Trump’s Foreign Policy Problem

Posted on October 30, 2024 by thezman

One of the problems the world faces is that the dominant power on the planet has entered a period of incoherence. Joe Biden has come to symbolize the country he allegedly leads in that he is old, frail and not always understandable. This is how much of the world now sees the United States. What they see from Washington are people either trapped in a bygone era or divorced from present reality. It is as if the last several decades never happened.

You see this in this Financial Times post about what foreign policy could be like under a second Trump presidency. Keep in mind that the Financial Times is often used by the intelligence community to plant stories it wants to launder. The audience is not just the English-speaking world, but also Europe. The people quoted are all said to be associates of the Trump team. Their views may or may not reflect the thinking of Trump’s inner circle.

That aside, the first thing to note is that there is no acknowledgement of present reality in the story. For example, Congressman Michael Waltz is quoted often about how to resolve the Ukraine war. He says, “Trump could threaten to crash Russia’s economy by lowering the price of oil and gas.” According to Waltz, this will force the Russians to beg for peace negotiations. This policy makes sense if it is 1985 and Russia is still the Soviet Union with a brittle command economy.

For starters, the president cannot willy-nilly change oil prices. No amount of American production can drive down prices to a level where it would have an impact on the Russian economy. The “break even” point of Russian crude is well below that of the cheapest American production. Then you have the fact that it will take a decade to bring American crude production to the levels needed to crash prices. There is also the fact that Biden emptied the strategic oil reserve.

In other words, the big idea from the foreign policy experts is something they read about from the Reagan years that has no chance of working now. It is as if they are unaware of the sanctions war they launched two years ago that not only failed to crater the Russian economy but boomeranged back on them. The German economy is in in free fall because they no longer have access to cheap Russian gas. Meanwhile, the Russian economy is booming.

Of course, there is the fact that these people can only think in terms of threats when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world. Congressman Michael Waltz is a neocon sock puppet who was an early cheerleader for Project Ukraine. He was also wrong about every aspect of it. In any other profession, being as wrong as Mike Waltz would be disqualifying, but here he is being quoted as an authority on Russia. This is what happens when there are no consequences to failure.

Elsewhere in the article, they quote Fred Fleitz, a former John Bolton staffer and current foreign policy adviser at the America First Policy Institute, which promotes itself as helping shape Trump policy. With regards to Iran, Fleitz argues “The objective should be to bankrupt Iran again and to reinstitute maximum pressure.” Again? Has he not noticed that Iran survived sanctions for three decades? Is he not aware that Iran now has the support of China and Russia?

With regards to settling the war in the Ukraine, Fleitz says, “We freeze the conflict, Ukraine does not cede any territory, they don’t give up their territorial claims, and we have negotiations with the understanding there probably won’t be a final agreement until Putin leaves the stage.” Unlike Waltz, Fleitz has no clue as to why the Russians would entertain such a silly offer. Note that this idea was first floated by the neocons when the Ukrainian counter-offensive failed.

The jaw droppingly ignorant part of that post is the use of the term “Minsk-3” to describe the Trump strategy. The Russians correctly view the Minsk agreements as a Western ploy to buy time to arm Ukraine. The reason they think this is Angela Merkel said this in an interview last year. Naming the Trump strategy after two prior efforts to trick the Russians is just a way to make sure there can be no negotiations between the Trump people and the Russians.

This is probably why this story was planted in the Financial Times. The hope is to poison the well, so to speak, for the next administration with regards to negotiating with the Russians. They may not be able to control what Trump does, but they can give the Russians many reasons to not trust any overtures. After all, Trump will be gone in four years, so if they can freeze the Russia situation, they have a chance to get back in power and resume their efforts to start a war with Russia.

What becomes clear in that Financial Times story is that the American foreign policy establishment does not have a clue as to how to address the many problems the next president will face. The main reason for their incoherence is they seem to be unaware that these problems were caused by them. Compounding it is the toxic ideology of neoconservatism that has poisoned the foreign policy community. It is a cancer in the bowels of America’s most important institution.

It is what makes prospects for a sober minded and realistic approach to foreign policy under Trump unlikely. Trump’s instincts are good, as are those with many of the people around him, including JD Vance, but he will inherit a foreign policy establishment that is both stuck in the past and corrupted by a worldview that is inconsistent with the world as it is today and with the needs of the country. Fixing this problem without the use of extrajudicial means may not be possible.

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The Kazan Catastrophe

Posted on October 24, 2024 by thezman

Back in the ancient times, if you wished to buy product from someone you arrived at their location with money, or they arrived at your location with product. The product was inspected, and the money was inspected. Once both sides were satisfied, the exchange was made, and the deal was done. It did not take long for a class of middlemen to turn up who brokered such deals. They inspected the goods, arranged transportation and safeguarded the product and the money.

World trade has not changed much since the ancient times. Middlemen still facilitate most of the trade. They are called banks, insurance companies, freight brokers, shipping companies and so forth, but they are all part of this vast and essential middleman economy that makes it possible for the local Walmart to have shelves stuffed with goods from Asia. It is what makes it possible for the Chinese company selling dog food to get paid by Walmart.

One thing to note about this setup is the two greatest seafaring nations in the history of the planet, the United States and Britain, do very little shipping. Instead, they control the flow of goods around the world through control of the insurance markets and the financial system used in global trade. If you are involved in global trade, you are certainly using the American financial system and either directly or indirectly the British maritime insurance system.

The dollar being the world’s reserve currency has been to this point the main driver of the explosion in global trade. The buyer in South America can do business with a seller in China, because his bank is connected to the American financial system through his country’s central bank. He does not have to get RMB from his bank to pay the Chinese vendors, because the exchange is done automatically through the dollar dominated global financial system.

This is about to change with the launch of an alternative payment system that was announced at the BRICS summit in Kazan Russia. The Russians and the Chinese have been working on creating an alternative to SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It is the platform that networks the world’s banks to facilitate the flow of money around the world. The new system seeks to replace SWIFT for trade among the BRICS countries.

