There's no leader of the free world anymore

Nobody who supports either free markets or the non-initiation of force principles can now think that the Trump Administration is an acolyte of either principle, even in a somewhat flawed way (as all governments that may advance in that direction are).  It's an incoherent mash of the feelings of two men who are more upset about their egos being offended, than either projecting an economic policy of demonstrable success or managing international relations based on strength against a weak (albeit dangerous) aggressor that embodies almost everything the United States has been against for decades.

The stupid trade war isn't about leverage to get other economies to open up, it is old fashioned autarky or even Kim Il Sung's fatuous "Juche Idea" (self reliance). It's the economics of hardened Marxists, and the economics of moronic economic nationalists like the bloviator Pat Buchanan. The tariffs wont replace income tax ( a line that some have trotted out) and will push up inflation in the US, and harm consumers and producers there, and the global economy.  However, Republicans are now embodying the economics of destroyers like Juan Peron, who helped take Argentina from being a rich country to being a poor one, through this sort of nonsense.  It will only be made worse by the EU and other developed countries responding in kind.

However, it is the moral depravity of the line on Ukraine which deserves the most approbrium.

There is no morality in surrendering to an aggressor all that it has won, so you have "peace" while it rebuilds its armed forces, rearms, and at the same time your erstwhile ally has blackmailed you into signing a predatory deal to hand over resources for the sake of vague promises of security.  Ukraine doesn't want to do that, but the new appeasers do.

The claim Trump makes about wanting to be even-handed between Russia and Ukraine is a complete moral inversion.  Whilst he has been excoriating about Zelensky, he has said nothing negative at all about Putin or the behaviour of Russia.  He has said little about what Russia should do, and little about what the US will do if Russia doesn't stop fighting. He has only demanded that Ukraine stop.

He talks of Ukraine gambling with World War Three which is absurd, given Ukraine alone, with ample military supplies has taken the war to a stalemate -  stalemate with Russia, because Russia's fighting capabilities are woeful. Without nuclear weapons, Russia would be easily overwhelmed with Western power, and pushed back.  Indeed given the US also has nuclear weapons, it could have simply declared it was controlling Ukrainian airspace given:

• Russian military attack on a civilian airliner
• Ukrainian Government invitation to protect it.

Would Russia really have launched a nuclear attack at that point, with the US drawing a clear line that it was defending the territorial integrity of the remainder of Ukraine from air power?

Who was gambling with World War Three the non-nuclear armed Ukraine trying to defend itself from a nuclear power??

Of course Ukraine should feel aggrieved. It has the world's third largest nuclear weapons cache when it became independent and it signed it all away based on promises from the US, Russia and the UK to protect its territorial integrity.  It was Barack Obama who neglected to follow up on that agreement when Russia started its attack on Crimea.  It was Joe Biden who continued to fail once the full blown invasion was launched.

The claims about NATO expansion being provocative are only claims that are echoed by hardcore communists, who pretend that NATO was a project to attack their beloved eastern bloc, not one to defend liberal democracies from it, or from fascist nationalists, who can't believe that countries that spent half a century under the jackboot of the Soviet Union (which they once professed to loathe) would want to be free of Russian imperialism forever more.

Of course Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia etc. do not want their independence threatened by an aggressive Russia - again - and if you dont think that is legitimate, then you're either a communist, or someone, like Hitler, who thinks you can make accommodations with a communist for your own political objectives.  Hating the European Union or "globalists" is all one thing, but if anyone who claims to believe in sovereign borders, the right of states to control their territory and be independent, thinks surrendering Ukraine is consistent with that, then it shows it up for all it is - desperate tribalist support for a US Administration that doesn't care about your beliefs when it suits it.

If territorial integrity of sovereign states doesn't matter to Ukraine, then maybe it doesn't matter anywhere that the Trump Administration doesn't care about, and that includes any country in Europe, or Australia, or New Zealand etc etc.

Of course everyone wants the war to end. It could end tomorrow if Putin just decided to end it, and withdraw, but he's a psychopathic kleptocrat who feeds young Russian men (from poor backgrounds) and North Korean men to their deaths.

Ukraine has been successful in knocking out much of Russia's military strength including knocking out  much of the Black Sea Fleet. Had it been armed more effectively it could have pushed back more inflicting more pain on Russia.

Trump doesn't like that though, because he wants economic relations with Russia.

Had Trump wanted to, he could have demonstrated strength against Russia and demanded concessions or significantly enhanced support for Ukraine, but instead he has demonstrated strength against Ukraine and made it into a supplicant, and emboldened Russia. 

If the war ends soon, on the basis of Russia giving up little, and there being no substantial security guarantees for Ukraine (including US direct military support), then it will prolong the inevitable. Russia can spend a few years rearming, and use its renewed economic potential after sanctions are lifted by the US, to steal military capability and be ready for another attack. It knows the US wont do much, and it doesn't fear European power. At that point, the cost not just to the Europe, but the world of letting it be known that the US is isolationist and wont act to protect any nation states from attack by Russia, is going to be much higher than the tens of billions taken to bolster Ukraine.

Even Marine Le Pen is critical of Trump on Ukraine, because by and large, European countries want to sure of defence against the predatory criminal gangster state to the east, which treats its neighbours with impunity.

Perhaps a deal will be struck, perhaps not and Europe will do all it can to support Ukraine, regardless, it is now a time for small countries everywhere to acknowledge that it's all on now - the US doesn't care if you are attacked, you have to fend for yourselves with any other allies.

There is no "leader of the free world" anymore.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

It's been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, seeking to take Kyev and reconquer it.

I was, late last year, rather pleased Trump beat Harris in the US elections. It demonstrated that voters wouldn't be treated as if what they think and feel don't matter.  With record numbers of black and Latino voters picking Trump over Harris, the identitarianism of the hard left was given short shrift.  Domestically, there was some promise that Trump could overhaul the US Federal Government in spending and regulatory terms, and the nihilistic critical constructivist culture that sought to right past wrongs through discrimination over merit. The hard left attempt to replace the identitarianism of the past with an identitarianism of the future, based on a hierarchy of oppressor vs. oppressed (within which Jews and poor white trailer park men are oppressors, and wealthy African American entrepreneurs are oppressed) might be broken down by the Trump Administration.

The biggest negative until this week was the economic illiteracy around tariffs.  It's so outrageously stupid the thinking around trade protectionism that it barely deserves a response.  If it were about leverage to open up markets and break the back of the protectionist rackets of the EU and India, it might be one thing, but it's a brainless attempt to "bring back jobs" regardless of the cost, and somehow raise revenue.  Of course some argue that the US Federal Government was once funded by tariffs with no income tax, but there is zero prospect of income tax being abolished, so it remains a measure to tax imports, hike up inflation, punish consumers and ensure the US is less and less competitive internationally.

However that's small fry compared to the moral turpitude around Ukraine.

