As usual on Monday we have Alastair Crooke’s SCF essay and his chat with the Judge. The essay, “Macron’s Psycho-Play to Keep Aloft the Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU,’” gets a bit of coverage at the end of their chat; rather, Crooke’s Al-Mayadeen column, “Is the US divorcing Netanyahu? Or is it Democratic ‘cope’ for their errors in Gaza?” does merit the Judge’s attention and consumes about half the 33-minute chat. Those who remember will recall a paper written by what became W’s neocon cabal, “A Clean Break,” published in 1996 that became the blueprint for all the mayhem employed during W’s administration. Do pay attention to what Crooke says was told to him “in no uncertain terms” about the connection between the destruction of Saddam’s Iraq and the disposition of the Palestinians and their movement. And there’s much more we’re told about the disconnect between today’s young US-based Jews and their support for Palestinians over Zionism along with the inability of Washington to understand Palestinians’s Liberation mindset—essentially, Liberty or Death, with dying for Liberty seen as a duty if that’s what’s required. Would Patrick Henry who uttered that phrase during the American Revolution have acted in similar manner? Most historians say such behavior would be very/highly unlikely.
The beginning third or so of the chat is devoted to the terror attack in Russia and the Outlaw US Empire’s sad attempt to cover for Ukraine. IMO, not much new is revealed for those who’ve followed that event very closely, although there’s a bit here and there. I usually suggest watching the chat last since the written items provide helpful context to the discussion. Today that’s only true to a certain extent as the terror attack occurred after Crooke submitted his writings. I still suggest the chat be seen last, but I’m not advocating it as a must this week. The link is in the first sentence. As usual, the Al-Mayadeen column will precede the SCF essay:
Senator Schumer (who represents a state with more than 20% of the US Jewish population) delivered last week a pointed speech on the Senate floor excoriating Netanyahu as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in "Israel". Schumer was unsparing in his criticism: “The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after 7 Oct” … “The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past." [The very distant, mythological past he didn’t say.]
The address was widely circulated to the White House and Jewish donors and interest groups (including reportedly AIPAC) before delivery.
The speech, therefore, was read from an agreed text and intended to signal a major shift in the US stance. It was "sold" in mainstream US media as landing a "bombshell" onto "Israel", warning that it risked "losing" the US (and much of the world).
However, was it truly a divorce "decree nisi" between the US and Netanyahu?
Undoubtedly, many, if not most, reform and liberal Jews in NY and beyond, would agree wholeheartedly with Schumer’s stance. Taken together, they represent a core Democratic constituency.
But, if Schumer’s words constituted a statement of intended divorce, the reality is that "the couple" has been estranged and leading separate lives, for many years.
Years back, Netanyahu saw the writing on the wall as the Democrats in the US turned increasingly woke, just at the point at which Netanyahu, the Likud, and the Israeli polity were marching rightward toward fundamentalist Zionism.
The woke ethos of seeking redress (positive discrimination) for historic identity and racial discrimination and the demand for restitutive social justice clearly were at odds and a threat to the Zionist world of special rights for one population group (Jews) over another (Palestinians) sharing the same land.
Liberal democrats and radical Zionism were pursuing divergent paths.
The answer for the Likud Party seemed to be a pivot to the Evangelical constituency in the US -- and since most were Republican, a shift too to the GOP as the main patron. (In 2007, 51% of Protestants in the US identified with evangelical churches.)
It was seen as a bold and controversial move by the Israeli Right at the time. But from the Likud perspective, it started to pay off -- as in the case of the fraught move of the US Embassy to al-Quds. The Democrats were not the patrons here; it was the Evangelicals (for Christian Biblical motives).
In this light, Schumer’s speech was less a bombshell in "Israel" than in the US. The paths of Likud and Western Liberalism had long diverged. What Schumer was proclaiming was the divorce of US liberals from "Israel" as it is today, (and not the imagined, rosy-tinted world of two decades earlier).
The horrors of the Gaza war have exposed that "liberal Zionism" is now an oxymoron.
It is also exposing the impotence of the secular-liberal approach to a problem (in the talk of security reform of the PA, two-state solutions, Saudi embrace/normalization... etc.) that is becoming evermore eschatological; driven by fear; hatred, and Biblical injunctions to kill as mandatory command under Halachic Law. There is a psychological block in the West to admitting that Biblical compulsions can override "rationality".
Of course, the unsaid element to the Schumer address is that the Democratic Campaign managers were spooked in Michigan by the size of the "uncommitted" protest vote against Biden’s support for Israel’s war aims.