For most people this is an eye-glazing topic, but in the fullness of time it could be an event that generations of historians study as an inflection point. What the BRICS countries are seeking to do is wrest control of the global financial system from the West, specifically the English-speaking countries, at least for the members of BRICS and those countries willing to trade with BRICS. By extension, it is an effort to reduce the power of the dollar and thus the power of the American empire.

What this new system proposes to do is make it easier for participating countries to conduct business in the currency of other participating countries. Instead of China needing dollars to buy oil from the Saudis and therefore preferring dollars from other countries for Chinese goods, the Chinese will be able to buy oil in RMB and the Saudis will be able to buy Chinese goods in whatever currency they possess. The new system would handle the conversion and exchange rates instantly.

As an aside, that last part is interesting. In the United States, a business does not get paid by the credit card company for a few days. Often, the delay is longer. Of course, there are fees for taking credit card payments. In Russia and China, the movement of money is instant. The system is treated as a public utility, so fees are relatively small compared to what we see in the West. This is owing to much better and newer technology and a different attitude toward banking.

That aside, the significance of this proposal is enormous. The BRICS countries represent half the world’s population. The Arab oil countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, are onboard for this new system. The Saudis let expire the fifty-year-old deal with Washington that established the petrodollar. China, India and Russia are the driving force behind this new arrangement and represent three of the most important economic powerhouses in the world at the moment.

What this means for the West is far less influence over the rest of the world through the control of the financial system. The main reason China, Russia and India have pushed for this new system is they have grown weary of Washington abusing its position to bully the rest of the world. The sanctions war unleashed by Washington against Russia in 2022 was the final straw. If Washington would use the dollar to try regime change in Russia, it would do it to anyone, especially China.

What the BRICS summit in Kazan represents is decades of belligerently incompetent foreign policy in Washington. Ten years ago, it was inconceivable that these important countries would come together to create a parallel financial system, as all of them were committed to the dollar and the Western system. They were committed to the “rules-based order” because they assumed it served their interests, but decades of abuse by Washington has convinced them otherwise.

What this means for the West is clear. What we see forming up is a trading and cooperation block that includes all the countries outside the West, representing the bulk of the world’s population and the majority of economic activity. Add in the fact that the West has let its manufacturing base shrivel and seems to be at war with its agricultural base and you can see the problem. Economies based in providing services tied to the financial system are facing a cliff now.

For the United States, this could not come at a worse time. Debt is already at staggering levels and is accelerating. The productive and innovative portion of the population is aging, while the unproductive portion is exploding. Add in decades of infrastructure neglect, the demographic and cultural catastrophes, and now is not a good time for a decline in the dollar. America is an empire that debased its currency via the perfidious subversion of its own rules.

Contrary to some claims, the dollar is not about to collapse, but what Kazan signals is the steady decline in the dollar. As the rest of the world begins to trade outside the dollar, it means dollars and instruments denominated in dollars, like debt, will lose value on the global market. This means the American banking system must slow the creation of dollars to prevent inflation. This means the cost of borrowing dollars must go up and stay up in anticipation of declining dollar demand

The steady decline of the dollar means a steady decline in the American standard of living, baring a revolution in Washington. Being the world’s mint and banker only works if the world accepts what you are minting. A rentier economy reliant on skimming from every transaction is only possible if you control the currency. The parasitism that has become a feature of our economy is going to become more obvious. That will bring political consequences as well.

American Trotskyites

Posted on October 21, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the collapse of the entertainment industry, a post about the end of The Grand Tour and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the most remarkable, but woefully unremarked, developments of the last decade is the shift of the neocons back to the left. Starting with Trump coming down the escalator in 2015, the neocons first tried to purge him and his supporters like they did to Pat Buchanan and the paleos in the 1990’s. When that failed, they began their slow march out of the conservative movement then out of the Republican Party, returning to their old home on what we call the left.

Perhaps it is the timescale, but this is not something that has gotten a lot of attention, despite the centrality of the neocons to conservatism. There are prominent neocons at all the major media nodes, where they have spent the last decade railing about Donald Trump on a daily basis. For those familiar with the history of neoconservatism and their wars with the people we call paleos, this transition is like getting confirmation of a long-dismissed conspiracy theory.

Imagine if twenty years from now a collection of retired government officials steps forward and to say that 9/11 was an inside job. The planes were real, but the whole thing was orchestrated by the CIA or maybe the Mossad. It is not just that it would reveal a conspiracy to conceal the truth, but that it would validate the people tarred as conspiracy theories for doubting the official truth. It would be the sort of revelation that leads to questioning other official truths.

That is how this post about Bill Kristol and Eliot Cohen should be viewed. Way back when a group of Jewish intellectuals broke with the left in the middle of the last century and started their march into Buckley conservatism, there was a debate about what they were really doing. Was it a way to subvert the Buckley movement? Were these people genuinely changing their ideological orientation or were they simply opportunists seeing conservatism as a more useful vehicle for their project?

Long forgotten is the fact that the label “neoconservative” was a smear coined by a socialist named Michael Harrington. These newly minted conservatives were often called Trotskyites because they never abandoned their old ideology, but simply opposed the people who came to dominate the American left. Of course, others accused them of being a stalking horse for Zionism and the Israel lobby. Still others suspected that their obsession with Russia was the real motivation.

In other words, from the very start no one trusted their sincerity with regards to their conversion to the conservative cause. They brought lots of money and organizational might, so the Buckley crowd overlooked these concerns and welcomed them into the movement over many objections. Before long, the neocons organized the purge of their doubters and enemies in the movement. Half a century or so since this started, the skeptics of these people have been vindicated.

