Well, someone on Team Trump knows their game: gotta love the symbolism of meeting in Alaska! Yup, Li'l Volodya / L'il Volodymyr, it's real estate. Sometimes you wish a former territory was still yours - but sometimes that's just history and we all move on. Great stuff.
While we await the ghastly prospect of Trump and Putin sitting around the map of Ukraine drawing arbitrary lines (and Putin wetting himself with pleasure at meeting the Great Man again), here's the story I promised you'd get.
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Many years ago I was working for (*gasp*) an oil & gas company, and had planning responsibility for our ops in a certain African country. A plum piece of offshore acreage was up for grabs and we wanted it: but another company had a rather more compelling claim. The acreage was contiguous with a play they'd been working very productively for several years, and their geo-data strongly suggested the oilfield they were producing extended into the new block. It is technically possible for business to be conducted effectively by two separate developers accessing a single field that straddles a licence-line - you need to negotiate a "unitisation" agreement - but it's messy, not least in primitive jurisdictions (are you allowed to say that? - Ed). So the incumbent was strongly motivated to pitch hard for the new acreage. We had some neighbouring acreage, too, which thus far had not yielded any discoveries. But we weren't deterred: the prize was great.
The minister, replete with tribal hat and fly-whisk, decreed that he would make his determination at the end of a grand meeting where he'd hear each side make its case. Along came the incumbent with a slick slide-show of all their geo-data: a fine technical presentation that was pretty persuasive - judged on its own terms.
But our chief geologist was a canny Frenchman (Basque, actually - we'll call him Vasco), and this was a Francophone country. When the incumbent's team had finished their polished performance, he strode up to the table with a large map that he unrolled theatrically and plonked down several paperweights to hold it flat. It was a simple map of the seabed, with few markings: the lines of the various licence areas; and seabed contours.
Now seabed contours don't have very much to do with what lies thousands of feet beneath (OK: nothing whatsoever). But they made the plot that was up for grabs look a lot more natural a fit with our existing area, than with the incumbents. Our man's presentation was short and simple, and he concluded it with a grand, sweeping gallic hand-gesture across the map, indicating the perfect logic of his contour-based argument. Then he sat down.
The minister pondered all things in his heart, and then rose to the table. He addressed the assembled host with these words:
Moi, je comprends l'argument de Monsieur Vasco
With this, he grandly replicated the sweeping gesture across the map; turned on his heel; and awarded us the licence.
* * * * *
I think we can guess what Putin's maps are going to look like. Heaven help Zelensky on 15th.
ND
16 comments:
What if Sir Greased Piglet were to make a dramatic intervention to buy Putin's mercy for Ukraine by offering to let the KGB man have ... The Chagos Islands?
Errr ... + + TARIFFS ?
Perhaps 'Vasco' knew the politico's back story or knew the rational choice was not with your side, so gambled on a pitch that appealed more to emotion. Politics - especially without a load of advisers in train - can be more emotional. Maybe the politico felt a bit of competition would be good - or have good optics at home.
Anyway, the great thing about the Alaska meet (show him the gold Donny) is that it is a 'feel out' meeting. Probably a signal to say 'don't expect too much', either side can and probably will walk away. Happy is he who expects little and Zelenski needs to suffer a bit more in order to soften up. Way to go here I think - disgusting as it is.
Jim, there is no "perhaps" about it! It was our only shot (given the strictures of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).
Your conjecture about a bit of competition is a very fair one: and while having two discrete sets of production ops in the country would technically be inefficient, it would probably have created more jobs**
Another potential factor was that the incumbent was well known in the industry for swaggering, unbearable arrogance, and they may easily have pissed him off in the past
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** then again, an inefficient operation would probably have generated less oil and less profit, which in the long run would mean less royalty and tax payments to the country. It's a multi-dimensional game of chess, this
"Politics - especially without a load of advisers in train - can be more emotional"
True. But it seems that we have in charge a man who has never encountered an emotion in his life. Starmer. Is he actually human?
Sir Pusillanimous Prick has said enough to make it clear that he disliked his father. That's an emotion. Probably he was a Mummy's boy - that's another.
Very hard to say for sure what’ll happen in Russia post any Ukraine “peace” “agreement”. (heck, we’re not even that good at setting expectations for what’ll happen in the next UK election!).
On some readings I’ve seen, Putin used the war to clear out some of the questionable-loyalty nomenklatura and the oligarchs who wouldn’t be shaken down to help fund and supply the war effort at cost — or, worse (for them) — below cost price.
The new elite stability isn’t really that stable, I don’t suppose. This is Russia we are talking about. Perhaps the new elite were “happy” to go along with the war because, as Putin’s new-found friends, they discovered being friends meant benefits. Or even just missing appointments with open windows. But just how much more “support” are they willing to — or able — to pony up, for any future escapades? Putin isn’t getting any younger. And succession planning in these kinds of situations is, well, always interesting.
