Gefira 93: A big picture of purpose

When it comes to the war in Ukraine, Europe – the European Union along with the United Kingdom – is in a fight mode while the United States is not. Europe is still flaunting its so-called human and democratic values, while the United States has just reversed the course of wokeism and genderism. European leaders have shut themselves off from the outside world in their echo chambers and surround themselves with like-minded bellicose individuals, while the United States is trying to find a balance in its foreign policy. Europe is still objectifying Ukraine – the country and the nation are only viewed as a battering ram against Russia, Europe’s topmost foe, while the new American administration seems to be red-pilled to for-ever wars and has become to deal with reality on the ground as it is. European and American ways have ceased to align.

Europe has a history of aggressiveness directed towards the east, which was encapsulated by the notorious German political catchphrase Drang nach Osten or Drive to the East. Indeed, wars between the western and eastern parts of the Old Continent were invariably initiated by its western part. These were the military raids of the Teutonic Knights, these were the invasions launched by Sweden or France, by imperial Germany and the Third Reich. For all that historical record, it is Russia that is credited with aggressive intentions. Why, Europeans, including those with university degrees, are not familiar even cursorily with their own past. Schools are not there for the Europeans to let knowledge sink in; schools are for mind shaping.

Europe obsessed with Russia and Putin appears to be overlooking the worldly political and economic trends. The developing countries are slowly but steadfastly gaining economic and – what follows – political momentum. The United States has broken with globalism and is focusing on its own affairs, recognizing that its role as a global hegemon has come to an end. Not that Washington has given up on exerting leverage here and there in the world: the action to control the Panama Canal or the plans of taking control over Greenland show that the American empire is alive and kicking. Yet, the United States needs to reckon with powerful rivals and concede them some political room on the world stage. It is not only Russia, it is China as well.

Europe has let itself be pushed out of Africa, Europe has developed a guilt complex towards Africans for all the failures of the latter and Europe embarked upon letting itself be colonized. The vacuum created on the Dark Continent has attracted the attention of the Middle Kingdom. China is taking Africa over from degenerating Europe. China’s population is numerically almost a perfect match to that of Africa, while Europe’s dwindling indigenous population is on a slippery road to nothingness. While European influence in Africa is often denounced in European capitals as neo-colonialism, China’s take on its presence on the Dark Continent is framed by Beijing as Going Global. Europe, riddled with guilt and shame, cannot stand up to the Middle Kingdom with the latter’s political ambition. Europe has become irrelevant, while China is a rising star. Also on the Dark Continent.

 

Gefira Financial Bulletin #93 is available now

  • Russia – a stumbling block of nations
  • Greenland
  • Europe out, China in
  • The Mar-a-Lago plan

The difference between tariffs and sanctions is that there is no difference!

The whole world is talking about the many tariffs that President Donald Trump has imposed and is about to impose on various countries around the globe. That is by the way something that he promised he would do on several occasions before he was elected to the highest office in the United States. The leaders of different countries seem not to have believed a word from what President Donald Trump said he would do. They didn’t believe it because they themselves are in the habit of promising things and not delivering on them, not even thinking of delivering on them. This time they have been confronted with a politician who keeps his word, and that comes as a surprise.

President Donald Trump believes in the benefit of tariffs, that is to say he believes that restrictions on international trade, restrictions on the amount and number of goods imported to the United States are beneficial for American economy. Imposing tariffs he must have reckoned with retaliation, which, indeed, is being applied. In other words, President Donald Trump must also believe in the beneficial effects for American economy of the limited exports. To put it otherwise, President Donald Trump is well aware of the fact that his sanctions seal American economy off from the economies of other countries, and yet he also believes that it is good for the United States.