Buried in that post about Kristol and Cohen is an easily overlooked assertion that has always been at the heart of the issue. They claim that conservative Jews have specific interests that they think are better served by the Democrats now. Leaving aside their definition of “conservative Jews”, what they are arguing is that this subgroup of Americans has interests peculiar to themselves that can conflict with the majority interests of the country, but those minority interests come first.

This gets to something further down the memory hole than the old neocon – paleocon battles of the last century. Jewish liberals and leftists have often accused neocons and Zionists of being bad for the Jews, because they confirm the claims often made by Jewish opponents regarding the loyalty of Jews. Bill Kristol makes explicit that his primary interests lie outside of and often in opposition to the interest of the American people, so you can see the problem.

A lot of people accused of being conspiracy theorists with regards to the behavior of the neocons have been vindicated over the last decade. This gets little to no attention in the mainstream media because the neocons still wield enormous power. They have always deftly folded their interests into those of the Israel lobby and no one in politics dares take on those guys. For elected officials, opposing Israel means losing the next election and for the chattering classes, it means exile.

Another aspect of this is the ease with which the neocons have made the transition from conservative and Republican to progressive and Democrat. Disgraced in the Bush years, they nevertheless hung on in the Obama years, orchestrating various schemes like the 2014 coup in Ukraine. They have had total control of the Biden administration to the point where its sole purpose was war with Russia. At no point in this transition was there a hint of dissent or self-examination.

The other side of this is the fact that the Democratic Party has put up no resistance to the return of their old Trotskyites comrades. The same people who were marching around in the streets, banging their pots and pans over the Bush wars in the Middle East now wear Ukraine lapel pins. Without a trace of irony, they accuse Trump fans of disloyalty for not supporting the Ukraine war or the Israel wars. There is a last scenes in Animal Farm quality to all of it.

Of course, this raises the oldest critique of America’s two-party political system, that it is just a show put on for the masses. The real decisions are made outside of public view by the powerful interests who control the system. One of those powerful groups are the neocons, who work with the Israel lobby to control foreign policy. Given what we have witnessed over the last decade, that old critique is vindicated. The people in charge are immune the ballot box and operate as an alien overclass.

Washington Was Right

Posted on October 14, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the death of grammar, a post about life as a modern serf and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

George Washington famously observed, “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.” This was in his farewell address where he cautioned that one of the risks to the new nation was from involvement in foreign affairs. When a country aligns with another country, it not only takes on the friends and enemies of that country, it opens the door for that country to influence its leaders and shape its policy.

We see this writ large with Israel. Since the Bush II administration, Israel has been seeking a way to get the United States to go to war with Iran. They claim Iran is the cause of all the problems in the region. Coincidentally, Iran also backs the two primary opponents of the Greater Israel project, Syria and Hezbollah. Therefore, if the United States takes out Iran, then peace will descend on the region and, coincidentally, Israel will face no opposition to its expansion plans.

Bush II probably would have pulled the trigger on a war with Iran if the Iraq war had not been such a debacle. The neocons were boasting in the first term that once Iraq was made into a democracy, it would help “liberate” Iran from its rulers. These plans we shelved once Obama came to power, in part because of Valerie Jarrett, who was in favor of normalizing relations with Iran. The neocons were also busy getting Project Ukraine off the ground.

Depending upon whose narrative you prefer, the United States is either abandoning Project Ukraine in order to deal with the Middle East or the United States is getting sucked into a war with Iran and must abandon Project Ukraine. Either way, it is becoming clear that war with Iran is in the cards. The Israelis keep provoking the Iranians, who have no choice but to respond. The Israelis then claim the response is an unjustified attack so they must respond.

The last turn at this game was a genuine escalation as the Iranians launched waves of ballistic missiles that were able to penetrate Israeli air defenses. This by itself is a huge step in the process. No one thought the Iranians had this ability. Add in the accuracy with which they were able to target Israeli military facilities and the Israel – Iran conflict moved much closer to all-out war. Israel promised massive attacks against Iranian nuclear and energy facilities.

Now we get word that the United States is setting up the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in Israel. This is the most advanced air defense system in the American arsenal and it is supposed to be capable of defeating the best missiles. Of course, the Iron Dome was supposed to be the best air defense system until it was defeated. The Patriot system was also supposed to be a great system until it was destroyed by the Russians in Ukraine as soon as it was deployed.

Reportedly, the Biden administration opposes attacks on Iranian nuclear and energy facilities, but that could be a cover story. They reportedly promised Iran that Israel would not retaliate to the Iranian drone attack. Then Israel set off a string of targeted assassinations and the famous pager attack. It is a good reminder that everyone involved in Middle East politics is incapable of honesty. Everyone lies about everything to everyone, even about the lies they are telling.

Regardless of intentions, this move now provides Israel with cover for whatever attacks they have planned. This will inevitably mean Iran launches another wave of missiles at Israel, maybe even targeting that THAAD system. This is what happened with the Patriot system in Ukraine. The Russians filled the sky with drones, so when the Patriot system lit up, it became an easy target for Russian missiles. The use of air defense systems makes them vulnerable to attack.

Even if the Iranians avoid striking this system, they have a lot of missiles and the THAAD system is limited. Each battery is about forty interceptors. Iran reportedly has thousands of missiles. Of course, like everything to do with the Military Industrial Complex, the THAAD system is riddled with corruption. It is a big, complicated and expensive system no one expected to use in war, so it is mostly a jobs and patronage program, rather than a weapon of war.

All that aside, it is easy to see that George Washington was correct. Indulging habitual fondness for Israel has made the world’s lone superpower a slave to whatever schemes the Israelis are plotting. The United States is on the brink of war with Iran, solely because Israel desires it. No one in Washington dares question any of this, as the Israeli lobby is too powerful. Even the neocons, who prefer Project Ukraine over Project Iran, are powerless against the Israel lobby.