Ukraine gained independent with the dissolution of the USSR, a point in history anyone with a belief in liberal democracy, individual rights and freedoms and belief in human self-determination would celebrate. Vladimir Putin didn't of course.

Ukraine inherited borders from the USSR, as did all of the former Soviet Republics. It made sense because there is no shortage of potential disputes around people split between sovereign states. Besides the Governments of Russia, the USA and UK agreed to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine (and Belarus and Kazakhstan) in exchange for the three former Soviet republics surrendering the Soviet nuclear arsenal based on their territory.  After all, there was genuine fear of nuclear proliferation.

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed in 1994 was an agreement that the parties would:

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).

Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

Not to use nuclear weapons against any non–nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.

Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments

Russia broke this agreement in February 2014 by invading Ukraine, first to annex Crimea and again in early 2022. The United States broke this agreement by not guaranteeing Ukraine's borders.

Now Trump has decided to shred what remains of this.

Obama was the start, he ridiculed Mitt Romney warning of Russia being a looming threat. 

Then Obama did little to respond to Putin's invasion of Crimea. Biden's response to the invasion of the rest of Ukraine was more significant, but ultimately was weak. It wasn't to provide air cover, it wasn't to provide the weapons he could, it was to do enough to constrain what Putin could do, and now its over.

There is a line of US self-styled conservative thinking that ranging from loving to being sympathetic to Putin. Why? Because he's a strong man who "defends his country" against "Islam" and in favour of "Christian values". Values that seem to include rampant kleptocracy and Soviet style oppression of dissent.

Some are actual far-right fascists, who yearn for a strongman to jackboot his way through their country, poison and arrest opponents, shut down protests and enforce a traditional view of the role of women, an avowedly anti-homosexual position and embrace an expansionist shameless view of the power of their beloved nation state.  Others are contrarians, who see Putin pushing back against "globalism" (whatever that means), and regard the European Union to be more authoritarian and malign than a virtual one-party state run by a permanent President who runs his country as a mafia state. Of course there is plenty of room to criticise the European Union, but the intellectual vacuum that sees criticism of policy in Western Europe as justifying a war of aggression against Ukraine is eye-watering.

Likewise is seeing the flaws of Ukrainian liberal democracy as being morally equivalent to Russia's kleptocratic totalitarianism. An argument can readily be made to critique the approach of the Biden Administration, but to turn reality into an inversion as the Trump Administration is doing harks of the perversions of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

The idea Ukraine started the war is deranged. Ukraine was not run by a Nazi, and Russians in Ukraine faced no existential threat from the Government. Indeed Russians in Russia face MORE threat from the jackbooted tyranny of the FSB than they do in Ukraine. We shouldn't forget of course that one of Russia's proxies before invading Ukraine proper did shoot down a civilian airliner murdering all of its passengers and crew.

The moral relativists in Washington DC have blanked out flight MH17, just a lot of Dutch people, Asians and Australians after all. 

The deluded concern about NATO expansion, as if NATO has ever threatened Russia and as if ANY country actually has an interest in invading it.  This is Russian nationalist hysteria.  See how Sweden and Finland have joined NATO and Russia barely blinked an eye.  Ultra-nationalists are prone to delusions about conspiracies to destroy their beloved people, and this is one.  The truth of NATO is that it remains because the Soviet Union's former empire doesn't want to go back to being a part of it, and Russia has not successfully deradicalised itself from its past eras of totalitarian irredentism.  Lithuania, Romania, Poland and even Ukraine purged themselves of their past under one of the world's most murderous and morally bankrupt regimes, but Russia is led by a man who misses that.

What Trump has done is invert the moral order.  At the very core of modern international law is the belief that the sovereign state is inviolate and it is a fundamental breach of the international order for one national army to invade the territory of another.  This has only happened because the USA and Europe refused to deter Russia invading its near neighbours, and the consequence are where we are.  However, it is entirely Russia's fault for being an aggressive imperialist invading force.

If the 21st century international order is that naked aggression by a nuclear power, on a much smaller, benign peaceful country, is to be shrugged about and rewarded by another nuclear power, with that other one seeking to do a deal to literally plunder the victim's property indefinitely, it isn't "order". It is a neo-feudalism of bullies, and the only defence against that is offence.  It is the acquisition of the greatest of weapons, nuclear, to deter anyone.  It makes the world a more dangerous place. 

Trump's position is also contradictory.  As Janet Daley said in the Daily Telegraph:

Trump and Vance claim that Putin is not a threat to the West, that his military operations in Ukraine are simply a defence against attacks by Zelensky’s illegitimate regime. This is wickedly fallacious as a factual account of events, and the conclusion that apparently follows is blatantly self-contradictory.

In the very same pronouncements in which they proclaim Vladimir Putin’s benign intentions, the Trump-Vance team excoriate European leaders for failing to increase their defence spending and properly arm themselves against threats to Nato. But if Russia is an innocent victim and Putin is not an aggressor, where does the danger to Europe come from?

Either Putin is a peace-loving, reasonable interlocutor with whom we (which is to say, Trump) can do business – in which case Europe need not worry about increasing its defences – or he is determined to reclaim as much of Eastern Europe as he can seize – in which case the complicity of the Trump government is shameful.

Which is it? Is Putin a blameless, misunderstood victim and we can all go back to blithely spending our peace dividend on lavish welfare systems, or is he a malign actor who is an active threat to Nato countries, which must rearm as quickly as possible at their own expense?

And how can this instruction to Nato members to rearm at any cost be consistent with Trump’s support for the Russian claim that it is Nato expansion that is the cause of the recent conflict? Surely a rapid rearming of Nato members would justify Putin’s paranoia.

It also makes the United States a fickle ally. This deranged set of contradictions has no coherence.  The likely outcome is that European countries will increase their military capability, which will upset Russia, and they could provide more military support to Ukraine as well.  The unwillingness to call out any of Russia's actions seems difficult to comprehend, unless it has underlying it, either a sympathy for Putin or an interest in simply surrendering and withdrawing out of fear - the fear that doing anything else will cost the US money or lives.

It is a new isolationism for the US, although this is not new for the country.

Furthermore is the bizarre demand that Ukraine pay the US for the cost of the support the US provided for it to defend itself.  It is an inversion of the demands of Germany after WW1, which was forced to pay reparations to the Allies for starting the war.  This of course turned Germans to be ultra-nationalists, to resist the economic and national shame.  The Nazis came from that.  

Should Israel or Egypt be worried? Both have received billions in military aid over decades from the US, but will Trump demand half of Israel's GDP be handed over to pay the US back for its support? If not, why not by this measure? Why should Ukraine be punished for taking what a previous Administration had granted it? Besides, given the US shows little interest in actually protecting Ukraine from a future Russian invasion, it is difficult to trust that the Trump Administration would actually do anything if Russia tried again.