Since tariffs and the retaliatory measures limit or make impossible exports and imports, they are no different from… sanctions. Sanctions are sort of tariffs: a country that is at the receiving end of sanctions cannot export or import as much as it wishes. The result is the same, or is it? Now President Donald Trump may have believed in the beneficial effects of tariffs a long time ago, but it is also possible that he realized the beneficial effects of tariffs (or his long-standing belief was reinforced) as he observed what happened to the Russian Federation since sanctions were imposed on it. Russian economy not only did not collapse, but seems to have developed its potential.

Just as the Western economists have prophesied that the Russian Federation was just about to collapse due to the thousands of sanctions directed against its economy, so are they now prophesying that President Donald Trump has overreached his hand and rather than helping the United States is going to do it enormous harm. Time will show. Still, the similarity of the economic effect that tariffs and sanctions appear to have is striking. Two labels denoting two seemingly different economic policies and apparently the same result.

Then what’s so basically wrong with the tariffs which the American president is so enarmoured of? Does the European Union not separate itself from the rest of the world by means of tariffs? Does the EU not rely on tariffs to defend its economy against that of China? Why then are so many economists critical of America-imposed tariffs while they remain silent when it comes to the EU-imposed tariffs or – for that matter – sanctions?

It’s interesting to observe that all that glib talk about free trade, free market, free flow of capital, free flow of goods and services, all that glib talk is just another weapon in the arsenal of the powers that be. If they can turn free trade and free flow of goods and services to their advantage, then they are all in favour of it and they go to great lengths to impress it on others how beneficial it is for all players on the world’s stage. The moment, however, free trade and free flow of goods and services does not serve their purposes, they strike a different note. What yesterday was considered economically good, today is considered economically bad. Sure enough, an explanation or a string of explanations is offered and the consumers of information usually buy into such explanations.

Tariffs and sanctions are two sides of the same coin. President Donald Trump has effectively imposed sanctions in the European Union; conversely, one might say, the European Union has been imposing tariffs on the Russian Federation. The result? Russian economy has emerged victorious, and so will American economy emerge victorious. That’s at least the logic of this economic mechanism of separation or protection of one’s own market, of one’s own entrepreneurs and customers (economic protectionism). Economic protectionism is nothing new in the history of mankind. In point of fact, there were periods during which protectionism was the order of the day, and periods during which it was denounced, as the case may be.

Besides, the application of tariffs by the United States clearly shows that the country’s economy has long ceased to be dominant or else why would Washington use this means in the first place?

Trump wants to cause a recession

The American president changed his approach to the stock market in his second term. To the extent that he paid homage to Wall Street during his first term, he recently said in an interview for Fox News that he needs to build a strong country without looking at the stock market. The average American cares because retirement funds are operating on risky assets and many small investors are putting their savings into the stock market instead of keeping their money in low-interest accounts like Germans or most Europeans.

Trump believes that we are now facing a transition that will eventually lead to the return of wealth to America. Incoming Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent later added fuel to the fire when he said during his interview that if anyone thinks Trump will change his policies to stop the stock market decline, they will be disappointed. Bessent is of the opinion that we are currently in a “detox period” – a transition from reliance on public spending to private spending – and any negative market behavior is the legacy of Joe Biden and his policies to stimulate the economy with debt and deficits.

The new managers on the Potomac point out that the indicators are falling and Wall Street appears to be heading for a deeper correction.

What is also falling are the indicators of economic activity: the ISM Manufacturing (PMI) (activity in the US manufacturing sector), while ISM Manufacturing Price (change in the prices manufacturers pay for raw materials and other materials for production) is rising significantly. In the case of the former, it was above 50 points, i.e. above the threshold above which the economy is assumed to be developing, but well below the previous value and also below forecasts. In the case of the latter, it may be a return of higher inflation. In addition, orders in the US manufacturing sector are falling. Unemployment is also rising – Trump’s (or Musk’s) redundancies in the public sector are important here.

As a result, Americans are less willing to spend their money, which means that domestic demand, one of the main drivers of the US economy, is falling. After all, consumer spending accounts for 68% of US GDP!

