Ukraine War - Europe Destroyed by Vulgar Pacifism and Strategic Illiteracy among Western Elites

War of aggression! Criminal Putin! Heroic Zelensky! Barbaric Russians! Glorious Ukrainians! 

 

These designations and other absurdities have been regurgitated to dumb down the masses while the war raged for the past ten months. Despite the damage done, Western political elites are intensifying the propaganda in their desperate attempt to avoid losing face. They duplicate their pronounced security illiteracy, deepen the conflict, and reduce the chances of a negotiated peace. 

 

The false and vulgar pacifist attitude to designate the one who used violent military means first - no matter the reasons and overall context - still prevails in Western political and media quarters. It is totally left out of the picture that Mr. Putin had exhausted all peaceful means and was virtually thrust into violently resolving an existential threat to his nation's security. 

 

No war is an isolated act and should not and must not be regarded as such, as the armchair strategists and self-proclaimed security policy experts on TV have tried to make us believe. But I provided comprehensive political and philosophical analyses of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in previous blog entries and publications. Find details here and here.

 

Former radical pacifists of the European green and socialist parties keep pushing for further arms delivery to Ukraine and support of the war effort. Their hatred for Russia and subservience to a U.S. warmongering regime appear even to trump their long-held ideological convictions. And the public, by and large, still mirrors the pernicious bias of their political masters. 

 

According to polls, more than half of the population in Western European countries still prefer an unconditional victory of Ukraine over any deal that would respect Russia's interests. Even politicians and commentators who criticize sanctions want them lifted because they hurt Western nations' interests. They haven't figured or don't dare to mention that the sanctions are unjust and unethical in and by themselves. 

 

The lies - dictator Putin has launched a war of aggression out of pure lust for power to restore the borders of the Soviet Union - seem to persist successfully. The American president dared to declare that Putin started a war completely groundless and without provocation. A transparent falsehood, a convenient political lie in the face of all evidence and the truth of the matter.

War is always ugly but sometimes inevitable. Neither its justification nor condemnation should be decided from the gut!

Being against violence does not make for a beautiful soul (Aristotle)

If we consider war as a continuation of political activity by other means, it never arises out of nowhere. Every war has a history that led to it. The topic of war is complex and delicate, and assessing its justification or inevitability in specific instances is even more so.

The general public often views war as the worst of all evils. The prevailing opinion is that the side that starts a war is inherently wrong and evil, while the side that resists is right and good. But as history and rational reflection show us, this is not necessarily true. If it were so easy to distinguish between right and wrong in war, many instances would reveal the United States and its Western allies as the aggressors. If the question of war could be answered based purely on emotion, we would never need to discuss the "Just War" theory, which has occupied philosophers from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to Michael Walzer and others, including myself. I devoted my doctoral thesis (and the book based on it) to the morality and immorality of violence (and non-violence) on both individual, collective, and politico-military levels.

The evaluation of war and its political-ethical implications can be approached from two essential perspectives. First, what triggered the war, and what prompted political leaders or governing bodies to go to war? What is the causa iusta—the just reason, as the primary consideration of the principle of ius ad bellum (right to war)—that justifies or seems to justify waging war?

The challenge in assessing this crucial aspect is that the justification for the use of force—no matter when it occurs—is always subjective, based on the intentions of political leaders or decision-making bodies. To assess this adequately, observers—whether individuals, political administrations, or international bodies—must rise to a meta-level of thought, striving to judge the events leading to the dispute as objectively and impartially as possible. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, as pacifist and political-ideological emotions often cloud judgment. The United Nations, which should ideally play this role, seldom succeeds in maintaining this objective and impartial perspective.

Two essential criteria of transcendental moral philosophy (independent of experience and comprehensible by reason alone) for ius ad bellum are necessity and inevitability. War must always be a last resort, necessary and inevitable as the only option for resolving a conflict. While this is relatively obvious in cases of clear defense, it becomes more complicated in cases of preemption or prevention. A pre-emptive war represents a proactive breach of the peace, aimed at addressing an imminent threat or gaining a strategic advantage before an inevitable armed conflict. Pre-emptive war may be justified if all alternatives to the use of force have been exhausted, or if immediate military intervention is needed to prevent a much larger threat. Examples of pre-emptive military strikes include Israel's Six-Day War in 1967 and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the latter case, the assumption that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was used as a justification for war, though this proved to be inaccurate.