War with Iran will be a disaster of the United States. The American military can deliver devastating strikes against Iran, but Iran can also close the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices through the roof. They could also attack oil facilities in the region, crippling global supplies and sending the world into a depression. Only a madman would want such a scenario, but this is the price that must be paid when you chain yourself to the lunatic regime that is Israel.

Compounding things is the fact that no one knows who is actually running foreign policy in the Biden administration. We know it is not Biden, due to his declining health, but who is calling the shots is a mystery. It is no doubt a mystery to Iran, as well. The Russians have made this point regarding the Ukraine war. The result is the United States is the Lennie Small to the Israeli George Milton as far the Iranians are concerned, which means the United States no longer has agency.

This is exactly what Washington warned of in his farewell address. The only way out of this degenerate relationship with Israel is a revolution in how Washington deals with the entire region and that is impossible due to the massive Israel lobby. When every Congressman has a minder from Israel and every media outlet has to run their coy past AIPAC and the ADL, there is no room to think about this clearly, much less have a debate about this terrible situation.

This is why the way to bet is war with Iran after the November election. The Biden people have no reason to care at that point and Israel will see it as an opportunity to get what they have wanted for decades. The next administration will have to pay the price for this reckless foreign entanglement. Perhaps it is the price that must be paid for the end of empire. Gas lines and ten-dollar gasoline will surely cause some to question this habitual fondness for Israel, at least.

The Smash And Grab Ends

Posted on October 9, 2024 by thezman

This weekend, the heads of the NATO families were supposed to meet to discuss the “victory plan” for Ukraine created by Volodymyr Zelensky, but the meeting has been cancelled, allegedly due to the weather. Joe Biden was supposed to attend but dropped out on Tuesday due to hurricane Milton. The peace summit Zelensky was planning was also cancelled. When Zelensky was in Washington last month he was given millions to hold a second peace conference.

One thing that was supposed to be discussed at this meeting was a plan that has been in the works for eighteen months according to the Financial Times. This story covers the basics of the new plan for victory. Russia would be handed a deal whereby they get to hold the lands they have, Ukraine joins NATO, but promises to not start a war to reclaim those lands and at some point in the future, Russia will give back those lands to Ukraine for reasons no one can explain.

The scheme is ridiculous, which is probably why the intel service planted the story in the Financial Times this week. This has become a habit of the Anglo intelligence services over the last year. When they want something injected into the political discussion regarding Ukraine or they want to elicit a Russian reaction to something discussed behind closed doors, they plant a story in the Financial Times. Presumably, this story was placed there ahead of the meeting for some reason.

Officially, the main focus of the meeting was supposed to be the Zelensky plan for peace, which has two main parts. One is Ukraine joins NATO right now and Russia agrees to return all lands claimed by Ukraine. That is pretty much it. The path to victory is the United States threatens Moscow with nuclear war unless the Russians withdraw all of their forces from Ukraine, including Crimea. The reason to cancel the meeting is there is nothing really to discuss. The plan is nonsense.

That may be the reason why Zelensky created the plan and spent the last month shopping it around the West. The one thing Zelensky cannot survive right now is a peace process involving the Russians. The reason for that is the ultranationalists in Kiev and on the front are strong enough to oppose it. They can use the process as an excuse to take out Zelensky. On the other hand, Zelensky cannot simply flee with his billion dollars, as the West will not protect him.

He is in a political vice. One jaw is the nationalist forces that have been committed to war with Russian since the Maiden coup in 2014. Despite the losses on the battlefield, they remain committed to the war. They have no choice from their perspective, as a Russian condition for peace talks is dissolution of the nationalists. Given the Russian habits and recent history, the leaders of these nationalists forces are right to assume dissolution means they end up dead.

The other jaw is the West, which has committed itself to the war against Russia, but is unwilling to go all in fearing the consequences. The truth is escalatory dominance only works if the other side believes you can continue to escalate. The Russians know the West is not willing to go all in for Ukraine. The West is now in a trap they created for themselves in 2022 and 2023 with all the hot rhetoric. They need a way out, but they cannot simply quit, so they need Zelensky to make a deal.

For his part, Zelensky has been a rapacious schemer who has survived far longer than anyone expected. He does not get credit for managing to stay alive while existing in this impossible position. He must wage a war enthusiastically that he knows cannot be won, but also keep the various factions from pointing the finger at him for the failure to find a miracle solution to the battlefield reality. So far, he has outmaneuvered all of his opponents in Kiev, which is miraculous.

It looks like the Zelensky victory plan is actually a survival plan. The game is to buy time so that the nationalist units on the front get worn down or destroyed, thus weakening their political support in Kiev. As the saying goes, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. If there is going to be a move against Zelensky, it will include nationalist military units. If those units are buried under rubble in the Donbas, then they will not be around to depose Zelensky.

For their part, the nationalist units seem to get this, as they have repeatedly refused orders to engage with the Russians in difficult battles. Despite having the best equipment and the best men, they have been held in reserve for most of the war, most likely for political reasons. That cannot go on much longer, given the condition of the front, so time is probably on Zelensky’s side. At some point, the nationalists either die on the front or quit on the war.

Of course, all of this assumes the Russians will be willing to deal with Zelensky when the time comes. It also assumes the West will not kill him as an excuse to wash their hands of the project. Then you have the nationalists who may simply kill Zelensky because they can, and they have never liked him. The Zelensky survival plan assumes many things that may turn out to be unrealistic, but for now it is the only plan he has, so he is working it as hard as he can.

That may be the other reason for the cancellation of the Ramstein meeting. It may be dawning on the Western political class that there is no plan for victory because victory is impossible and Zelensky has known it for a long time. His little green man act was just part of the long con he has been running to both remain in power and get hundreds of billions in financing, some of which has underwritten his retirement. The West now needs a plan for how to not look like dupes.

