Masters And Slaves

Posted on March 24, 2025 by thezman

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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.

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Whither Europe

Posted on March 11, 2025 by thezman

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.

A Weird End For A Weird War

Posted on March 10, 2025 by thezman

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.

The Zelensky Problem

Posted on March 3, 2025 by thezman

Note #1: Last Wednesday was the second 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 the events of last Friday, a post about the importance of knowing who is in charge, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here. I was also on with the boys from the Old Glory Club where we discussed the events of the day. The replay is 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.

Ronald Reagan was famous for saying that “the closest thing to immortality is a government program.” He was not the first person to say it. There are examples of American politicians saying a version of this going back to the 1930’s. There are probably versions of this concept going back to the Kingdom of Ur, because it is the nature of government to create constituencies in favor of its actions and those constituencies always lobby for more of what created them.

You see this with Project Ukraine, which was largely created by a small number of zealots called the neocons in the Obama administration. They overthrew the government of Ukraine, installed an anti-Russian government and just like that there was money and opportunity in Ukraine. By the time Trump came along in 2016, the Ukraine project had a sizable constituency in the Western ruling class, which is why Trump was impeached. He threatened the project.

Since the war broke out in 2022, the power of the Project Ukraine constituency has grown much stronger for monetary and political reasons. Important interests in Western countries are making money from the war, so they support politicians who seek to keep the war going. The politicians are happy to oblige, as the war is a nice distraction from the boring tasks the voters expect from government, tasks that the political class has thoroughly and completely ignored.

There is also the fact that the European political class operates like a preschool, where they are the children, and the United States is the teacher. Ending Project Ukraine is like forcing them into regular school or maybe sending them home to parents who do not fawn over them like their teachers. The reality of Europe is bleak, largely due to the perfidy of the Europeans political class. They prefer not to face that and instead fixate on this glorious adventure in which they are the heroes.

Of course, like all government programs, there is the program itself, which always adheres to the iron law of bureaucracy. In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people. There will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization and those dedicated to the organization itself. The second group will gain and keep control of the organization. We see this with how the Blob is fighting DOGE like Grendel facing off against Beowulf.

This is what we see with Zelensky. He is the anthropomorphized government program, consumed with defending its prerogatives. It is why he was so nasty in his trip to the Trump White House. He could not believe that these people would have the audacity to make demands upon him. He is the indispensable man, on whose shoulders rests the fate of the free world and through him is expressed the hopes and dreams of the managerial class that created him.

This is the problem the Trump administration faces as they seek to wind down what they consider to be a pointless and costly enterprise. They wisely drove a stake through the heart of that part of the Blob that has controlled American foreign policy, which is why official Washington is struggling to defend Project Ukraine. Legacy media is simultaneously calling Trump Chamberlain and Hitler – he is somehow appeasing himself – but otherwise they have no answers.

The Europeans are another matter. They see themselves like the tax eaters in Washington getting memos from Elon Musk. For them, Project Ukraine is their reason to exist now, so Trump’s plans to end it are an existential threat. It is why they cooked up the scheme to trick Trump into going along with their peacekeeper idea last week and why they are now busy cooking up a new scheme. Ukraine is their teddy bear, and they cannot think of being without it.

Zelensky is the key here, as his very life probably depends on this war never ending, at least not until he has an exit strategy. He cannot make a deal with the Russians because the ultra-nationalist will not tolerate it. The only deal he could make is one that requires Russia to surrender, which is not a possibility. His other choice is fleeing the country, but he would no doubt be tracked down by enemies. That leaves him with no other choice but to keep the war going.

One of the truths of a government program is that when it is finally killed off, the world never ends and the people dependent upon it find something else. After the initial sobbing and moaning, the dogs bark and the caravan moves on. That will be the case with Project Ukraine. What must happen first is Zelensky must exit the stage, and either be replaced by chaos or by someone willing to do a deal to end the war. At that point, the Europeans will adjust to the new reality.

