Thanks To Bernhard Of Moon Of Alabama...And Happy Easter.

Bernhard's meticulous and steady digging through the pile of media sources provides for a truly great news aggregator, and I may feel today somewhat vindicated and have my rah-rah and ego, which is larger than cathedral, pleasantly tickled.  MoA provides a weekly review of notable sources and in one of them I ran into this conclusions by Esteemed Ambassador Chas Freeman--a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and deputy assistant Secretary of the State for African affairs, among many other important diplomatic posts he held in the times when the United States actually did have a competent diplomacy. Just take a look at his skills: he speaks Chinese fluently, Spanish and French at the professional level, and Arabic conversationally, in addition to several other languages. Ambassador Freeman studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and he earned a JD from the Harvard Law School and an AB magna cum laude from Yale University.

Here is what attracted me in Freeman's excellent interview:

But there’s not much evidence of China wanting to replace us. They are displacing us in some spheres because they’re big and growing and successful. Do they want to take on our global dominion and hegemony role? No, but we assert that they do. We posit that China thinks and behaves like us: “We had Manifest Destiny and it took us across the Pacific to the Philippines. Therefore, China must have a Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny in mind.” This is wrong. Things don’t work like that. So I would argue that we have inhaled our own propaganda, and we are living in the appropriately stoned state that that produces. If we have sound policies, we can out-compete anyone. But we’re not looking at sound policies; we’re looking at pulling down our competitor. 

Boom! I, of course, would argue that at this time the United States lost its competitive edge in a number of crucial fields in which it can not "out-compete" China or Russia, but the message about propaganda is ultimately correct and this "inhaling" is precisely what I warn about non-stop for the last 7-8 years. Just read my Sand Castle Geopolitics series of posts from 2014 in this blog. Recall introduction to my first book:

It is doubtful that such a miscarriage of a historical justice will be challenged successfully in the combined West, let alone in the US itself, where many media figures, politicians and “scholars” are in overdrive, doing their utmost to falsify the actual truth about the birthplace of American, real and perceived, superpowerdom—World War II. The real danger from such manipulations arises not when those manipulations are done out of knowledge of reality which is distorted accordingly for propaganda purposes, but when those who manipulate information begin to sincerely believe in their own falsifications, when they buy into their own narrative. They stop being manipulators, and they become believers in a narrative. They become manipulated themselves.   

In other words, US "elites'" "inhaling" own propaganda is a clear and present danger to the world because acting upon what in proper societies is called a historical and geopolitical bullshit is not the way to conduct oneself in the world where we all are merely 30 minutes away from a complete mutual annihilation--an idea many in D.C. simply cannot grasp. In general, Freeman's interview is excellent, including his superb definition of good diplomacy. Freeman's justification of his dropping out of law school is also instructive and explains my concern about huge swaths of America's foreign policy (or lack thereof) big honchos being lawyers primarily. 

Law school is not irrelevant, but it isn’t as interesting as dealing on behalf of the United States with foreign governments and cultures. The French have a phrase, “déformation professionnelle,” which means that you take on the mindset and reasoning skills of a particular profession and you become narrow-minded because you don’t see the whole picture. The first year of law school is a sort of ideological bootcamp in which you are taught to reason in terms of rights, duties, privileges, and immunities, and various other categories relevant to legal reasoning. That training is all very injurious to diplomacy because if you approach an international relationship in terms of who’s right and who’s wrong, you’re wasting your time. There is no superior authority, no court system, and no legal system to sort out many diplomatic questions. If you insist that the other party’s wrong, the other party may decide to go to war with you.

So, enjoy Freeman's interview, while I express my appreciation to Bernhard for pointing out a very important view by a real professional American diplomat of what today could be termed as an "old school" of American diplomacy, because a new one, frankly, is a bunch of ignorant ideologues pretending to be diplomats. I am very happy to have correctness of very many of the key points of my writing being corroborated by an important figure in the ever-shrinking field of the American genuine international relations professionals. 

In related news: my sincere congratulations for Westerners celebrating Easter today. Christ is risen and all the best to all of us. Most importantly--peace on Earth. 