It's simple now The US cannot be trusted to defend its allies, it cannot be trusted to even advocate for the basic rules of the international system.  It is no longer a bullwark for liberal democracies, when it judges Ukraine and ignores Russia.

What should happen is Trump should threaten Russia with tougher sanctions, with NATO membership for Ukraine, a no-fly zone and greater help unless Russia withdraws. It should be simple, because it is.  It could show the backbone of Ronald Reagan, of JFK, of Harry Truman. It could because Putin is a bluffing minnow.   

What looks like happening is that Ukraine will be dismembered, all because of a deranged fetishisation of a short thieving psychopath, and a moronic disregard for an international order that for, better and for worse, kept the peace by and large.

The only real hope is that this is a lot of bluster and rhetoric.  If it really is, it's quite some technique in diplomatic bombast and disruption.

Sadly I think it is a New New World Order, and it has no real coherent order at all.  What it means for those wanting peace and security, is that they will have to pay a lot more for it.

Yes New Zealand it means 2% of GDP on defence within five years, but it also means Japan, South Korea, European NATO, and many others are going to be spending a lot more. 

The peace dividend of the end of the Cold War is well and truly over.

Charles Moore on the prospects of Trump in Foreign Policy

 From the Daily Telegraph:

One of Mr Trump’s clearest messages, amplified by his choice of J D Vance, is that he does not want to help Ukraine defeat Vladimir Putin’s invasion. His strategic “realism”, advanced by policy advisers such as Elbridge Colby, looks at these issues through the “lens of pragmatism” and decides that America cannot deal with the Russia and China problems at the same time. Since the US and China are “the two heavyweight boxers”, that is where all the action should be, they say.

If this were just a military division-of-labour argument, it would make some sense. Mr Trump has always been right that America cannot help defend Europe if Europe will not defend itself. But he goes much further than this.

He seems not to accept that China and Russia see very clearly the link between grabbing Taiwan and grabbing Ukraine and wish to use it to break Western, especially American, power. His faith in the capacity of “one telephone call”, made by him, to calm it all down is astonishing. Despite his pugnacious character, his role model seems to be Neville Chamberlain, not Winston Churchill.

Trumpian neo-isolationism thinks as if the Second World War had never happened. Even then – an era of much slower communications and far fewer human and commercial links than today – the Western allies recognised that it was impossible to see the war in Europe and the war in the Far East as separate entities, except in operational terms. The threat was global: victory had to be global, too.

Mr Trump’s failure to acknowledge the globalisation of war threatens not only the Ukraine he proposes to neglect but also the Taiwan he says that he wants to help. He criticises that tiny island, up against opponents about 1.5 billion strong, for not doing enough for its own defence. He also recently complained, “They did take about 100 per cent of our chip business” (semi-conductors, not fried potatoes).

Compare this transactional carelessness with China’s long-term, implacable intent, and you can predict the likely winner.

I come back to the God stuff with which I began. As a believer myself, I welcome the signs of renewed interest in Christianity among the Western young. It is an awakening against nihilism, and against Islamist fanaticism.

But – more in the United States than in Britain – it contains a strand so disgusted with the degeneracy of Western liberalism that it falls for a charlatan like Putin when he says that he is doing the Lord’s work against our godless decadence.

It was much to the credit of the Leave campaign in Britain that – except for a few Faragiste/Ukip outliers – it never fell into this pit that Putin had tried to dig for it. But the Trump team has. Its effects could disable the free world.   

and no, Biden hasn't been stellar either, but if the US thinks it is expensive keeping a global order it used to care about, intact, like it has since 1945, wait till it sees the new multipolar, multi-nuclear weapons (and other WMD) states world isolationism would bring to it.

Particularly when it is patently clear Russia is largely full of bluster and could easily be defeated if the will was there.

The purpose NATO exists for should be abundantly clear - the future beyond Ukraine is a new Cold War

During the Cold War, NATO was to the West what the Warsaw Pact was to the communist bloc. Both sides faced off at the Iron Curtain. So when the Cold War ended, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved (mostly because once the jackboot of the Red Army had been removed, most eastern European states were full of citizens that just wanted to be liberal democracies), the question was raised as to why should NATO still exist?

Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" was proclaimed, President Bush proclaimed a New World Order, after the UN Security Council endorsed collective action to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The new Russia was, in fact, a liberal democracy, had dismantled its centrally planned economy, and was now working with Western countries. Sure there was still tension and rivalry in the Middle East, with concerns over Iraq and Iran, the simmering Arab-Israeli dispute, and of course the Korean peninsula, but in Europe, the belief was that liberal democracy had won.

Except of course, it hadn't quite. 

The New World Order declared by Bush was no nefarious shadowy view of the international system, but one which would AT A BARE MINIMUM not tolerate one state taking the territory of another.

That is what the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait was about, and it is why Saddam Hussein's regime was not destroyed at the time. The New World Order was not about regime change, it was about protecting international borders from aggression.

Much happened after that. The war in the Balkans ultimately saw NATO action to deter Serbia from engaging in genocide in Kosovo, following the genocide in Bosnia and Croatia (not all from the Serbian side of course).  Hum.anitarian intervention became an addition to the New World Order as countries were confident that international cross-border war was a thing of the past

9/11 changed all that, although the attack and overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified as a response to the aggression of 9/11, the subsequent attack and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime was not. Overthrowing Saddam was a settling of old scores and an attempt to demonstrate Western military dominance against potential threats. What it did was show the West incapable of occupying and transforming a nation state without enormous loss of life, or in the case of Afghanistan, ultimately a lack of political will to pay the price in money and lives to institute government that was closer to the ideals of liberal democracies with Enlightenment values. This culminated in the weak withdrawal from Afghanistan last year

Yet Russia had already tested the limits of the New World Order a few years ago and found it wanting. Not only had Russia effectively annexed Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia (which had started in the 1990s),  but the 2014 annexation of Crimea under the Obama Administration (after Obama famously ridiculed Mitt Romney in the 2012 election campaign for claiming Russia was a growing threat) showed the West was unwilling to enforce post Cold-War borders against direct aggression.

NATO expansion has been occurring, with all of the former Warsaw Pact nations now NATO members, and the three Baltic states, all of which had been invaded and occupied by the USSR during WW2. The expansion of NATO to defend former Soviet republics was deferred, not least because of concern of provoking Russia.  Both Georgia and Ukraine have wanted NATO membership, and the results of denying it are now seen in the destruction of Ukrainian cities.