Can such a situation suit the Trump administration? Paradoxically: Yes!

It is well known that the Fed is maintaining high interest rates (4.5%) in response to persistent inflation of around 3% (target is 2%). High interest rates lead to higher bond yields. Considering that the US needs to refinance a large portion of its debt this year (a good 25% of the total), it would be best for it to do so at the lowest price – i.e. the lowest interest rate on bonds. It is well known that it will not be easy to get the Fed to lower interest rates in the face of increased inflation, so a recession is the best solution. With limited economic growth and demand (see above), inflation may ease considerably and the associated layoffs could prompt the Fed to cut rates to stimulate economic growth.

Hence the tariffs, hence the trade wars – the aim is to bring production back to America, to increase the attractiveness of US products for domestic consumers and… to initiate a new, better period for the American economy after the recession.

The EU under “Führer Ursula” is not a peaceful project, says Lavrov

A few days ago, this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to three Americans: Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, and Mario Nawfal. Judge Napolitano runs a popular YouTube channel Judging Freedom, Larry Johnson is a former CIA operative, while Mario Nawfal runs his own channel on YouTube. A few days prior to the Lavrov interview, the last of the three mentioned interviewed Belarus’ President Alexandr Lukashenko. The interview with Minister Lavrov lasted an hour and a half and was conducted in English without an interpreter.

Go and have a listen before it is not taken down by YouTube. If you think you can form your own judgement, you need to know what the other side to the conflict has to say. Especially from the horse’s mouth, so much so that Minister Lavrov did 95% of the talking. Below a few take-aways from the interview.

Russia is a Christian country, a Christian nation with Christian values. The United States and Western Europe have departed from Christianity and have been pursuing deviant ideas of the alphabet sexuality, unisex toilets and the like.

The West promised Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastwards by an inch and broke its promise. Even if it were not formulated in written form (it was), a man of honour keeps his word.

Security cannot be divisible, i.e. one country cannot provide for its security at the expense of another country. Expanding NATO may increase the West’s security, but it certainly decreases the security of the Russian Federation.

Ukraine itself is to blame for the losses that it has sustained. Had there be no coup d’etat as a result of which legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych was made to flee the country, Ukraine would not have lost Crimea; had Kiev abided by the Minsk I and Minsk II Accords, Ukraine would not have lost the four eastern provinces.

Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president who was toppled by the coup in 2014, had every right to reconsider Ukraine’s association with the European Union. There was no malice on his part, nor was he a Russophile. The decision of associating Ukraine with the European Union had very serious economic consequences. At that time there were no tariffs between Ukraine and Russia, but there were tariffs between Ukraine and the European Union. An association with the European Union meant lifting the tariffs between the EU and Ukraine, which would have meant the necessity of imposing such tariffs between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as the Russian Federation needed to protect its market against European products. Since Ukraine’s trade with Russia was way larger than that with the EU, an association with the EU would have meant huge economic losses for the country.

The European Union is not a peaceful project. Minister Lavrov quoted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who said that “peace in Ukraine could actually be more dangerous than the war that is currently taking place,” and quoted Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, who floated an idea of expanding the alliance or the alliance’s tentacles as far east as China, Korea and the Pacific Ocean. One of the most bellicose politicians of the European Union is its leader Führer Ursula, as Lavrov put it, and mentioned the 800 billion earmarked by her for the re-militarization of the continent.

All the anti-Russian campaigns like those centered around the downing of the Malaysian airliner, the Skripal and the Navalny cases, the Bucha massacre allegedly perpetrated by Russians were aimed at harming the international image of the Russian Federation. This is easy to prove because in each of the aforementioned cases Russia’s request to have access to the medical, chemical, legal and other documentation was denied.

Human rights have been weaponized by the West. Human rights only serve as a pretext to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations and as a justification for assaulting them militarily.

