Trump, Russia, Tariffs, EU ... now Poland

BTL the previous post, anon regales us with this quote relating to a pronouncement from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

Donald Trump has reportedly asked the EU to levy tariffs of up to 100% on India and China, in order to increase pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine.

Well, the Polish situation demands some kind of response; else the next "unplanned" wave of Gerberas will be over Finland and Estonia.  And I doubt NATO feels able to do much more than throw an aerial defensive screen around, say, Lviv - based firmly in Poland.  Economic measures are all that Europe is really up to at the moment.  The "coalition of the willing" is only looking at what it might do in the event of a ceasefire.

There is no doubt Russia is suffering economically just now (not to mention a growing shortage of gasoline and indeed water (sic) in the Donbas): and it might be made to suffer more.  But it can suffer more!  It's increasingly a war economy; and Russians are like that anyway (see this blog on many occasions).

Tense times.  Who needs the feeble distractions of Rayner and Mandelson?

ND  

What Syria means for Russia

At the peak of its vainglorious Cold War pomp, the USA reckoned to maintain forces sufficient to fight two major wars and one minor war - simultaneously.  Well, it was never put to the test.  But perhaps there's the measure of a true global superpower.  Putin, of course, fancies his Russia as a superpower ...

I wonder how he'd assess his standing the day after Damascus fell.  To describe this as humiliating for him is an understatement: if you can't see it, you obviously don't read much from the teeming world of fiercely patriotic Russian 'milblogs'.  He must own to an intelligence failure on a par with Israel's, pre October 2023; the loss of a client regime in under a fortnight; in material terms, the loss of his logistical springboard to Africa, where he aspires to a buccaneering, influential and lucrative interventionist positioning; and in political terms, the loss of prestige.

Ah, prestige.  Who uses that term these days?  In my earliest soldiering, I found myself briefly under the tuition of a Chief Instructor who'd fought in the closing 12 months of WW2 and in many a campaign through the '50s and 60's.   He told us that everything he'd done, all across the globe, was for the sake of upholding and extending British prestige.  If, today, we are too post-imperial to care about such things well, across most of the world and most definitely including Russia, prestige matters immensely.

Putin and his Russia just aren't up to it.  How much does he look forward to his next meeting with Xi?  With Kim?  With Erdogan?  The man who can't prosecute a mid-sized war in his own back yard, nor prop up a single strategically vital client on whose territory he maintains sizeable naval, army and air assets.  The man who, for all his much vaunted experience of decades and supposed statecraft, even now doesn't realise that the enemy gets a vote?  Even after Ukraine indeed turned out, as predicted, to be Finland rather than Georgia. 

See, Volodya, superpowers need to be cognisant of how, when they extend themselves in foreign lands, it's necessary to do a great deal more than plonk down some forces, kick a little ass, and then assume everything's bought and paid for.  Check out Rome in its prime, Britain, the USA - and note just what an all-enveloping, wrap-around approach needs to be taken to hold what you think you've got.   How many snipers and opportunistic hit-and-runners you need to be prepared for.  What all those other carping, jealous powers can do, with so little effort and just a little hostile intent, to incommode you and your positions on your faraway clients' turf.  How (in the military idiom) if you want to hold the line at a river, you must hold both banks.  Oh, how much all-round capability it all requires!  Capability you just don't have.

If you ask me, this humiliation will result in Putin lashing out, and bodes worse for Ukraine than anything else so far.  Which other cat can he kick?  But even there ... the enemy has a vote.

ND

Contra Starkey, contra Putin: "Ukraine" is a Real Thing

The Starkey lecturette we were directed to the other day is very good viewing indeed - all manner of interesting perspectives.  I can't go along with all of it, however.  As noted before, the degree of strategic capability we should attribute to Putin is very much open to question, as is his 'hero' status in the non western world.

There's something else that needs to be challenged, if not on the facts then certainly on the interpretation.  Right at the beginning, Starkey notes that through most years of recorded history we won't find 'Ukraine' on the map.  His clear implication, I suggest, is that Ukraine is therefore not a 'proper entity' in some sense - a latter-day confection - which very much invites the next step of "so maybe we shouldn't get exercised about something which lacks status in that way". 

However much it's important for some purposes to learn the history, for other purposes we needn't get into "what are the origins of modern-day Ukraine?".  Specifically, there's the rather pointed alternative question: "will they stand and fight?".   A few days before it all kicked off, against a BTL comment that pointed to several recent regimes that had simply crumbled in the face of a determined military thrust, I offered the view that Finland 1939-40 was the appropriate counter example (NOT France 1940); and that "Ukrainian nationalism is a real thing".  If that's right - and I remain of the view that it is - the answer to Starkey's observation is a resounding "so what?".  If they stand and fight, what's the relevance for immediate practical purposes as to how they came by their national identity?