In this regard, the Ukraine war is a metaphor for the West. Everything about this project has been in the short term. Everyone involved is thinking like a smash and grab gang working the shopping mall. At the macro level, it is as if the West is controlled by an alien class that is here to harvest what they can before moving on to the next opportunity to run the next grift. As with Ukraine, no one thinks about investing in the people or the long-term consequences of their actions.

Trouble On The Edge Of Empire

Posted on September 24, 2024 by thezman

In the end phase of an empire, there are two political dynamics. One is the intense, internal politics among the ruling class of the empire. These are the people fighting to hold onto the power of the empire, but also fighting with one another to maintain their slice of the shrinking pie of benefits. The other politics are on the fringe where the beginnings of alternative power centers grapple with reality and the decreasing ability of the empire to provide necessary protection.

For the American empire, one of those fringes where politics is happening as a result of the decline of the empire is Europe. The Germans, for example, have had a set of local elections that were all bad news for the provincial rulers, which in this context is the coalition government led by Olaf Scholz. The parties that make up the ruling coalition of Germany did poorly, and in the case of the Greens catastrophically bad, in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg.

Worse yet, the winner, in the public relations sense, was the hated AfD, or Alternative for Deutschland, which came in second in Saxony and Brandenburg and won for the first time in Thuringia. The AfD gaining support is a disaster all by itself, but doing so in Brandenburg is a fascinating development. This is the base for the SPD, and they needed shenanigans to prevent the AfD from winning the election. The CDU threw its support to the SPD to block the AfD.

Another bit of subtext to this is that a new party of former leftists, in the German sense of the word, has created an anti-immigration party around Sahra Wagenknecht, called the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance or BSW. They came in third place. That means two anti-immigration parties are surging. On top of that, the Green Party appears to be losing all of its support everywhere. In Brandenburg they failed to meet the minimum threshold to gain any seats in parliament.

Of course, the German political elite is not taking this well. As we see all over Europe, the parties that pretended to be ideological opponents for years have come together to thwart these outsider parties. Germany, for example, has been ruled by the “traffic light coalition”, which would be like the Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Greens forming a new coalition to fend off the Constitution Party in Congress. It gives the game away to maintain control of politics.

This is the same thing we saw in France over the summer. The anti-immigration party led by Marie Le Pen surged to the lead in the first round of elections for the National Assembly, so all of the other parties teamed up to prevent the Le Pen’s party from winning an outright majority in the second round. Of course, the parties in this grand coalition to stop mean words has immediately started to attack one another because the only thing they have in common is corruption.

As in Germany, the bit above the waterline is the immigration issue, but beneath the surface there is a bigger issue. The political elites of Europe no longer look like European political elites. Instead, they are these weird, cosmopolitan citizens of the world types whose success is pegged to their slavish loyalty to an international economic elite centered in London and New York. There is an alienation rooted in their transnational transactionalism to which the locals are reacting.

Of course, immigration is the tangible manifestation of this. Immigration only makes sense if the immigrants are a net benefit to the locals. This only works in boom times when everyone is feeling generous. It is not boom times in Europe, but the immigrants continue to pour in, which suggests there is another reason behind immigration enthusiasm among the political elites. This is where the sterile, technocratic alienness of the political class comes into play.

It is not just in the heart of the EU where this “us-versus-them” cultural dynamic is turning up in practical politics. Italy has quietly started to limit immigrants while not offending Brussels. The Italian economy relies on transfers from the rich, intelligently managed economies of the north, so the Meloni government has to tread carefully in order to avoid regime change. She has managed to remain popular, while quietly addressing the immigration issue.

At the other end of the EU, the Nordic countries are experiencing something of a revolution in thought on immigration. Denmark has been quietly hostile to immigration, but now Sweden is becoming publicly hostile to it. The Swedish government is now paying immigrants, even those with citizenship, to leave Sweden. This is an enormous change in attitude, as Sweden was the most fanatically pro-immigration country in the EU just a few years ago.

Something that may be working in the favor of nationalist parties and activists in Europe is the lunacy in the Anglosphere regarding immigration. Vulgar simpletons like Keir Starmer are a warning to the continent. Despite having support from just one of every six British voters, the Starmer government is aggressively waging war on the natives on behalf of the immigrants. What is going on in the UK and America is proof that those “far-right” parties are right about what lies behind immigration.

All of this has been helped along by the proxy-war against Russia. After the effects of the initial gaslighting wore off, Europeans started to notice that their political elites were far more enthusiastic for Ukraine than their own countries. They also noticed that their political elites were happy to sacrifice the welfare of their people for Project Ukraine in order to curry favor with Washington. The American empire was happy to inflict misery on Europe if it furthered their petty fights with Russia.

Where this has left Europe is as a collection of provinces that no longer enjoy the protection of the empire but are governed by a provincial ruling class that enjoys the financial benefits of empire. The growing awareness of this reality is causing the clodhoppers of Europe to revolt. The continent is far from breaking free from their Anglosphere masters, but the politics of Europe are opening the gates to parties and politicians who will seek liberation from empire.

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The Theater Of Politics

Posted on September 18, 2024 by thezman

The great exploding pager psy-op Israel pulled on Hezbollah yesterday is a great example of how the focus of all politics has shifted from the practical world of doing things to the virtual world of saying things. Owning the information space in an effort to win the information war has taken precedent over accomplishing real things in the world of real things, even when it comes to war. Every operation, even those with practical goals, has a public relations element at the center of it.

As is always the case, time will tell if the initial reports are close to reality, but there is no doubt that pagers were exploding, and Israel was responsible. The questions not asked by Western media, much less answered, are why Israel would do this and what did they think they would achieve by it? That is the first clue. The media and their audience just assume it is a good thing and will result in more good things. What those things are and why they are good is not a topic of interest.

It is a clever caper, for sure. The Israelis accessed the supply chain that delivers these devices to Hezbollah. They most likely bribed an official at the Taiwanese plant that makes these things. This gave them access to the shipment, which they then sabotaged with some form of explosive. Then they waited until the devices were deployed and sent the signal to them. The sheer cleverness of it is admirable, so it is easy to see why that is the focus.