That’s Minister Lavrov’s understanding of the ongoing conflict between the West and the Russian Federation, that’s in a nutshell Russia’s view of the current political situation and its causes.

The Revolution of Commonsense

President Donald Trump’s inaugural speech which he delivered to Congress was as revolutionary as the speech delivered by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in Brussels or the one given by JD Vance in Munich. It was revolutionary or – better put – counterrevolutionary. President Donald Trump’s second-term presidency reminds one of the rule by Napoleon Bonaparte or Joseph Stalin, with no malicious hint being meant in either of the two adduced cases. Both Napoleon Bonaparte and Joseph Stalin took power after a period of revolutionary changes – in France and in Russia – changes that had sought to turn everything upside down in terms of morals, in terms of societal norms, changes that had declared war on commonsense. Indeed, both Napoleon and Stalin stopped the pernicious process and reverted it to a greater degree. Prior to the emergence of these two historical figures France commencing from 1789 and Russia starting from 1917 were on a suicidal course. The likes of Maximilien Robespierre in France and Leo Trotsky in Russia were hellbent on reconstructing and de-constructing society and, indeed, the whole world. Nothing was regarded as sacred, as sacrosanct. Everything was subjected to change while opponents were severely punished.

Much the same has been happening in the United States for the last three or so decades and especially during the presidential office of Joe Biden. The only – and indeed significant – difference between the events in France and Russia was that – as yet – the revolutionary changes were not bloody. All the rest is very much alike. What President Donald Trump is attempting to do is best expressed in the term commonsense revolution, a term that he himself employed in his inaugural address. In a nutshell: no more sexes (or genders) than two, no more wokeism, no more diversity-equity-inclusion madness, no more rampant crime, no more impunity on the part of illegal immigrants, no more craze of gender reassignment, and so on, and so forth. Napoleon and Stalin took similar measures in that they reversed lots of pernicious processes and resumed the pre-revolutionary normalcy to a greater extent. Yes, the latter has very bad press in the world, but the alternative to Stalin – the said Trotsky – was much, much worse.

Americans, just as the French and the Russians of the periods mentioned above, are a split nation. One part of them clings to commonsense, to traditional values, while the other despises everything that has created and shaped America and, indeed, the Western civilization. Why do we get such two opposing sectors of society? God only knows. Sociologists, historians, and economists will readily come up with varied explanations of the phenomenon and they all may be partly right. The most probable cause is – as it seems – a psychological i.e. biological phenomenon concerning the human psyche. Man can choose to dress neatly or to defile his skin with tattoos. As it is, social standing, profession, level of education have little or nothing to do with such personal choices. The divide runs across families, runs among siblings, hence it must be something biological, something we might say – genetic. Now, if such an unfavourable phenomenon afflicts and infects a sufficient number of individuals, and consequently if such individuals manage to attain power – it matters little if they attain power by peaceful or by violent means – then a revolution in morals is set in motion. It is as a rule a minority that is capable of violating the morals of the majority of society. Be it the Russian Bolsheviks or French Jacobins, the German National-Socialists or the Chinese followers of Mao Zedong, the numbers of the political seducers and ultimately ruthless tyrants were always relatively very small. It is not the numbers that decide the course of history: it is the decisiveness, determination, fanaticism and ruthlessness on the part of the social annihilators, accompanied by the meekness, submission, self-effacement, and docility on the part of the vast majority of the rest of society.

