Zerohedge ran a very insightful article the other day that I’ve been sitting on. It was written by a former British diplomat, Alistair Crooke. The actual article goes into a lot of inside politics detail about what’s going on in Europe, working from an interview that France’s Macron gave the other day:
Nord Stream: The Geopolitics Of Keeping Germany 'Down', Russia 'Out', & Instability In Ukraine
All I want to do here is lay out the big picture of what’s driving geopolitics, and has been since WW2. Here’s the general idea. We in America tend to regard NATO as conceived, from very laudable motives, to defend “freedom” against Communist inhumanity. Is there truth in that? Certainly, however …
America is simply not the same country that it was in the immediate post war years. Post 1968 everything changed—and has continued to change.
The author frames this in the context of traditional British foreign policy: to prevent any combination of continental European powers combining such that they would pose a threat to Britain. As Sir Humphrey Applebee explains it so lucidly:
No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time to join with Britian to form an Anglo-Axis, although there is always the sneaking suspicion that the British tail may too often be wagging the American dog—that would probably be the view of non Anglophile Europeans, to include Sergei Lavrov. The result is that the US has found itself in the position of attempting to maintain an arguably obsolete security structure. The difficulty, of course, has been that the continental powers—primarily France and, especially, Germany—have not been in a position to do anything about this arrangement and, until the end of the Cold War and during the decades of Russian disarray, lacked a compelling motive for rapid action.
Putin’s resurrection of Russia has changed that dynamic—to the dismay of the Anglo-Axis. To be fair, there are other European countries that are also troubled by current geopolitical developments. Poland is certainly one of those countries but, interestingly, Norway and Denmark have or are in the process of surrendering large chunks of their sovereignty to the US in exchange for what they conceive to be their national security. But that’s a pale shade of NATO.
So, here’s Crooke discussing current developments which appear to have led to the US climbing down from their previous degree of commitment to the puppet regime we installed in Ukraine. But, there’s a new force in the geopolitical equation in Europe: China.
… NATO was conceived, from the outset, as a means of Anglo-American control over Europe and more precisely for keeping Germany ‘down’, and Russia ‘out’ (in that old axiom of western strategists). Lord Hastings (Lionel Ismay), NATO’s first Secretary General, famously said that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.
This mindset lingers on, but the formula has acquired today a greater import, and a new twist: To keep Germany ‘down and price uncompetitive’ versus U.S. goods; to keep Russia ‘out’ from being Europe’s source of cheap energy; and to keep China ‘fenced out’ from EU–U.S. trade. The aim is to contain Europe firmly within America’s narrowly defined economic orbit and compelled to forgo the benefits of Chinese and Russian technology, finance and trade – thus helping towards achieving the aim of barricading China within its borders.
Largely overlooked is the geo-political import: that China, for the first time, is directly intervening (taking a very clear and powerful stance) on a matter central to European affairs. In the longer term, this suggests that China will be taking a more politically orientated approach to its relations with European states.
In this context, at the Biden and Olaf Scholtz’s press conference in Washington this week – lit up, in flashing neon lights, for all to see – Biden literally bullied Germany into a commitment to scrap Nordstream 2 (should Russia invade Ukraine), reflecting Washington’s aim to keep Germany on the leash of bloc discipline. He effectively said that if Scholtz doesn’t bin Nordstream, then he, Biden, would do it: “I can do it”, he underlined.
My recollection of that press conference is a bit different. My belief is that Scholtz remained carefully non-committal. That was almost certainly his intention, gamed out well before arrival in DC:
Yet, the moment he gives that undertaking, Germany’s little slice of sovereignty is gone – Scholtz yields it to Washington. Moreover, Macron’s aspiration to some wider euro-autonomy is gone too, for without French and German policy alignment, EU ‘pretend sovereignty’ is gone. Moreover, if Nordstream is binned, EU energy security is blown away. And with little real alternative supply, the EU is nailed for good to expensive U.S. LNG dependency (with the likelihood of gas price crises at home, too).
