Fighting talk from the EU: Part 2

UK daily, The Independent, yesterday:

Keir Starmer hailed his “good relationship” with Donald Trump just hours before the US President’s special envoy slammed the PM’s Ukraine peace plan as “a posture and a pose”.

Steve Witkoff said the Labour leader’s idea of a peacekeeping force made up of the ‘coalition of the willing’ was based on a “simplistic” notion of thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.

In an interview with the pro-Trump personality Tucker Carlson, Mr Witkoff also praised Vladimir Putin, saying that he “liked” the Russian president. “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. He’s super smart,” he said.

Read full story …

As I was over whether Israel rules the USA – see yesterday’s post – I’m with Brian Berletic on not being distracted by noises coming out of the Trump Administration as regards Russia. For the why of that, see Trump does not seek peace in Ukraine. There’s every reason to suppose Trump the realist acknowledges the strength of Russia’s position and will work – on pain of deep state opposition he has more cause than most to fear – to weaken it while talking the talk on partnership and peace.

Didn’t Merkel brag of deceiving Putin over Minsk, to buy time for Kiev to prepare for war? Didn’t freezing the Syrian dirty war conflict by placing the terrorists rebels and their weapons in Idlib under the protective “custody” of Turkey, after Russia’s game-changing intervention of 2015/16, buy them time to break out and seize state power last December? If I can work this out, so can Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov and Sergei Shoygu. They’ll accept no ceasefire that gives Ukraine and the West time to lick wounds and fight another day, with none of the casus belli – NATO by any other name on Russia’s border, the ethnically Russian east still vulnerable, and Banderite Nazis biding their time – resolved.

The Nazi leaning Azov Battalion in Marioupol – a city in the Donetsk Oblast of then Ukraine – March 2022

That said, how could I not savour the schadenfreude when Britain’s execrable prime minister was put in his place – hours after bragging of his “good relationship” with Trump – by Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine? Sir Keir had irked Steve Witkoff by peddling a “simplistic” strategy for peace while playing the Churchill card.

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Moving on. It’s almost a fortnight since I wrote Fighting talk from the EU: Part 1, thinking Part 2 would follow in a day or so. It didn’t. Thinking also that Part 2 would conclude things. It won’t. There’ll be at least one more post, to sound out the military, technical, manufacturing and – in the face of popular opposition to ‘containing’ Russia at cost of more ‘austerity’ for the many – political  capacity of Europe to implement Ursula von der Leyen’s fighting talk of March 4 as quoted in Part 1.

We are living in the most momentous and dangerous of times. I do not need to describe the grave nature of the threats that we face. Or the devastating consequences that we will have to endure if those threats would come to pass. Because the question is no longer whether Europe’s security is threatened in a very real way. Or whether Europe should shoulder more of the responsibility for its own security. In truth, we have long known the answers to those questions. The real question in front of us is whether Europe is prepared to act as decisively as the situation dictates. And whether Europe is ready and able to act with the speed and the ambition that is needed. In the various meetings in the last few weeks – most recently two days ago in London – the answer from European capitals has been as resounding as it is clear. We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending. Both, to respond to the short-term urgency to act and to support Ukraine but also to address the long-term need to take on much more responsibility for our own European security.

The interview featured below bridges Parts 1 and 3. It contains little that’s substantively new but is significant in that its guest sits in Britain’s House of Lords. He is clear, calm, personable and for the most part accurate in his assessment of the proxy bloodbath in the Ukraine.

I have only three caveats. First, Lord Robert Skidelsky confesses himself unable to explain how all mainstream media in the UK spoke with one voice to promote the manifestly false narrative of Russia as unprovoked while denying space for a tsunami of evidence to the contrary. I can help him out there. As I will keep saying:

On many matters our ‘quality’ media serve us passably well but this enables a greater lie. They must show themselves trustworthy even if it embarrasses high office. (Not only does long term capacity to manufacture consent depend on it. So too, on pain of losing market share, do their business models.) But the trust gained helps them mislead us, more by omission than commission, on matters of critical concern to the power they ultimately serve. Never more so than when vilifying states and leaders in the way of empire designs.

For the mechanisms involved – and we need not suppose outright lying by media practitioners – see my posts here and here and here. As for why that proxy war in Ukraine was a “matter of critical concern to power”, that was addressed in Part 1.

Second, Lord Robert is one of the many who acknowledge Russia’s extreme provocation while condemning, perversely it seems to me, her special military operation of February 2022. This is a logically coherent position only if accompanied by a setting out of alternative paths Moscow could have taken. Other than a hole-ridden case ¹ offered by Paul Street in CounterPunch in the first few weeks of the SMO, I’ve yet to see the proponents of this viewpoint attempt to do so.

My third and final caveat is that Lord Robert opines that Mr Putin, whom he clearly respects, made a big mistake in Ukraine, expecting a quick win. But if anyone expected a quick win in Ukraine, it was the West – as documented in many posts on this site. Granted, the two are not mutually exclusive but I’m with a YouTube comment by one adamaant4159, who responds with this:

Neither president Putin nor Russian leadership believed that the special military operation would be concluded quickly or solved easily. They Expressed their understanding of the situation as having very complex problems that could take years to solve if ever solved, but doing nothing would amount to a bigger threat. They had a perfect understanding of the context and they knew the risks as evidenced by the many public interviews and statements of the Russian leadership before the start of military operation in 2022 and after it. And by the way, it’s not an invasion, it’s a special military operation conducted with various degrees of limitations. This is a conflict being fought cross border. The word invasion is part of the western narrative.

But as I so often say on this hallowed site, of folk I’m largely on the same page as – at least within the confines of the topic at hand – Lord Roberts gets a lot more right than wrong here.

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1. Paul Street argued that Russia could have achieved her aims – which for the removal of doubt were (a) to secure her security needs in the face of a border state applying to join an alliance predicated on her encirclement, (b) protect ethnic Russians in the east after a US backed coup empowered Nazi supremacists – by economic means alone. This despite the fact of a West already waging an unprecedented level of economic war on Russia. There was no need, for instance, for Russia to threaten Europe with cutting off the gas flows when Europe’s leaders were about to allow Washington to do the job for them!