Notes & Queries I

Trump on Ukraine, European Desperation & Emerging Pressure on Israel

We now have a broad consensus on what Trump’s policy on Ukraine is - “I tried, I failed. Europe is not serious about Russia. It’s Europe’s War and I am going home, taking the profits of flogging guns to Ukraine. If the Europeans take a commission, that’s fine by me.” The Russians appeared relaxed about the US position (less so about the European). Reports from Kiev suggested that the Ukrainian interpretation of events is not much different from that of the Russians, the Financial Times, the Spectator and ours - Europe is on its own and the war continues with the gloves off. Zelensky may not be entirely happy but he has achieved one important thing: the departure of direct US military and financial support (though not intelligence and other support) did not leave him bereft but resulted in the Europeans being trapped into backing an unending resistance to Russia at Europe’s expense. Europe got out-played and not for the first time.

Western war policies are now being ‘strategised’ by a ramshackle network of Europeans under the aegis of NATO. Brinkmanship over flights and air space is now becoming quite dangerous. At stake for Russia is access to Kaliningrad and free passage in the Baltic which is ‘existential’. An ‘accident’ is becoming increasingly possible. We remain broadly sanguine about the prospects for continental war largely because Russia remains a rational actor (which is more than can be said about many Europeans) but the room for a mistake and the consequent logic of mobilisation as in previous world wars remains large. Who shoots who down first will define the narrative but what us mugs on the ground can be sure of - the truth of the matter (why something was shot down and possibly precisely where and even by whom) may well be excised from the explanation. Hybrid warfare always requires narrative control.

European strategy (such as it is) appears to be, somewhat forlornly, to try to get subject populations to get excited about the ‘Russian threat’ and then connive in the dismantling of their own welfare structures in order to release funds for warfare across fiscally challenged state structures. The European economy is, in fact, fairly sturdy (at least so long as Governments can resist meddling) but a lot of the positive news is coming from everywhere except the three major historic power houses of the continent (the UK, Germany and France). All have serious fiscal problems. These problems are all the more problematic because all possible solutions are in danger of creating either political crises that benefit populist revolt or fiscal decisions that undermine the private sector or both - killing the goose that lays the golden egg of the growth that is the only credible solution to incoming economic crises.

Although there are hotspots of innovation, Europe in general is way behind on the new technologies driving the next technological revolution, notably artificial intelligence and robotics. Its ideological commitment to Net Zero appears to rely on subsidy and Chinese imports. The Keynesian militarism of liberal governments as an alternative either to planned economies within an integrated Europe or libertarian deregulation and the freeing up of entrepreneurial private sector capitalism is a hodge-podge of inadequate policies smacking of ignorance, compromise and desperation. It also depends on maintaining international tensions and everyone believing that Russia wants to expand into Europe which is, in fact, a rather absurd proposition but one easily believed by armchair observers of the situation.

The very long play towards a Net Zero economy might have been sensible if the fools had not suddenly cut off all Eurasian energy product and made the continent dependent on the emerging US-Gulf energy axis instead. Strategic planning seems not to be a strong point amongst European ‘technocrats’ (ironically). There seems to be no will to recognise errors and move swiftly to reverse direction - whether on migration, Net Zero, regional peace or economic and fiscal structures.

The reason for this is clear - the whole ramshackle structure is not held together by strong institutions but by a coalitional belief system that has long since become dysfunctional but which cannot be abandoned for fear of imploding the structures of power that hold the European Project together. Either Europeans put in the institutional structures (not easy with the emergence of populist movements) or they change or at least adapt the belief system. Either option requires time and time has been running out since the failure to make peace with Russia in 2023.

This is the context for the drone events around Danish airports. Officially, there is “no evidence of Russian involvement” and yet those same officials wittered on about hybrid warfare as a ‘given’. After the Nordstream debacle and the UFO flap in America, one does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to see something very dodgy going on that may have nothing to do with the Russians and something to do with the growing desperation at the lack of commitment to increased defence spending in voter populations. This is spending absolutely essential for the Atlanticist elite in order to keep the US nuclear security ‘guarantees’ in place but also to maintain the last ditch attempt at ‘growth’, the only way to rescue the European Project. It seems not to have occurred to European elites that perhaps the problem lies in a slavish adherence to Atlanticism and inherent flaws within the Project.

One motive for the drone ‘attack’ might even be ‘false flag’ by the same people who brought you the Nordstream explosion and hope to have the Russians blamed. Another might be ‘black ops’ to frighten people into conformity with NATO policy. But others might include anarchist or populist or green independent actors acting on ideological grounds. Or does someone just think it is fun because it can be done? Or it could be Russian - let’s not let Moscow off the hook yet. We honestly do not know but there is no intrinsic reason to trust authorities who are clearly out of ideas and desperately trying to defend the indefensible.