The revolution of common sense. These are apt words with which one can describe what is happening now in the United States. The Trotskyites of all epochs and latitudes create secular religions out of thin air (though many a time they claim to have science or God on their part) and seek to rebuild reality. Since they usually appeal to moral values of justice, equality, inclusion, aid, charity, and the like, they can always attract relatively many people, especially young, impressionable, especially intellectually weak (though with university degrees) and inexperienced. In the seventies of the previous century, many people who lived in affluent Western nations adored Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Castro but – and this is a big but – they never ever thought of relocating and living in a political system created by those heroes of theirs or a country run by them or their followers! More to it, the admirers of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Castro did not even notice that people – common people i.e. workers mean peasants – from the countries under the rule of those Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Castro types would regularly leave their social paradise and preferred to be exploited by the system of capitalism, patriarchy, racism and what not which the impressionable Western minds used to criticize so much. So let us say it one more time to bring it home: the idolizers of all those seemingly wonderful social solutions wanted neither to experience them first hand nor did they notice that common people kept fleeing from the likes of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Castro in flocks. Were the adorers and admirers of social experimentation feeble minded en bloc?

Much the same is observable nowadays. The activists who want to import people from the Third World hardly ever mingle with the immigrants, hardly ever live among them or close to the neighbourhoods settled by Third World individuals. The activists who try to intimidate the rest of society into accepting gimmegrants and who accuse the societies they live in of racism and capitalist exploitation do not seem to notice that millions of Third World people flock to allegedly racist and exploitative nations of the Western world. The activists who are oh so fond of demolishing traditional morality do not seem to notice that the people from the Third World despise the ideas of having the many sexes or genders and, what follows, of surgical gender reassignment operations, or irreligiousness of the Western world. The activists who act against commonsense and seek to destroy masculinity (necessarily with the adjective toxic) do not seem to notice that the Third World males are very much masculine and hardly likely to be turned into effeminate pseudo-males of the Western type.

The activists who pursue a revolution in morals do not seem to have the powers of observation. They import people from other countries and claim that by doing it they enrich the West (as if the West were not regarded as the richest part of the globe!) and cannot for the lives of them notice that by enriching their societies they necessarily impoverish the societies from which the enrichment is derived! Indeed, commonsense is not what the Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Castro types have. They accuse their own nations of being exploitative towards the third world countries and in the same breath they… praise the exploitation of those third world countries by depriving them of the human resources with which those countries or nations could enrich themselves.

In his inaugural speech President Donald Trump enumerated a long (by no means exhaustive) list of the financial expenditures of the previous administration, millions and millions of dollars spent on improving democracy or enabling gender reassignment or similar things in all corners of the world. This procedure shows the craziness of the Trotskyist type that took hold of the Western world. This procedure also enabled a couple of millions of political and social activists to enrich themselves. Political and social activists are as a rule individuals who do not have skills or knowledge that is in demand. These are individuals who have a degree in critical race theory or gender inequality or climate change or, or, or, so participation in government-paid projects such as bringing about or supporting women empowerment somewhere in Africa is the only way for them to assert themselves socially and to have subsistence. Being engaged in such projects one does not need to have any skills or any knowledge: one simply gets money and travels the world with the blessing of a charitable or governmental organization, and can claim to have gained moral high ground.

Because apart from money grants – huge money grants – moral high ground is something that social and political activists of all shades are also very much after. Such is human psyche. A human desperately needs to be regarded as ‘good’. Being ‘good’ is the easiest thing there is in the world. If you cannot master a skill or a branch of knowledge, if you cannot be a good sportsman or artists, you can always gain esteem and achieve a kind of dominance in society by the pretense of being morally good, morally superior. It is especially easy when you do not give away a penny from your own pocket to prove your goodness. The pennies and the pounds come from other sources. It is the others that pay for “women empowerment” somewhere in Africa, and it is the others who pay for your travel there and for your remuneration. It is the tax payers, the people who have skills or that kind of knowledge that is in demand. It is such others who work long hours and pay taxes with which the activity of social do-gooders is paid for, with which the do-gooders can be good.

For we are all driven by the drive of dominance. Dominance is not reducible to material riches or political power. If you cannot assert yourself in either, you can always opt for dominance in the realm of (perceived) morality, you can always strive to become a Gandhi or a Mandela type. This kind of societal dominance can prove better, way better, than material riches or political power. This kind of dominance carries with itself admiration and recognizability, and makes the world adore you. A powerful incentive.