As much as the Western nations will crow about economic sanctions on Russia, and much global unity on condemning Russia, it has done nothing to stem the bombardment and the growing occupation of Ukraine. As much as it is significant that Germany has finally unhooked itself from equivocating on Russia, by stopping the Nordstream 2 pipeline, Russia knows its oil and gas supplies keep much of Europe from grinding to a halt. This is predominantly due to the virtue signalling policies of the EU in energy and the environment which have stopped Europe from pursuing domestic sources of fossil fuels as an alternative, in favour of trying to save the world. Unlike the US which wisely enabled fracking, and is no longer dependent on oil from the Middle East, Europe in transitioning from coal has become reliant more on Russian fossil fuels whilst it inches towards renewables. Even more disturbing, the inexplicable decision of Germany to abandon nuclear power as a bizarre reaction to the Fukushima disaster (even though Germany neither has earthquakes or a risk of tsunami) has further weakened European energy security. Russia, of course, funded and supported anti-fracking activists.  

In the coming weeks and months there is a likelihood Ukraine will fall to Russian tyranny, without a shot having been fired by Western liberal democracies in support of the principles they are meant to be defending.  For the first time since 1968, tyranny has advanced in Europe.

Disturbing as this is, what will be just as disturbing is what the Western response has to be. A return to the clarity that an attack on NATO means war with all of NATO, which includes the risk of nuclear war.  A rearming of European countries, which means a reprioritisation of public spending towards defence, at least matching the NATO target of 2% but realistically needing to go for 3% and above. Permitting expansion of NATO to any liberal democracy that meets the conditions for membership.

It goes beyond Europe though. In the Pacific, a reassertion of the defence of Japan and South Korea, but most importantly a clear assertion by the United States that it will not stand by if Taiwan is attacked by the PRC. It must become too risky and too dangerous for the world's two largest tyrannies, Russia and China, to go any further.  The single biggest risk now is that Russia and China perceive that there wouldn't be any pushback if they go further.

It's too late for Ukraine, we got here due to weak US Presidents, and by that I mean not only Biden, but also Trump and Obama. We can speculate endlessly about whether Putin would have risked attacking Ukraine under Trump or not, and the answer is far from clear.  About all that is clear is that Trump was unpredictable, and that unpredictability was probably a deterrent, but Trump was also a man whose positions on issues was not consistent.

All that can be done now is for a firm redline to be set, by Biden, by NATO and all of its allies, that the West is willing to go to war to defend the borders of liberal democracies.  It is frightening and plenty of people politically on the far-left and right will oppose it, but it also means that Western liberal democracies need to spend more on defence, and less on virtue signalling, "rebalancing/levelling up/building back better" and to strengthen their economies to be resilient against dependence on Russia and China. Allister Heath outlined it starkly in the Daily Telegraph here:

For the first time in more than 30 years, we face a truly existential threat. Our enemy is a hostile state armed with nuclear weapons, a large conventional army and led by an empire-building psychopath: the danger to the European powers is orders of magnitude greater than the very real risk posed after 9/11 by al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

This new conflict will almost certainly be long, complex and extremely expensive. It won’t be like fighting the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein, or lone wolf actors. It will require us to relearn strategies, tactics and virtues at odds with the hyper-emotional performative stupidity and instant gratification of the Twitter era. Our elites will need to reprogramme themselves psychologically, economically and militarily, read some history, become more serious and austere, and knuckle down for a lengthy fight.

The implications for Australia and New Zealand from that are going to be stark. The easy ride of China buying so much, and selling so much back is about to come to an end.

There is some hope, but as Heath wrote:

Yes, Russia is staggeringly weak, a decaying nation with a population much less than half that of the US, and a GDP far lower than that of New York state. But it has nuclear weapons and needs to be deterred and eventually defeated. We must also send a signal to China, a country that is immensely richer and more sophisticated than the Soviet Union ever was, that the West is serious once more. This is a new Cold War, and we must urgently contain the authoritarian powers at war with liberal democracy.

The international system is turning against freedom and liberal democracy

The last monumental change in the international system occurred in 1989-1991, with the end of the Cold War, driven by Mikhail Gorbachev's unwillingness to keep a jackboot on the throats of Soviet citizens and just as importantly, its satellite states, along with the US and the UK and their allies being willing to try to put international relations back on some sort of legal footing.  The Gulf War was a test of that, with the UN Security Council generating unprecedented international support for action to evict Iraq from its occupation of Kuwait.  It is difficult to underestimate the optimism of the time, with half of Europe freed from Marxist-Leninist dictatorships (including some of the most evil in history in Romania and Albania), the end of Cold War tensions between the former USSR and the USA, and even though China brutally suppressed dissent in Tiananmen Square, it seemed to accept a new world order based on rule of law.  Victory against Iraq at the time indicated a willingness to not tolerate territorial aggression.

So much has changed in 30 years. 

9/11 was critically important in refocusing Western attention on Islamist insurgency, but it paralleled change in Russia, as the relatively benign Boris Yeltsin was replaced with the altogether more sinister, ex. KGB official, Vladimir Putin. Russian liberal democracy has been wound back so much, it is little more than a fascist, organised crime syndicate running an authoritarian militarist dictatorship. China having become rich with capitalism under Marxist-Leninist rule, has seen the rise of Xi Jinping, who takes inspiration from Mao's era. Except now instead of being a gnat with a few nuclear weapons, China is the world's second largest economy, with businesses from Europe to North America and Japan all heavily invested in it. China is a major trading partner of many economies, and its requirement for local partners and investors has enabled it to steal intellectual property from some investors, and then copy what they do, at a lower price.

For much of the last 30 years Russia and China were content maintaining their regimes and growing richer. Russia on oil and gas (although this was severely dented for some years once fracking made the US in particular, capable of supplying its entire domestic demand), although little else. China on being a manufacturing hub. However, both have become bolder as Western liberal democracies have become weaker defenders of the international order.

Western liberal democracies have been damaged by 

1. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein: This demonstrated how utterly incapable Western democracies are in nation-building, and their lack of capacity and willingness to occupy and transform a defeated enemy. The blood and treasure lost in Iraq, and even the aftermath of the limited intervention to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya, have not been seen as worthwhile in most liberal democracies.  This has caused most to want to withdraw militarily.
   
2. Weak Western commitment to the international system: President Obama was committed to a future of US pulling back from conflict, and this was followed by European powers that by and large took the same view.  When Russia invaded Crimea, the Western reaction was one of resignation.  When Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk shot down a Malaysian airliner, only the Netherlands and Australia demanded explanations so vocally. Obama's "red-line" over Syria using poison gas against its own population was backed up by little.  Trump for his bluster, has largely been uncommittal on anything. Biden is yet to be tested, but looks and sounds weak.
   
3. Western ideological self-hatred: The weak commitment has been backed by both right and leftwing apologists for Russia and China.  Ones on the right regard China as a great business opportunity that shouldn't be disturbed. They also see Russia as a "traditional Christian" state, that has "understandable" interests in neighbouring states. They downplay Putin's authoritarianism. Ones on the left are back in the Cold War, thinking it is "time" the West stopped dominating, after all, it's Western capitalism that they blame for most of the world's ills.

The international system is led by actors that have proven unwilling to deter or confront Russia from irredentist behaviour.  Russia currently occupies not just Crimea, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, it also effectively backs a rogue breakaway entity called Trans-Dniestr in Moldova, and is Belarus's biggest friend.  