This is where things stand now. At some level the Europeans seem to know it, which is why they put on a show over the weekend featuring their favorite comedian. It was a funeral where they could all hug and reminisce, except the corpse was still walking and talking, demanding more money and weapons. The reason Zelensky keeps talking about resigning is he knows that for this program to finally end, he must exit the stage, so he is hoping to create conditions which drag that out a bit longer.

While it may feel like government programs are immortal, immune to all efforts to slay them, nothing lasts forever. That is what we are now seeing. Along with the death of the 20th century mindset in American foreign policy is the death of its last great program, Project Ukraine and its anthropomorphized representation of it. Once Zelensky is gone, the war ends, and the process of developing new, normalized relations in Europe begins as we exit the post-Cold War world.

The Game of Chicken

Posted on February 24, 2025 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door, there is a post about the blob, a post about big stupid trucks, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here. Last Wednesday was the kickoff of a show with Paul Ramsey, which you can watch on Paul’s channel. I also did an appearance on the Mike Farris show, which can be seen here.

The Trump administration’s opening of direct talks with the Russians setoff panic in Kiev and the capitals of Europe. The reason for that is Project Ukraine was centered on the acceptance that there could be no direct talks with Moscow, until the Russians surrendered their country to the control of the usual suspects. Trump’s call with Putin and then the meeting in Saudi Arabia violated this central assumption. First there was panic and now there is a game of chicken.

The Trump administration has concluded, after assessing the situation inside and outside the issue of Ukraine, that normalizing relations with Russia is in the best interest of the United States. One of the obstacles to that is the war in the Ukraine, so logically they are looking to wrap up the war as quickly as possible. The Russians have agreed to talks with Ukraine but insist on elections in Ukraine first. They point out that by the laws of Ukraine, Zelensky does not have the power to sign a deal.

Russophobes argue that this is a stalling tactic, but they are the ones demanding the unconditional surrender of Russia before any talks can start, so this is the usual projection that is a feature of the post-liberal West. The Russians, having been burned by the Minsk agreements charade, want the next deal to have teeth, so they are insisting that it be signed by the internationally and domestically recognized leader of Ukraine, which means new elections.

The Russians would probably drop this demand if the EU were willing to co-sign whatever deal is struck, but such an offer will never come. The reason is the whole project relies on never having direct talks with the Russians. This is the trap setup in 2023 to keep everyone committed to Project Ukraine. Ukraine passed a law forbidding direct talks with Russia in exchange for unlimited support. Europe signed on in exchange for unlimited support from Washington.

The reason the Biden administration expedited the remaining weapons and money allocated to this project was an effort to prevent the incoming Trump administration from rethinking these arrangements. They would not have time to do that, as Ukraine would immediately need more money and weapons. The assumption was that they would have no choice but to go along with more money and weapons, thus entangling Trump in the Ukraine trap.

The underlying assumption was that Trump would not walk away from Project Ukraine and risk the image of Russian tanks rumbling through Kiev. This is the assumption the Europeans and Zelensky are relying on as they deal with Trump. In fact, Zelensky is so confident of this that he is going out of his way to jerk around the Trump administration on the mineral rights deal. Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer are coming to Washington this week to set Trump straight.

Reportedly, Starmer and Macron will present a plan to Trump that has the UK and France putting troops into Ukraine, while the United States provides air cover from bases in Poland and Romania. In effect, the United States must create a no-fly zone over Ukraine and go to war with Russia if the Russians violate it. The madness of the scheme is so beyond the pale it is hard to accept as real, but the Europeans are operating in an alternative reality from the rest of us.

The Trump people see that the main obstacle to their plans for normalizing relations with Russia is Zelensky. Anyone who has dealt with a deadbeat knows Zelensky and the best way of dealing with this type is to get rid of them. Elections will remove him from the picture. The end of American support will also remove him from the picture, as the only reason for him to exist is as a facilitator of money and arms into Ukraine, mostly the money, which is stolen by Ukrainian officials.

