A huge, heavy ship, loaded to the brim, is turning around in narrow straits amid perilous waters. Thus, the world is performing a rare volte face under the daring captainship of Donald Trump and his breakneck mates Elon Musk and JD Vance. They couldn’t have cut it any closer – already we felt the breath of our doom. Whether the peril be nuclear mushrooms or pandemics crafted in Pentagon biolabs, or some other totally unpredicted collapse concocted by Schwab and his ilk – our new captain seems to recognize Scylla and Charybdis. Our fragile life was about to collapse when the young programmers of DOGE dove into deep cellars of hidden data and uncovered the pearls: millions of dollars earmarked for broken Haiti to make a dream home for Chelsey Clinton; millions of social security checks being sent to beneficiaries 150 years old and older; millions earmarked for regime change, for neutering boys and girls, for planting tempest and reaping storm all over the world. And after this brief but tempestuous overture rung, above the furious sounds of battle, the telephone; the telephone call of captain Trump to captain Putin.
God revealed His mercy and tender caring for us, calming the storm at the very last moment. It is a perfect replay of the Cuban Missile Crisis multiplied by a factor of one hundred. The voices calling for global nuclear holocaust were becoming increasingly frequent and shrill recently. Now one can hope they will be pushed back to the fringe. US and Russian delegations meeting again in Riyadh have agreed to restore the normal civilized diplomatic routine: appoint ambassadors, open missions, increase tenfold the embassy staff. Since Obama’s days the embassies had been run down to the bare minimum.
Immediately the Economist and similar rags have tried to spoil the mood. The Ukrainian crisis has not been solved yet, the war still goes on, they cry. Trump can’t be relied upon, they fume impotently. I always rely upon the Economist as a perfect inverse barometer; whatever they say we may consider pure enemy hasbara. They show Trump talking to Putin with the text “The worst nightmare of Europe”. For me, the worst nightmare would be ruins of Gaza or nuclear waste of Hiroshima, for them, peace would be the worst.
Our enemies do not want us to rejoice ever, but these are the days we could and should be glad. The Ukrainian war is a minor event compared with such a worldwide tectonic shift. The West has tried to isolate, break and consume Russia for many years, once it became aware that Putin is not a new Yeltsin, that he is a stubborn, strong-willed leader, a man like Hamlet: though you can fret him, you cannot play upon him. And ever since that time, over many years, Russia has suffered in isolation, while all the world press blamed Putin and incited legions of tiny dogs from Estonia to the Ukraine to bite him. Such conflict was inevitable because Russia and the West had different interpretations of 1991. For the West, it was the final defeat of Russian independence. For Russia, it was a lesson learned. Never again will Russia attempt to play by Western rules. So how could anyone solve such an intractable divergence of opinion? It took just one call from Donald Trump.
The Ukraine war is a small thing in comparison: Russia wants its seat at the table with the big boys, it wants to be safe, not besieged. Russia wants Western troops and arms as far from its borders as was promised to Gorbachev, this is important. The Ukraine war will be terminated in due time by diplomatic negotiations between civilized adversaries, as it should be. NATO’s war policy has revealed that the majority of the European states, governed by enemies of Trump, are also enemies of democracy. JD Vance was right: they forgot they should listen to their people instead of dictating to them.
In the UK, the popular leader Jeremy Corbyn had been dismissed on the phony accusation of anti-Semitism, and replaced by an extremely pro-Jewish and anti-Russian PM. He is, of course, pro-war. He also detains hundreds and thousands of his citizens for the terrible crime of a post in the social network, or a demonstration, or even worse: a silent prayer. In England, a silent prayer in your own house is a crime, too. France continues to be ruled by Macron, an ex-Rothschild banker, also (of course) warlike. In Germany, there are elections coming soon, but mainstream German politicians are all liberal-left and of course pro-war. In liberal Germany, prison waits for anybody stepping beyond the red line. They imprisoned and amputated the legs of the brilliant and daring lawyer Horst Mahler for a gesture. However, the fresh wind of Trump populist revolution blows over Germany as well.