The ius in bello (law in war) is the second aspect of warfare to be evaluated. Do the warring parties and their military forces abide by the laws of war, such as the Geneva Conventions? Do they wage wars based on universal human principles that must not be endangered or abandoned, even in armed conflict? Do the warring parties distinguish between combatants and non-combatants? Are military targets the focus, with efforts made to minimize collateral damage? Are prisoners of war and wounded enemy soldiers treated in accordance with the Geneva Protocols, and are war crimes avoided?

While both sides appear to violate the ius in bello in the ongoing Ukraine war, only alleged Russian war crimes are widely reported in the West. For example, there is no mention of Ukrainian troops using civilians as human shields, choosing defensive positions in residential areas, or arming non-combatants in violation of martial law, actions that organized crime exploits to wreak havoc, while the blame is shifted to Russian forces. Furthermore, there is no mention of the restraint Putin has imposed on his armed forces, with a focus on military objectives. The West misinterprets this as incompetence on the part of Russian troops.

To understand the causalities that led to the war and provide criteria for its potential resolution, we must focus on the question of ius ad bellum—the reasons and motives for starting a war that lie within the hands of political leaders.

The Responsibility for this War in Ukraine is on the West's Side

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Disclaimer: I am a friend of Europe and the US, but not necessarily of their ruling political class or policy decisions. None of my criticism is intended to be malicious or adversarial. It is only meant to enlighten the discourse, broaden perspectives, and improve political relations and decisions.

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Although Western political elites and their media unanimously condemn President Putin's decision to recognize the breakaway regions of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) in eastern Ukraine as autonomous people's republics, Putin's strategic maneuver can be seen as one of last resort.

Donetsk and Lugansk separated from Kiev following the Western-backed Maidan coup of 2014. They did not tolerate the deposition of the incumbent President Yanukovych and the installation of Poroshenko, whom they perceived as a puppet of Washington and Berlin. Poroshenko’s policies opened Ukraine to the political, military, and economic influence of the US and the West. Since then, the Ukrainian leadership has rejected—disregarding the Minsk I and II agreements—meaningful discussions on the status of its eastern territories, even resorting to a civil war-like conflict in an attempt to forcibly reintegrate the republics.

In 2014, following the Maidan revolution, it became immediately clear that Putin would not passively accept Ukraine's potential NATO membership, which could result in the expulsion of Russia from its Black Sea ports in Crimea. For the first time, Putin was confronted with an anti-Russian regime in Kiev. This prompted the annexation of Crimea and support for the separatists in Donbass, who opposed Ukraine’s transformation into a NATO base. The predominantly Russian population in these areas also resisted the Ukrainian regime's efforts to eliminate Russian traditions, language, and culture.

The annexation of Crimea and support for the eastern territories should have been predictable had the US and Europe taken the time to consider Russia's legitimate strategic interests and conducted an overdue, intelligent evaluation of the region’s security dynamics. How would the United States react, for instance, if Mexico allied with Russia and Putin stationed massive troops along the southern border?

Western political elites have not made a single meaningful effort to address Russia's legitimate security concerns. Instead, they have pursued ruthless regional and global dominance, which has shaped international relations—and particularly relations with Russia—for over a quarter-century.

Resolving the crisis in Ukraine would have only required a reassessment of Washington, Brussels, and Berlin’s strategic miscalculations and a respect for Russia’s legitimate security interests. Unfortunately, the current political leadership in the US and Europe lacks the necessary restraint to peacefully resolve the conflict.

For example, neither the weeks-long Russian troop build-up on the Ukrainian border nor Russia’s security demands—outlined in a letter to Western leaders prior to the military action—led to any acknowledgment of Russia’s national security concerns by the US, EU, or NATO. They denied Putin any opportunity for diplomacy. The blame for the collapse of dialogue and the first step toward Russian aggression lies solely with the West.

While public and international discourse on this issue often focuses on the Kremlin and the White House, little attention is paid to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s role in the current crisis. Had he defined his country’s national security interests wisely and sensibly within the broader geopolitical context, particularly in relation to Russia, he might have avoided the conflict and preserved his country’s territorial integrity. Instead, driven by his Western backers and perhaps megalomaniacal ambitions, he pushed Ukraine toward NATO membership and the stationing of nuclear weapons—decisions that overstepped the reasonable limits of an adequate security strategy.

The United States of America – Is a Hegemon Devouring Itself?