The danger of pulling the plug on Ukraine is that it could be bad public relations, which is where the mineral rights dispute comes into play. The point of this is to make it appear as if Zelensky is unwilling to make a deal for more money and make it look like he is the obstacle to a peace deal. Trump’s team has figured out that Zelensky cannot sign the mineral deal, and he cannot agree to negotiations, so they are pressing on both in order to shift the blame to him.

What is setting up is a game of chicken. On one side we have Zelensky and the Europeans, who are sure Trump will never walk away from Ukraine. It is why they are getting bolder in their demands. They think Trump is bluffing. On the other side we have Team Trump who is sure the Europeans will fall in line, rather than risk a break with Washington, even if it means abandoning Ukraine. Zelensky is sure he has fooled everyone with his latest schemes.

For their part, the Russians are making the prudent bet. It costs them nothing to talk with the Trump administration and there is a good chance it leads to a positive outcome, so they will follow that route to the end. Similarly, the Chinese have made positive noises about the start of talks between Moscow and Washington. Like the Russians, the Chinese welcome the return of normalcy to Washington. China and Russia are open for business and ready to make deals.

It is too soon to know how this ends, but this game of chicken revolves around Zelensky being the ruler of Ukraine, which means the way to avoid a collision is to remove him from the equation. The Russians figured this out two years ago. The Chinese figured it out last year when they had talks with him. Now the Trump administration has arrived at the same conclusion. That leaves the Europeans and the bet in the White House right now is they will choose Washington over Zelensky.

The Universe Smiles

Posted on February 13, 2025 by thezman

Tomorrow the Trump team arrives in Germany to participate in the Munich Security Conference, where they are expected to inform the Europeans of their plans to bring Project Ukraine to an end. No one knows what Trump is planning, but the Europeans are braced for bad news. That bad news is either a plan for peace brokered without them or a plan that hands the whole mess over to them. Team Trump had made clear that their first priority is accounting for the money.

As a general rule, anytime the guy giving the money starts making angry noises about accounting for the money, the guy receiving the money is in trouble. This type of scene is always part of gangster movies for a reason. It means the giver is unhappy with the receiver and has come to a conclusion about the arrangement that is going to be bad for the receiver. Imagine some DOGE kids stuffing Zelensky into a locker and you have a good idea of what is coming.

To make matters worse, Trump just had a long call with Putin and both sides described it in very positive language. There has been an exchange of prisoners, with Trump indicating the Russians asked for little in return. He was making clear that he understood their gesture and was ready to reciprocate. It is the sort of thing that is done when two sides are looking to build a larger relationship. You do small deals to build trust and develop a process for larger deals.

What is clear is that Trump has looked at his options with regards to Ukraine and did not see a deal worth pursuing. The Russians are not interested in anything but the deal they feel was done in Istanbul in 2022, plus some extra to cover the costs of litigating it on the battlefield for the last two years. They will get that deal either at the table or on the battlefield and there is nothing to be done to prevent them. Trump seems to understand this and accepts it.

Deal making always starts with discovery. You must first learn if there is a deal to be had, otherwise you are wasting your time. The number one rule in deal making in the private sector is that time is your most precious asset. The best salesmen maximize their time by not wasting time chasing bad business. For Trump, Project Ukraine, as constructed by his predecessor, is bad business. The goal now is to get this off the agenda as quickly as possible.

Most likely, the starting place this week is to inform the Europeans and Zelensky that the deal for them right now is Istanbul plus some other things. If they are ready to take that deal, then the Trump Team will hammer out the deal with the Russians and at some point, the Ukraine government will be invited in to sign it. Who the representative of that government is will be determined by elections to be held immediately. That means Zelensky will not be part of the signing ceremony.

This is why they are talking about the money. Imagine the bosses from Chicago coming out to Las Vegas to talk to the guy they sent out to oversee their operations, and their first question is, “Where’s our money?” Zelensky made the fatal mistake of saying he will never be able to account for it. That sealed his fate. There is simply no way Trump will do business with the guy. It now means any support requires elections and repayment of the money.

