DISPATCHES from Oliver Boyd-Barrett: Sleeping Giants Arouse, and more.

On Ukraine, perhaps the biggest issue earlier in the week was whether Putin is a rationalist sucker obsessing over the joys of having that nice, cuddly, respectful Donald as a mate. What a time they might have!

We had established that Putin can compartmentalise: he can be firm with Zelenskiy while quite soft with the Yellow Doll. But Trump’s mood was altered, beginning to get testy even because Putin was definitely not walking back on any of his demands for an end to the Ukraine conflict, while Zelenskiy and Europe - the one in an economic death spiral and the other heading in the same direction (though distracted by the greasy thought of stealing Russia’s seized or frozen assets) were digging in their heels. Trump was wavering on the latest false hope: the issue of sending Tomahawks to Ukraine. Putin professed to be disappointed, saying, first that this could destroy Russian-US relations but then relenting and saying that it would only damage them. He probably understood, as most knowledgeable US sources attest, that the chances of workable, launchable Tomahawks getting to Ukraine, particularly in any number that could make a difference before Ukraine’s slice of the map shrinks a good deal further, are very slim.

So why not be all smiley for Don? But again, as many in Russia and the West are asking of Vladimir Putin, is, really, why bother, when the clear goal of the US remains unchallenged dominance?

Rather, what is needed, these voices likely say, is a real wake-up call to the US to shock it out of its Hollywood-induced self-satisfaction, sufficient to save the world from the sheer, reckless silliness of the policies of Washington and its proxy subalterns.

Lo and behold, that seems to be what Russia and China have done this week. From a war of attrition in the Donbas, Russia has shifted to a war of conquest and angry retribution that appears to have brought Ukrainian cities to a standstill, to have wrecked over half of Ukrainian gas production and crippled weapons production and transport systems. Trump will know that American and European-supplied air defence systems, even as the flow of these to Ukraine is reduced to a trickle are pathetically inadequate to protect the country from the mighty increase in volume and power of Russia’s nightly missile and drone attacks.

China meanwhile, has shut down most of its rare earth supply to the US, indifferent to the relatively shallow impact Trump’s additional 100% tariffs are going to make to China’s economy. China may be the first to say so boldly that it can do without the US but it will not be the last.

The Yellow Doll is absolutely the wrong character for the unfolding era, seemingly unable to rise above his own narcissism - as indicated by the chair of Sweden’s Nobel committee even as it awarded a Peace prize to an extremist, pro-US regime change fanatic in Venezuela (a move that will encourage an American invasion; so much for peace).

He seems to understand very little of substance. In his vanity he equals Macron (who tonight is re-appointing a resigned and failed prime minister rather than give an inch to the far more popular prevailing political coalitions).

This is what you get when the rich govern. Their money buys them freedom from having to learn about themselves, and having to deal with the fact that both they and their policies are really rather stupid.

First, Gaza. Hamas is taking a huge risk in agreeing to give up its hostages in exchange for Israeli-held prisoners/hostages as part of the first phase of a multi-phase agreement. Hamas negotiators must know that they are investing huge trust in the totally untrustworthy US and Netanyahu’s government. They presumably are doing this because they feel the pressure of responsibility for the lives of up to two million Palestinians in Gaza and know that without an agreement these lives will be considerably more vulnerable, even, than they already are.

With an agreement, even, it is still quite possible, likely, that Israel will backtrack on some pretext or another, and that the US will fail to honor any security guarantees. If negotiations do continue towards a second or third phase, there is every likelihood, I would say probability, that they will fail. Particularly sticky will be the questions surrounding the future governance of Gaza, the extent to which it can be possibly a Palestinian entity, how its members would be selected, one that even includes (as Trump has indicated) a role for Hamas, and the very sensitive issues to do with Arab and any other category of peace-keepers (with Egypt’s Sisi recently reported as saying these would need to include US troops - he possibly has a good sense for just how unpopular his own forces will prove to be). I have yet to see any meaningful reference in the negotiations so far to the future of the West Bank, to Zionist objectives for a Greater Israel, and to the possibility of a meaningful Palestinian state that can actually surmount all of the physical and other hurdles embedded in the Abram Accords that undermine the practical possibility of coexistence between an overreaching, geographically solid, relatively wealthy Zionist State and a weak, geographically fragmented, impoverished Palestine.

Second, Russia. There is genuine scope for debate as to whether Putin has what it takes for Russia to take advantage of the fact that the West currently is weak. Am I saying I want nuclear war? Of course not, but nuclear war is what we will get if the Neocons are allowed their way.