Half a year before last fall's presidential elections, I argued (see my blog essay "U.S. Presidential Elections and the Future of the West" https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2016/04/2016-us-presidential-election-and.html) that the fate of this country and the entire Western civilization will depend on its outcome. By denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, we must prevent a third term of Obama's Marxist-Globalist policies. The result was one I had predicted and hoped for; Trump won. In a follow-up essay, I explained how the U.S. and the world were supposed to get a respite from the insanity of previous years. 

But a look at Washington D.C. some eight months into Mr. Trump's presidency makes one wonder about wasted chances and failures to implement urgently needed policy promises. It appears that President Trump's pragmatic instincts succumbed to neoconservative imposition from within the White House as well as the Senate and the Congress.

 

Instead of vetoing it and signaling decisive course correction, a seemingly helpless Trump signed a sanctions bill on Russia and had himself bullied by the mainstream media into moral relativism and the absurdity of designating (fascist) right-wing violence worse than (equally fascist) left-wing violence. He disregarded the Virginia governor and Charlottesville mayor's lawlessness, both of whom intentionally and purposefully let a demonstration turn violent by ordering police forces to stand down. 

While fortunately proclaiming the end of nation-building and democracy export, Mr. Trump caved to the pressure for a troop surge in Afghanistan and the continuation of U.S. presence there. 

 

The malice of Never-Trumpers and the hateful obstructionism of Democrats and neoconservative Republicans appear to force Trump to continue the past two decades' terrible policy failures. He seems, at least partially, to abandon the promises he ran on in his presidential campaign. 

 

Given my political philosophy expertise and my participation in educational efforts in Eastern and Southeastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, I have tried to get in touch with the Trump administration since campaign times, particularly since its inauguration. But, alas, to no avail. I admit that I felt the need to do something about Washington's overbearing strategic blunder that has caused so much damage to global affairs. And I was sure that only President Trump gave hope to overcome and defeat the previous administration's wrong ways (after Rand Paul as the best suited among the Republican establishment candidates had dropped out). 

 

As repeatedly addressed in my blog essays, I sensed the lack of philosophical depth in U.S. politics. I had observed the mistakes ill-educated and ideologically disoriented politicians and advisors, liberals as well as neocons, had perpetrated time and again, and from whose apparent failures they refused to learn. I witnessed how the establishment of a post-Cold War New World Order started as an initially well-intended and seemingly meaningful project. In 1991, the transatlantic alliance instituted close relations with Russia in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council/NACC (later on named Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council/EAPC). The creation of NATO/Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994 intended to expand the alliance's reach to meet the new challenges Out-of-Area in close cooperation with Russia. 

I shared the initial enthusiasm for building a new stable and just world order by providing educational input in multiple undertakings within the PfP framework. Sadly, those good relations soon became perverted by nothing else than Washington's geostrategic arrogance and hubris.

Propaganda from both sides aside, relations began to sour due to aggressive power projection and the increasing neglect and alienation of Russia's and other global players' strategic and economic interests by the U.S. and its European and NATO allies. Of course, this carelessness happened in combination with the old strategic ploy for vindicating one's unjust policies by reversing actual cause-effect relations. As so often before in history, it resulted in the grounding of U.S. foreign affairs and national security policies on intentional misconceptions and outright lies. While the U.S. pushed NATO closer to Russia's borders and engaged in ever-bolder imperialism, it blamed Russia precisely for what it was doing itself. 

 

Two cases may exemplify this reversal of facts and the blaming of an alleged and yet never existing so-called "Russian aggression" and Mr. Putin's dream of reinstating the boundaries of the "Old Soviet Empire." In the summer of 2008, after Georgia invaded South Ossetia, a tiny province that had won its independence in the 1990s, and Georgian artillery had killed Russian peacekeepers, the Russian army entered and chased the Georgians back into their own country. Since then, Russia has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, very much to the chagrin of the U.S. and the U.N.  

The aggressor was not Vladimir Putin but Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, a megalomaniac and now stateless sociopath who had been brought to power in 2004 by one of the US-engineered color-coded revolutions, at the time under Bush II. By annexing those two provinces, Georgia as an ally to the West would have enlarged its national territory and moved NATO-friendly terrain closer to Russian borders, despite a tendency in those provinces that broke from Georgia in the early 1990ies for ethnic and other reasons, to instead ally with Russia. The same applied to Transnistria and Moldova, both of which show interested in joining the Russian Federation. Thus, the question arises, astutely asked by Pat Buchanan, why in a time of peoples' self-determination, the U.S. (and the transatlantic community for that matter) support every ethnic group or fledgling republic that secedes from Russia, but considers any ethnic group or little state moving toward Russia a threat, a traitor, and insinuates it could only take place because of Russian imperialism? The only viable answers are:

 

• A paranoid and untenable Russophobia endures in Washington.
• A misconceived strategic design for a post-Cold War global setting dominates national security circles.
• An astounding lack of any sound political philosophy of international relations abounds among Washington's elites who to this day impose their unreasonable concepts on the White House and the U.S. State Department. 

