A Reckoning

 

The debacle the West has brought on itself over Ukraine is impossible to ignore any longer.  Of the three wars that began in February: the battlefield, the economic, and the propaganda—only the last, the “softest” and least tangible, can be called a victory of sorts though a Pyrrhic one at that.

The Russian invasion prompted the U.S. and its western allies to attempt to crush Russia’s economy in full confidence that the rickety old “gas station masquerading as a country” would quickly collapse and force Putin to beg for forgiveness. Bad Vlad would be overthrown or marginalized, and Russia reopened for business just like in the glory years of Yeltsin and the Harvard-boys, the neoliberal experts who auctioned off Russian resources to the oligarchs. 

Instead, the Russians turned out to be prepared for just such an eventuality. They now preside over a stable domestic scene, are selling all the oil and gas they wish, and are in the process of launching a radical reordering of a large chunk of world trade by hiving itself off from U.S. control. Russia has its own bank clearing system that smoothly took over after the Americans threw them out of SWIFT, uses its own currency with its trading partners, is finding alternatives for things it used to import from the EU, and has kept inflation at manageable levels. (No, Joe, the ruble is not "rubble.") Somehow, it will survive the loss of access to Louis Vuitton bags and Scotch whiskey, no doubt at great emotional cost.

On the other hand, the U.S. and Europe are frantically trying to rein in double-digit inflation at home while at a loss for what to do in case the recession-inducing interest rate hikes don’t work. Two EU/NATO governments already have cracked, and more will surely follow. Estonia’s 22% inflation rate knocked its coalition government, led by the free-market-liberal Reform Party, into a corner. Boris Johnson in the U.K. survived a no-confidence vote by such a slim margin that he’s now dead meat and currently standing by the door with his coat on. Face-saving commentators refuse to blame the Ukraine war for their losses and point instead to the economic messes directly caused by it. Okay, whatever. 

The Italian techno-government led by the eternal (though not, thankfully, immortal) Mario Draghi is tottering; Macron in France stands to lose his parliamentary majority; and the German Social Democrats, never strong since they took over just months ago, look set for an historic drubbing.  

And last and also least, our own dear Sleepy Joe has to be wondering where did this ass he’s holding in his hands come from. Food prices are shooting up, housing costs are galloping into the far distance (trailer parks are being seized by private equity, so that’s a disappearing option), and gas is so dear that Americans may suddenly discover that they have feet. According to Biden’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, everything is or soon will be just dandy, demonstrating that for our Democrat leaders, the only real problem is an inadequate public relations strategy and whiny citizens who don’t realize how great they’re doing.

Speaking of propaganda campaigns, casual observers deserve our sympathy for believing that the Ukraine war is going well and that triumph is near. Unfortunately, Mr Bernays had no real advertising suggestion for how to spin the destruction of one’s fighting forces by an enemy invader. Ukraine is tottering on the verge of total defeat, notwithstanding the cheery dispatches from the hotels of Kiev by a phalanx of loyal stenographers bottle-fed by western spook agencies.

The US/European dominance of the informational spaces has resulted, perversely, in a trap: given the relentless boosterism over every imagined Ukrainian battlefield advance—whether technically true, practically irrelevant, or completely made up—has left Biden, Johnson, and von der Leyen with nowhere to go once they realize that the Russians are eating their bountiful lunches.

With every passing day, Russia’s leadership has ever less reason to negotiate anything. What once could have been face-saving compromises (such as that outlined in the Minsk agreements that would have left the Donbass republics within Ukraine) are slowly disappearing from the realm of possibility. In a few more weeks, the hated Mr Putin will be dictating terms, and Russia will decide exactly how much of the former Ukraine it will absorb into its territory permanently.

When we, the citizens of the western countries who brought this about, realize that we’ve been fed a pack of lies, the reaction will be something to behold. IMNSHO, the aftermath of this war will not be merely a humiliating Afghanistan 2.0 but rather a cataclysm with existential consequences.

NATO’s continued credibility as a defense/offense alliance will be in serious doubt, and the much-ballyhooed entry of Sweden and Finland looks likely to be vetoed by Turkey’s president, who is highly attuned to the direction of the winds.

Europe, in the person of its undemocratic EU bureaucracy, remains strangely committed to its own disintegration as it faithfully toes the failed American neocon non-strategy of telling everyone what to do despite no longer having the power to make them do it.

More immediately, the economic war launched by Washington, which the Nulands and Sullivans and Blinkens were sure would bring about a quick and glorious triumph, has turned into a giant boomerang headed right for the necks of the Democrats facing the voters in a few months. The boycotts and sanctions and thefts have caused oil and food prices to spike, and there is no sign of relief from any quarter.

Failing to stave off recession and impoverishment while losing a war is not an attractive record of accomplishments for the campaign trail. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see the maniac Republicans steamrolling to victory both now and in 2024, then finalizing its rigging of the system to remain in power permanently. We will be lucky to avoid electoral dictatorship with journalists imprisoned for sedition or ultra-right-wing biker gangs and gun clubs enforcing ideological purity. Those who sat by passively while Bush, Obama, and the courts destroyed habeas corpus may be shocked to see how precious that hoary old civil right actually is.

Unfortunately for the increasingly deranged figures arising from the Trumpian swamps, they also have no answers to the systemic weaknesses of our current social and economic arrangements and will find themselves equally discredited in the long run. What looked like a slow decline and gradual political crisis with neither party able to mount a coherent response is shifting into a much higher gear.

While the upheaval is not likely to be pretty, the possibilities for a rethinking of very basic assumptions—about our country, our habits, and in the end our very selves—increase proportionally. When the old ways no longer work, painful changes ensue.