Like the guy who cannot pay in the gangster films, this leaves Zelensky and the Europeans in an impossible position, which is the point. Team Trump is prepared to work with the Russian on other issues, even if they cannot get a deal on Ukraine, so they are prepared to walk away from Ukraine entirely. If Europe wants to keep the United States engaged, then it means elections and an accounting of the hundreds of billions sent to Kiev over the last three years.

Now that the Trump plan is coming into focus, the girl boss running EU foreign policy issued a statement declaring the unconditional support for Ukraine. Not having come to grips with what is happening in Washington, she seems to think Team Trump will sit down with her to talk it out and come to a compromise. Instead, this will be used to justify handing the whole mess over to the Europeans so Trump can move onto matters far more important than Project Ukraine.

This is the other thing coming into focus. The war caused the Russians to rethink their relationship with Europe. They stopped taking calls from people like Macron and Schultz, because there was no point in speaking with them. The Chinese have gone out of their way to humiliate European leaders who turn up in Beijing. Men close their doors to the setting sun and that is what is happening to Europe. The emerging great powers of the new world order are ignoring Europe.

Now we are seeing Trump do the same thing. Vance was in Paris this week, in advance of the Munich meeting, and he told the Europeans in no uncertain terms how things are going to be going forward. They were properly offended, and that was most certainly the point of his speech. Friday, the Trump delegation is going to tell the Europeans how it is going to be with regards to Ukraine. If they do not like it, they can go it alone, but everyone knows they lack the ability to do it.

It is proof that the universe has a sense of humor. Four years ago, the Eurocrats were congratulating themselves along with Biden people, telling each other stories about the new world order and how they would build back better. Now, the guy they thought they had vanquished will be telling them their place in the new world order. The guy building back better, will be the guy they were sure was the final boss in their quest to spread the managerial revolution around the globe.

A Do Nothing President

Posted on January 14, 2025 by thezman

Note: Over the weekend the SSL certificate for the site was supposed to renew, but something went wrong and it did not renew. This is why your browser got angry when you tried to access the site. H1B strikes again!

On Monday, Trump will be installed as president, so naturally everyone is speculating about what he will do once he gets the keys to the White House. Interestingly, much of the speculation is around the foreign policy issues he inherits. The neocons in the media are working hard to keep Ukraine in the news, so they are making claims about what Trump will and will not do with Putin. The Israel lobby wants Israel to be number one, so they are focusing on Iran.

What does not get noticed is Trump was elected on domestic issues. In the last election, Israel and Ukraine were far down the list for all voters. The number one issue was the economy. Immigration was the next big issue. The typical Trump voter looks at Ukraine as a boondoggle and Israel as an unsolvable problem. Logically, these two issues should be far down the list for Trump, but the media is focusing on them, which speaks to the power of their respective lobbies.

The first hint of what Trump has in mind for Ukraine came last month when Trump’s personal envoy to Ukraine and Russia said that it will take one hundred days to get a deal with Russia over Ukraine. This was a big shift from prior claims about Trump ending the war in a few days. Kellogg has also shifted with regards to what is happening in the war. The business about there being a stalemate has been dropped in favor of an acknowledgment that Ukraine is in trouble.

What the “one hundred days” tells us is Trump is not going to litter his first one hundred days with the Ukraine matter. It is a custom to assume that the first one hundred days of a new administration set the tone, so it is not an accident that Kellogg was suddenly using that phrasing. It is a signal that the Ukraine matter is not in the list of items that will take up the president’s time starting in January. To whom it was a signal is not all that clear and whether they understood it is unknown.

Time is the way to think about what Trump is planning for his second term. He has just one term and that means he has about eighteen months to get his domestic agenda pushed through Congress and the administrative state. Once we get to the summer of 2026 his party will be busy throwing the midterms. This means they will not pass anything the people want but instead focus on angering the base. After the election, Trump will get nothing from Congress.

