June 1, 2020--Under Siege.

With our cities under siege and Tump cowering in his White House bunker, I am thinking again about the Apocalypse and something I wrote and posted two years ago on June 12, 2018.

I thought it might be sadly appropriate to reprise it--

In something I wrote and posted in May, "What's He Up To?" I speculated that the he, Donald Trump, obsessed with making as much money as possible, but fearing he is compromised by the goods the Russians have on him, and the still-leaking revelations about his tangled sex life that includes, now admittedly, paying hush money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, faced with this, Trump will do all he can to undermine the various probes underway into these and other malfeasances, especially smearing the Mueller investigation which is clearly most comprehensive and threatening.

I ended with what I thought would be a smirky throwaway line--  

"Then, if this fails there is the Gotterdammerung scenario where Trump goes up in flames and brings the metaphorical house down on all of us."

Well, fewer than three weeks later the Wagnerian scenario seems to be the one unfolding with Trump and Rudy Giuliani [remember him?] in an operatic duet that eventually will bring on the flames.

Trump like Siegfried is on his own Rhine Journey. Siegfried first kills a dragon and then subsequently is murdered while Rudy, in familiar drag, channeling Brunnhilde, is ready for his own Immolation Scene. In the Gotterdammerung ("Twilight of the Gods"), Brunnhilde assembles her own funeral pyre and after igniting it rides her horse into it where she is consumed by flames.

Of course I'm being metaphoric.

But the best recent example of the approaching political Gotterdammerung was Trump, acting out of a geopolitical death wish, basically blowing up the G-7 summit meeting held last week in Canada with our allies. Or should I say, "former allies"? 

"There's a special place in hell for Justine Trudeau" intoned Peter Navarro, a senior Trump economic advisor, because the Canadian prime minister wouldn't roll over for Trump when it came to accepting Trump's outrageous trade demands.

Not getting his way on trade, our petulant president in a improvised smirky aside said that if the other G-7 nations will not give in to his ruinous requirements on trade and tariffs maybe the U.S. should take home its "piggy bank" and stop trading altogether with EU and Asian members.

Sensing this, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who Trump called "weak" and his economic team on the record accused of "stabbing Trump in the back") quipped that maybe the G-7 should reorganize itself into the G-6 Plus-1. Or, an actual possibility, just the G-6 with us and the Russians dealt out.

Since de facto this is already underway, when I heard this, I said to Rona I'm glad the stock market is closed for the weekend since acting-out Trump is in the process of bringing down the world.

June 16, 2015--The New Cold War

This report from the New York Times isn't from 1955 but appeared yesterday--

In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is drawing up plans to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, official say.

What happened to détente? What happened with the Obama administration's claim that it had successfully pressed the "reset button" in our relations with Russia?

This sounds to me like all too familiar sabre-rattling.

But there's more.

A few days earlier the Pentagon announced that a Russian jet fighter buzzed a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying well outside Soviet borders over the Black Sea. It came within 10 feet of the American plane and maintained its provocative position for 10-15 minutes before breaking off. Overnight, the Russians announced they would match the U.S. buildup in Eastern Europe.

This to me sounds like back to the future and is very scary.

We know that Obama and Vladimir Putin despise each other and can't stand to be in the same room.

Nixon managed to meet and talk with Nikita Khrushchev, Roosevelt and Truman sucked it up and met and negotiated with Stalin, so why can't the current U.S. and Russian presidents do the same thing?

They would probably claim it's because they disagree about Crimea, which Russia annexed a year and a half ago. Obama sees Putin threatening more incursions in other culturally Russian parts of Ukraine; Putin sees it as an inevitable part of Russia's national destiny. We in America above all should understand his version of Manifest Destiny.

But none of this requires Cold-War-style confrontations. If Putin and Obama had a civil working relationships it all could be resolved with a few phone calls.

"Vlad, what's going on with you guys? I mean in Crimea." 

"Well, Barack, it's a traditional part of Russia, the people there are of Russian descent, speak Russian, and want to be a part of Russia. So why not let things take their course?" 

"I see your point. But what we need to do, Vlad, is sell the idea to our own people and make the case that you let the Crimeans vote about affiliating with Russia. Which they did and overwhelmingly wanted to. I'll work on Poroshenko to convince him it's no big deal. He owes me one. Everyone knows Crimea has been largely autonomous for decades so we should be able to put a fig leaf on the situation. How does that sound?" 

"I think I can make that happen. In the meantime, send my best to Michele." 

"And mine to . . . Sorry, I forgot her name. The gymnast?" 

"Alina, Alina Kabaeva. Will do. Talk to you soon. Call any time. You know I don't sleep."

So now that their relationship is ruptured, there will be no conversations of this kind and as a result we have economic and diplomatic sanctions flying in both direction, Russia has been kicked out of the G-8 (which is now again the G-7), and there are not-so-veiled threats of more to come, including additional close encounters in the sky and at sea. All we need is for one jet fighter pilot to make a mistake and launch a missile and who knows what would happen next.

This is the way adolescents behave, not the leaders of the world's two most powerful nations, both still with hundreds of intercontinental missiles at the ready and thousands of nuclear warheads.

Where are the adults?

June 6, 2014--Progressive Dinner With Vladimir Putin

High school is breaking out among the G-7.

They are meeting in Europe right now without including G-8--Russia. Because of their annexation of Crimea they, actually, Vladimir Putin, are in the doghouse.

No better evidence of how ridiculous things can get have been all the maneuvers to keep Putin and Barack Obama from running into each other. This is because Putin in fact has been in Brussels but meeting less officially with European counterparts and he, as well as Obama, were in Paris yesterday and will be in Normandy today, the 70th anniversary of the D Day landings.

But the funkiest machinations were those involving dinner and souper (supper) on Thursday (in a movement I will unpack that distinction) in Paris, hosted by French president Francois Holland.

"Dinner," at an undisclosed Parisian restaurant, will include Obama but not Putin while souper, which will follow dinner, will include Putin but not Obama.

So for Monsieur Hollande and other members of the G-7 or G-8 it will be like a progressive dinner (where courses are served at different locations) with the dinner part, I suppose, consisting of small plates while souper will be more robust.

Or the other way around.

I am not privy to the menus but they could be something like the following--

Always the good host, Hollande, wanting Obama to feel at home after being largely ignored at the G-7 talks, at dinner will order up a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and a a couple of Big Baby double-cheesebergers.

"What, no Moules Marinieres?" Obama will ask. "Back home I eat Bug Babies all the time."

Dinner conversation with him will center around how, after tapping her phone, he can get Angela Merkel to return his calls.

At the Putin souper cabbage borscht will be served after which there will be skewers of lamb shashlyk.

"What, no Blanquette de Veau?" Putin, pouting, will ask. "In Moscow all I eat is shashlyk."

Souper conversation with him will likely include putting the final touches on France's sale of 1.2 billion-euros' worth of helicopter carriers to Russia in, sort-of, violation of the sanctions the West has imposed on Russia because of its intervention in Ukraine.

But as they say in Paris, C'est la vie.