Happy Easter.

Any Human Language?

Last time I checked, Russia's official language, Russian, is a human language. That means you can  translate it, learn it, use it and comprehend it on this planet of ours. That is what usually assumed by Russians, especially at the top political level, which is a level of Russia's President or Minister of Foreign Affairs. Top shelf interpreters work there and they bear personal responsibility for precision with which words from and to Russian officials are translated. Well, EU "diplomacy" (I have no idea what is this) and "elites" evidently have issues with understanding a rather important human language, such as Russian, since they still do not get the message. When Russia's President tells them directly that: "... love is impossible if it is declared only by one side. It must be mutual", he expects EU to understand that he, being highly cultured and well-behaved statesman, is telling EU to go fuck itself until their attitude changes. OK, that's Putin. Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov, however, is a man who can turn the heat up a notch and that is why his famous meme is... well, famous. 

EU's high commissioner for whatever passes there for diplomacy, Josep Borrell, is in Moscow now, expressing his worries about:

The EU's foreign affairs chief has said relations with Russia are at their lowest level because of Alexei Navalny's poisoning and subsequent imprisonment. Josep Borrell was speaking during a three-day visit to Moscow ahead of talks with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said he was ready to discuss "any topic".

Well, he got his audience with Lavrov who, basically, repeated what Putin said but in a more direct form. Speaking about EU as non-agreement capable, Lavrov stated:

"Поэтому мы свою жизнь выстраиваем, исходя из того, что Евросоюз является ненадежным партнером, по крайней мере на данном этапе."

Translation: because of that, we build our life out of consideration that EU is not reliable partner, at least at this stage. 

After that Russia declared persons non-Grata and kicked out three diplomats from Poland, Sweden and Germany, who were especially active in fomenting trouble inside Russia around Navalny. I don't know in what language should Russia talk to EU for EU to understand that, as Lavrov stated, Russia doesn't really care about EU's internal decisions and nobody in Moscow, in reality, gives a shit how Borrell "assesses" EU-Russia's relations. Who knows, maybe Lavrov has to go to 11 and openly state to these cretins that they should go and fuck themselves, literally. Evidently they still don't get the message. EU does not have a subjectivity in international relations, it is an object which is there to dance to Washington's tune. Russians are fully aware of that and that is why Russia is turning away from EU. Including being somewhat reluctant, for now, to let go of Nord Stream 2 for purely geopolitical, not economic reasons as Ischenko thinks, a view which I share. I also completely agree with his assessment, that abandoning NS 2 for Russia is merely an inconvenience, for Germany--it is a catastrophe.  In what language, then, do you communicate with a bunch of cretins? Obviously, they do not understand human language. 

To underscore the absence of intelligent life in EU, I will leave this link (in Russian) and you can easily translate TASS reporting using Google translate tool. They don't even understand that most of Russia laughs at them. As you can see from this EU graph, the trend in economic relations was pronounced already by 2019. Russia simply started importing less from EU. 

Even when adjusted for Covid-19, it is clear that imports from EU to Russia will continue to decline in mid to long-term. As some people in Russia suggest: what about trading Navalny for Assange? That could be a really good deal, especially since politically Navalny is dead, especially after his disgraceful behavior in court today, while his "org" was effectively dismantled and there are many sad people in MI-6 and CIA today because of that. As strategic truism states, don't try to make strong plays with a weak hand. But then again, do they even understand a human language, any human language. 

 

ADDENDUM: What is wrong with these people? 

President Joe Biden has dusted off an old story about how he came under fire while visiting Iraq, more than a decade after he admitted the claim was somewhat exaggerated. ‘Where’s the MSM outrage?’ social media users have asked.While addressing US State Department staff on Thursday, Biden hailed the diplomats for showing “great personal courage,” which the new US president has purportedly seen first-hand. "I’ve been with some of you when we’ve been shot at," he told the audience. It’s unclear what Biden meant by the passing remark, and the White House has not elaborated on the statement.

What's the deal here with stolen valor pandemic of which I wrote before. It is becoming nauseating with US politicians telling fairy tales of their "courage under fire".