What was more revealing was that no one in Denmark who had been elected appeared to have any idea of what is going on. If it is not the Russians then, as with Nordstream, silences seem to be in order … to keep faith with a collapsing narrative …or perhaps elected officials are no longer in any loop that matters. Still, there was no threat to anyone’s safety. Shooting down the drones down might have created that threat. Creating awareness of hybrid warfare capacity for funding purposes might be the most cynical interpretation but it is probably true that a lot of people would probably fall for it and, as in any Agatha Christie murder mystery, motive is there as well as means.

And, yes, the Russian economy is now under some significant strain although less than is being reported in our somewhat tame legacy media. The ‘West’ almost certainly underestimates what Russia is prepared to ‘suffer’ to meet what are ‘existential’ ends and over-estimates its own ability to hold itself together and sustain a two or three year war without handing the Continent over to populists and losing access to key markets like China and India. Eventually exhaustion will bring everyone to the table but it is hard to see Russia losing the core of what it has gained territorially. The Ukrainians are now planning yet another offensive. We will have to see how that goes.

Russian propaganda also seized on Trump’s comments about an international agreement on bio-weapons in order to put a more positive gloss on the UNGA Speech. First, such an agreement is a specific where Washington and Moscow can agree (and so maintain a conversation). Second, it is a ‘gateway drug’ to the denuclearisation agenda which is a key part of Moscow’s agenda and also a significant aspiration of Trump. Third, (uncomfortably for the West), Russian propaganda about bio-weapons research being undertaken by the Pentagon off-balance sheet under Biden in Ukraine may have some validity.

We seem to be in the depressing situation where something that could have been resolved at any time in the last few years will be resolved on terms little different to what has been on offer since the spring of 2023 but with the key players exhausted and depleted to the benefit of the US and China. Europe, still economically very strong in aggregate, albeit with fiscally challenged and weak Governments, is becoming a dependency of Washington. Russia is not in a much better situation in relation to China. Russia at least has sound existential reasons for the risks it is taking whereas Europe has locked itself into ideologically-driven liberal positions that are subverting its very ability to thrive as an independent player on the global stage. Dumb does not cover what is happening here.

There are shifts too in the Middle East. Israeli defiance of increasing if weak recognition of Palestine had seemed to be leading towards an Israeli seizure of the northern third of the West Bank (at least as threat). Trump’s insistence that any seizure of land by Israel on the Palestinian West Bank is not going to happen on his watch places Israel on notice. This may be part of a shift towards support for an emergent Arab-Islamic alliance (an ‘Arab NATO’) into which Israel can be slotted once Netanyahu has gone. The recently announced Saudi-Pakistani pact (which implicitly draws in ‘conservative’ powers like Egypt) may be regarded as a sub-set of the Western bloc as Iran, Afghanistan and increasingly India are drawn elsewhere. The new world order is slowly forming and Israeli right wing ambitions are on the way to being curtailed (albeit in return for security) if they did but know it.

Western recognition of Palestine is, however, very weak if only because (as Starmer has pointed out) the recognition does not come with recognition of the sovereign right of Palestine to have a defence and security capability. Placating domestic non-Jewish populations concerned about humanitarian issues and the US at the same time is twisting the non-US West into a raft of inconsistencies and divisions. Political leaderships in Europe are as fragmented and inconsistent as they are on nearly all foreign policy matters offering us a mix of confusion, cowardice and incompetence.

The war in Gaza is getting nastier by the day as if that were possible, made more problematic by the lack of independent reporting. There are no observing journalists on the ground who are not at least partially controlled by Israel or Hamas and some of the latter are simply murdered at will by airstrikes when they are uncovered. The Israeli position here is rational. Complex hybrid warfare today now means narrative control (a constant theme of this article) albeit that Netanyahu seems to have lost the plot on that strategically quite some time ago.

The Israelis are also getting nervous about Egyptian troop movements in Sinai where conditions have been close to anarchic in the littoral between the Suez Canal and Gaza for many decades. The movements are probably just precautionary in order to deal with movements of people and fighters out of Gaza. They almost certainly do not offer any threat to Israel but rather might be a police operation against the criminal infrastructures that support Hamas.

Egypt is unlikely to want to challenge the US directly (as we have seen, Arab conservatives seem to be moving towards an independent pro-Western foreign and security policy in a more co-ordinated way). However, the Israelis will be worried that the Egyptians may intervene under certain conditions to secure Southern Gaza for ‘humanitarian’ reasons with much of the world supporting them in this and the Israeli military becoming too stretched to counter such a move. Egypt, of course, would probably quite like to exploit the situation to restore sovereign military control of Sinai.

There are also developments in Syria with Al-Julani in Washington to put Syria’s case for the US to assist in restraining Israeli incursions. The attempt to disarm Hezbollah by the Lebanese Government under US pressure is worth keeping an eye on. The Pakistani political and military leadership also turned up at the White House not long after for an equally friendly photo op. All in all, we seem to be seeing a quite subtle process of creating a pro-Western regional stabilisation programme under ultimate US hegemonic control designed to integrate Israel into the region and oblige Iran to come to terms in some way. The President seems confident that we will see progress on peace in the region and, despite the intensity of the horrors and manoevring, there does seem to be more hope of progress here than in Ukraine.