Netanyahu, it seems, is to be the scapegoat for the entirety of "Israel", which -- right or wrong -- overwhelmingly supports the Cabinet war aims in Gaza and Lebanon. Schumer’s finger-pointing effectively absolves Biden of his initial error in embracing Netanyahu and declaring that the US "has Israel’s back". As one analyst noted:
“Biden knows that Netanyahu is representing a mainstream position on the war and that the president is mostly bluffing for domestic benefit. “Biden has a game he’s playing, and that is criticism of Bibi … It reduces some of the flames.""
Additionally, Schumer’s speech intentionally absolves the "liberal" West for having colluded, over two decades, in "Israel’s" deliberate blocking of any prospect for a Palestinian State coming into being, and it avoids the issue of why the Biden Administration goes on sending bombs and munitions to the Israeli military.
Netanyahu may have played a central part in the recent transformation of "Israel", but this is not all his Netanyahu. These dynamics were perfectly visible during the Ariel Sharon era, too.
Interestingly, even Senator McConnell picked up on these points, “The Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem: It has an anti-Israel problem." However, as usual, the insight is clouded by party politics: McConnell espies the opportunity for the GOP to seize "the card" of Israel from the Democrats! [My Emphasis]
Now the SCF essay My emphasis bolded italics:
Charles Michel, the European Council President, has called on Europe to switch to a ‘war economy’. He justifies this call partly as urgent support for Ukraine, but more pertinently, as the need for relaunching the (beached) European economy by focussing on the defence industry.
Calls ring out across Europe: ‘We are in a pre-war era’, Polish PM Donald Tusk says. Macron, after mooting the possibility ambiguously several times, says, “Maybe at some point – I don’t want it – we will have to have operations [French troops in Ukraine], on the ground, to counter the Russian forces”.
What has spooked the Europeans so? We know the French Intelligence briefing reaching Macron in recent days was dire; it seems to have triggered his initial sally into direct French military intervention in Ukraine. French classified Intelligence warned that the collapse of the Contact Line, and the disintegration of the AFU as a functioning military force, might be imminent.
Macron played coy: Might he send troops? At one time seemingly ‘yes’; but then frustratingly the prospect was uncertain, yet still possibly on the table. Confusion reigned. Nobody knew for sure, as the President is nothing if not volatile, and General De Gaulle bequeathed to his successors, quasi-regal powers. So yes, constitutionally he could do it.
The general view in Europe was that Macron was playing complex mind-games, firstly with the French people, and secondly with Russia. Nevertheless, it seems that there could be some substance to Macron’s sabre-rattling: The French Chief of Army Staff said he has 20,000 troops ready to be inserted in 30 days. And the Head of Russia’s SVR Intelligence Agency, Naryshkin, more modestly assessed that France seemingly is preparing a military contingent for sending to Ukraine, which at the initial stage, will be about two thousand people.
Just to be clear however, even a 20,000-man division by standards of classical military theory is supposed to be able to hold at maximum, a 10km-front. An insertion of two or twenty thousand French troops would change nothing strategically; it would not halt the vastly larger Russian steamroller, grinding on westwards. So what is Macron playing at?
Is this all bluff, then?
Likely, it is part ‘grandstanding’ by Macron, pre-occupied to present himself as ‘Mr Strongman Europe’ – particularly toward his French constituency.
His posturing comes, however, at a more significant conjunction of events for the so-called ‘Geo-political EU’:
Clarity: Light has pierced and has illuminated a space hitherto occupied by shadows. It is now as clear as it can be – after Putin’s overwhelming win in elections on a record turnout – that President Putin is here to stay. All the western shadow-play of ‘régime change’ in Moscow simply shrunk to naught in the bright light of events.
Snorts of anger can be heard from some quarters in Europe. Yet they will subside. There is no choice. The reality, as Marianne newspaper, quoting a senior French officer, derisively noting in respect to Macron’s Ukraine’s posturing: “We must make no mistake, facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable”.
At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal … (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”.
What pains the EU ‘neocon ever-hopefuls’ more is that Putin’s clear electoral victory coincides, almost precisely, with an EU (and NATO) humiliation in Ukraine. It is not just that the AFU appears to be in a cascading implosion, but that the retreat is accelerating, as Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain.
Into this grim EU prospect is that second shaft of clarifying light: The U.S. is slowly but surely turning its back on the financing and arming of Kiev, leaving Europe’s impotence exposed for all the world to see.