Russia's narrative that if Ukraine joined NATO it would provoke it was complete nonsense, as it is clear that HAD Ukraine become a NATO member some years ago, the chances of an attack would have been more remote.  

For what it's worth, the international reaction to the attack on Russia has largely been uniform and positive. Widespread condemnation, and the emergence of sanctions and increasing military and economic aid and assistance.  Yet it still looks pathetic for Ukraine to not be subject to military support from powers that completely support it politically and ideologically. Russia's vile defamatory narrative that it is "de-Nazifying" Ukraine (against its Jewish President!!??!) is laughably absurd.

Indeed, the Russian ethno-nationalist narrative Putin is expounding is absolutely fascist.  It is blood-and-soil, historical revanchism, that blanks out the USSR's alliance with Nazism that backfired, and glorifies the Soviet defeat of the USSR.  See this Twitter thread for an excellent summary of that, and how Putin now uses revival of WW2 myths to bolster Russian nationalism.

Let's be crystal clear, Putin is a nationalist neo-fascist.

Of course the West cannot directly intervene against Russia, not least because the price could well be risking nuclear war. What it CAN do, is make it crystal clear that it will use all necessary means to defend NATO member states, which means including nuclear weapons. Russia is only deterred by the risk of overwhelming force.

There have thankfully been very few voices seeking to downplay Putin. However, in NZ Chris Trotter, who has valiantly stood in favour of freedom of speech has revived his tankie instincts over the "tragedy" that the USSR collapsed. The Green Party's Golriz Gharaman has OPPOSED New Zealand sanctioning Russia unilaterally, implicitly accepting that Russia vetoing UN sanctions is preferable, but also essentially claiming sanctions just hurt ordinary people so shouldn't proceed.

Of course then she is happy to share a platform with Roger Waters, who supported Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea and Noam Chomsky who actively supports the Russian imperialist narrative.

Maybe she is more concerned about Palestine and attacking Israel, than actual imperialist warmongering, which simply reflects the weak-willed vacuousness of hard-left anti-Western so-called "peace" activism.

By contrast the Australian Greens, have got a backbone:

 

as do, it appears, a lot of governments that we perhaps otherwise didn't think had it in them. Finland and Sweden actively discussing joining NATO. Germany finally capitulating to cancel Nordstream 2.   Then there is this magnificent speech from Kenya.

We can only hope that the brave people of Ukraine, finally having some support (except direct military assistance) against Putin, can hold out and Putin can be rolled back into some capitulation.  Putin wants ALL of Ukraine for himself, but he will likely have to resort to accepting a ceasefire in the Donbass, unless he is willing to unleash a fury of weaponry that may cause more Russians to turn against him.

Let us hope that this puts paid to the PRC's ambitions to attack Taiwan.  A firm resolve is needed.  Ukraine is a test of the international system, a test of the resolve of the USA, under a President who has looked weak from day one (with the withdrawal of Afghanistan having been such a mess), the UK and France, the EU and the community of liberal democracies

Syria is what most in the West wanted

What did you expect with Aleppo?

Syria's hereditary socialist/nationalist (Ba'athist) dictatorship has flagrantly used chemical weapons against its own people and dropped barrel bombs on them, for daring to oppose 46 years of repressive family rule.  Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama, said the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line", then did nothing besides let Assad (and his father) 's ally Russia "supervise the destruction" of the weapons.   

Obama, leader of the world's only superpower, then did nothing.  His excuse was that the UK House of Commons had voted against military action against the Assad regime (which it did, as now former leader Ed Miliband wanted to prove how much the "anti-Blair" he was and burnish his leftwing credentials).  Non-intervention, the preferred policy of rightwing isolationists and leftwing "pacifists" is the new norm, except for Russia.

Of course it isn't pure non-intervention.  The West has been funding and arming some of the rebel groups in Syria, including those with Islamist leanings.  They aren't ISIS (despite some claims), but there are no angels in Syria.   No one is fighting for Syria to be a secular liberal democracy that respects individual rights and political plurality.  

The surrender of Aleppo to the Assad dictatorship was the inevitable outcome of Russian intervention in favour of its long standing ally and the flagrant ongoing violation of international law by the Assad regime in using chemical weapons and barrel bombing civilian areas.

Chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombing by the Assad regime has worked.  China, Russia, Iran, all of which execute political opponents, don't care.  The part of the international community that should care (the "West") has shrugged, said lots, but Obama handed over responsibility to Russia.  This was like handing over responsibility for addressing North Korea's human rights atrocities to China.

The experience of Iraq - successfully overthrowing tyranny, followed by utter failure in replacing it and achieving control of the country, rightfully gave cause for caution.   

However, the result of that vacuum has been to give Russia an opportunity, to be the new power in the Middle East.  There were opportunities to contain Assad's use of chemical weapons and air power over civilians, with no fly zones, but doing anymore would have been much more difficult.   

Now those on the left are complaining that "we" sat by and did nothing, yet that is exactly what they campaigned for.  Dictators will murder opponents, will slaughter civilians and unless you are willing to put our own taxpayers' money and military force to intercede, it will continue.   Obama in 2011 said Assad either had to lead a transition to democracy or get out the way, but he did neither - he fought on, gained support of his strong ally - Russia - which already knew the West was going to do nothing.

The isolationist right of course also believed in leaving Syria alone, a few because they accepted Assad's propaganda that all his opponents are "terrorists" and all his opponents are "Al Qaeda and ISIS" whereas he is moderate and reasonable.   A few because they see Putin as a "friend".  However, mostly because they have no interest in what happens to people in foreign lands, as they are far away places of which they know little.  Syrians wanting freedom from tyranny should do it themselves, and not expect foreign government support (even if it means foreign governments actively support the tyranny).  At least that position has a consistency - governments should only defend the rights of those within their boundaries, even if other governments engage in mass slaughter that sends hundreds of thousands fleeing to other governments.

So Aleppo is awful.  Yet, it is the end result of the policies of both leftwing so-called "peace" supporters and rightwing isolationists.  The biggest threat to the lives of individuals are tyrannies, and the only way to redress that is to arm opponents or to take them on yourselves.   The Western appetite for this is slim indeed.

Brexit: An opportunity that could be wrecked by politicians

So the UK votes to leave and the PM decides to leave, but not now.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer hides, and beyond the Bank of England printing a few billion, nothing else happens.

The EU has already decided to play tough and has its own position, which is essentially "fuck off, the walls are going up, deal with it".  Although Germany is being much more nuanced.

The Conservative Party has to find a new leader, and from that a new Cabinet and a policy on negotiations.  Labour meanwhile is going the same way.  It is likely a new Conservative leader/PM will call a General Election on a manifesto of leading the UK into a new open, free-trading world with a new free trading relationship with the EU.   Leaving the EU requires the UK to initiate it formally, which the EU is begging for, but the Government would rather delay because it changes its bargaining position.