 

 The distorted narrative on foreign affairs and Russia's role is kept alive by the paranoid Washington elites at all costs. It became tangible in early August this year when the honorable Vice-president Pence, speaking in Montenegro, the tiny nation in the Balkans that had just become the newest member of NATO. He repeated the apparent national security lies about Russia vis-à-vis Georgia. As was to expect, he also replicated the falsehoods about Ukraine to justify the offensive deployment of forces and missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic, and other Eastern European Nations. In Ukraine, President Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which had ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia. He bloodlessly seized the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow's Black Sea fleet was present by Treaty. The West alienates Russia and Putin now over a reaction it could have easily foreseen, had it only pursued just and wise policies that acknowledge the existential interests of other global players. I commented on all this in more detail in several earlier blog entries ('Russophobia - Achilles' Heel of US-Russia Relations of February 17, 2017, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/02/us-russia-relations-russo-phobia.html and 'Ukraine - Another Failure of Western Interventionism' of February 22, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/02/another-failure-of-western.html).

 

Not Russia, but the U.S. has become the primary threat to world peace and global stability through aggressive policies of indifferent power projection that neglected legitimate geopolitical and geostrategic claims of other international players. Over the last two decades, the old buffers of the Soviet Union toward the West, most of all Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and not to forget the Baltic States, have all become full-fledged NATO members; with only minor diplomatic resistance from Russia and clearly no intent to invade those countries or reinstate the boundaries of the old Soviet bloc. It is of strategic importance for Russia and a core consideration for her national interest to keep Ukraine, an important geopolitical region that it designated the 'Near Abroad' somehow in a militarily neutral state. 

 

But the foreign relations experts in Washington do not rest contented with all the strategic blunder on the ground and in military terms. They pair their misguided policies with economic foolishness by way of economic warfare through sanction regimes that impact not only the U.S. but allies and partners in Europe and beyond as well. Just ignorant politicians could jubilee over the significant disruption of Russia's economy, the Ruble's inflation, and working "trade barriers." What they forget or perhaps willfully put on the line is the fact that the European Union is, by far, Russia's leading trade partner and accounts for about fifty percent of all Russian exports and imports and seventy-five percent of all foreign investments in Russia. From whatever angle, it sure comes at too high a price to prop Russia as an artificial enemy for one's own failed imperialism and as the scapegoat for a presidential election's unsuccessful outcome. After all, the presidential candidate herself as secretary of state had caused the blunder in cooperation with the presidential predecessor. 

The opposite of what the strategic calculus of Washington wanted to achieve is happening – not only is the global standing of the U.S. diminishing, but the hegemonic superpower harms itself in various policy fields. Putin increasingly writes off the U.S. and the West and enters into a Russian-Chinese strategic alliance. And if Washington continues to ignore and alienate Russia, the European Union and individual European countries will have to weigh their commitment to the North-Atlantic Alliance against their own economic and security interests. The latter process is what has commenced in Europe right now. It is relatively easy to comprehend that if Washington is not coming to its senses, a continuation of this policy will drive a wedge into transatlantic relations. 

 

Will President Trump be able to stand up against all these war-mongering and Russia-hating Democrats, Neoconservative Senators and Congressmen, Brass-Officer advisors, and Military-Industrial lobbyists? Will he bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Syria and end the aggressive posture of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern and southeastern Europe and the Baltic Region? After all, he was elected to complete the conglomerate of provocative, aggressive, and, indeed, unethical policies the United States has pursued in recent years.  

