An Enemy to Its Friends

Comments

• 19 February 2025 at 8:10pm
  Rory Allen says:
  America has adopted the same position towards Russia now, under the Trump faction of the Republican Party, as it would have done in 1939 towards Germany if the German American Bund had been in control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress.
  
  We can no longer expect help from the United States to save what is left of Western liberal democracy. The only hope, slender though it is, is for Western Europe to massively increase its military spending, become totally independent from America for its weapons technology, and increase the size of its armed forces, possibly including conscription in those countries that don't already have it.
  
  We assume that without US arms, Europe is defenceless, but this may not be the case. Sweden's Gripen is probably better than anything Russia currently has, three European countries have excellent tank and IFV designs, and presumably drones can be built as plentifully and cheaply in Europe as in Russia.
  
  What may be lacking is the political will. Russia has spent decades systematically building up the far right parties in Europe, and their investment has paid off. We can be certain that Reform UK and its counterparts in other countries will set up howls of grief and outrage in the event that Europe takes serious steps to make sure it can defend against Russia, either on Ukraine's current border or perhaps further West.

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• 19 February 2025 at 8:22pm
  Ian Ross says:
  Trump is the great disruptor and propagandist. His philosophy, if you can call it that, is grounded on the 'deal' - if he wants it he can buy it or bully his opponent into submission. He will MAGA by attacking any economy that has a trade surplus through tariffs - 'such a beautiful word' - while forgetting that trade surpluses are not the real issue - that is balance of payments which include services. He wants world peace on his terms because, as a certifiable narcissist, he has no interest in anybody apart from himself and that includes US citizens. It also allows him to make false claims about anything because the propaganda noise drowns out any questioning. His sociopathic personality reveals a belief that he is the greatest man on earth.
  In reality he is both lazy and certainly not cerebral. Geopolitics cannot be resolved by real estate deals. Tariffs have proved time and time again to be counterproductive - most spectacularly in the Great Depression when world trade declined by 60%. Buying Putin's line about the awfulness of Ukraine in requiring self-determination is the most egregious example of this, as is making Gaza a new Riviera, or buying Greenland, or using force to take over the Panama Canal. He reminds me of a toddler given a new basket of toys.
  
  We have to put up with this for four years by which time I hope American electors have realised the folly of their choice. The only way to do this is for NATO, the EU and the UK to develop an alternative strategy with the first objective being to secure Ukraine's right to decide for themselves and provide the military cover to ensure that Russia will face the consequences if it invades again. NATO membership is not a pre-requisite, and such arrangements need back channel diplomacy to save Putin's face. All that is necessary is for him to understand is that immediate and forceful intervention will follow any further incursions.
  
  Europe could have ended this war much earlier had it been decisive at the outset - through a 'no fly' zone for example. Instead it only provided enough support for Ukraine to keep fighting, but not enough to win. As we have all discovered fighting wars elsewhere has collateral damage in the cost of living. So what is most important - protecting our way of life or our borders? There are dissenting views from Orban and Fico but so what? I am no expert on EU voting rules but I am sure that the Baltics, Sweden and Finland, Poland and the big hitters (including the UK) could form an informal alliance that could both constrain Putin and Trump. We need to remind ourselves that the EU economy is 12 times bigger than that of Russia.
  
  As it stands the EU seems preoccupied with saving itself. This is an opportunity to take sensible leadership from the front-runner Trump.
  

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  • 19 February 2025 at 9:32pm
    wse9999 says: @ Ian Ross
    Totally agree.
    An historic confrontation, now suddenly exacerbated by the mystifying collaboration of Trump with a Hitlerian Neo-Soviet Russia.
    Thus what will his avowed foe Xi be making of this? It surely raises the chances of Taiwan going hot.
    Yes Europe has no choice but to sock it to Russia, stand with Ukraine.
    Just look at a map.
    Yes it's from a standing start, will take time, but yes their economy dwarfs Russia.
    The strategy, loudly telegraphed, should be simply to increase the cost to Russia beyond what Putin's "electorate" will tolerate.
    Regime change would bring a huge peace dividend, to both sides.
    Meanwhile it's hard to believe Trump will not be disciplined at home, even by the GOP one way or another.
    The whole ugly Trump experience may leave democracy stronger for it in the longer term.