This is a lesson Trump learned the hard way the first time. Once he won the election, he was swept up in a series of events that forced him to use his time in ways that had no benefit to him. He became the salesman wasting his days tending to customer service issues, rather than finding and closing new business. The number one skill for a salesman is time management. If you fail to manage your time, you fail. This is true for presidents, especially reformers like Trump.

It is why the signs point to Trump being something of a do-nothing president with regards to foreign policy issues. With Ukraine, he can do nothing, and it will resolve itself, as far as Trump is concerned. He inherited an unsalvageable mess from Biden, so no deal is better than any deal. Spending any time on it is a waste, so the one hundred days will probably turn into forever. The post-war deal with Russia will be left to the governments of Europe and the EU.

As for Israel, the signs are there for a delaying action. Kellogg was asked about it and reiterated the usual lines about pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which they largely did long ago. Michael Waltz, the new national security adviser, seems to get his opinions on Iran from Fox News. One suspects that he was picked because he will do what the boss says. Despite talk of new sanctions, Trump remains opposed to a war with Iran, or an Israeli war with Iran.

Another signal that the Middle East may be down there with Ukraine on the priority list is the fact Trump has signaled his disdain for Netanyahu. He was not invited to the inaugural and Trump has tweeted some untoward things about him. He also posted a link to Jeffrey Sachs calling Netanyahu a “deep, dark son of a bitch”, which is not the sort of thing you say about your friends. Trump has also been clear about wanting out of Syria, especially now that it is in chaos.

What may be shaping up for the first half of the Trump term is a policy of doing nothing with regards to the foreign policy hotspots. Trump and his advisors can answer questions and make the usual noises, but when it comes to investing time, the scarcest commodity Trump possesses, the administration will be stingy. These issues will get the absolute minimum amount of time and only so that they do not become a time waster for the domestic agenda.

It is looking like Trump learned that the most important card any president can play in politics is his attention. There is not much anyone can do if Trump simply de-prioritizes Ukraine, for example. “We are looking into it” works just as well against the schemers behind things like Ukraine as it does his own voters. Perhaps this time, instead of saying this regarding domestic issues, Trump will be saying it regarding foreign policy, to focus on the issues that matter to him.

The Wolf At The EU Door

Posted on January 8, 2025 by thezman

Note: An unexpected event this morning left me with no time to write, so this is the green door post from yesterday to fill the void. Assuming nothing else goes wrong today, I should be back tomorrow.

As January 20th grows closer, the Europeans are growing more hysterical about what Trump may do with Project Ukraine. There were rumors before the holidays that Keir Starmer was set to visit Mar-a-Lago to talk with Trump about Ukraine. Starmer had a call with Trump which must not have gone well, as the British media came out with stories about Trump rambling during the call.

It is hard to know what Trump is thinking with regards to Ukraine, which is why the Europeans are in a panic. If they knew what he is planning, they would be busy undermining it, which is why Trump is not talking about his plans. His personal emissary on Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, has cancelled his plants to visit Kiev and European capitals, which only adds to the intrigue.

The big fear in Europe is that Trump will do a deal with Putin and cut the Europeans out of the process. One would think that any deal that leads to peace would be welcome, but the Euros have more skin in the game than most realize. They either need the war to continue, or they need it to end in a way that does not expose the financial corruption around the entire project.

One good example for why the Euros are in this predicament is a town called Shevchenko, which is in eastern Ukraine. The Russians have just captured it as part of the steady push west. This little village would not matter, if not for the fact that it has one of the largest lithium mines in the world. It is part of what may be the world’s biggest lithium deposit.

While lithium is enormously important, that is not why this matters. You see, this mine is not actually owned by Ukraine. The rights to exploit it were traded away to an English company that was planning to use an Australian company to mine it. How this came to be is not all that clear but given the way the world works it surely required underwriting, which means British bankers were involved.

Now west of this town are other towns with massive lithium deposits, which have been pledged as collateral for various things, including the war. It is the thing that never makes it into the media. A significant portion of the financing for this war is tied to Ukrainian assets, which serve as collateral. They also buy the support of economic elites for this project. Project Ukraine is important business.