 

Not forget we must that the appalling course of U.S. foreign affairs policy of late runs parallel to the deterioration of internal politics in the United States. The civil war over ideas and convictions – a real culture war – is in full swing and seems to intensify day by day. Relentlessly dishonest and Trump-hating news outlets push it, above all CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and, the most abysmal and painfully foolish of all, MSNBC. The degree of disinformation and corruption is mind-boggling in its unreasonableness and almost inconceivable in its blatant immorality. The Washington swamp is real. It is so bad that certain commentators even identify an ongoing silent coup to oust Trump by the joint conspiracy of mainstream media, deep-state exponents, liberal politicians, and radical left-wing interest groups. The latter, who organize protests wherever Trump appears and carry out counter-demonstrations with the explicit aim to instigate violence, which they blame on Trump, are funded by billionaires like George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

The pigheadedness of never-Trumpers and all those politicians, pundits, and commentators who were so wrong about Trump never being able to win the presidency seems boundless. These people give precedence to their stubbornness and political and ideological inertia over the nation's best interest. Insight into one's wrongs and judgment errors, learning from mistakes and wising up, and notions like critical self-reflection no longer count or even exist in certain people's consciousness. Instead, they are doubling down on stances that experience has proven wrong. Unprecedented obstructionism not only from the opposition party but from the GOP's ranks – the most despicable example provided by the traitor senator John McCain on the repeal vote on the Affordable Care Act – dominate the domestic political landscape. 

 

 A look into U.S. politics, not even a year into Trump's presidency, reminds one of a young and fledgling republic in some Third World region of the globe. In the previous blog essay entitled 'A Sick Republic' of July 5, 2017 (https://edwinseditorial.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-sick-republic-yeah-dude-im-talking.html), I outlined the parameters of this profoundly flawed political system and the unmatched decay of intellectual and moral political standards in the U.S., which continues to push the nation toward more violence and outright civil war. 

 

Who or what could remedy this state of affairs of division and hatred in the United States society that goes far beyond any acceptable measure a functioning republic could withstand in the long run? How can we overcome this mental tyranny of the left that denounces everybody and everything running counter to their views? How can we break the vicious collaboration of forces on the political left to remove Trump from office, even at the cost of throwing this country into mayhem and internal violent conflict? The only answer I can come up with is "success." 

 

 To improve relations and defeat obstructionism, President Trump and his allies in Senate and Congress will have to be successful in pulling off a significant tax reform for businesses and working citizens. Furthermore, they will have to push through a decisive modification of the healthcare system, in both cases with immediate and tangible results that can no longer be hidden from the public, not even by hostile news media outlets. A new paradigm in foreign and security affairs is overdue. It should feature pragmatic strategic prudence and restraint rather than globalist adventurism. The U.S. has to disentangle from the continued involvement in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and bring troops home. It should abandon regime change interventionism and come to a new understanding in US-Russia relations. These steps should enable the nation to recover and find political and social stability. 

 

The United States finds itself at a crucial crossroads at this point. The significance of the moment goes far beyond saving Mr. Trump's presidency and marks a juncture that determines the future not only of this nation but the future direction of Western civilization as a whole. 

 

Let's make no mistake. The election of Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the U.S. came at a point of existential significance as to the future course of our civilizational development. It is the defining moment of decision between, on the one hand, liberal-Marxist globalism in conjunction with cultural decadence and the rise of moral relativism in ever more secularized social milieus; and in contrast, on the other hand, the furtherance of orderly (international) relations among sovereign nations with western countries grounding their pluralism in traditional morality and a minimal nucleus of their Christian heritage. 

 

It is clear before the power of our reasoning that both opposing sides in this ongoing culture war over principles and values cannot claim the same amount of validity for how they envisage our Western-style democracies' future path. Opposing concepts in all kinds of social and political realms – immigration, the rule of law, gender and race relations, education, economics, international affairs, etc. - cannot be equally meaningful. The course of social and political 'progressivism' that we have witnessed in recent years is either the right one for a prosperous future or a pernicious concept that destroys our societies and our civilization in its entirety. Yet, who could honestly believe, considering the evidence of societal mayhem, confusion, and polarization regarding open border globalism in recent years, that cultural progressivism is the right way as we advance? 

 

It might be wise for the left to end their demonization of conservative politics and specifically of President Trump, and give the man and his program a chance to succeed. But for this to happen would require the mainstream media to stop its one-sided anti-Trump crusade and bethink their exact principal role as an unbiased and objective interface for information and dialogue between people and government. 

Furthermore, perhaps even more importantly, it will take the ceasing of obstructionist efforts from certain Republicans in Congress. Full support of Mr. Trump's by his party, whose representatives have to set aside personal vanities and sanctimonious reservations, and a constructive political opposition that recovers at least some minimal sense of fairness decency, appear to be immediate requirements for success. 

 

The period of trial and error and political and social experimentation with the radical ideas of the left, domestically and internationally, has to end. It is high time that the Washington elites and stakeholders come to their senses, intellectually and morally, and refocus on this country's common good, which is so closely related to the entire western hemisphere's well-being.