The EU simply cannot substitute for the U.S. pivot. Yet more hurtful for some is that a U.S. retreat represents a ‘punch in the guts’ for much of the Brussels leadership, who had fallen on the Biden Administration with almost indecent glee, upon Trump’s leaving of office. They used the moment to proclaim the cementing of a pro-Atlanticist, pro-NATO EU.
Now, as former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar perfectly defines it, “France [is] all dressed up – with nowhere to go”:
“Ever since its ignominious defeat in the Napoleonic wars, France is entrapped in the predicament of countries that get sandwiched between great powers. Following World War II, France addressed this predicament by forging an axis with Germany in Europe”.
“Caught up in a similar predicament, Britain adapted itself to a subaltern role tapping into the American power globally but France never gave up its quest to regain glory as a global power. And it continues to be a work in progress”.
“The angst in the French mind is understandable as the five centuries of western dominance of the world order is drawing to a close. This predicament condemns France to a diplomacy that is constantly in a state of suspended animation, interspersed with sudden bouts of activism”.
The problems here for the exalted aspiration for the EU qua global power are three-fold: Firstly, the Franco-German Axis has dissolved, as Germany swerved towards the U.S. as its new foreign-policy dogma. Secondly, France’s clout is diminished further in European affairs as Scholtz has embraced Poland (not France) as its like-minded, ‘best friend forever’; and thirdly, Macron’s personal relations with Chancellor Scholz are on a dive.
The other plane to the EU geo-political project is that the embrace of Washington’s financial wars on Russia and China has resulted in “the U.S. has dramatically outgrowing the EU and the United Kingdom combined – over the last 15 years. In 2008, the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s … America’s economy is now however, nearly one-third bigger. [And] it is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK”.
In other words, being America’s ally, in its ill-judged Ukraine-proxy war, has – and is – costing Europe dearly. Eurointelligence reports that a survey amongst small and medium-sized companies in Germany has registered an extreme shift in sentiment against the EU. Of the sample of 1,000 small and medium sized companies, 90% were unhappy with the EU to varying degrees, driving many to re-locate from Europe to the U.S.
Put plainly, the effort to inflate and hold aloft the notion of a ‘geo-political Europe’ is ending in débacle. Living standards are sinking and Brussel’s regulatory promiscuity and high energy costs are resulting in the de-industrialisation and impoverishment of Europe.
Macron, in a blunt interview in late 2019 with The Economist magazine, declared that Europe stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geo-political power, lest we will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” (Macron’s remark preceded the war in Ukraine by 3 years).
Today, Macron’s fears are reality.
So, to turn to what the EU plans to do about this crisis, EC President Michel says he wants to buy twice as many weapons from European producers by 2030; to use the profits from Russian frozen assets to finance weapons purchases for Ukraine; to facilitate financial access for the European defence industry, including by issuing a European defence bond and getting the European Investment Bank to add defence purposes to its lending criteria.
Michel sells it to the public as a way to create jobs and growth. In reality, however, the EU is looking to create a new slush fund to replace the QE purchases by the ECB of EU states’ sovereign bonds, which the interest rate spike in the U.S. effectively killed.
The defence industry ploy is a means to create more cash flows: The EU’s various mooted ‘transitions’ (Climate, Greening and Tech) clearly required mammoth money-printing. This was just about manageable when the project could be financed at zero cost interest rates. Now the EU states’ debt explosion to fund the pandemic and ‘transitions’ threatens to take the entire geo-political ‘revolution’ into financial crisis. There is a financing crisis underway.
Defence, Michel hopes, may be saleable to the public as the new ‘transition’ to be financed by unorthodox means. Wolfgang Münchau at EuroIntellignce however, writes on ‘Michel’s rosy war economy’ – that he wants a geo-political Europe, and so concludes his letter with the familiar cold war adage – that ‘if you want peace you need to prepare for war’”.
“Are those weapons in Michel’s war economy to speak for our failures in diplomacy? What is our historic contribution to this conflict? Should we not start from there?”
“The language Michel uses is dramatic and dangerous. Some of our older citizens still remember what it means to live in a war economy. Michel’s loose talk is disrespectful”.
Eurointelligence is not alone in its criticism. Macron’s gambit has divided Europe, with a majority firmly opposed to inserting troops into Ukraine – sleep-walking into war. Marianne’s editor Natacha Polony has written:
“It is no longer about Emmanuel Macron or his postures as a virile little leader. It is no longer even about France or its weakening by blind and irresponsible élites. It is a question of whether we will collectively agree to sleepwalk into war. A war that no one can claim will be controlled or contained. It’s a question of whether we agree to send our children to die because the United States insisted on setting up bases on Russia’s borders”.
