Cracking rumours emerge from the US-Russia bilateral negotiations in Riyadh. The US is reportedly offering to withdraw its military presence from former Soviet republics, dismantle missile sites in Poland and Romania, cancel all sanctions and even tease the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe.
After years of Cold War 2 proxy conflicts and economic warfare, Washington suddenly seems to be handing Moscow geopolitical prizes on a silver platter. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is—and that’s precisely the point.
Day three, a wet and windy Friday, of my rubber tramp in the South West Lakeland Peninsula sees me sipping tea at The Furneds Railway, Barrow in Furness. I may move on to the hard stuff – double espresso. You’ll be thrilled to know I’ve sourced, with a little help from steel city stalwart Dave Hansell, the liveliest of weekend reads.
In my previous post I described Donald Trump as “not what you’d call a deep thinker”. Well one who might beg to differ is Kevin Batcho, a fan neither of the Big Tangerine nor of – here’s another quote from my previous post – “the US duopoly masquerading as a democracy”.
At every turn counselling against underestimating Trump, Mr Batcho’s piece – its title, Depth of a Salesman, is a punning nod to Arthur Miller which gainsays my own verdict on the 47th President. You can be the judge of that – and methinks he is at times smitten by the views from the ramparts of his own word castles. I can forgive that, and so will you. This a splendid read, breathtaking in its imagination and erudition, its vim and panache.
Enjoy.
Depth of a Salesman
Geopolitical Glengarry Glen Ross in Riyadh: Trump’s good-cop piques Russia’s ambitions, luring and looping Putin into a grand bargain—or a grand trap—ever deeper into the maze of the Grand Chessboard.
Cracking rumours emerge from the U.S.-Russia bilateral negotiations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The United States is reportedly offering to withdraw its military presence from former Soviet republics, dismantle missile sites in Poland and Romania, cancel all sanctions, and even tease the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe.
After years of Cold War 2.0, proxy conflicts, and economic warfare, Washington suddenly seems to be handing Moscow geopolitical prizes on a silver platter. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is—and that’s precisely the point.
Upon hearing this news, Russian President Vladimir Putin must have felt the chill of an unseen hand toppling the Grand Chessboard—geopolitical wizard Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of U.S. dominance over Eurasia.
In The Seventh Seal, a knight returns from war to find himself locked in a fateful game of chess with Death. He plays not to win—no man can—but to delay, to bargain for meaning in the face of inevitability. Every move is a desperate act of resistance against an outcome already written. Yet as the pieces fall, the illusion of control crumbles, and all that remains is the quiet realization: the game was always rigged.
The bargains will be Faustian. The blood, sealing the deals, will be Ukrainian …
Read the full piece – here’s the link again – on which both Dave Hansell and I have commented. And have a great weekend.
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Smoke and mirrors – – Trumps entry on Wikipedia (not unbiased of course) is a catalogue of bankruptcies, property seizures, forced re-structuring – basically failing (upwards) all the time. The idea that he or indeed the rest of his entourage have suddenly turned into Metternich clones is a bit of a stretch to say the least.
Behind the smoke and mirrors (not of Kevin Batcho’s making but of the times) we’d likely both agree that a tectonic shift is in process, geopolitically speaking. In this regard I’ll hazard that Mr Putin will in hindsight be seen as a major player, Mr Trump less so. But to dismiss the latter as a buffoon is in my view to make the mirror opposite error of those in his fan-base who see him as saviour and champion of downtrodden Americans. He was not the choice of the most powerful wing of the US ruling class, yet neither its hard core nor their deep state could stop him. He is not to be underestimated …
… I think. These are times when the wiping of egg from face will be a task imposed on the best of us!
But my goodness, what an exhilarating read! At times it’s reminiscent of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine (and if flawed, then for the same reason; viz, overegging a powerful but far from perfect heuristic).
(As for my double use of egg metaphors, chalk that up to my having two of the poached kind in my Rahman noodle soup at Wetherspoons last night. I’d dodged torrential rain by catching the latest and hugely enjoyable Bridget Jones, to emerge under brighter skies with a hole where my stomach disappeared. I pen this now from the van as I look out over the Duddon Estuary from my overnight pitch near Askham in Furness. Am about to make coffee, then stroll up the sands – sands lethal to the foolhardy – to Kirkby in F, where the Ship Inn is well spoken of on Trust Pilot etc.)