Europe, grasping at what remains of stolen Russian assets (riding roughshod over EuroClear and the Belgium government, because the EU is now Ursula von der Leyen’s little empire) and with the US still very much a player in the background - since US technicians, satellite data, intelligence support etc. will be needed for the Himars that are almost certainly already being fired from Ukraine against Russian oil refineries, and for the Tomahawks that the US will likely end up sending, not forgetting to mention the German technicians that will be necessary for the firing of Taurus missiles - continues to prepare for World War Three.

For this event, German Chancellor Merz has kindly advised us to put a red circle on our calendar around the date April 1, 2029 (well, 2029, if not exactly Fool’s Day although that would be appropriate), although we should wonder whether Germany or any of its companions will have avoided utter bankruptcy in the meantime.

Why would Putin want to take such theatrics seriously?

Putin may be so focused on winning the war in Ukraine - and I believe that he will, soon (given Ukraine’s effective bankruptcy already and Russian destruction of its energy system). And because Zelenskiy will hold on to Presidential power illegally, Russia will raise the price of Ukraine’s defeat to include four more oblasts - in addition to Crimea and the four oblasts that are already integrated into the Russian Federation - to include Odessa and the rest of the Black Sea litoral as well as Cherniviv, Sumy, Kharkiv. But Putin’s focus on Ukraine is distracting him from the attention and preparation for the already unfolding World War, giving valuable time for Russia’s enemies to rebuild their armories and armies.

China, and Russia and the BRICS, if they are interested in their sovereignty and the freedom of their peoples, need to get off the fence, now. Manifest consolidation of their strength in timely fashion will change their destinies and save the world. This could begin with a change of Putin’s strategy on Ukraine, moving from attrition to decapitation: not a sound moral position, I know, but just noting that this would mean a quick end of the war, sending a compelling message to a Quixotic and divided Europe and providing more time for Russia, with its allies, to finalize their strategy for heading off the US threat perhaps by some form of unanswerable show of strength leveragable for ushering in a new and gentler, multipolar world.

Thirdly, Venezuela: Trump has broadened the coming war to include Colombia or some kind of Colombian involvement by murdering a boat-load of Colombian citizens without any legal or any other kind of justification. Has Trump bought Brazilian silence by offering a better deal on tariffs to Lula, and confirmed Argentine silence by bailing out Argentina from the latest economic fiasco of its ruling class, as wrought by Milei? Probably. Lula like Erdogan, and Modi need to stop playing narrowly domestic games of cat and mouse with the interests of Washington and the interests of the Global South.

Fourthly, Iran: Does not look good. Russia and China are unlikely to ramp up their own protections for Iran in time and to the necessary degree to ensure a crushing defeat for Israel and for the US. Israel will certainly take a major hit, but probably not incapacitating. The humiliating implications of a dismembered Iran and a resurgent Turkey-Armenia-Azerbaijan buffer for Russia and China to the north and a Greater Israel entity to the south incorporating much of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq may be the final stimulus to Russia, China and the BRICS to finally get their shit together.

Gold has hit $4,000 an ounce and if I was a member of the global ruling class or a pal of Judge Napolitano, I would certainly have bought a lot of the bright stuff by now and have hidden it somewhere safe, like a long way away from the likes of HSBC, Pat Bondi or James Comey, and securely stuffed under a stack of dirty washing in the garage.

Because I am not a Western economist, I would for some time now have monitored the progress of the SCO and the BRICS towards non-dollar denominated trade. I would also have calculated the economic distortions of US tariff policies and have concluded that no matter where I am, I am better off without trade with the US.

And this week, I would have added to these key observations a third, namely, that there can be no reasonable hope for Western rationality and that I must therefore look to my own long-term survival albeit under conditions of the utmost peril.

Just as in 2022 Vladimir Putin came to the correct conclusion that there was absolutely no chance the West would cease its relentless provocations in their hope of a plausible justification for the rape and dismemberment of Russia, Russia’s final acceptance this week that Trump is as ineffectual and deranged as he looks, that the political machinery of which he is leader is corroded by a severe, collective, suicidal, mental illness - possibly the product of excessive plutocratic intermarriage - does not bode well for the cause of peace.

This is coupled with the equally alarming realisation that the Europeans remain bamboozled by their own nauseating cocktail of arrogance, misinformation and self-righteousness, and will never cease their relentless prattle about how they must defend themselves against a monster of their own steamy imaginations.

Some voices in Moscow and Beijing should now be advising their leaderships, just as they did in Moscow in 2022, that absent some credible, verifiable climbdown from US Neocon Hegemony, this nightmare is never going to go away, this will never end. War will come, and if you sit back and wait for it, it will eat you alive. We cannot be sure, these voices may say, that things are going to be more or less favorable to our interests one year, or five, or ten years into the future - very likely less favorable if we give our opponents time to re-arm and modernize their pathetically depleted stocks, manpower and budgets - but now, right now, is a very good time to strike.