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  • 19 February 2025 at 10:24pm
    Adam Chmielewski says: @ Ian Ross
    Ian Ross writes that „As it stands the EU seems preoccupied with saving itself.” It has now become painfully obvious that Europe might save itself only by taking a decisive step to support Ukraine by saying no to Putin-the-annihilator and deranged Trump. Otherwise, in not that distant future, Putin’s troops will be marching down not only Marszałkowska but also Unter den Linden and maybe even further, and the European Union will be paying the taxes to Russia.

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  • 20 February 2025 at 12:52pm
    Delaide says: @ Ian Ross
    Surely the mid-terms will see the Republicans lose the House and, though less likely, they could lose the Senate. Change could come in two years, if the world can hang on till then.

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• 19 February 2025 at 8:24pm
  Harry Gilonis says:
  Oddly, it almost a year ago to the day that James Meek wrote a piece in the ‘LRB’ explaining how the crippling problem facing Ukraine was the supply of military materiel, particularly ammunition:
  
  https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n04/james-meek/two-armies-in-one
  
  Obviously enough Pete Hegseth is not going to act to ameliorate that.
  

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  • 20 February 2025 at 10:41am
    James Meek says: @ Harry Gilonis
    They still don't have everything they need, no army ever does, but two things have changed the situation. One is that European arms manufacturers have stepped up their output, with the Czech republic leading quite a successful effort to buy ammunition for Ukraine from non-western countries. It seems unlikely the US, which has also increased munitions production, will fund more weapons for Ukraine (much of it nominal funding in the sense what Ukraine gets is second hand gear America wasn't using) but that doesn't mean they wouldn't sell weapons to Europe for Ukraine to use. The net result is that supplies are somewhat less of a problem than they were, but the other thing that has happened is that Ukraine's problem conscripting fresh soldiers for its army has got much, much worse, and is now the main reason it can't hold back Russia's creeping, low-tech advances in the east.

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• 19 February 2025 at 8:54pm
  j. w. says:
  Anyone who believes that Putin has any intention of ever honoring the terms of any agreement or treaty he signs is themselves suffering from cognitive dissonance.
  
  Here is a (surely incomplete) list of the treaties, conventions and agreements violated by Russia over the last two decades:
  
  ◦ United Nations Charter
  ◦ All Geneva Conventions and in particular, the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention
  ◦ Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention that define war crimes against civilians
  ◦ Rome Statute (Russia not a party but bound by the force of customary law).
  ◦ 1899 Hague Convention on Belligerent Occupation
  ◦ Helsinki Accords
  ◦ Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  ◦ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
  ◦ European Convention on Human Rights
  ◦ Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
  ◦ UN Genocide Convention
  ◦ New Start Treaty
  ◦ Conventional Forces in Europe
  (CFE) Treaty
  ◦ Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty
  ◦ Treaty on Incidents On and Over the High Seas
  ◦ Open Skies Treaty
  ◦ NATO - Russia Founding Act
  ◦ 2008 Ceasefire Agreement with Georgia
  ◦ Minsk I and Minsk II Agreements
  ◦ 1994 Budapest Memorandum
  ◦ 1999 Istanbul Summit Agreement committing Russia to withdraw its army from Moldova and Georgia by 2002
  ◦ Moscow Mechanism of OSCE
  ◦ 2003 Ukraine-Russia Treaty on the Sea of Azov
  ◦ 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation that recognised the mutual inviolability of borders
  

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• 19 February 2025 at 9:03pm
  Conn Nugent says:
  Brilliant, sophisticated piece on a tawdry but crazily consequential development.
  