Not only does the far-right AfD call for peace, so does the far-left BSW! The German civil society association Kulturtreff held two rallies in Berlin and Frankfurt under the slogan «No vote for NATO vassals, immediate peace for Europe!». The protesters demanded immediate peace negotiations, an end to the war in the Ukraine, an end to arms supplies to the Ukrainian state, and the restoration of economic and political cooperation between Germany and Russia. Kulturtreff states that «the current main opposition party CDU/CSU wants as does the ruling left-liberal coalition for the war in Europe to continue. The leading political parties of Germany do not have a single new solution in their program». The speakers supported the point of view of US Vice President Vance at the Munich Conference, who pointed out that the political elite of Europe is deeply disconnected from the real interests of the European people.
In Munich, there was a big demo, organised by followers of Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek socialist. They are called DiEM25, and they also call for peace and friendship with Russia.
Bear in mind that all calls for peace are forbidden in Europe; if you look for “Germany peace demo” in Google it shows you rallies for climate, or a rally for migrants, or some rally against a local version of Donald Trump; but no peace demo will be shown, unless it is full of blue-and-yellow banners demanding more war. In the UK and Germany, you might get a visit from the local gestapo if you click a cautious *like* under an anti-war post in your social network. In Sweden, a minister explained why the people are not allowed to decide their NATO status: “Membership in NATO is too important to ask the people to approve of it.”
In Russia, the anti-Putin and pro-Western opposition, as run by Navalny and ilk, relocated abroad claiming hatred of war. But they couldn’t retain that pretence for long. At first, they supported Israel’s war against the Palestinian people, and this was important because some 70 per cent of Russian oppositionists who left Russia after February 2022 landed in Israel. Obviously, they considered themselves Jewish, and Israel recognised them as Jews. It may be true that not everyone who opposes Putin is a Jew, but to a great extent it was true and to a great extent Jews continue to finance and people anti-Putin organizations in Russia. And now, with the first sight of Trump’s international thaw and the possibility of terminating the war in the Ukraine, these emigres have collectively called for more war. This was the end of the anti-war movement in the Russian World, in the archipelago of Russian-speaking communities – it seems that Russia’s counter-elites will not be happy until they see the Russian army defeated. They dream of US Abrams tanks rolling through Red Square, with Putin executed like Saddam Hussein, but instead those Abrams tanks (30 or 31 delivered to Zelensky) burned in the fields of Novorossia, far away indeed from Moscow.
However, many people, including first of all the parents of Russian teenagers, were excited by Trump’s call for peace, as the war in the Ukraine was a big bloodletting for Russians and Ukrainians alike. Although Russia’s fighters are all well-paid volunteers, there is no doubt that the Russian people will be happy when this war is concluded.
For the Russian leadership, the most important goal was defined in the so-called “Putin’s Ultimatum” of December 2021 (I wrote about it at length here: To Make Sense of War). Putin’s draft treaty called for an immediate end to NATO’s drive Nach Osten, keeping all Western armies and weapons out of former USSR republics. Now it seems this goal will finally be obtained.
It seems that we are at the brink of a great sea change. President Donald Trump has already given us a basket of blessings. There is a song Jews sing at Passover: if He would give us only this, it would be enough, Dayeinu. It is perfectly suitable in this case. If Trump only saved us from World War III, it would be enough. If he only disclosed the dark secrets of USAID, it would be enough. But let’s not forget to thank him, even if it be just for a moment while we think of what we want next. Such a drawback is his policy towards Palestine. Let’s hope that it will remain just silly talk.
The Atlantic Magazine gives us reason for some hope: it claimed Trump is building the most anti-Semitic cabinet in decades. It certainly has fewer Jews than the Biden’s cabinet, and less belligerence coming with fewer Jews.
Source: The UNZ review