Yet that could be problematic, not least because a key plank of those fighting to leave the EU is to end free movement of people with the EU, and all countries in the EU Single Market (including non-EU Norway and Iceland) all have signed up to free movement, and even non Single Market Switzerland has, although it does have extensive restrictions on new residents having access to any government provided services.

Meanwhile, leftwing nationalists have jumped on an opportunity.  Sinn Fein wants a referendum on Irish unification, but the Northern Ireland First Minister has said no.  Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is flailing about wanting a second referendum on independence, but wont discuss:

1. The EU only lets non-members join, not current members split into joining and non-joining;

2. Joining the EU means joining the Euro;

3. 90% of Scottish trade is with the UK, Scotland in the EU would mean any EU trade barriers with the UK also apply to Scottish trade with the rest of the UK.

Spain, showing it really hasn't turned as far from Francoism as it would have liked, is demanding co-sovereignty over Gibraltar.

Meanwhile, the young leftwing social justice warrior types (Generation SnowFlake some have called them, for their "safe spaces", being "triggered" by hurt feelings and constantly protesting about what is offended) feel "betrayed" about the old "ruining their futures".  However, the truth is that the majority of the young didn't care enough to vote as revealed by Sky News below.

% who got through our final #EUref poll turnout filter by age group:

18-24: 36%
25-34: 58%
35-44: 72%
45-54: 75%
55-64: 81%
65+: 83%

— Sky Data (@SkyData) June 25, 2016

Whinging about democracy when it doesn't go your way, whilst embracing it otherwise, is beyond the pale, as are some of the hate filled attacks on older votes coming from those whose own identity politics is supposed to decry hate speech.  The truth being that the so-called liberal leftwing anti-hate, anti-violence activists are full of hate and quite happily embrace violence to get their "own way".  It's emotion laden petulance, of the kind you would have only seen from the fringes of the far-right and conspiracy theorists had the vote gone to Remain. 

So what should happen now? (notwithstanding who the PM and Government is)

1. The Government should announce the key planks of a new relationship with the EU around trade, investment, movement of people and co-operation, that it seeks to adopt.  It should clarify to the entire country that it is not going to be a UK of isolationism, but one of openness.

2. The Government should make it clear to all EU passport holders in the UK that no-one will be deported, except under existing arrangements for threats to national security or criminals.  No EU residents need fear this, nor will their property be affected or businesses, and if anyone threatens them they should go to the Police.

3. The PM should make it clear that there will be no referendum on Scottish independence this side of Brexit, but that the Government will consult with the Scottish government and parliament on the deal it seeks with the EU.  It is precipitous to talk about Scottish independence until Scotland sees the new deal negotiated with the EU.

4. The PM should make it clear that there will be no referendum on Northern Ireland joining Ireland unless the preconditions of the Good Friday Agreement are met, but that equally it cannot happen until the new deal with the EU is negotiated AND negotiations are concluded with the Republic of Ireland.

5. The PM should go to Dublin and discuss the future relationship and reassure that no border controls will be reinstated.

6. The PM should go to Germany and talk, extensively, about how to make this work, and then go to all other EU Member State capitals, and the EFTA Member States too. 

7.  The Government should go to the WTO to discussing reviving membership.

8. The PM should visit USA, China, Japan and other trading partners and say that it wants to have open, freer trading relationships and the UK will be open for business and people.

9. Finally, the PM should make it clear that there wont be a second referendum on membership and that those who want to claim it is unfair, that this is democracy and the task now is to bring the country together and work for a new relationship with the EU and the world that demonstrably proves the claims of the Remain activists wrong.

Oh and ignore Nicola Sturgeon.  The Scottish Parliament can't "veto" the British Government any more than Lambeth Borough Council can stop the UK having nuclear weapons.

Crimea matters, for all sorts of reasons

I don't know what has appalled me more - Putin's cynical opportunistic land-grab of Crimea, the almost complete abrogation of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees for Ukraine by the UK and US, or the extent of leftwing and rightwing moral relativism about the whole thing.

I started by writing an article about how Crimea is what happens when isolationists are in charge.  However, the reaction of much of the public is not just the isolationism that has been bred by the left (the "the West is evil as as bad as anyone else" brigade) and the right ("we're safe, they aren't coming for us, just our friends, who we can ignore"), but the moral relativism attached to what is going on.

In this age of competing media, it is easy to turn on Kremlin propaganda in English from Russia Today, and for critics of the status quo on left and right to cynically dismiss reports from the plurality of Western media sources as propaganda, but it's naive and delusional.  What is going on in Ukraine is old-fashioned power politics, because Vladimir Putin has sniffed weakness from the West and knows it will do little - as long as Barack Obama is in power, David Cameron remains beholden to the appeasement loving Liberal Democrats and the Germans remain paralysed by their own history.

So let's first knock out some of the lazy assertions, promoted by Putin's regime:

What the lobbyists wont tell you about the Kyoto Protocol

There are three types of countries that signed up to the Kyoto Protocol (the US is outside and now Canada is too):

-  Annex 1 countries:  Those that commit to reducing their emissions, covering both "industrialised countries" and "countries in transition".  New Zealand and the UK are in this category, along with all other EU Member States, Russia, Japan and others.  Total of 41.  So they all bear the costs of reducing activities that reduce emissions, or must buy emissions allowances, or mitigate their emissions.

- Annex 2 countries:  A subset of Annex 1 countries that also include New Zealand and the UK.  They not only are obliged to reduce emissions, but their taxpayers are required to subsidise the likes of others to reduce emissions.  This includes the "rich" EU Member States, i.e. Greece and Portugal, not Poland and Slovenia. 

- Developing countries: That is everyone else.  They are not obliged to reduce emissions at all, unless Annex 2 countries pay for them to adopt new technologies to allow it.  They can "volunteer" to become Annex 1 countries when they have developed.

The environmental movements don't challenge this.  Yet let's look at who is in the category of developing countries.  These are countries the New Zealand government, both the Clark and now the Key governments, have committed to helping subsidise to gain new technologies.

Qatar - Which has 6.8 times the per capita emissions of New Zealand and 6.2 times that of the UK, with per capita GDP (Purchasing Power Parity basis) 2.5 times that of the UK and 3.3 times that of New Zealand.  Bear in mind Qatar basically earns virtually all of its income from exporting oil, so it can earn money from "selling CO2 emission" then emit as much as it likes, and get money from poorer countries to buy new technologies. Nice.

UAE - Has 4.4 times the per capita emissions of the UK, 4.5 times the per capita emission of New Zealand, with per capita GDP 1.4 times that of the UK and 1.8 times that of New Zealand.  A similar economy to Qatar.