The reason the Russians captured this town is they are slowly encircling a city called Pokrovsk, which has been a major supply hub for the Ukraine army. The Russians are trying to split the front so they can break up the Ukraine army. This lets them destroy it piece by piece, limiting Ukraine’s ability to shift reserves where needed. This town with the big lithium mine is near the city of Pokrovsk.

This is a huge problem for Ukraine, but it is an even bigger problem for the EU, because Pokrovsk is vital to the coal and steel industry of Ukraine. You see, project Ukraine was supposed to bring the Ukraine steel industry into the EU economic zone, but now it looks like it will become part of Russia. The many investors in Ukrainian industry are not going to happy if Trump signs this land away to Russia.

This is the reason they put a gun to Speaker Johnson’s head last year to get the $60 billion Ukraine bill passed. Much of that money was to make whole those who had invested in project Ukraine. The arms dealers had “lent” the Biden admin weapons to send to Ukraine and they needed to be paid. The same is true for players like Blackrock that invested in Ukrainian agriculture.

Based on the hysteria in Europe, it does not appear as if the political class there has a similar way to solve their problem. If Trump makes a deal with Russia, all those companies and banks that invested in the project will be left with nothing but worthless Ukrainian bonds. It is why the European political class is desperate to be included in the negotiations. They think they can claw back some of the money.

Then there are the Russian frozen assets. Most of these are held in European banks and the Euroclear Bank. Any deal the Russians make with Trump to end the Ukraine war will include those assets. Otherwise, the Russians will confiscate American assets currently in Russia and Trump will not agree to it. In fact, walking bank sanctions and unfreezing assets may be the prerequisites for negotiations.

What if those assets are not available? The Europeans have been issuing bonds against the profits from those assets, but what if they have been using the assets themselves for other things? Even if the principle is intact, the investors expect to get paid, so if the assets are gone, then the profits are gone as well. Billions rest on those assets not being unfrozen anytime soon.

In a way, project Ukraine is coming full circle. In Trump’s first term, official Washington freaked out when Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine. What followed was the first Trump impeachment as a massive smokescreen to hide what was happening. Five years later and the Europeans are in the same bind, but they cannot stage a phony scandal and impeachment to buy time and conceal the crime.

This is probably why the Europeans are going crazy over Musk. They think they can escalate their feud with Trump to the point where he either backs off and agrees to consult with them on Ukraine or maybe they can pin the blame on Trump for whatever happens to Ukraine in the coming year. It is not a great plan, but when you owe money and have no way to pay, you will try anything.

Deep State Nemesis

Posted on December 16, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about how the primary goal of American foreign policy is to create chaos, a post about the challenge of buying an old truck, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the more difficult things for people to accept is that sometimes things happen that benefit no one and for reasons under no one’s control. Other than natural disasters, people just assume that everything happens for a reason and someone wanted it to happen because they gain to benefit from it happening. Conspiracy theories are born when it is not clear who made something happen. This need to know the who and why for everything gets filled by the conspiracy theory.

The collapse of Syria is a great example of this. Everyone just assumed this was another American regime change operation. Then we got stories about how it was the Turks who backed the rebels and wanted Assad gone. Once the Israelis started grabbing land, the usual suspects came in with their usual theories. There is even a theory that the Russians wanted Syria to collapse to create a quagmire for the Americans to manage in the Middle East.

All these theories make some sense, if you ignore the things that make no sense whatsoever, like the dangers of creating chaos in the region. The Israelis might be happy Assad is gone for emotional reasons, but having a bunch of Islamist warlords operating on their border just added a lot of new costs to their budget. The United States now has a new problem to manage. Guarding those Chevon oil fields suddenly got more expensive and more complicated.