A Sick Republic! (Yeah, dude, I’m talking about the U.S.)

While still claiming strategic superiority in global relations backed up by her unmatched military power, the US' political bankruptcy becomes ever more visible and undeniable. In terms of foreign affairs and international relations, the US, by desperately trying to keep its position as the sole superpower, devastated the world with its support of terrorists, interventions for regime change, and its irrational and unwarranted stance vis-à-vis the Russian Federation. Yet, foreign affairs blunder doesn't make for a sick republic. The sickness factor lies within. 

 

In domestic terms, the US society appears to have degenerated into what the ancients called an Ochlocracy, a mob reign, the intimidation of government and legitimate authorities by a specific group of people. Stunning in the US American case is that this authoritarian mob is not merely recruited from vulgar, lower-class people of the electorate, but recruits itself from all society's strata. It is made up and even led and represented by elected officials of the Democratic Party, supported by a significant number of neoconservatives, the central part of the mainstream media, and exponents of academia and the world of arts and culture. A clear indication that ill-education knows no bounds. And neither does lousy morality. 

 

The level of political illiteracy and moral inferiority is unparalleled in Western civilization's recent history. The leftist mob's machinations to reject and potentially overturn the recent presidential election results are unprecedented. Any healthy level of antagonism appears to have vanished that usually characterizes the political struggle in open societies. 

 

The intrinsic concept of the Political, namely to consider the opponent as a legitimate force that needs to be defeated for political gain and governing power, but not physically terminated, is in danger. When the political's essential character gets lost, it threatens social stability and may lead to violence and potentially to civil war. 

Let's identify and explain the significant determinants of this sick republic. I shall emphasize three essential subject matters and remedies described before a somewhat optimistic outlook may conclude this exposition. 

 

First: The deranged political mind! Large parts of the US society have forgotten or intentionally negate the prime feature of democracies, namely that governing regimes can change due to the people's decision in periodic elections. 

 

Significant numbers of the populace have lost any respect for governmental institutions, including and predominantly the presidency. The minimal deference to a governmental authority, necessary for a working political system, is missing, including disregarding the recent presidential elections' outcome. Their electoral loss so mortifies the US's political left that they are consumed by a sheer unlimited sense of hatred and destructiveness. 

 

Violence in the streets, open calls for assassination, utter baseness in language, and destructive facts dominate the reportage fabricated in the editorial offices of print and electronic media. For the most part, news outlets are no longer the medium to communicate factual information between government and people. Instead, in unprecedented fashion, they have turned themselves into distortion and ideological agitation instruments. 

 

Irrespective of political orientation, never before had a president spend his first few months in office to such a degree with his back to the wall, warding off most vicious attacks mostly by tweeting directly to the public, circumventing the largely hostile and dishonest reporting by the media. And never before had a president cope with such a degree of nasty obstructionism from the political opposition.

 

Most commentators consider some of Mr. Trump's tweets' aggressiveness to be irreconcilable with the office's dignity. But this judgment is clearly false and just another attempt to diminish his standing. Proportionality is a principle in self-defense. And self-defense is what the man does as he is reacting to an unparalleled onslaught of denunciation. 

 

The viciousness with which this man and the office he is holding has been and still is being attacked requires proper confrontation and resistance to a degree hitherto unknown. The wrong and evil must never be encouraged by inactivity or misguided leniency. So yes, indeed, Mr. Trump should continue to tweet and give the wrongdoers what they deserve.

  

Solution/Prediction: There is hope that Mr. Trump will prevail. Most of all, the fake media, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times – are virtually imploding. They will have to purge themselves and return to some measure of decency. The same applies to the Democratic Party. The silent majority of the party, which consists of decent citizens just led astray, will have to reign in and bring back sanity to the Senate and Congress's hysterical voices. On attempting to damage Trump, they brought devastation over their political movement. Beyond that, the progressive left, fascist in their strategies and violent in their means, cannot be reasoned. Since they have no arguments that withstand the lessons of history or common sense, they only understand the brutal fact of apparent political, economic, and societal defeat and failure, which has been presented to them and will continue to haunt them. The charlatanry of Mr. Obama, supported by the hardcore political left in this country, has already come to the fore and must be defeated. For, if not, this country will descend into societal chaos and violent civil war. 

Second! The globalism fallacy! The near existential struggle between the globalists and one-world government/open borders factions versus the traditional nation-state and My Country/MyCulture/My Religion First exponents has taken center stage within the US and the European Union but challenges the entire western civilization.