The French revolutionaries and the revolutionaries in Russia, the Chinese Red Guards or the followers of Che Guevara, the followers of John Calvin or Girolamo Savonarola, they all acted for the good of the people. They had no skills nor did they dispose of sound knowledge, but they were spurred on by the dominance drive in that they all wanted to improve society, to improve reality itself, and to present themselves as good men, as good women. What is comforting in all this is the fact that after a period of madness of social engineering there always followed a period of a comeback to commonsense led by the likes of Napoleon in post-Robespierre France, Stalin in post-Trotsky Russia, Deng Xiaoping in post Mao-Zedong China, Konrad Adenauer in post-Hitler Germany, Donald Trump in post-Biden United States, and so on, and so forth. The discomforting element in all this is that periods of societal madness – like this in France or Germany, like those in Russia or China, like those elsewhere in the world throughout history – sadly, keep recurring. Humanity moves along the sinusoidal wave, hitting now troughs, now peaks. Fortunately, we are experiencing a period of relief as the Biden trough is now being counterbalanced by the Trump peak. Sooner or later another trough will come, though. Inevitably. 

Military (mis)calculation

Recently, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk quoted the International Institute for Strategic Studies according to which Europe together with Ukraine has a strength of 2.6 million troops, the United States has 1.3 million troops, while China – 2 million and Russia barely 1.1 million. Then the Polish prime minister pathetically suggested that Russia should be crushed under such a force and should fear the West. Wow!

You know, Donald Tusk was a student of history. He must have been absent-minded during the lectures or he may have forgotten every bit of what he may have learnt. When throughout the history of humankind has it ever been a rule that sheer numbers always prevail in conflicts? An example from European history.

The Kingdom of Prussia comprised basically two relatively small territories, one around Berlin and on both sides of the Oder estuary, and the other on the Baltic Sea (present-day north-eastern Poland plus the Kaliningrad province that since World War Two belongs to Russia). These two territories were even not connected by land: they were flat, with no resources, and scarcely populated This small Kingdom of Prussia threw down the gauntlet to a huge Habsburg Monarchy (yesterday’s European Union in the centre of the Old Continent, made up of present-day Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and a huge part of Romania) and won the wars of 1740-42 and 1744-45, tearing away from the Habsburg monarchy Silesia (today’s south-western Poland). In an attempt to regain the lost province, yesterday’s European Union, i.e. the Habsburg Empire, allied itself with Russia and France – two superpowers of that day – and again went to war against the little Kingdom of Prussia – the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63 – and… lost it a third time. The numerical advantage of the anti-Prussian coalition was enormous (the Habsburg Monarchy, France and Russia along with Saxony, not to mention many other German principalities) and yet it turned out the be of no use. Towards the end of that costly and protracted war Russia decided to withdraw its troops (just like today the United States is disengaging from the crusade in Ukraine), and since Russia left the battlefield, the alliance was soon dissolved.

Another example, an example from today, an example that everybody, not even one interested in politics, is aware of. The tiny state of Israel that is located in the sea of – nay – in the ocean of the hostile Arab, Islamic world. The state of Israel stands its ground, and has stood its ground since its inception. True, it has been supported by the United States, but even then: Israel is a tiny country surrounded by usually unfriendly, much more densely populated Arab states. Egypt alone has some 100 million inhabitants, while Israel merely 10 million of which 2 million are Arabs!

That’s the numerical part of the problem. The Polish prime minister did not take into consideration other factors, especially the factor of motivation. Why should the Portuguese or the Norwegians, the Greeks or the Swiss go to war with Russia over Ukraine? Why should they sacrifice anything for this war? Why should they compromise the quality of their life because of Ukraine of which they know next to nothing, of which the older generations did not even learn at school as a separate state because thirty years ago there was no Ukraine on the political map of Europe? Even if forced, Portuguese, Greek or Norwegian soldiers are not likely to really fight somewhere in the East, somewhere in Ukraine. Do you remember the Italian, Hungarian and Romanian soldiers that fought hand in hand with Germans on the eastern front during World War Two? They were usually more of a burden rather than real aid. Was it not the same with Napoleon’s incursion into Russia? The French emperor led troops from almost all of Europe. His numerical advantage was more than obvious. How did he fare?