Then you have the fact that there are many players on the Syrian board. Before you get to the big players, you have six factions within the rebel coalition. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, called HTS in Western media. They are backed by Turkey, Qatar, the CIA and led by a guy who looks like the main character from the move The Dictator. He wants to create an Islamic state in Syria. This group used to be called ISIS of Syria but now is pretending to be a kinder, gentler ISIS.

Remnants of the Assad Regime are now forming up in the Alawite areas they still control and presumably they will get support from Russia and Iran. Then there is FSA/SNA and allied groups, that have been supported by Turkey, Qatar, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA. The Kurds, called SDF, have the protection of the American military operating in the region. ISIS still exists, with backing of pro-Islamic forces, along with regional tribal and Islamic groups.

What we now have is an area a little bigger than the state of New York controlled by a collection of war lords that do not like one another very much. The most likely outcome of this arrangement is a civil war between the groups. The only reason anyone would want such an outcome is if they have no exposure to it. In other words, there is no reason to think that anyone wanted this outcome, at least none of the countries exposed to whatever comes out of Syria.

This brings us back to that default formula. Everything happens in the world for a reason because someone stands to benefit from it. The cost-benefit for everyone with an interest in Syria is already negative and promises to get much worse as things travel their natural course. In the end, someone might make something of it, but right now it is a chaotic mess. Who would want this result? The answer is no one because no one saw it as a possible outcome.

Instead of a game of four-dimensional chess, Syria is an example of the lack of second order thinking by the Turks and Americans. Since 2011 both sides have supported anti-Assad groups for different reasons. Erdogan is obsessed with the Kurds, who operate in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The United States backed anti-Assad group because Assad was tight with Russia and Iran. Their goal was to put pressure on Russian and Iran with a slow bleed of Syria.

Based on the associated media campaign, it is clear the United States and Turkey thought this would be a repeat of past flare ups. The rebels would make some attacks, but the Syrian army would push them back. After all, the Syrian army was a quarter million men with the support of Russia and Iran. The rebels numbered around thirty thousand and lacked air power and modern equipment. Instead, the Syrian army collapsed and Russia and Iran did not come in to save them.

Like all large-scale human societies, Syria was a complex system made more complex by relentless pressure from outside. Those outside failed to appreciate this complexity, so they did not plan for what would come from it once they started making changes to the conditions in which that complex system existed. Like a bomb disposal crew randomly cutting wires, the whole thing blew up and now everyone with a connection to the region is scrambling to adjust to a new reality.

Instead of being an example of the cleverness needed for the popular explanations about why Syria collapsed, especially the more conspiratorial ones, Syria is an example of a lack of those things. No one seems to have understood what was happening inside the Syrian system and no one thought much about what could come from monkeying around with the conditions inside Syria. It is the result of a lack of second and third order thinking, not four-dimensional chess.

The thing about this situation is it should have been obvious to all concerned that collapse was a possibility even before the rebel attack. In other words, this scheme was obviously stupid, but the main players did it anyway. This is not the first time the United States has been this stupid. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt are three great examples of the same poorly conceived scheme. If not for the Egyptian military, the Muslim Brotherhood would be controlling most of North Africa.

It is a good reminder for those who love chanting about the Deep State. The same people who create these debacles around the Muslim world are making decisions about all sorts of things, foreign and domestic. In a complex world, the default assumption about why anything happens is Hanlon’s razor. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence, neglect, or ignorance.” What we are seeing In Syria is a combination of all three.

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Minority Rule

Posted on December 11, 2024 by thezman

While most see the collapse of Syria as just another Middle East country thrown into chaos by the American government, it is a good lesson in the dangers that come when a distinct minority rules over the majority. The ISIS rebels get the credit, but the real blame lies with the way in which the Syria state was structured. Until now, Syria was ruled by one of the many minorities in the region. That minority is a mysterious ethnoreligious group called the Alawites.

The place to start is with the people. Syria has some of the oldest communities in the world, dating back to the ancient world. Maaloula, a village in western Syria, is one of the last remaining places where Aramaic is spoken. There are Christian communities that date back to Rome. Of course, Islam has been in the area now called Syria since the time of Mohamed. There is also the ethnoreligious group called the Alawites, which split from Shia Islam at some unknown point in the past.

