to news that its best units have been routed.

Since everything about this proxy war has been strange, it is fitting that its last acts will be strange as well. Normally in a long war of attrition, the side with the upper hand is willing to press on with the war, while the other side wants peace. In this case, the winning side wants a deal, while the losing side demands to fight on, even as its main benefactor demands peace. It will be another reminder that this part of the world produces nothing but misery for everyone around it.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!