My views on this stem from when I worked in Moscow, many years ago.  I was determined to learn the language, and took on a Russian tutor.  At a very early stage I brought him a list of my Russian staff and asked him how I should correctly pronounce their names (knowing that, for example, Олег would put up with being called Oh-leg, but really it is more like Alyeck).   The tutor scanned down the list, and with a look of utter disgust lighted upon one name:  This is a Ukrainian name, he spat out - why do you employ her?

And so it went on.   At one particularly memorable business lunch when my boss from the US was over, one of the assembled host told a joke, the punchline of which was to compare Ukrainians unfavourably with certain others of mankind's races, and also the apes.  This was solemnly translated for my man, who went purple but didn't know quite what else to do.  But it was par for the course in Moscow.

In a later business incarnation I found myself working alongside a Ukrainian for a sustained period, who gave me the other side of the picture over a beer or three.

Any suggestion on Putin's part that Russians and Ukrainians are blood-brothers that have been artificially and temporarily separated, doesn't ring at all true to me.  Ukrainian nationalism is a Thing alright, wherever it came from and whenever it dates from - and quite tangible enough to fuel serious resistance.  As we see before us daily.  I'm still on my Finland-not-France analogy.

ND   

PS: I might add that if it rumbles on into a stalemate where the west keeps the Ukrainians armed and fighting as did Russia and China keep the North Vietnamese, this Russian gentleman suggests we may live to regret it.  As with Starkey, we're not obliged to agree with everything he says: but it's a compelling little essay.

PPS - an afterthought: if Ukraine "didn't exist" for much of history, then how's about, errrr, Germany?  Italy?   etc etc etc 

Russia Has A Painful Precedent In Mind

 ... and it's Finland, 1939-1940.

Russia hasn't had stellar success of late, even in Georgia and Chechnya, both a damn' sight easier to chew off than Ukraine.  

But the real pain must come whenever they think of Finland, whose heavily outnumbered forces dealt them a serious bloody nose.  It's generally reckoned the Soviet casualties in the 'Winter War' were of the same order of magnitude as Britain suffered during the whole of WW2 - and that in just three and a half months.  For not much gain  (a bit of Donbass-style land-grab), and substantial international opprobrium.   (Not that Joe Stalin cared very much.  Nor about casualties, for that matter.)

That's what can happen when you take on a nation that is (a) very big, geographically, with unlimited ability for tactical retreat by the defender, and overstretch trouble for the attacker;  (b) fiercely nationalistic.   Given their own dealings with Napoleon and Hitler, we might imagine that for the Russians, this lesson is not lost ...

It's been fairly noted recently that successful guerilla wars are fought by youthful fanatics, not middle-aged populations - with the suggestion that under this precept Ukraine has the wrong demographics for that kind of resistance.  Maybe so: but surely Finland is a much more relevant case study.

Oh, and that extremely interested observer President Xi will also be recalling China's own less-than-glorious attack on Vietnam in 1979.  Still, at least Putin hasn't pooped on Xi's Winter Olympics party in the unseemly way he did with Georgia, slap bang in the middle of Beijing's 2008 summer games, to China's profound disgust.  Well - not yet, anyway.

ND

Taking Pot-shots at Putin

Oh dear, even close neighbours Finland don't mind mocking Mr Putin.

I'm told this is hilarious in Finnish - you need to know that the two suited eejits are easily recognised as the prime minister and president; and the Putin lookalike speaks for himself.  Or twitches his muscles, anyway.

The Finns, of course, have a hard-won reputation of standing up to Russia: in just a few months the Winter War of 1939-40 saw the Red Army suffer half as many casualties at the hands of Mannerheim's brave army as were suffered by the UK military during the whole of WW2.   Maybe they are laughing at themselves as well in this skit. 

It's a bit too early to call the bottom on the oil market, but if the UK gas market precedent is a guide, we may be there.  Can Putin hold his breath for four or five years at $50?  Russia is also famed for its ability to take it on the chin: but the casulaties could once again be disproportionate.  As the Ukrainian situation takes a(nother) turn for the worse, and the end of winter hoves into view with European and LNG gas stocks comfortably high, we may shortly find out what the shirtless Volodya is prepared - or forced - to do.

ND