America is plunging into fascism and civil war. Could this be a tad distracting for the Neocons? You bet! They are running out of TNT and even cotton for their artillery. They knew this over a year ago and they STILL haven’t been able to resolve the crisis. Because it cannot produce the number it needs for all its proxy bunnies around the world, the US has to lean on Israel and the Dutch to supply Patriot missiles to Ukraine, of which Ukrainians need two for every time they try and shoot down a Russian missile at a cost to the West of $2 million.

The US is trying its best to look tough and mean (but absurdly over-extended) as it ramps up for war with Iran on the false pretext that Iran is a threat to Israel, the false pretext that Venezuela is killing Americans with drugs (no, that’s America that’s doing that), and the false pretext that American security requires a Taiwan that is no longer part of the One China that is the only China that either the US or the UN recognize.

A very good time, then, when Hungary’s leader says the EU will soon collapse, Slovakia is equally disenchanted, the new leader of the Czech Republic signals an end to the flow of Czech artillery munitions to Ukraine, when there are rumors of nuclear weapons for Poland, a deindustrializing and high energy cost Germany struggles to lift its fighting forces, at huge expense and borrowing cost to a remotely credible level, and the so-called Far Right looks set to crush the Salafist (i.e. extremist) “Centre” in France and Germany, Britain just cannot stop looking, sounding and acting like a public school fag in a Rudyard Kipling novel, and when Europe’s great offensive against the misleadingly named Russian “shadow fleet” ends up with the detention by the French of one vessel that they then have to release for lack of evidence.

Can this bunch of dangerous Keystone Cop loonies be any less competent than they are now? Well, why would you want to bet on it? Putin at Valdai sounded like he had made a rational bet on the ultimate possibility of Western rationality, but in the relative absence, I would argue, of rational justification for such a bet in favor of reason.

For the prosecution, let us examine the case of Syria, whose head-chopping, self-appointed, terrorist, Erdogan puppet was drooled over with sycophancy last week by former CIA director David Petraeus.

The forces led by this sewer creature spawned by the likes of the CIA, MI6, Turkey, Qatar, Al Qaeda and ISIS have been busily massacring Alawite, Christian, Druze and other minorities in Syria. Amidst these war crimes the illegal, self-appointed President, propped up by Erdogan, Trump and Netanyahu - Jolani Al Sewer - has arranged (this past weekend) “elections” of which few Syrians were aware and in which few actual citizens participated. This was because the “electors” are either appointed by Jolani himself or are appointed by committees whose members Jolani has selected. The result is a parliament made up almost entirely of Sunnis, barely any women, and no representation of the Druze or of two Kurdish regions.

By contrast the political system overseen by the Assads in the period leading to the CIA’s Timber Sycamore regime change operation of the 2010s was a model of democracy with regular elections and political parties (even Communist) and fairly inclusive representation. Did I say it was perfect? No, of course not. It’s brutalities were somewhat less sickening than those of the Arab monarchies and autocracies that are utterly dependent on a corrupt and amoral Western imperial protectorate but who rushed to defend the cause of Syrian “democracy” in 2011. Assad’s Syria was constructed on the basis of robust principles of Arab solidarity, socialism and secularism. The advantage of a system whose roots were in Alawite-Shia communities was that it gave a decent measure of security to Syrian minorities, those same minorities now being massacred by the Sewer, and was wide open to opportunities for the majority Sunnis - except when relatively small bands of these were seduced by the Muslim Brotherhood and it’s ilk into murderous and Salafist uprisings against the Assads in 1980 and 2010.

Now Israel, supposedly in some kind of collaboration with Jolani, occupies the south of Syria (“protecting” the Druze), bombs Syria with impunity, just as it has been doing now for years, first against Hezbollah and Iranian militia (there at Assad’s request) now against who exactly knows?

It is pals with the Kurdish, pro-US SDF (who, surprise, surprise, are baulking at their absorption into the Syrian army) and likely to be moving as we speak against pro-Iranian militia in Iraq, as Israel pursues its aspiration for a Greater Israel that may one day absorb part of Saudi Arabia (though, take note. now within Pakistani nuclear umbrella) as it ramps up for the coming next strike on Iran, a county which seems almost perversely unable to avoid projecting weakness.

Erdogan is of course, extremely nervous about Israel’s affiliations with the Kurds of northern and north-eastern Syria, even if he thinks he is defanging the Kurdish “threat” in Turkey itself (frankly, I dont believe it) but can likely see big advantages to a weakened Iran that will allow more forceful Turkish advance of its interests towards Azerbaijan and into Uyghur China.

If China and Russia see a possibly not-to-be repeated moment of opportunity for a transformational, geopolitical upheaval at this juncture that would be surprising and unlikely. But it could be a lot more rational than many of the alternatives.