  -- Conn Nugent
  Washington DC

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• 19 February 2025 at 10:31pm
  David Ascher says:
  The suggestion that the EU could start a US style re-armament program is both naive and puzzling. It is naive to think that the Trumpists and other American Imperialist wannabes, won't turn around, after years and years of demanding that Europe re-arm and stop depending on the US to guarantee European security , and declare that rearmament by the EU is hostile to US interests. Of course, they're right because the US sells EU countries quite a bit of weaponry and EU countries making their own toys is against the interests of US weapons manufacturers.
  
  It is puzzling because the idea that Russia could launch a military invasion against any Western European country seems so completely unlikely when Russia has had to struggle so hard in its invasion of Ukraine which absolutely nobody imagined would last more than a month or two when it started. Beyond that, Russia has the friendly right-wing parties to collaborate with them and it has valuable resources to sell to Europe. Why invade Western Europe when you can have plenty of political and economic leverage without the costs of a military invasion.?

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• 20 February 2025 at 8:52am
  shewie says:
  "If you're not a completely brainwashed Rusophreniac, and if you really studied and listened to Putin in the past 20 years, all he ever wanted is a peaceful, mutually beneficial and prosperous relationship with the rest of the European continent.
  
  But, driven by one US admin after another, the European puppets fell into a trap of illusory self-entitlement and hubris, ignoring and ridiculing the legitimate security and national concerns that Putin has outlined in his historic Munich speech in 2007. Nothing has changed since then - neither Putin's rhetoric, nor Eurocrat's approach to Russia.
  
  In fact, pushed by the US, and led by the UK, the rotting Eurocrats have managed to escalate what once was called the Cold War into a full blown bloodbath in Ukraine. Driven by ideological insanity, they did it despite damaging their own economic and social status quo.
  
  And now it has come the time to pay the price. There is a reason just two days ago Lavrov gave the most un-Lavrov speech that I have ever seen. The reckoning is coming, in fact it has already begun, and we are in the front row seat to witness the fall of the decomposing neo-liberal regime that has consumed the citizens of Europe and has caused needless suffering to millions of people with the so-called "European values", when in reality it's just a violent blood-sucking parasite-infested jungle masquerading as the "garden".
  
  These vampires at the wheels of European power deserve everything that's coming for them."
  Quote from Olga Bazova.
  Who's right? James Meek or Olga Bazova.

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  • 25 February 2025 at 7:45pm
    whatnot says: @ shewie
    personally, I think Lavrov was at his 'most Lavrov' when alluding in some interview to Hitler's Jewish roots - whether he picked it up from Putin's dream about a 'peaceful relationship' with 'rotting Eurocrats' I can't quote tell, because of my 'ideological insanity'.
    
    but who is this AI 'Olga', 'specializing in humoristic geopolitical analytics, exposing hypocrisy and satire'? and what to make of her 'Rusophreniac' projection - did she mean 'Rusophobe'?
    
    regardless, I think it's safe to say that James has nothing on her.

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• 20 February 2025 at 8:57am
  steve kay says:
  Thanks for sharing that with us Shewie. Just the thing to read at the breakfast table after the Grauniad reporting Trump’s ascendancy to the status of a king.

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• 20 February 2025 at 1:12pm
  Sebastian Arthur Hau says:
  Thank you for your text, Mr. Meek - as always.

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• 20 February 2025 at 11:47pm
  Graucho says:
  The human head in the sand syndrome is eternal. The guy writes Mein Kampf, no one takes him seriously and then he does exactly what he promised. Putin writes that the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. was a disaster and that he wants to recreate it, no one takes him seriously and he proceeds exactly as promised. Trump campaigns promising to sell the Ukraine down the river, European politicians don't take him seriously and guess what. Well we are where we are and I want Putin's bitchboy out of NATO. He is now the alliance's Achilles heel. He will never honour article 5. He's even threatening to annex one NATO ally and annex the territory of another. From now on Europe's policy has to be "You want isolationism, we will isolate you". Lobby to have oil and other commodities priced in Euros. Invite Canada to join the single market and help them build oil pipelines to export outside the U.S. Cut generous trade deals with LATAM and provide them with alternate export markets. Surcharge all U.S. corporations doing business in Europe. Right now consumers in muslim countries are boycotting U.S. companies because of their Gaza policies. Stop trading with Israel and steal America's lunch.