That is the thing about this caper. It is mostly a public relations caper, with little practical impact on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Sure, Israel won the news cycle for a day or two and the Hezbollah side feels stupid, but by Friday any practical impact is gone, and everything is back to where it was pre-caper. Hezbollah now has a new step in the process, where they inspect their communications devices, something they should have been doing all along.

This is where certain people insist that it was a great scheme because it affected important people. The reality of communications devices is that the closer you are to one, the lower you are down the status ladder. Low level people display their device on their person because that is all they have. Important people have someone who manages the communications gear. You do not call Warren Buffett. Your people reach out to his people to set up a call.

That aside, the shift in focus from practical reality to the abstract reality of public relations is something we see everywhere now. Washington’s war on Russia has mostly been about winning the information war, on the assumption that losing the information war would have a practical impact on Russia. Instead, Russia has lost every round of the media war, often failing to attend the fight, but Russia has seen its economy boom and its standing in the world rise.

In fairness, the schemers in Washington were reasonable to think “wrecking Putin on social media” would be a big win. In their world, getting wrecked on Twitter can have practical consequences. We have gone through a decade of “cancel culture” where people lose their jobs and their lives for imaginary crimes like using anathematized words or holding impure thoughts. In a world where being cancelled is a serious concern, cancelling Putin makes a lot of sense.

That was certainly the thinking inside the Israeli brain trust when they were cooking up this exploding pager scheme. They surely understood that sabotaging pagers would have little impact on Hezbollah. On the other hand, blowing them up like this would make for great memes on social media. The sheer cleverness of it would impress their American audience, who they sense might be bored with them. This caper got the crowd back into their seats for more of the Israel show.

The Roman poet Juvenal famously criticized the Roman people for caring more about the “bread and circuses” than their freedom. This is often twisted around to mean that the rulers relied on bread and circuses to trick the people out of their freedom, but Juvenal was focusing his critique on the people. Radicals of the ideological age have made a similar complaint. Marx famously called the peasants a sack of potatoes because they could not be politicized.

This narcotic of entertainment that troubled Juvenal is now corrupting the political class of the West. They care more about the show of which they are a part, or the show being put on for them by others, than the practical reality of their position. The manufactured reality of politics obscures political reality, not because the political participants cannot see it, but because they do not want to see it. They prefer their manufactured, abstract reality, over the practical reality of their position.

This is why Israel invested in the pager scheme. They understand that practical arguments about the reality on the ground in the Levant will have no impact on Washington or the American public. Similarly, Zelensky understands that he has to keep producing new acts to keep Western politicians amused enough with Project Ukraine to keep the money flowing. Like a Hollywood producer, he tells his generals he needs bigger explosions and bigger drama.

Objective reality has always been the substrate on which human relations operate, so there has always been a gap between the human drama and reality. Human relations, especially politics, are more often than not about what we think ought to happen, rather than what we think will happen. However, necessity has always kept the gap narrow, but that seems to be changing. In fact, it seems that politics is often about broadening that gap between itself and reality.

Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, so this turn from reality will eventually end. Israel cannot stay at war forever with its neighbors, no matter how good the show. The West cannot remain at war with the world, no matter how many times they cancel people they do not like. At some point the theater of politics, the theater of Western public life, must give way to reality and people who prefer reality over self-generated fantasy.

The War Of Politics

Posted on September 11, 2024 by thezman

“War is a continuation of politics by other means” is a famous quote attributed to Carl von Clausewitz, a 19th century Prussian military theorist. This line is often used to end discussion about the causes of a war, rather than to understand the motivations of both sides, but that is the way to use it. Wars are not just about geopolitics, the disputes between the combatants, but the internal politics of the parties. In most cases, the parties to a war are in the war due to internal political reasons.

We see this with the Ukraine war. For Russia, decades of meddling around the border of the Russian Federation had reached a critical point internally. The pro-Western wing of the Russian political class had maintained that they could deal with elements in the West to address the concerns of Russia. The realist wing argued that there was no dealing with Washington, as they were implacably anti-Russian. The oligarchs sided with the former for financial reasons.

The provocations by the Biden administration along with the superheated rhetoric aimed at Putin changed the internal dynamics of Russian politics. On the one hand, this vindicated the position of the realists. They said all along that there was no way to make a deal with Washington, because Washington was not honest. It is impossible to deal with people who come to the table in bad faith. Any deal you make with them will fall apart because they will never abide by it.

Proof of this was when Angela Merkel said in an interview that the Minsk agreements over the disputed areas in eastern Ukraine were just a stalling tactic so the West could arm Ukraine for a war with Russia. This statement was done to humiliate Putin within the Russian political elite. This was when the West was sure that sanctions would topple the Russian state, so it was a bit of anticipatory celebration expecting that Putin would be out of power at any minute.

Instead, it had the opposite effect. The reason for this is both wings of the Russian political class wanted a peaceful solution to the Ukraine issue. They just disagreed about the best course. Western behavior leading up to the war and throughout the war has convinced both wings that peace can only come through the defeat of the NATO backed army in Ukraine. In other words, Russian politics brought war to their border, but now Russian politics control the prosecution of the war.

That should have been clear to the West in 2022 when the Russians reorganized their army and military industrial complex in response to the collapse of the Istanbul negotiators that were skuttled by Washington. The competition with the West had changed, so the war with the West was changing. The Russians settled in for a long war of attrition against the Ukraine army, society, and the West. The Ukraine war was now part of a larger global conflict with the West.

This is where the war reveals things about politics in the West. It was clear by the end of 2022 that there was no scenario in which the Ukrainians defeated the Russians militarily, so the set of possible outcomes was limited to a total defeat of Ukraine or some sort of negotiated settlement. This is what realists like John Mearsheimer argued even before the war started. The trouble is, there are no realists in Washington or the European capitals, at least none with influence.

