A revelatory sample of Applebaum Cold Warrior chatter. Ukraine the test case of a faltering Western Hegemony!
ANNE APPLEBAUM:
I think the surprise is the openness and the harshness of Trump’s turn against Ukraine. We know he didn’t like President Zelenskyy. We know he’s inclined towards Russia. He favors Russia. He has done so for 40 years. He said it many times. His relationships with the Russians have been investigated over and over again, so it’s not really a mystery. The surprise is why he suddenly decided in the last couple of weeks to take what was actually a fairly good moment for Ukraine. Ukrainians have been either holding territory or even taking territory on the front line. They were striking very effectively against Russian targets deep inside the country, against refineries, but not only. And suddenly Trump decided to take Putin’s side and to put pressure on Zelenskyy without putting any pressure on Putin as well. And the timing is strange. It was a couple of weeks before the midterms.
Putin is a very unpopular figure in the United States. His support is in single digits. Zelenskyy, on the contrary, actually is popular. He’s more popular than Trump himself. And so why he suddenly chose this moment to make this hard switch is, I mean, I think it’s actually still mysterious. And what he did was is he put pressure on Zelenskyy to stop hitting Russian refineries and said that he would be importing diesel from Russia. It’s not enough diesel to make a difference to prices in the US. It’s not enough diesel, I wouldn’t think, to affect the US election. I mean, maybe it’s something Trump could say on the campaign trail, although I see he’s kind of dropped it. But what it did do is it suddenly gave a psychological boost to the Russians. Instead of putting pressure on them to end the war, he’s putting pressure on Ukraine essentially to capitulate and to stop fighting. And it’s disturbing for the Ukrainians.
It’s very disturbing for Europeans who are now the sole supporters of the Ukraine. US does not give any money to Ukraine anymore. And of course, this was accompanied with this decision, unclear who made it, probably Elon Musk, to turn down or to control the use of Starlink and Starshield. These are the internet electronics services that the Ukrainians use mostly to defend themselves actually because they have other things that they use for offense and certainly for attacking Russia. But the decision suddenly disrupted the Ukrainian frontline. It made it hard for the Ukrainians to anticipate incoming missiles and to warn people. And it looks like some people died for exactly that reason. So you had a very strange few days where suddenly Trump turned on Ukraine, Musk accompanied him, the Russian press went mad with joy, and a lot of Ukrainians died. And we’ve hit some kind of, I don’t know, some new balance now.
I think neither Trump nor Musk wanted to take responsibility for the fact that people died because they weren’t able to defend themselves. So now it’s equal again, but the damage has been done. It’s been done, I would say, especially in Europe. The last remaining sense that the United States could be a reliable partner and that the United States was on the same side more or less as the democratic world I think is beginning to fade.
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Anne Applebaum/Sikorski on Europe’s True Divide: a comment by Political Observer
Posted onFebruary 7, 2015 bystephenkmacksd
Is the fact that Ms. Applebaum/Mrs. Sikorsky should issue such a ringing endorsement of the demonstrably failed successor to the Free Market Delusion, Austerity, be anything like a surprise?
A number of dissenting opinions on the notion of Austerity’s putative success:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/economic_austerity_how_it_failed_in_one_chart.html
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/06/joseph_stiglitz_austerity_failed_greece_partner/
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-eurozone-austerity-reform-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2015-02
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/06/how-case-austerity-has-crumbled/
The alliance between the Neo-Cons and the Neo-Liberals is of long standing: Ms. Applebaum is a Neo-Con in all but name. But the fact that her badly cobbled together propaganda realizes itself in this argument : the social/political potency of the idea/practice of ‘national renewal’ as a particular historical/political aspiration across Europe ending in the alliance of Right and Left, as she narrates the story. Need we, as readers, look any further that the Coup Government of Ukraine as an object lesson of this narrative? Right Sector and Svoboda are active participants in that Coup Government. In view of this, should the Greek’s be offered the same tolerance/acceptance that Ms. Applebaum not only accepts but celebrates as worthy of our approbation and material aid in Ukraine?
Please don’t mention the collusion between the banks/investment houses and Greek Oligarchs to hide the reality of the actual condition of Greek indebtedness, it is antithetical to this writer’s ideologically charged essay. The Putin hysteria mongering, Russophobia is a function of The New Cold War rhetoric that the Neo-Cons/R2P zealots have adopted in anticipation of WWIII, and her marriage to Radosław Sikorski Polish politician and journalist.
Political Observer
