The President-elect seems to have a distasteful fondness for autocrats, but he also hates to lose
18 November 2024
President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine’s use of US long-range missiles in the Kursk region currently occupied by Ukrainian troops is welcome. But he does make Marshal Blücher, who famously arrived at the Battle of Waterloo at 4pm, look like an early bird. He could and should have made this decision last year.
As for Britain, we should have refused the Biden constraints on what Ukraine could do with the Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles that we have already given them. Now we must help as fast as we can. With rare decisiveness, Germany chickened out yesterday.
Apart from the fact that Mr Biden has only two months left in office, what seems to have prompted him to act more boldly is the arrival of 10,000 North Korean troops to fight on the Russian side in the Kursk region, standing behind Putin’s invasion. Their presence is such a blatant affront to international norms that even “Sleepy Joe” woke up. What happens next, of course, is largely a matter for Donald Trump, not for the now comprehensively defeated Democrats.
The Trump camp have a theory that Ukraine is not a matter for them, but for Europe. They wish to concentrate their energies on confronting China.
In terms of burden-sharing, the Trumpists are quite right that the European part of Nato should be the main protectors of Ukraine. It is our persistent failure even to meet agreed levels of spending, let alone commit further, which has fed Mr Trump’s almost pro-Putin rhetoric. In the Far East, America makes all the difference, and calls on Japan, South Korea and Australia, more than on us.
However, the North Korean presence in the middle of Europe is vivid proof that, from a joint European and American point of view, our interests do not divide clearly at some imaginary border roughly between Europe and Asia. The crazy and cruel regime in North Korea is a client state of China and a supplier of Russia. Kim Jong-un’s exploited soldiery would not be turning up in Kursk if Xi Jinping were actively opposing their move.
Just before the current Ukraine war got going, China and Russia declared a “friendship without limits” (even though they hate one another). What they have in common is a determination to advance their respective empires and persecute minorities within them, and a detestation of democracy. The fall of Kyiv and Taipei would be welcome to Russia and China for similar reasons. Western weakness in support of one makes their task of subverting or invading both so much easier.
Mr Trump seems to have a distasteful fondness for autocrats, but he also hates to lose. His chances of prevailing in his struggle against China are far weaker if he decides to let Russia win in Ukraine.
Comment from :
Paul Wusteman
I don’t understand why Trump does not see this. To finish off Russia as a looming psychotic threat to the rest of the world will secure his name in history forever!!
He will be a hero!.. and finishing off Russia clears the decks for facing down China.
The Russians are on the edge now as the cumulative effect of the sanctions and the heartless savagery in the Ukraine are growing inexorably. ( The sanctions, tightening like an anaconda, and the cost of the war will inevitably cause Internal economic collapse – the only thing that may make the Russian population change their habits of 500 years of autocracy, racist delusions and savagery. For the squeamish – Russians will never starve or freeze in the winter unless it is other Russians doing it – which is sadly what happens).
Mike Page
“Mr Trump seems to have a distasteful fondness for autocrats … ”
Evidence please.
Andrew Crawford
Reply to Mike Page –
Trump held an international press conference with Putin and told the world that he believed Putin over his own intelligence services — not because there was any rational reason for doing so, but because Putin told him what he wanted to hear and the US intelligence services didn’t.
Trump, quite apart from being a corrupt imbecile of endless squalor, is a threat to US national security.
“Their presence is such a blatant affront to international norms that even “Sleepy Joe” woke up.”
Nothing can fully wake up sleepy. Even now, with his permission to strike mafia land with ATACMS, he has an eye tightly closed and in deep sleep. Only a Biden can do this. I count the days to see him off and into the nearest nursing home, where he should’ve gone to four years ago.
Speaking of waking up, the Democratic Party must also wake up. I’m sure they have better candidates for president than sleepy or Harris. But, I hope the war will have ended in victory by the next elections.