It is not clear (and a likely source of anxiety for Macron), whether Germany’s refusal to give Biden his desired Nordstream ultimatum represents any meaningful reserve of Euro-sovereignty at all. What would happen were Washington to incite the Ukrainian militia ‘crazies’ into some outrage, or into a false flag attack that triggers mayhem?
Would Scholtz be able to hold his Nordstream ‘line’ in the ensuing frenzy that the Anglo-axis would whip up? The little space which Macron has been trying to free-up in order to resolve the Ukraine crisis, would evaporate in the moment.
All this underlines what a narrow ‘line’ Macron is trying to walk: Were Schulz ‘to cave’ over Nordstream, Macron’s aspirations to re-shape Europe’s security architecture inevitably would be perceived in Moscow – though laudable – as hollow for their lack of any real European agency.
…
The most significant point to grasp from the Putin–Macron episode is that it gave the lie to the idea that Moscow is somehow hoping to open negotiations with the West on secondary issues, as a possible gateway to Russia’s existential concerns. Russia is open to negotiations, but only in respect to Putin’s three red lines: No NATO (including stealth NATO) in Ukraine; no strike missiles on Russia’s border; and the roll-back of NATO to the lines of 1997. Putin did not give an inch on the latter; he gave not an inch either on Minsk as the only solution in Ukraine. Putin did not give at all the impression of a man liking negotiating for the sake of negotiating.
Bottom line: No easy fixes. Even if conflict is frozen or paused over the short term, it will not hold longer-term, as the West refuses to acknowledge that Putin means what he says. This likely will only change through the sides’ experience of pain. The West, for now, sits sanguine in the belief that it has escalatory preponderance in the application of pain. We’ll see how true that proves to be.
It seems reasonable to expect we will have this crisis with us – in its various forms – for at least the next two years. These political initiatives mark but the start of a drawn-out, high-stakes, phase of a Russian effort to shift the European security architecture into a new form which the West presently rejects. The Russian aim will be to keep the pressures, and even the latency, of war ever-present, in order to harass war-averse Western leaders to make this necessary shift.
My point here is not to designate geopolitical good guys and bad guys. I will suggest that, as America has morphed from a Republic into an Empire, lines have been blurred. Predatory dynamics have been unleashed. It’s all very complex, and black and white distinctions don’t really serve conservatives well in analyzing US foreign policy.
No, my point is simply that the US establishment has allowed itself to be beguiled by Neocon fantasies of an “end of history.” History hasn’t ended yet—it won’t end until the human race ends. Donald Trump—he who had to be deposed—understood this. He also recognized that Putin’s Russia has good reasons (based in self interest) for being skeptical of the projected Eurasian Axis of German, Russia, China. Trump was willing to adopt a more inclusive relationship between NATO and Russia that would have seen the US and Russia cooperating. Whether he could have concluded this successfully is open to debate, but I don’t believe he could have responsibly done otherwise.
I present this simply for consideration. It’s a major dynamic—one of several—behind the political turmoil in the US.
I' m obviously not the only guy that watched Yes Minister on PBS, and Blackadder too. Pat Buchanan is a prophet, predicted the sorts of mischief caused by the transition of the USA from a republic into an empire.
Interesting Clinton's impact on the current mess:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1493605470485024769.html
Along with forcing Yeltsin's re-election, that gave us 20 years of Putin:
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/02/there-are-things-forgotten-by-chance.html
My take is Putin is doing his best to cause problems for the US, just like he did during Obama's Presidency. And it worked out well for him.
Europe - clueless, with weak leadership, a bit of anti Americanism, and trying to keep a low profile as they slowly become less and less of a global power.
US Leadership - Trying to distract from the disasters at home they created, so looking overseas for something positive and a distraction.
China - trying to become more and more powerful, and keep their President in power during this time of change, with a lot of arrogance.