Julian Macfarlane: The Duran gets it wrong– again!

I used to follow the two Alexes assiduously, but over the last year, their analyses have been mostly wrong, at least when it comes to predicting what comes next – the outcomes in the relationship between Russia and the West.

I like their personalities, especially Christoforous, who has a beard and likes cats, and is funny. But intellectually?

My impression is their work is flawed by a lack of basic research—they rely too much on the British media (!), comparing this article and that. Sorting shit is, well, unhygienic. They need to spend more time reading.

Maybe they have just been too busy, traveling around, doing dinner parties and the like.

No matter….. In any case, they always seem to be a little “off” these days. I still love you guys…but pleeeaaaaaaaaaaseee!

The Anchorage Summit was no exception. Mercouris in particular seems to have taken Trump’s statements at face value.

“He’s not a fool”, says Alex, arbitrarily dismissing some commenter who thinks Trump is a moron.

No? To dismiss the comment in that way is foolish of …Alex!

Does he think that Trump is just someone who says things that have no basis in reality, which everyone else with half a brain knows is wrong— but not a fool. That would imply a truly Machiavellian mind.

Or maybe make the Donald just evil.

I don’t think Trump is evil —who enjoys causing death and destruction, pain and suffering —but a fool in power causes evil things to happen, disavowing all intention. In Ukraine, 1.8 million KIA. In Gaza, (tens of) thousands of children. In Syria? In Iran? In Yemen? In Lebanon? It is always somebody else doing that.

Trump has the ability to stop all the killing almost overnight by cutting off money and weapons to the Ukrainians and Israelis and other murderers who couldn’t survive without American support. Consider also his absurd war on the Developing World, the Tariff War – it‘s going nowhere.

So Trump is not stupid, but indeed a fool.

Fools are not necessarily stupid or lacking in intelligence: it is a fault of character, which makes it more dangerous than just low IQ. Trump is no Gump.

So, Mercouris’ take on Trump implies that he is an intelligent man who is a lazy thinker— calculating, dishonest and manipulative —and almost always wrong— a fool.

OK, that’s my personal animus. And there is a caveat.

We are all fools at some time or another. Me, too. But if we don’t recognize that, we are something worse. Trump has had plenty of time to learn. But Trump 2.0 is arguably worse than Trump 1.0.

Lessons from Anchorage

The good thing about Anchorage was that it set a precedent – the US and Russia talking-- and it established for all to see that the Russians are reasonable people.

But the Russians conceded nothing. No ceasefire. No cessation of hostilities. No swaps of territories.

They set out their conditions long ago for a comprehensive peace agreement, but those conditions:

• have not been acknowledged

• could not be implemented without a major change in the security architecture of the West

• would require a major revision of the Western “narrative”.

Yet, they are still willing to talk.

The West’s security architecture was built in 1945 as the West prepared for war with the Soviet Union, then a non-nuclear state. “NATO” was specifically designed as an anti-Soviet military alliance under the assumption of an all-out war. The US realized it would need a lot of boots on the ground to occupy something as big as the Soviet Union, after they had finished bombing its cities into dust.

Soviet breakthroughs in nuclear technology and MAD froze the whole situation, leading to the “Cold” war.

Then came Glasnost, the collapse of the USSR, and the new Russia. “The end of history”, Fukuyama called it. But the NATO objectives remained in place. Maybe not war with whomever was in Moscow, but certainly taking control of the Heartland, as Hitler had envisioned, and as Europe had hungered for from the 18th Century on.

In 1990, the West had military and nuclear supremacy, and Yeltsin represented the future of Russia, drinking himself, itself to death. “Have another vodka”, Bill Clinton said.

Now the situation has been reversed. America is not drinking itself to death. It has opioids.

Trump, however, talks about the SVO as though it were the core problem. Solve that and everything is hunky dory. Back to 1890 when men were men and ….

 

The Golden Age of exploitation.

Making America great again just means exploitation.

