Writing about the relationship between the European Union and the United States over the Ukraine war, I am reminded of a sexually suggestive hook from David Bowie’s “Suffragette City”: “Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am!”
It appears Washington is about to do a David Bowie on Europe over Ukraine. Speaking of the late musical genius, there is also a memorable line from another song, “Diamond Dogs”, from the eponymous album: “This ain’t rock ‘n roll. This is genocide!” But I think I am going to take a break from writing depressing columns about Palestine today.
Lately, you may have noticed that mainstream Anglo-American media are suddenly all warning about an impending Russian victory in Ukraine. This is after two years of cheerleading by the same people who prophesied Ukraine would win totally and the Putin regime would collapse, any day now. Oh yes, and Beijing was gearing up for an invasion of Taiwan!
Here’s a useful learning moment: whenever you see a strong consensus forming that brooks no opposition by the Western media and their ruling elites, bet on the opposite. It’s not foolproof but you would have a much better shot at realising what’s really going on.
Some Western pundits and former officials now conjure up apocalyptic visions of the end of Europe or even Western civilisation itself.
“Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory.” “Europe’s foundations are trembling.” “US warns it’s running out of money for Ukraine war.” “The West wavers on Ukraine.”
The Washington Post, one of the most gung-ho pro-Ukraine news outlets in the US, admitted last week that “Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western aid.”
That’s roughly about 0.25 per cent of Russian-conquered land.
My favourite is from someone no less than the defence and foreign affairs editor of the Daily Telegraph: “Putin is close to victory … Ukraine’s time is running out. The danger is that the EU faces the same fate as the Holy Roman Empire.”
Well, if that were true, there would be nothing to worry about. As Voltaire famously declared, the Holy Roman Empire was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” Napoleon merely gave it the coup de grace. Frankly, I don’t think Putin is Napoleon.
But Europe today does have something to fret about, actually a lot. It’s not so much about losing Ukraine; it didn’t. At most, it loses 20 per cent of Ukraine, but it gains an enlarged Nato with Finland, with Sweden about to join; and a fortified 80 per cent of Ukraine serving as an extensive buffer against Russia.
Rather, it’s the consequences of being left holding the bag after Washington calls it quits.
The US might have been telling Ukraine and the Europeans how important they were to the survival of the West, with the capital W. It turns out they may be less important in Washington’s calculus after all.
Even a superpower like the US can’t afford underwriting two expensive wars at the same time while going on all fronts short of a hot war against China. Now that Israel has come calling, guess which war America will now pick?
War is an investment; that’s why it’s important to know what you are investing in. There are downsides and upsides, and throwing good money after bad. And sometimes, you just have to cut your losses, however painful. That, I would argue, is actually one of the key lessons in Clausewitz’s On War, for those who have bothered to read it.
With the Ukraine war, the US has made Europe absorb most of the downsides while it is taking most of the upsides. The upsides are aplenty, even if they didn’t reach the maximum target price, which was the collapse of the Russian regime and the economy.
It wasn’t just the US defence industry, particularly the “Big Five” arms manufacturers, that got a big boost from the war but the US oil and gas sector, which has profited mightily by selling at inflated prices back to Europe who voluntarily cut off cheap Russian supplies. Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines? Anyone?
To be fair, the European cutoffs mostly targeted Russian oil while it continued, rather quietly, to import gas. Still, rarely in modern history do you see so many Western virtue-signalling politicians so busy imposing effectively reverse sanctions on their own populations.
That’s in the form of severe inflation and rising costs of living, coupled with the worst immigrant crises in multiple EU countries. No wonder the far-right fringe – and even the far left – are gaining grounds across the continent; a new far-left party has just been formed in Germany, by the country’s most famous communist Sahra Wagenknecht.
It’s a popular revolt in the biggest European economies against a liberal EU ruling elite represented by Brussels that, along with Nato, has bent over backwards for the US. These are structural changes to the European body politic that are fraught with dangers and uncertainties.
Meanwhile, Washington is clearly preparing its domestic public and its European allies for a Ukraine exit. Now it’s time to cash in and reinvest in Israel/Palestine. Remember, war is an investment, and the US has never stopped investing, from regionally to globally, since its inception.
Richard Haass, who until June, was the president of the Council on Foreign Relations – which serves as the revolving door between the public and private sectors for the creme de la creme of the US foreign policy establishment – is now advising for a ceasefire, among other policy luminaries.
He has been doing the rounds on US major networks and publications.
“We are already stretched to support Israel and worry about Taiwan. Even if we give everything we want to give to Ukraine, it still won’t lead to success,” he told MSNBC.
“What I argue therefore is, the United States needs to have some very direct conversations with Ukraine and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky – talk about reducing their emphasis on liberating land, putting their emphasis on holding on to what they have got … Right now, let’s have 80 per cent of the country safe, 80 per cent of this country rebuilt. I would actually propose a ceasefire.”
I find it most ironic that Haass said all that on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which is hosted by the husband and wife team, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
Mika is the daughter of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser who was among the few “wise men” of US foreign policy warning consistently against letting Russia, China and Iran form an “axis”, something which Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine has exactly brought about, and with North Korea thrown in as an extra gift to Moscow!
I was dying for Mika to raise her late father’s prescient warning, but she just sat there meekly. Perhaps that’s the heavy price you pay for working under the US mainstream legacy media.
But I digress. Haass has spelled out the latest thinking of the Washington foreign policy elite: Israel over Ukraine, and don’t throw good money after bad.
That’s why you now have prominent news stories about the need for negotiations; US Republicans trying to halt more funding for Ukraine; and the widely reported dismal failure of the Ukraine offensive, as opposed to its supposed spectacular breakthroughs only a few months ago.
Tragically, Ukraine could have got a peace deal a few months after the Russian invasion, according to a former top Zelensky adviser and ally David Arakhamia, and his account was never disputed by senior Western officials. But London and Washington scuppered the negotiations and pressured Kyiv to fight on. From then on, the Russian invasion became the West’s or Washington’s proxy war.
But 80 per cent of Ukraine is not nothing. As Bill Gates said on record before the war, Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe.
After the war, boy, it’s going to be a bonanza for some people.
Zelensky has declared loudly that Wall Street and the US defence industry will be the backbone of the country’s foreign investment for reconstruction. Everyone can see where this is going.
Europe may get a smaller piece of the pie but at the cost of its liberal-social-democratic traditions being undermined. After the war, it may have to depend even more on the US for security, along with all the ceding of autonomy that France has warned against, but without any economic quid pro quo from Washington.
Or the EU can tilt back towards Beijing at a time when both economies need each other more than ever, with one facing deflation and the other stagnation. But that’s sure to upset the US with its intensifying economic warfare against China.
De-risking or decoupling? Actually, it’s more like being stuck between a Chinese rock and an American hard place.
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