Good cop, bad cop

JD Vance plays enforcer

Daniel Davis has asked the question, ”Is Washington playing ‘good cop, bad cop’ with the Kremlin , with Trump trying to flatter Putin while at the same time, JD Vance talks of sanctions and ‘military action if Russia doesn’t give the US a face-saving ‘deal’?

The Kremlin has, of course, seen this routine before where Trump pretends to be “just folks”, a nice friendly guy with orange hair—while his “team” is talking differently. He is like a mafia boss, with his enforcers and hitmen.

After all, it was Trump who set up Western Ukraine for war making sure that the Ukrainians got the weaponry and training they needed despite the Minsk Agreements, imposing all sorts of sanctions on Russian aimed at regime change until he lost office in 2020.

Perhaps fortunately for Russia, the KGB trains its operatives to spot Trump’s kind of personality immediately and teaches them strategies to deal with them, knowing that, given enough time, they will self-destruct. Trump is not unique, even if not your standard issue US politician. He is too unstable to trust.

Trump does not understand that Putin is several steps ahead Nor that American and Russian goals are incompatible. Nor that just winging it is not strategy.

The Russians are committed to a real multipolar world in which nations interact on the basis of mutual respect and equality-- international democracy, fostering cooperation and engagement.

The Americans, on the other hand, are stuck in the supremacist mythology that they inherited from the British, They want the world divided into “spheres of influence” – American, Russian and Chinese-- but Amerika uber alles. Size matters, Power matters.

These “spheres of influence’ are in fact empires—neoliberal, post-feudal, and colonialist, with a single master-state in each case, and slave-states serving it.A few get to live in the big house with Massa’. It is a different concept altogether from the Russian and Chinese one and inherently regressive.

So it is that Trump insists that the Americas must belong to the US—all the countries in North and South America – not to mention the Pacific. And America must always be primus inter pares.

Of course, the Trumpian “plan” depends on the dollar remaining the world’s reserve currency, as well as American re-industrialization—neither of which are going to happen.

In any case, nobody, especially people in the Global South want to be slaves.

Russia’s strategy, as I have indicated, will be similar to that of the Vietnamese in that long ago war– keep the Americans talking and prancing and dancing about--while the Russian economy and Russian society grow and develop even more, driven to ever greater heights by the ongoing SMO in Ukraine and European Russophobia.

At some point, cultural PTSD will set in in the US of A. The chaos the US is spreading abroad will infect the US.

Trump of course wants the Ukraine problem resolved fast— with a ceasefire. He likes “ceasefires” as in Gaza, even if they solve nothing.

He insists a viable and independent Ukrainian state should remain, minus maybe a few oblasts, although that state would remain under the thumb of the NeoNazis. So his idea of “peace” is conditional.

The Russians won’t agree to a ceasefire. They want complete demilitarization but also denazification – and war crimes tribunals, putting to rest once and for all the Western fiction of Russian “invasion”. When I say “the Russians” want this—I mean the Russian people who have suffered too much to let the NeoNazis in Ukraine and the West off the hook.

There must be justice.

That means continuing until the Ukrainians surrender un-conditionally. Which they will do.

Despite what some people in Alt Media say, Trump is not just “misinformed” by advisors about Russian and Ukrainian casualties — he knows as everyone else does the extent of Ukrainian losses and the relatively low casualty rates for Russia. If he doesn’t — he needs a crash course in remedial reading.

Russia realizes that agreements or not a real war will remain with the Russophobic West – Europe and the US and Canada— a new kind of World War, economic, cultural, informational, political, as well as military —which cannot be resolved while the world remains as it is.

Since the West knows no other game than Trump’s win-lose game – the West must suffer a humiliating and absolute defeat.

The Caracat

This is a Caracat, which originated in Russia when a domestic cat got into a cage with a male Caracal. They are rather dog-like and very protective of their human families. They are also hugely expensive and rare.

Special Article.

I am about 5000 words into my article on Putin, which — as usual— covers a lot of territory, including the philosophy of history, “Continental Philosophy” , Stalinism, Maoism and various ‘isms”, cultural mythologies, the late Soviet period—as well as Putin’s upbringing, personality, gifts and accomplishments.

I will have to shorten it and re-organize it — but it is coming together nicely and prepares the way also for another article — this one on Xi Jinping .

Of course, Chappy and Ichi are doing the real work.

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