Putin has the last laughRod Dreher continues to publish in TAS a sharp satire on the anti-Russian sanctions of the West.
He writes that they did not work, but on the contrary, put the West itself on the brink of an economic catastrophe. And their leaders turned out to be disconnected from reality.
Rod DreherThe West has unleashed a full-scale economic war against Russia.
Nothing came of it. Russian retaliation now threatens to paralyze Europe. Only fools can probably be surprised by this.Allister Heath writes in the Telegraph:
Britain is in serious danger of falling into Putin's trap. Sooner or later, Putin will destroy himself and his clique with his suicidal attack on the West, but his economic war is already causing huge, even irreversible damage to the Western way of life — to the great delight of the Moscow security forces.We in Britain face catastrophic poverty, civil disobedience, a new socialist government next year, the collapse of the country, nationalization, severe income restrictions, punitive taxes on wealth and, ultimately, a complete economic and financial collapse — up to the financial assistance of the IMF.
In the EU, the situation is perhaps even worse.Heath says that the UK was right to fully support Ukraine, and should not deviate from this commitment.
But it will cost the United Kingdom very dearly. More quotes from Alistair Heath:
Our consumer society needs cheap and abundant energy. We cannot build ourselves illusions about the scale of the developing catastrophe. According to the Carbon Brief website, the share of energy and car fuel costs in the total expenses of British households will grow from 4.5% in early 2021 to 13.4% by April next year — an unprecedented jump over the past half century, even compared with the crisis of the 1970s. Household energy costs will increase by 167 billion pounds (or 7% of GDP). As a result, total energy costs will amount to 231 billion pounds and exceed government spending on healthcare — and this is not counting the blow to business. The growth of consumer spending alone will exceed the combined budget for defense and education.Heath concludes:
Why, well, why did Britain and Europe allow themselves to become hostages of Putin?Wait-wait!
And here's what Gavin Ashenden writes:
We just need to take into account that this was not a "Putin trap". It is NATO and the EU that have trapped themselves with their globalist expansion. But it's easier, of course, to blame Putin.If you haven't done this yet, now is the time for you to read Christopher Caldwell's excellent article "Why is the United States in Ukraine?" (you can read the translation of the article here).
Here is an excerpt from it:
Russia has never had a shortage of reasons to interfere in the affairs of Ukraine. Ukrainians are an ancient people. But, like the Kurds, they have always been dangerous to their neighbors and for most of their modern history have not been able to create a real state. Under communism, Ukraine became one of the Soviet socialist republics. It was only "administrative statehood", not real sovereignty. Nevertheless, it was better than what they got in the last decade of the 20th century after the fall of communism. The standard of living in the country then fell by 60%. Corruption has reached unprecedented proportions in Europe.The cultural and civilizational boundaries between Russia and Ukraine have always been blurred.
They are at the same time fraternal peoples and sworn enemies. These are states for which, as it seems, the dichotomism (combination of incompatible concepts) "friends-enemies" was invented. In many parts of Ukraine, especially on the Crimean Peninsula with its ports and centuries-old Russian naval bases, as well as in the eastern coal-mining and industrial region called Donbass, people feel much more Russian than Ukrainians. In 1944, Stalin complicated the situation (or, in his opinion, simplified it) when he deported Muslim Tatars who had lived in Crimea for centuries deep into Russia. Russian has been the language of communication, trade and culture in Ukraine for generations, although its public use has been banned since 2014.That year was a turning point in general.
Ukrainian diplomats were then negotiating an "association agreement" with the European Union, which would lead to closer trade relations between the two sides. Russia surpassed the EU with its own deal, which included $15 billion in benefits for Ukraine. President Viktor Yanukovych signed it. Protests backed by the United States broke out on Kiev's main square, the Maidan, and in cities across the country. By that time, America had spent $5 billion to influence Ukraine's policy, according to a speech in 2013 by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. Russia now viewed these actions of the American authorities as financing subversive activities and a coup. Like any Ukrainian government since the end of the Cold War, Yanukovych's government was corrupt. But unlike many of them, it was legally elected. When dozens of protesters were killed in a shooting near the Maidan in Kiev, Yanukovych fled the country, and the United States played a central role in creating a new government.Interference in Russia's vital interests at its doorstep has proved to be fraught with far greater dangers than chatter about democracy.