 

As an inheritance from the disastrous Obama presidency, the political left and the entire Democratic Party are in the tank for a globalist utopia, pursued by progressive social and cultural policies, both domestically and internationally.

 

They found their political complement in the failing governing administrations in Germany, France, and the UK. The philosophical illiteracy resting at the bottom of all this globalist nonsense is astounding. A united world republic, a one-government global system, is forever impossible for many ontological and epistemological reasons, not to speak of religion and cultural dimensions. The critical error is confusing truly globalist developments – i.e., in the economy, trade, communication technology – with a profound alteration of the general ontological conditions of physical human coexistence. For the latter by in large remain unchanged, indifferent globalism is probably the most pernicious error in the political thinking of our day and age. 

 

The nation-state (or alliances of nation-states), characterized by separation of powers and monopolization of force, is certainly reduced in its significance and transcended by the impact of globalism. However, it will persist for generations to come as the preeminent model for how people coexist together. A more elaborate blog essay on this specific aspect alone is forthcoming.

Solution/Prediction: The significance and, indeed, indispensability of borders and clear demarcations between citizens and immigrants, in short: healthy nationalism will return to the decision-making bodies of western societies. It will take time and cost a lot of pain and a tremendous waste of resources, as it already has. Still, sanity in the arrangement of human affairs will have to return if Western civilization is supposed to survive. Mr. Trump finds allies in this endeavor within the European Union, where nations like Poland and Hungary have resisted accepting the quotas of Muslim immigration imposed by the European Commission. And they have been successful as the only countries avoiding an internal terrorism problem and a shake-up of their social stability. 

Third: The disastrous foreign affairs paradigm! As the statesman is aware, nothing is more critical for prosperity and domestic stability and security than a comprehensive and meaningful foreign affairs policy that does not exhaust itself in economic profit-making and geopolitical bullying.

 

As I have shown in several of my blog essays over the past years and, alas, have been proven right by how things unfolded, the US's foreign affairs and national security policies have been catastrophic. Aside from individual instances of failure and folly most conspicuously in the general application of a flawed national security paradigm that highly damaged international relations ever since the end of the Cold War, thus roughly in the past quarter-century. The attempted Pax Americana turned out to be an utter failure, brought destabilization and terrorism to Europe, caused endless years of bloodshed and refugee crises in the Middle East, turned established political entities into rogue states, deteriorated political conditions by instigating regime changes and supporting insurgent terrorist movements, and devastated US-Russia relations. 

Solution/Prediction: The first meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin at the G-20 Summit is only a few days away from the time I write these lines. It might turn out to be the most critical meeting of the two Heads of State of these two countries in decades. What Trump has to achieve is of a tall order. In the wake of this meeting, he will have to silence the Russophobe forces in the US government and anti-Russian hawks in the Republican Party. He will have to stop the nonsense of considering Russia an enemy rather than a geopolitical rival who has to be collaborated with as a strategic partner and ally for defeating the global challenge of Islamism and assuring Western survival civilization.

  

It will be a tough challenge, but Mr. Trump needs to overcome the pressure from Congress, Senate, and the bulk of the media and put the US's foreign policy, particularly vis-à-vis Russia, on a new footing. Most problematic in this regard and posing a hurdle hard to overcome is the near-identical stance on foreign affairs espoused by neoconservatives and neoliberals. But President Trump must not fail in this endeavor as a further deterioration of international relations to the point of configuring the stakes for a new global armed conflict would be the result. 

Overall, it is going to be a colossal task for Mr. Trump to cure this republic. 

In his goal-oriented, pragmatic, and non-ideological intuitive way, President Trump has achieved a lot in the first half-year in office. The success goes mostly unnoticed as the media is more focused on character assassination rather than reporting on his accomplishments. But it is a fact that he managed to boost business and economy by decisively reducing regulations and reversing ideologically driven impositions of the former administration. Consumer confidence is up, and unemployment is down, and so is illegal immigration. A decisive improvement of the health care system and massive tax reform is imminent. Christian values are on the rebound, and the reversal of recent years' cultural decline is at least in its initial stages. 

 

What still gives a reason for concern is the president's failure to come through on the campaign promises of correcting the United States' foreign policy – reducing its overseas engagements, ending the meddling in the Middle East and the endless wars, diminishing the imperialist posture in general. Trump's recent trip to the Middle East and the Gulf States appeared to accomplish some improvement in terms of reducing the funding of terrorism and cooperation in defeating ISIS. His upcoming meeting with relevant heads of state such as the President of China and the Prime Minister of Japan, but most of all Russian President Putin, at the G-20 Summit will hopefully bring about solutions regarding the North Korean threat and lay the foundation for a new collaboration with Russia. 