Instead, foreign policy is controlled by a coalition of ideological zealots and infantilized managers who are easily led by the zealots. They do this by creating pleasing narratives that always end with the managerial elite coming out as Churchill in this new version of the last world war. Every new scheme to win the war always ends with some Western political figure giving the great speech announcing the triumph of the forces of good over the forces of evil.

As an aside, it is why the usual suspects broke out in hives when Tucker Carlson had on his show a historian who questions the role of Churchill. They immediately started calling Cooper and Carlson Nazis, not because either of them defended Hitler or the Nazis, but because they questioned the archetypical hero of the modern political narrative, the figure every managerial striver sees in the mirror. Cooper did not just question the narrative, but the point of the narrative.

That aside, we see this political dynamic in the conduct of the war. The Western political class is the audience, demanding a good war narrative. The ideologues are the producers, who collaborate with the writers and show runners in Ukraine. Together they create narratives like the Great Ukraine Counter Offensive of 2023 or now The Great Kursk Offensive for the fans in the political class. The military logic of these schemes does not matter, because it is all about the politics of the West.

Now that The Great Kursk Offensive has turned into a military disaster for Ukraine, the series will be cancelled, so the usual suspects are busy working on a new show to put on for the Western political class. This time it will probably include firing long range missiles into Russia to “humiliate the Putin!” You see, despite it all, the main plot line says that in the end, someone in the West will be the idealized Churchill, triumphing over Putin, who they have bizarrely cast as their Hitler.

This war has also altered geopolitics. The Chinese, who had a similar dynamic in their political elite as the Russians, experienced a similar evolution in thought about how they deal with the West, especially Washington. The Chinese have been quite blunt in their assessment of Washington. They have repeatedly told high ranking Biden officials that the constant lying is an impediment to good relations. If the Chinese think your candor is a problem, you have a serious problem with honesty.

Returning to Clausewitz, this war has allowed Russia and China to reorient global politics away from the unipolar, post-Cold war arrangements toward a multipolar world based in regional interests. This has been made possible by the war exposing the superciliousness of Western political leaders, but also the childish ignorance of the people allegedly making policy in the West. The world is starting to see the West as a setting sun and men close their doors to the setting sun.

An Old Story

Posted on August 14, 2024 by thezman

For a little over a year, it has been clear to people who have followed the war in Ukraine that there is no winning scenario for Ukraine. The sanctions on Russia failed to change the Russian approach to the war. The hundreds of billions in NATO weapons, planning and support were not enough to beat back the Russian army. The great Ukraine offensive of 2023 was a stunning failure that eliminated any possibility of the Ukraine army holding the line in the Donbass.

The question has been how does the war end. For Ukraine, the best outcome is a negotiated settlement that includes a change in Ukrainian attitudes. Maybe NATO abandons the project and the Russians install new leaders. Maybe Zelensky figures out that he is about to be cut loose and cuts a deal with the Russians. Maybe Washington, hoping to save face, backs Zelensky in making a deal with the Russians. No matter how, the best option for Ukraine was a negotiated settlement.

That appears to be off the table now that the Ukrainians have launched this crazy incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. It appears that the plan was to reach the nuclear power plant in Kursk and then use it as blackmail. The Ukrainians would not just demand negotiations but require a Russian withdrawal as a condition for negotiations or they would blow up the nuclear power plant. As ridiculous as that sounds, the other explanations for this gambit are even nuttier.

Of course, this plan sounds like it is from a poorly made Hollywood action thriller, rather than a sober-minded military operation. The reason for that is the people running Ukraine are actors. For going on three years now they have spent far more time crafting creative narratives about the war than thinking soberly about how they can avoid being wiped off the map. For people who imagine reality is just a clever written story, this operation sounded brilliant.

The supreme role of narrative for Western political elites is evident in how they have reacted to this new production. It seems they had no part in its construction, or at least they were not told about it in advance, so they were unprepared to play their role in selling this as the next great event in the drama. Western media was not provided with a script, so they had no idea what to say. Eventually they settled on this being bad for Putin’s narrative, a thing that does not exist.

It is another example of the total lack of realism in our political class. The Ukraine war is an unnecessary venture for everyone involved except the Russians. A thousand years of history says they will not allow Ukraine to fall into the Western orbit. Otherwise, everyone else involved has practical reasons for not having this war, but the good feelings that come from good narratives have been too much to resist. The result is an unfolding catastrophe for the West.

This total lack of realism in the West seems to have finally reached an end point with the Russians after this latest caper. In a recent press conference, Putin said that it is now impossible to deal with Ukrainian leadership. While not closing the door to negotiations completely, he has now ruled out dealing with Zelensky. Other Russian officials are floating the idea of regime change in Kiev as a necessary precondition for any negotiated settlement to the war.

What that means is that the eventual collapse of the Ukrainian army, which is now accelerating due to the nutty decisions made by Kiev, will be followed by a political collapse, by force if necessary. In other words, if the West deciders it is time to make a deal with the Russians, that deal starts by cutting Zelensky loose, which in the context of Ukrainian politics means the whole crew must go. They will not go voluntarily, so it means the end game includes a civil war in Western Ukraine.

The Ukraine war is a microcosm of what is happening in the West. Every decision is based only in the moment without any thought of what comes next. Things are done voluntarily that should have been avoided, not because they are part of a larger strategy but because they fit the current narrative. It is as if once the story is created, the writers are sucked into it, losing all control of the plot. All they can do is respond as if they are now unwitting characters in the story.

This is harmless in the low-stakes world of parlor games in which members of the political class evolve, but in the practical world, it is a disaster. It leads to a scenario in which no one knows if the current president is alive or dead. No one seems to care because his character has been written out of the story. Who is actually making decisions is a mystery. It is the dynamic that created the condition for war in Ukraine and is now pushing it towards catastrophe.