Bahrain, Brunei, Kuwait all have higher per capita emissions that the UK and NZ, and all but Bahrain have higher per capita GDP.   All richer more polluting economies, all making money from selling CO2 emitting energy, all expected to do nothing, all entitled to get taxes from NZ and British taxpayers to dabble in being more environmentally friendly.  Nice that.

China, Brazil and India of course are all classed as developing countries being poorer per capita, despite having significant foreign exchange surpluses and rapidly growing emissions.  You might ask quite why China is owed subsidies from Western taxpayers when it sits on a growing mountain of money it earns from exporting to those people.

A few other countries are classed as "developing" and deserving of subsidies, and able to emit all they wish, yet have HIGHER per capita incomes than New Zealand, such as Singapore, the Bahamas and Israel.

You might ask yourself quite why these little details are seen as acceptable by a government claiming to be looking after your interests.  Why you might have to pay more, whilst the descendants of oil sheikhs and Chinese millionaires need not face anything, and your taxes might even subsidise their dabbling in green technologies.

You might even wonder why nobody asked any of the major political parties those questions.

Assange shows himself up to be a shallow attention seeker

The concept of Wikileaks has some appeal for a libertarian.  Government secrets can hide criminal behaviour, breaches of individual rights and can show up corruption.  It can also show up things that governments don't want you to know, because they are embarrassed or think they know best.

However, it is one thing to be concerned about governments misusing their power, and engaging in criminal activity.  It is another to think that absolutely everything governments do should be in the public domain.

Some time ago I wrote the post "What is the motive of Julian Assange?" where I noted that Assange tends to leak one side of the story on most things.  Relatively little has been revealed from Russian, Chinese or Iranian sources.  Probably because language is a barrier, possibly because Assange would rather not be in the firing line of authoritarian regimes who are known to not be too fussed about using murder to deal with opponents.    

I later noted:

As interesting as it is for Wikileaks to publish stolen communications from US diplomatic sources, are there not similar communications being made available for Wikileaks to publish from countries that are not Western liberal democracies?


Will it receive such uncritical coverage if it publishes British diplomatic communications regarding strategy with the European Union? How about New Zealand's diplomatic communications on trade access issues?  How about South Korea's diplomatic communications about north Korea defectors?


Would it not be at least as interesting, and indeed more valuable if Wikileaks also gained access to material from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba etc?

Now we have seen things have gone down that path.  Wikileaks has inadvertently published quarter of a million stolen US diplomatic despatches, which includes names of informants in China, Iran and Afghanistan.  People who now have their lives in jeopardy because Assange wanted attention.  The story behind it is complex and described in Der Spiegel, but it has since caused one former Wikileak's staff member to resign, explaining it in the Guardian as follows:

By drawing attention to, and then publishing in full, the unredacted cache of documents, WikiLeaks has done the cause of internet freedom – and of whistleblowers – more harm than US government crackdowns ever could.

Before the first publication of carefully redacted cables, human rights activists, NGOs, and organisations working with victims of horrific crimes contacted WikiLeaks begging us to take steps not to publish any names. To be able to assure them details would be protected was an immeasurable relief.

These cables contain details of activists, opposition politicians, bloggers in autocratic regimes and their real identities, victims of crime and political coercion, and others driven by conscience to speak to the US government. They should never have had to fear being exposed by a self-proclaimed human rights organisation.

Wikileaks is no human rights organisation.  It is an activist organisation, driven by the political agenda of Assange, which is to undermine Western governments' interests and embarrass them. 
Wikileaks is no friend of freedom, as Kyle Wingfield writes:

This is not a studied neutrality, or allegiance only to truth. It is for all intents and purposes making a value judgment in favor of authoritarian regimes over democratic ones. To deny this is to deny reality. And second, Assange and his co-conspirators, rather than proving the merits of transparency, have simply demonstrated the danger of letting a small group of unaccountable people wield control over information. They are guilty of everything they accuse governments (but mostly the U.S. government) of doing, and more.

The road to hell is paved ... and all that.  Pardon my language, but Assange is an attention seeking little cunt.  He hasn't a clue about international diplomacy, international relations, human rights or politics.  His own egomaniacal belief in his own genius has been his undoing, as he acts outside the laws of countries and effectively writes his own.  Brave people under totalitarian regimes, that he doesn't dare visit, have their lives at risk, because he knew best in dealing with stolen documents.

He makes the allegations about phone hacking within News International look like a misdemeanor, for that didn't put lives at risk.  His leftwing mates should do some soul-searching before implying that somehow it is a set up (nice bit of wilful blindness you smug little man).  I can only hope no one is hurt by this, but I suspect this has just effectively made any dissidents or activists for political freedom in many countries fearful of ever working with the USA (or any Western governments).  A situation I expect most Wikileaks supporters probably didn't want, but which the cloyingly cliche'd anti-Western agenda of Assange created as an inevitability.

You see, most of the things embassies and consulates do are mundane, some are sensitive, and a few are about providing outposts of support and comfort for dissidents and others.   Over many years thousands of north Koreans have defected from their own embassies or from work, sport or artistic groups, or by simply escaping, through south Korean embassies.  In many authoritarian countries, embassies provide a place for privacy or implicitly providing support and security for political dissidents, or even just ordinary people who want to use a library, open internet access or to learn about a country more openly.   It isn't something Assange and his sycophants understand, because they have never lived somewhere like that.

There are plenty of organisations, from Reporters without Borders to the Global Internet Freedom Consortium and Freedom House, who work hard to promote free and open media across the world.  They know what they are talking about, they have freedom and openness as core values, not banners for publicity, and they believe in individual freedom, not that everything every says should be open to the world.

It is time to turn one's back on Wikileaks and Julian Assange as an experiment led by someone whose primary interest was not freedom of speech, but publishing diarrhoea.  He didn't have the values he purported to represent, but a political partisan agenda, that has picked favours, and has shown that he isn't the god and saviour he'd really like to imagine himself to be.

Bye bye Gaddafi, well done rebels and NATO

From the reports overnight, it appears that the Gaddafi regime is either in tatters or on the verge of engaging a final bloody battle. I wouldn’t put it past Gaddafi to do the latter, for the one thing that can be certain of the last 40 years of his regime, it is his willingness to lie incessantly and to react murderously on a whim.

There is, of course, great reason to celebrate the end of Gaddafi. He has spent his whole career following a megalomaniacal path of personality cult and self-aggrandisement, considering himself to be leader of Africa (and getting a semi-polite muted response from most of the rest of Africa, mainly because it looked forward to gaining some of his oil wealth in exchange for his friendship) and supporter of umpteen terrorist causes from around the world. He has over that period aided, funded and armed plenty from the IRA to the 1970s Marxist terrorist gangs in the West, such as the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades in West Germany and Italy. He supported communist insurgents in the Philippines, and often declared his solidarity with the Palestinians, though was not exactly a friend of the PLO. Of course he will be most well known in the West for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 and the bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986.   He also provided extensive funds to the Ceausescu regime in its development of a weapons industry (Gaddafi and Ceausescu were particularly warm with each other), whilst Romanian spies stole intellectual property from Western firms, and both countries developed chemical weapons.