What do numbers mean? Numbers only have their abstract value in abstract mathematical considerations. It is only in maths that every one and every other one is always the same two. In real life these two soldiers are by no means the same as those two soldiers, the military value of these two tanks and their crews is not comparable to the military value of those two tanks and their crews, and so on, and so forth. There are so many factors that matter that it is almost impossible to take them all into account. Numbers only win when other major factors are more or less comparable. Numbers in themselves are just stats, abstract metrics. Europe and the United States – to quote again Donald Tusk or the International Institute for Strategic Studies – have altogether 3.9 million of professional troops, Russia – 1.1: a proportion of roughly 4 to 1. What is reality? Reality demonstrates that Russia is holding a quarter of Ukrainian territory while Europe is flexing its flaccid muscles and issuing threatening statements – now from Paris, now from London – and becomes ever more livid with its helpless – childlike – hatred of Russia.

Freaking out in a meltdown

The news was a bombshell! President Donald Trump called President Vladimir Putin! Worse, President Donald Trump and the closest men in his administration have made overtures to negotiations with Russia in that Ukraine will not be a member of NATO nor of the European Union, nor regain its territories (US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech in Brussels, Feb 12, 2025). Still worse, it looks like the negotiations between the United States and the Russian Federation might take place without the European Union! That they will take place without Ukraine goes without saying. Three years of muscle flexing on the part of the European Union, three years of warmongering, three years of sanctions, three years of the rabidly anti-Russian agitprop, three years of lavishly honouring President Zelensky, three years of this and that have been thrown out the window, have gone into the gutter, have gone down the drain. 

Take a look at the livid outraged infuriated hopping-mad wrinkled formal manageresses of the Union: Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas; take a look at that bellicose boss of NATO: Mark Rutte! They all somehow did not expect it, and yet they did, once Donald Trump had won the election. They know not what to do now. They are likely – as said above – to be left out of the equation, chased away from the negotiating table. As the saying goes, those who are not sitting at the negotiating table are lying on it. Ukraine certainly will be lying on the table and be operated on. An organ or two for Russia, an organ or two for the United States. An organ may be territory, natural resources, political control, whatever. Certainly, Ukrainians will have no say. And most likely Europeans won’t have a say either! 

SecDef Pete Hegseth

Couldn’t it all have been foreseen right at the start, three years back? Does one need to be an experienced politician to figure out the military and economic disproportion of the players involved in the hostilities? One must have been fed on egregious glaring lies to have believed that Russia was about to collapse with the first wave of sanctions while confronting gallant Ukrainian soldiers! One must have been on a dope to have imagined that Ukrainians would cross the border and march into Russian territory! One really must have been out of his senses to have assumed such a scenario!

Three years, allegedly half a million killed in action, hundreds of thousands maimed, tens of thousands missing, a country experiencing wide-spread damage, devastated families, decimated generations of young men… What has been achieved? How can the Western leaders soothe their conscience? You know how: they have no troubled conscience. They are like Madeleine Albright (just look at her kind face) who justified the death of half a million of raqi children; they are like Zbigniew Brzezinski, for whom the world was a chess board and nations – consequently – chess pieces; they are like Henry Kissinger, who left a legacy of bombs and chaos in Cambodia.

Chancellor Scholz says Germany is in danger because of the talks between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin! In danger? What does he mean? Is Russia going to march across Poland and assault Germany? Why? Because Russia is desperate to take care of the millions of the Third Worlders and thousands of sexual perverts between the Oder and the Rhine? My oh my!