On the one hand, it certainly seems like the West is now governed by emotion and symbolism, rather than practical considerations. The Kamala Harris campaign can be boiled down to a promise of feel goods. The entire production is a collection of symbolic shapes and sounds to transmit the simple idea that it feels good or that the alternative will make you feel bad. To his credit, Trump is offering tangible things that have some connection to practical reality.

The lesson of the Ukraine war, however, is that reality still matters. All the feel-good stories and symbols has not changed the fact that the Russian army is chewing up the Ukrainian army. The clever narratives cannot conceal the massive cemeteries full of dead Ukrainian soldiers. The question that arises from this war is whether Western elites will learn that the clever stories by the managerial class will not keep them from the gallows if things start to crumble.

The great lesson of history is that there is always a price to be paid for failed leadership and that price is paid by the people, then their rulers. Joseph de Maistre famously said that the people get the government they deserve. He was wrong. The lesson of the French Revolution is that the ruling elite gets the people they deserve. A ruling class that is concerned more with clever narratives than practical reality will face a people, who out of practical necessity, decide they must get a new ruling elite.

The End of Israel

Posted on August 7, 2024 by thezman

One of the myths of the 20th century that is slowly starting to wither away is the one about Israel just striving to exist. Since the wars of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the narrative has been that Israel is this plucky democracy fighting for its existence in the midst of savage not-democracies. The line, “Israel has a right to exist” has been the company slogan for Israel Inc. for close to fifty years now. Over the last year this official narrative, like so many others, has started to collapse.

It is clear at this point that Israel is not the victim of aggression, but the primary instigator of conflict in the region. The assassination of the Gaza leader in Tehran, on its face, is an unjustified act of war. Ismail Haniyeh was not just the lead negotiator for Gaza, but the most dovish of the Palestinian leaders with regards to making a deal with the Israeli government. The only reason to kill him was to foreclose further negotiations over Gaza and to bait the Iranians into war.

The Israelis, the Zionist and their supporters in the West will claim that there can be no peace as long as Hamas exists, so they are acting in self-defense when they assassinate the people on the other side of the peacemaking table. They also argue that there can be no peace as long as Iran exists as an Iranian state, so they are acting in self-defense when they attack Iran. Currently, they are arguing for Israel to pre-emptively attack Iran before Iran retaliates.

What we are seeing is an evolution of that myth from the 20th century. The original myth was that Israel just wanted to exist and it was the Arab world that refused to acknowledge Israeli’s right to exist. All the Arabs needed to do was not make war on Israel and there would be peace in the region. Now, the narrative is that Israel must make war on the region in order to secure peace. We have gone from supporting the plucky underdog to backing the savage master.

It is similar to an observation by Christopher Caldwell regarding the programs that sprouted from the civil rights revolution. It was first argued that these programs must be supported because their beneficiaries are too weak. Now it is argued that they must be supported because they are too strong. We see this with Israel. Fifty years ago, the Washington political class supported Israel because she was weak. Now they support Israel because the Israel lobby is too strong.

The thing is though, regimes in serious trouble often go on the offensive thinking it will lead to some breakthrough or change the situation in some way. Armies that are beaten will often stage one last great offensive. Ideological regimes will crack down on dissent, like we are seeing in the West. The Israel lobby is proudly intervening in American elections, because it fears support is faltering. Israel seeks war with Iran, because is it very unstable domestically.

There is no question that the ground has shifted over the last year with regards to support for Israel in the West, particularly America. In the United States, where it matters most, unconditional support for Israel is now limited to old white conservatives, primarily located in the Bible belt. Everyone else ranges from Israel fatigue to outright hostility to Israel. The actuarial tables tell us that support for Israel among American is in a death spiral that cannot be arrested.

This coincides with the decline of the American empire, especially in the Middle East, where decades of intervention have exhausted the military and exhausted the American people’s patience with the topic. The days of the American empire dictating policy to the region are drawing to a close. This is why Israel is desperate to start a regional war with the Iranians. They think it will bring their patron back into the region, even though it is clear that this is highly unrealistic.

On the domestic side, an area that gets little attention, Israel has some profoundly serious internal divisions. This post by Alastair Crooke describes some of it. The current Israeli government is caught in a vice. One jaw is the reality of the situation with regards to Israel and the Arabs and the other jaw is that “an eschatological Right-wing cult now holds the majority in cabinet – and wields a vigilante militia ready to attack the military establishment, and the Israeli state.”

The ideological cross currents within Israel reflect the demographic collapse that has been underway for a couple of generations. The once dominant Ashkenazi Jews, these are the Jews of the diaspora, are now in steep decline largely due to their low fertility rates and the relative high fertility rates of the other groups, particularly the ultra-orthodox and the Mizrahi Jews. These are the Jews who never left the Middle East, and who hold an expansive view of greater Israel.

The result of all of this is a hyper-aggressive Israel that is seeking a big war with all of its local enemies and a hyper-aggressive Israel lobby in the United States that is aggressively interfering in elections. One result is the collapse of the old narrative where Israel is the plucky democracy in a world of antagonistic not-democracies. In its place is a new narrative where Israel is instigating the final conflagration to settle all of these outstanding issues for good.

What all of this tells us is that Israel is in deep trouble. The underlying reason for it is the country was born in war. Countries that are the creation of war tend to end in war because they must always seek war. For Israel, “normal” is the endless state of emergency, the constant fear of another attack. This dovetailed well with the diaspora fear of you know who jumping out of the history books. It has evolved to the point where Project Israel cannot exist in peace, so it must seek war.

How this ends is not clear. The geezers currently running Israel must eventually give way to a new generation, but that new generation is more war-like and vastly less sophisticated about global matters. On the other hand, the Arab world is young and increasingly sophisticated about how the world is changing. Can the Israelis figure out how to live in the new world or will they seek to take the rest of the world with them into the abyss of the dying old world?

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