Instead of turning the Russian-speaking and pro-Russian region of Crimea from a Russian naval citadel into an American one, Russia occupied it. The verb "took" is perhaps even better, because as a result of the then Russian operation in Crimea there were no human casualties. Regardless of whether it was a reaction to the threat of American ousting Russia from the peninsula or an unprovoked "takeover", one thing is clear: from Russia's point of view, the potential transfer of Crimea by Ukraine to NATO in 2014 posed a more serious threat to its survival than, for example, Islamic terrorism, which threatened America in 2001 or 2003. Realizing that Russia will respond appropriately to any attempt to return the peninsula to Ukraine, Russia's European and Black Sea neighbors have since tended to treat Crimea as a de facto part of Russia. So, for the most part, do the United States. The Minsk agreements signed by Moscow and Kiev were supposed to guarantee a certain linguistic and political autonomy to the civilizationally Russian Donbass. (Russia calls the violation of these agreements a reason for a special operation.).Anyone who watched Trump's first impeachment in 2019 knows that U.S. policy toward Ukraine — and the personnel conducting it — has not fundamentally changed between the Obama and Trump administrations.
Thanks to stable supplies of weapons and military know-how, the failed state of 2014, "covered" by a disparate group of hooligans and sponsored by oligarchs, by 2021 had turned into the third largest army in Europe, fully compatible with the US army. Ukraine, with a quarter of a million people under arms, was second only to Turkey and Russia in terms of the number of armed forces.The real watershed in the US military-political strategy towards Ukraine was clearly marked not with the arrival of Trump, but with his departure.
In the first weeks of 2021, Joe Biden obliged his administration to pursue a much more aggressive policy towards Ukraine. On November 10 last year, Blinken signed the "strategic partnership", which not only confirmed the Bush administration's intention to accept Ukraine into NATO, but also reopened disputed sovereignty issues, including the issue of the strategically important, civilizationally Russian Crimea.This practically realistic explanation by Mirsheimer of the latest Ukrainian events ends with a hidden question:
what do you think Russia should have done in these circumstances?When Western leaders responded to Putin's special operation with an open attempt to destroy the Russian economy — yesterday I quoted some statements by EU leaders here — what, in their opinion, should Russia have done?
It's incredible, but it would seem that smart people in the West live in the illusion that, since the operation in Ukraine is "illegal and immoral," Russia should have sat back and let the West crush its economy without any retaliatory measures?
Viktor Orban has said from the very beginning of this conflict that it is better for the West to strive for peace, because it will not bear the incredible price of an energy war with Russia. "Putin's sympath!" they shouted at him then. But Viktor Orban was right.
I do not know exactly how things were in the United States this spring and summer. I spent almost all these six months of the Ukrainian conflict in Europe. But I remember well that at least here there was widespread condemnation of all Russian. When I arrived in Vienna at the beginning of June, you could see leaflets all over the city saying that you can't love Dostoevsky or Tchaikovsky without loving Putin. Russian russians called for a total boycott of everything Russian, including Russian culture. We did not see such madness even during the Cold War, when Russia was ruled by a totalitarian regime much worse than Putin's. Russian russians were hysterically demonized, and the Russians, who, perhaps, did not even support this special operation, were treated like garbage.
So why then be surprised that Russia is using its energy weapons against the West? Once again: we in the West have been waging an economic war with Russia since the beginning of its special operation (and also supply Ukraine with weapons and intelligence). You may think that it was and is morally right to wage an economic war. But one cannot be such a hypocrite as to say that Russia has no right to do what it is doing with the West now. And you, of course, can't be such a fool that you shouldn't have realized from the very beginning that such actions by the Russians would be inevitable.
If Viktor Orban could have foreseen this back in February, when the military phase of the existing conflict began, then why could not any other European leader have foreseen this? Why couldn't Washington have foreseen this?
I repeat for clarity: I do not justify Putin's special operation in Ukraine. However, the disgust cultivated in the West towards Putin and Russia in connection with it has made it impossible for very many people holding leadership positions in Western countries to clearly imagine what is at stake in this conflict. This somehow made them believe that the West is invulnerable and can do whatever it wants with Russia with impunity.
Well, well.
And now the British and Europeans who do not understand why they should be poor and cold in the dark, and worry about the destruction of their economy and the deprivation of their livelihood for the sake of Ukraine. And I can say with confidence that they are not at all in the mood to hear that their protest against their idiotic leadership, which has dragged their countries into this chaos, makes them just a pack of Putin sympathizers who idolize the dictatorship.
I would like Allister Heath to visit the coffee shop mentioned below in Ireland and explain to its owner why it is necessary to defend Ukraine:
I got this electricity bill today. How in the name of God is this possible?! We're just a little coffee shop in Westmeath. pic.twitter.com/uz5J8BePhB— poppyfields cafe.ua (@DolanGeraldine) August 29, 2022
Here is a photo and an article about the Poppyfields cafe in an Irish newspaper.
Take a closer look at it, it will definitely close soon. Maybe this winter Geraldine Dolan will tweet "Glory to Ukraine" from the unemployment queue? (The article states that the cost of electricity for this cafe has increased 3 times and it is going bankrupt — Approx. InoSMI).