Important days and weeks are lying ahead. We soon should find out if the long-overdue alterations in the United States' foreign affairs posture will occur and whether or not the sick republic has put itself on the road to recovery.

Ukraine - Another Failure of Western Interventionism

As I've made clear in my previous blog of March 2014 below, by overthrowing a democratically elected government in Ukraine, Washington, with support from the European Union's leading powers, has brought the United States and the West into a confrontation with Russia.

In about a year, the West has managed to topple the democratically-elected Ukraine government, install the Washington and Berlin-backed Poroshenko administration in Kyiv, and drive the nation into a fratricidal civil war. It turned the country into a failed state, virtually destroyed its economy, and severely damaged Russia's.

In its usual reversal of cause-effect realities, the mainstream media, in its typical reversal of cause-effect facts, blamed Russia and Putin's aggression and expansionism for protecting incumbent administrations and concealing their sad and ill-defined policies. Had the U.S. and Europe conducted just and wise policy procedures, they could have foreseen the support of Ukrainian separatists and annexation of Crimea by Russia as inevitable for its national interest.

Think about this: A year before scheduled presidential elections through which the Ukrainian people could have gotten rid of president Yanukovich's allegedly corrupt administration and chosen an administration espousing a more EU-oriented course, the U.S. and E.U. instigated an unnecessary coup. Why, for what reasons? To install a Western puppet administration that the people of Ukraine might have never elected themselves? To prevent a Russian-prone government (that was simultaneously establishing good relations with the West) from being democratically confirmed in OSCE-monitored elections? To put Ukraine into NATO and E.U. and drive Russia out of its Black Sea ports in Crimea?
 
Whatever the reason or ensemble of reasons, the applied policies provide evidence of a colossal misunderstanding of foreign affairs in a post-Cold War global setting and an astounding lack of any practical political philosophy of international relations in Washington. However, the incompetence and dilettantism that is hiding behind the democratic principle is widespread and not limited to the White House. Senators and politicians of both parties in Washington are pushing the notion of arming Ukraine and an increased show of force in Eastern Europe by the U.S. and NATO. GOP Senator James Inhoffe just introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to arm Ukraine with "Lethal Military Aid" against pro-Russian separatists, which means the hawks are doubling down on the political foolishness. They perpetuate the damage to global affairs and continue to push Ukraine into a proxy war with Russia.

However, the overbearing arrogance and hubris of Washington appear to drive a wedge into transatlantic relations, as ever more European nations distance themselves from the idea of arming Ukraine and potentially dragging NATO into war with Russia. Western Europe's economic ties with Putin's country are too close, and a significant portion of Russia's natural gas delivery to Europe runs through Ukraine. Aside from that, European nations, even when NATO-members, know that their populations are not ready to subscribe to go to outright war with Russia over Ukraine.

What are the options for future development? From Ukraine breaking apart with the eastern and separatist parts integrating into Russia to outright war between the West and Russia over Ukraine, almost anything appears possible. Given the strength and commitment of the Russian-backed separatists, it seems unlikely that the Ukrainian Armed Forces, lacking in coherence and dedication to the cause, would reconquer the eastern and southeastern parts of the country. A diplomatic solution along the lines of the Minsk negotiations results will depend on the ending of military and armament support from the U.S. and other western nations. I am convinced, though, that the arms support will seize soon or never get up to speed as it has become quite clear by now that Kyiv has lost and is unable to wage a full-scale war with or without weapons from the West. While the U.S. and individual European nations might be willing to prolong the agony, Kyiv can't fight a war without the will of its people behind. And in the long run, even the most hawkish politicians in Washington couldn't possibly want to throw NATO in and fight World War III against Russia over some folly and utter political blunder they have instigated and committed in Ukraine by themselves in the first place?

It is mind-boggling to note that, like in the Middle East, western political authorities could have easily prevented the meaningless bloodshed in Ukraine and the state's unnecessary disintegration. The hubris of liberal interventionism and U.S. activism worldwide - resulting from distorted interpretations of history, misguided doctrines of international relations, and an unjustifiable sense of moral superiority - appears unconquerable.

No matter how many times history proves them wrong and presents the horrendous damage, these policies are causing worldwide, self-righteous pride and defiant inertia prevail over any judiciousness or informed judgment.