The SVO is just a proxy war started by the US—a symptom, not the disease. More exploitation.

In any case, the Russians are winning, and all the major centers in the Donbas coming under Russian control. But once Ukraine is out of the way, the same problems remain with the West as were the case before 2014.

One idea that Mercouris mentions is that the Ukrainians could withdraw from Donbas in return for a temporary truce while continuing to occupy parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye. To what end?

Silliness. Russia is not fighting for territory; it is fighting a war of attrition.

It does not care about “occupying” Pokrovsk or any other city, but about killing or capturing the Ukrainian troops there. Allowing those troops to escape to defensive positions on the other side of the Dniepr, allows Western Ukraine a breathing space to regroup and rebuild and fight some more with the help of Europeans.

What Putin may have proposed to Trump is something that Trump is theoretically able to deliver –if he had the guts – but unwilling to – a new security architecture, not just for the Ukraine - -but for the world. How likely is that?

It would require disbanding NATO, reducing the American military presence worldwide, democratizing the United Nations, deferring to international law – all unlikely because it means the US giving up claims to the notions of supremacy, so deeply embedded in American culture – “one nation under God” or, more correctly, “the one nation under God”.

The anchorage meeting was a photo-op, an event, with no real effect on the geopolitical situation-- only a blip in local politics in the US.

As usual, Trump and his minions (or onions) distorted events. Something that the Alexes appear to have noticed but weren’t too much bothered by.

‘Great progress,” said Trump, implying that peace in the Ukraine was about to break out. Nope.

Trump likes to spin things.

Trump said that Putin supported his theory that he was cheated out of the Presidency in 2020, for example. Not true. What Putin actually said, according to Russian sources, was simply that in Russia there is no mail-in voting because the high level of their voting technology which makes it unnecessary and the security factors. Russia has made every effort to ensure that the voting system is absolutely fair and the results cannot be disputed – which is obviously not the case in the US.

Putin did say that the 2022 SMO might not have happened if Trump had been President, which is, in fact, true, because he knows that bullies – which, of course, Trump is – back down, if they figure they might get hurt—which Trump would have done. Biden was too far gone for that realization.

Putin is no fool.

One of the aspects of Trump’s foolishness is his inability to keep his story straight.

Now, he will grandstand meetings with Zelensky and the Europeans. More theater. The show must go on.

Why?

EDITOR'S NOTE:
Pay attention to this pathetic spectacle, with Trump showering adulation on each of the European satraps, (and of course himself), while clearly contradicting what he had implied a short time ago. In fact, he allowed Zelensky to tell a torrent of lies and calumnies about Russia, again, a narrative the Europeans are now making a show of supporting, his ineptitude and cowardice reinforcing the wild trajectory of the Ukraine war. 

To end the “war”? No. Just to offload it onto the Europeans, which is great for the US arms industry. When the Russians take all of what they want, Trump will have people to blame and his friends in the defense industry can look forward to more business.

He plans to then tack to China. Another bad idea.

In the end, of course, there will be a new security architecture — after the US collapses as the USSR did.

So, no, I don’t think the two Alexes have much to say. Not like Pepe Escobar or Mark Sleboda or Brian Berletic or Dmitry Orlov, not that I always agree with them, of course.

But yes I continue to watch the Duran. It has a point of view. I may not agree, but it is useful to take into account.

Special Article (Putin 4)

I show how Putin’s personal evolution mirrors that of his country. And how the choices he made as a young man influenced the future. One was his early fascination with the martial arts.

He started with Judo, which is not that useful as self-defense as, say, combat sambo which he took up later and excelled at — but whose philosophy appealed to him, being based on Daoist and Confucian principles.

The soft and weak overcome the hard and strong. ( Laotze: Dao De Jing)

These studies informed his sense of strategy, which many have remarked upon.

The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.

— Bruce Lee (Tao of Jeet Kune Do)

Help me finish this special article.

I think you will find it useful in understanding what is happening and what will happen geopolitically in the next few years.

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