Succession planning is always the tricky bit - Russia has never really known democracy (and I'm not sure we have it any more with Uniparty rule). Putin is IMHO the best leader Russia have, just as Gaddafi was the best Libyan leader.
Our "democracy" is likely to change as our demography changes. 40% of English babies in 2024 had one parent born overseas, and Muhammad is the #1 boys name. When we were in Afghanistan I always said "If Blair wants the UK and Afghanistan to be more similar, why not wait a couple of decades for the UK to make the adjustment?".
Putin would then offer them to China !
(There's a 2016 novel, Twilight's Last Gleaming, in which Chinese special forces take Diego Garcia)
"Clive said...
Very hard to say for sure what’ll happen in Russia post any Ukraine “peace” “agreement”. (heck, we’re not even that good at setting expectations for what’ll happen in the next UK election!)."
Wrong, Clive? Labour will be destroyed just as the Tories have been. In both cases self-inflicted, though God know what state we'll be in when Starmer and Harmer have finished with us.
Any readers got young adults? Tell them to get the hell out.
So no deal. I see reports of a potential "air ceasefire" and there the devil will be in the detail. Can't imagine it includes drones, unless Ukraine are losing the drone war where it counts on the frontlines.
A Polish journalists view on returning from the war zone:
https://www.rp.pl/biznes/art42836831-ukrainie-brakuje-zolnierzy-nie-sprzetu
when it comes to the Ukrainian soldier, the biggest problem is that he's just... not there. And this is due to the fact that the scale of desertion and abandonment of units without consent is very high. This creates a dangerous situation: if you take into account the loss of soldiers on the front line, desertion and abandonment of units without consent, the number of soldiers on the Ukrainian side decreases month after month. Although officially the Ukrainians mobilize 20-30 thousand people every month, most of them do not get to the front line.
Certainly we're seeing, even on Ukrainian sites like DeepState, big Russian advances - 15 or 25km2 at a time where a few months ago 4km2 was a big gain, and in places like Chasov Yar or Bakhmut/Artemovsk a couple of streets could take weeks.
There was a Gallup poll in 2022 where I think 72% of polled Ukrainians (obviously not the ones in Donbass or Crimea) wanted to fight til victory. Now 69% want a peace deal and only around 20% want to fight on. Still enough to cause trouble of course - how many Dubliners wanted to fight in 1916 - or for that matter 1922? Yet Irish nationalism still prevailed. But ... Russians aren't Brits. Very different history and culture. OTOH, Russia will probably still be there in a hundred years. The UK?
In a joint statement published earlier today, the European Council said: “No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries. Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine’s pathway to EU and Nato.”
And there "should" be peace, love and little fluffy bunny rabbits.
While suffering from too small a sample size, my discussions with young adults on what to do with their lives seems to show they are confounders to your advice. Many have taken gap years or other opportunities to travel. So it’s not like they don’t know what they are talking about (unlike us adults, when we try to tell them what we think they should do).
Plenty of countries to go to, often cheap ones, too, where they can feel the firm smack of authoritarian governments ensuring clean streets and safe cities at night. Unfortunately these are the same ones which will deport them, jail them for lengthy periods — or worse — for getting caught having a sneaky spliff, or just being inebriated in the wrong place.
Plenty too with “low taxes” (or even no taxes). However, the kidz are alright, because they seem to have sussed that, if the state doesn’t provide, then someone else will, but there will be toll booths in front of everything you come into contact with and need.
That’s before we get to out-and-out scams (one unfortunate acquaintance found out the hard way that going to Australia to live your dream earning six figures as an electrician in the say, then spending weekends surfing and putting another shrimp on the barbie is fine. But, alas, only a reality having paid well north of £25k equivalent to get a “recognised qualification” from one of the rip-off “trade schools”, during which time, you, as a qualified electrician, work minimum wage all hours God sends for one of the “qualified” locals. They get cheap, competent labour. You get fleeced with bogus “training” you don’t need and some vague prospect of a dream coming true in about five year’s time. Maybe.
Not that I’m saying migrating overseas and living the expat life isn’t a good choice for some. But 77,000 former expats return to the UK each year after living abroad. Each, no doubt, with a story to tell.
You got to see the differing mechanisms yesterday, the US giving Putin a show of force with the flyover, whilst afterwards Putin showed he can manipulate Trump, even when he's got advisers with him.
A point for Putin, over to Europe and Ukraine now.
I don't think the US Presidency's influence has been reduced a prize to be battled for between foreign powers before, but here we are. Maybe the offer of a few Trump Towers around Europe's capitals, built as a gift, and one can host the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, would swing it.
What's amazing is that 12 years ago it was the US doing everything they could against Russia, colour revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia ("F*** the EU" as Nuland put it), while Europe said thanks for all that cheap gas - and now it's Europe "killing Putin with their mouth" - but unlike the US, Europe has no power to make Russia do anything they don't want to.
I honestly despair of our political class. It's like they want to see Odessa gone and a Russian land bridge to Transnistria.
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