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  • 21 February 2025 at 9:40am
    shewie says: @ Graucho
    Graucho is a parody account, right?

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  • 21 February 2025 at 2:57pm
    Graucho says: @ shewie
    No more than shewie is an FSB account, right?

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  • 21 February 2025 at 7:48pm
    shewie says: @ Graucho
    FSB: Federation of Small Businesses; a non-profit organisation that supports small businesses and the self-employed in the UK. That's me!

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  • 21 February 2025 at 10:19pm
    Delaide says: @ Graucho
    Clear as day, he’s one of Putin’s puppies.

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  • 22 February 2025 at 4:19pm
    Graucho says: @ shewie
    Something for your enjoyment.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk0nUUqG_Ag

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  • 22 February 2025 at 9:17pm
    Ted Eames says: @ Graucho
    Brilliant! Thank you for posting. I guess that the truths here will be lost on Russian bots like "shewie".

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  • 23 February 2025 at 10:42pm
    Delaide says: @ Graucho
    Still laughing. Thank you.

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• 21 February 2025 at 8:04am
  Charles Turner says:
  Trump is a paid Russian agent. His 2016 election campaign was supported by the same people who supported Yanukovych's 2010 campaign in 2010. Don't be surprised if the US now not only stops supplying weapons to Ukraine but starts supplying them to Russia so it can finish the job. Before that happens the EU needs to supply Ukraine with whatever it needs and place no restrictions on their use. Whatever happens, given Putin's imperial ambitions - which means the ambition to wipe Ukraine off the map - the only just peace is one that happens after Russia's complete military defeat. Such a defeat will, in the long run, be good for Russia and the Russian people.

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• 22 February 2025 at 9:01pm
  Ted Eames says:
  An excellent summary by James Meek.
  I am amazed that some comments hold out the hope that things might change in 4 years time, or even earlier. Anyone who thinks that Trump, or a Chosen One from amongst his coterie, will lost the next election is living in cloud cuckoo land. Steps are already being taken in the 'swing states' and elsewhere to make this an autocratic dynasty.
  Trump's love of 'the deal', and his reverence for Putin, will go much further yet: he will be selling arms to Russia before the end of his current term.
  To use Meek's formula: there is no evidence to suggest that there is any political or moral force within the USA to stop him.

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• 23 February 2025 at 3:43am
  Mark Sanders says:
  I think perhaps we should consider reality as opposed to how we think things should be. The reality is that no matter who won the U.S. presidential election, nothing can be done to prevent Russia from taking over the regions in the east it is fighting for, short of some nuclear game of chicken. There is no good reason for anymore soldiers going home in body bags.

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• 26 February 2025 at 7:38am
  wse9999 says:
  Neither side can afford to lose this war.
  
  After gaining so little at such great cost in lives and roubles it’s hard for Putin to settle for much less than the maximal demands already issued [cf Riyadh] without risking his job.
  Putin’s fighting has got nowhere in over 2 years since late 2022, losing c200k dead / c600k wounded, and now sending in old men. Also the economy is now seriously stretched.
  
  The key question is simply can Trump’s Administration live with the sufficiently concessionary terms Putin needs to survive in power without excessively offending his US electorate? Bearing in mind the cost in political capital for the Biden Administration from the US 2021 Afghanistan retreat.
  
  Meanwhile Ukraine plus US and Europe dwarf Russia, economically and militarily. Given Russia’s fundamentally weak hand then hardening settlement terms might therefore threaten Putin’s job, offer an historic prize for the Ukraine side, maybe including trading with a post-Putin Russia.
  
  Maybe someone [Europe?] needs to educate Trump?
  

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