The origins and identity of the Alawites are a mystery. There are roughly four million of them in the region. Their legends say they are descendants of the followers of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari. The reason he is called the eleventh Iman is because he was one of the twelve imams who claimed to be the spiritual and biological successors of the Mohamed. These are the founders of Shia Islam. Exactly how they became this distinct subgroup within Islam remains a mystery.

Now, Shia Islam is itself a minority within Islam. Roughly ten percent of all Muslim belong to a sect within the Shia designation. The vast majority of Muslims, especially in the Arab world, are Sunnis. Unsurprisingly, the relations between the Sunnis and Shia have never been good. One result of this enmity between the two camps is that the Sunnis, who make up seventy percent of Syria, claim the Alawites are not just heretics and non-believers, but not even Arabs.

That last claim is not without some merit. There has been a great deal of effort to gloss over the ethnic realities in that part of the world. Western experts are sure that there is no such thing as biological reality, so differences in people, even genetic differences, are explained as cultural differences. The locals, however, understand that the Levant has been the land of invaders, and they left behind more than just their buildings and some of their cultural practices.

That aside, the Alawites have been a highly clannish and resourceful group, often creating problems for the local rulers. The Ottomans tried to suppress them on multiple occasions, but also found them useful in roles requiring skill, like tax farming and managing the empire’s finances. When the Europeans came to dominate the region in the 19th century, the Alawites proved useful to their new rulers. It turns out that every ruler needs smart and clever people.

It is this ability to run complex systems that eventually allowed the Alawites to take control of Syria. That and their clannishness. Under the French, the Alawites played a key role, which gave them access to power and resources. After independence, their resourcefulness and understanding of the systems left by the Europeans allowed Hafez al-Assad and his Ba’ath Party to seize power. The Alawites, despite their numbers, were smarter than their rivals.

As an aside, one of the many claims about the Alawites by the Muslim majority is that they supported Israeli independence and had a long working relationship with the Jews in the region. This is generally considered a smear, but it is clear that the Alawites were willing to work with other minority groups in the region. The Assad family famously protected the Christian communities in Syria, for example. Minorities have a funny habit of sticking together against the majority.

That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny. This is why the Assad government had been ruthless at times when dealing with the Sunni majority. To keep the peace, the government had to make clear to anyone thinking otherwise that the government would use maximum force to maintain the peace. Minority rule is always made worse by the tactics necessary to maintain it.

Of course, the Assad led Syria had been useful to the West for a long time, so they got the support they needed to maintain themselves. Until now, it had been assumed that chaos in Syria would be bad for the region and bad for Israel. As a rule, confident countries seek stability in their diplomacy. Now that the official policy of the United States is to spread chaos around the world, Assad was an easy target for the now familiar regime change operation.

Regime change was possible in Syria because it was a minority government ruling a hostile majority. Western sanctions starved Syria of the cash it needed to bribe enough of the majority into supporting them. Turkish and American terror groups operating within Syria put constant pressure on the government. The reason Assad fell so quickly to this hodgepodge of ISIS radicals is the Alawite system collapsed. The ISIS mob was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This is what makes Syria a timeless lesson. No society run by a distinct minority can be stable, as the majority will always distrust that minority. Even when minority rule results in good times, as in the case of colonial Africa, the majority will find reasons to resent that minority. In fact, the good times allows that resentment to slowly build under the surface of apparent tranquility. As soon as bad times come, the majority revolts and the laws of large numbers takes its course.

Syria is why the Israelis have no interest in ruling over Arabs. They could take control of Gaza and the West Bank, for example, but they would be viewed as a minority ruling a hostile majority, so expulsion is their preferred option. In the oldest part of the world, the people still understand the oldest lessons. One of those is that a minority ruling a majority must always be a temporary condition. In the end, numbers always matter more than even human capital. The majority wins in the end.

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