The bigger question concerns the whole ‘Von der Leyen-Macron’ geo-political gambit of the EU needing to think of itself as a geo-political power. It is the pursuit of this geo-political ‘chimaera’ (in no little part, an ego-project) that paradoxically, has brought the EU exactly to the brink of crisis.
Do a majority of Europeans truly wish to be a geo-political power, if that requires relinquishing what remains of their national sovereignty and autonomy (and parliamentary oversight) to the supra-national plane; to the Brussels technocrats? Maybe Europeans are content for the EU to remain as a trade bloc.
So why is Macron nonetheless doing this? No one is sure, but it seems that he imagines he is playing some complicated game of psycho-deterrence with Moscow – one characterised by radical ambiguity.
His is just another psy-ops, in other words.
It is possible nonetheless, that he thinks his ambiguous on/off threat of an European deployment into Ukraine might just give Kiev enough negotiating ‘leverage’ to bluff Russia into agreeing to ‘rump Ukraine’ remaining in the western (and even NATO) sphere, in which case Macron will claim have been Ukraine’s ‘saviour’.
If this is the case, it is pie in the sky. President Putin, armed with his recent electoral victory, simply swept Macron’s psy-op off the table: ‘Any insertion of French troops would be ‘invaders’ and a legitimate target for our forces’, Putin made explicit.
One wonders if European mindsets were changed at all by the Moscow terror attack? In other words, would it be an even greater folly to attack Russia now that it’s even more motivated to defeat the West—the “invaders”? Having been subjugated and colonized by the Outlaw US Empire—a fact very few admit publicly—means Europe can look forward to a very long recession or depression depending on the region. The only EU members whose fortunes are brighter are those who remained friendly to Russia, a fact being noted by ever more people and their leaders, particularly in the Balkans. With the destruction of one of the EU’s major gas storage facilities in far-Western Ukraine and the fact that it will likely be revisited several more times to ensure its inability to function, a few more defections may soon occur. Recall that gas to some portions of the EU comes via the Turk & Blue Stream pipes, while it appears that all gas transiting Ukraine will cease at the end of 2024. There Are further energy problems as the Outlaw US Empire can no longer refine enough diesel and other heavy fuel oils for its domestic use, so it has none to export to EU. Plus, LNG supplies from the Empire will also begin to fall off as extraction decreases while the rate of depletion increases.
The bottom line is Europe cannot afford any war with anyone—not Russia nor Serbia. It will continue to support Ukraine’s Nazis as long as it can, although it appears the smaller EU members are becoming hesitant. IMO, the War Bond scam will be swallowed by Outlaw US Empire based neoliberal parasites and played for awhile until no more monies can be squeezed from it and it will be thrown back at the EU as a financial anchor around its neck. Russia has no need to invade any part of Europe as the Outlaw US Empire has already dealt it a mortal blow. Yet, more drama will playout in Moldova and Armenia, Moldova’s case being the more serious of the two.
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I still need to read the articles but had already watched the chat and the part I found most enlightening (which may not be news to others) was his discussion about Ron Derma's recent talks about the need to de-radicalize Gaza and the West Bank through a "transformative process" like Germany and esp. Japan experienced at the end of WWII.
"This is exactly what I was told back in 2003, that after Iraq was bombed into dust like Dresden the Palestinians would become docile and agree to peace on Israel's terms because Saddam Hussein was an icon for the Palestinians so his annihilation would be transformative for the Palestinian leadership, they would be thoroughly demoralized."
He also made some very good points about the Qassam Brigades, that they "have a different ethos than the political leadership sitting in Doha, their ethos is victory or martyrdom. We don't understand when they talk about this or about sacrifice, how they could conceive that sometimes a people must lose a large proportion of itself in order for the people as a whole to survive."
The notion that Palestinians can be bombed into docility is ludicrous, it will just radicalize more of them and understandably so. If your fate is to be killed anyway you may as well do as much damage to your enemy as you can before you go down.
I wonder how many young Europeans are baling out of their home countries since their prospects are so grim. IE, people who can "smell the coffee". It seems the social benefits will diminish as the 'leaders' there find a predictably moronic way to beat plowshares into guns. Apparently, Barbara Tuchman in her depressing history of 14th C. Europe, A Distant Mirror, not only wrote about the past but predicted the future. The more things change... The US MIC is licking their greasy/bloody mandibles in anticipation of the big grift. And...FJB