Perhaps the one odd thing about Gaddafi is that you can almost always predict that he would be on the side of the dictatorial, the fascist, the murdering and the anti-Western. He supported Idi Amin in his fight against Tanzania, and granted the murderous brute asylum when he was overthrown. He supported the Iranian revolution and has long maintained warm relations with the Iranian Islamist regime.

He waged war against his dirt poor southern neighbour of Chad, and bombed a French airliner in retaliation for French intervention to protect Chad. All the time having warm relations with the USSR, and gaining Soviet arms. He pursued development of chemical weapons although has never used them. More recently, Libya sought to improve relations with the rest of the world, but notably provided cheap oil to Zimbabwe in solidarity with Robert Mugabe. He also supported the now fallen Tunisian dictatorship of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Domestically, he ran an economy almost entirely dependent on oil wealth that would rise and fall according to the price of oil. In the 1970s he embarked on a socialist programme that included at one point free supermarkets, but this all collapsed in the 1980s as oil prices dropped and economic sanctions from the West tightened up markets for Libya. The more recent rises in oil prices have helped, along with his sudden willingness to co-operate with the West following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime. This, of course, saw him courting plenty willing to turn a blind eye to his past, from Prince Andrew to the London School of Economics.

Meanwhile, he ran a regime that was heavily focused on his own personality cult and the worship of his incoherent body of ranting called the Green Book. In this he mixes Islam, socialism and a disdain for free speech and liberal democracy in the style of an unhinged man. He would be funny, if he were not so lethal. Gaddafi was always ruthless towards political opponents or those suspected of plotting against the regime. Like any such regime he ran a ruthless secret police force, and Libya was never ever a haven for human rights.

Anyone with a smidgeon of belief in freedom will celebrate his overthrow, although it is unclear what will follow, it is difficult to imagine it could be worse. Certainly, the risk of an Islamist revolution seems slight in Libya. As a curious footnote, it might be worthwhile to find those in New Zealand who were once acolytes of Gaddafi. Like veteran Maori radical Mike Smith, the late communist radical Syd Jackson felt warm about Gaddafi’s regime. New Zealand’s media is all incredibly forgiving of those who were friends with mass murderers, but then again what can you expect from those who don't check their facts to justify an editorial line.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the fifth columnists in the West who will denounce all of this, who will claim that all along they opposed Gaddafi, but also opposed NATO’s intervention to protect the rebels and civilians from Gaddafi’s own war against his own people.   People like Andrew Murray, a noted sympathiser of the Kim Jong Il hereditary nepotocracy, who not long ago was damning the whole thing in the Guardian.  The ones who would rather sit on the fence and impale their moral reputation than accept that a people have overthrown a militarist dictatorship, that was more than willing to use its own army to crush opposition. For you see, for the leftist apologists of Gaddafi to accept that, they would have to accept that NATO did GOOD, that the UK and France (let’s not pretend the Obama Administration led this, or did more than come in behind) acted morally and justifiably against this murderous tyrant. Watch now as they point at Syria and say it is hypocritical not to intervene there, yet these very same people would oppose such a move. Watch as they deftly ignore Castro and Chavez's warm support for Gaddafi, brothers in blood spilling.  Dare a NZ journalist ask Hone Harawira's view on any of this?  Maybe someone might seek to go to Tripoli to do some research on the regime's archives and see how many lowlives worldwide were paid off by this regime?

Watch also as Obama, suddenly come out of his shell, to proclaim a kind of victory months after he was the do-nothing President.  

This is a victory by ordinary Libyans, who watched their neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt reject tyranny.  It was supported by NATO, but only because Cameron and Sarkozy were determined to prevent a bloodbath on their doorstep (and had a degree of guilt for how UK and French governments had appeased the regime in recent years).  Italy and Germany were obstructive, the USA tagged on behind.

Now is a chance to rebuild, for Libya to be a friend and for the truths of Gaddafi's decades of waging war on the outside world and tyranny on his own people, to come out.

UPDATE:  The New Statesman reminds us of some of Gaddafi's erstwhile friends.  Remember the one career where you can be feted internationally, at the expense of foreign taxpayers, whilst maintaining a record of mass murder, is to be a politician.  Yet so many people still like politicians to make decisions for them.

Professor Juan Cole writes top ten myths of the war in Libya.  It includes the perpetual (and vile) claim that it is all about oil.

End of cloud cuckoo land economics

So says City AM editor, Allister Heath.  In an extended editorial this morning he wrote an elegant piece that summarises where we all are at:

The post-Bretton Woods era is coming to an end. Asia and the emerging nations are on the rise – and the world’s increasingly vocal creditors. As economic power shifts, so will geopolitical and cultural influence. The US, which for decades enjoyed massive inflows of cheap financing, and huge benefits from owning the world’s reserve currency, needs to start to live within its means. The same is true of Europe, which faces two additional challenges: the Eurozone, which cannot survive in its present form and which has become the most urgent threat to global prosperity; and (even more than America) bloated welfare states and a generalised failure to grasp that weak education systems, high taxes and crippling regulations are a no-no in a globalised world.

He has no time for the endless budget deficits and the abuse of fiat currencies as ways to evade reason...

“stimulus” packages of the fiscal or monetary variety have become counter-productive, with every extra pound in economic output created coming at a much greater cost. Ultimately, one needs real, sustainable growth – and that must mean deferring consumption to allow the savings required to finance productive investment; a sound, non-manipulated currency; interest rates that reflect reality; and lots of hard work, creativity, skill and innovation, suitably incentivised. The pseudo-Keynesian micro-management that dominates policy-making is not only intellectually bankrupt but has been proved to fail in practice. Politics and wishful thinking has been defeated by economic reality. In a world of scarce resources, we need to produce before we can consume – all the borrowing and money-printing in the world cannot refute this simple truth. 

His big predictions are that the US can prevaricate for some time, and be in long term relative decline as it does, but the European Union has an immediate crisis, that now threatens to spread beyond the CPIIGS (Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) into Belgium and France.  

But while the US’s decline could run for decades, and will involve further downgrades, the Eurozone’s crisis is urgent. The only question is how much debt the authorities will want or be able to federalise – how many toxic government bonds will the European Central Bank and the European Financial Stability Facility buy, in exchange for creating money or issuing Eurobonds backed by all Eurozone countries. Prudent taxpayers in Germany and elsewhere will pick up the bill left by profligate nations; but given its huge, multi-trillion euro size, this could destroy yet more credit ratings. France could be next for a downgrade. Even more importantly, a sovereign bailout will destroy any remaining popular support for the euro project, especially in Germany, understandably so given that the population was lied to when it was told that countries would retain their fiscal independence despite giving up monetary sovereignty.

 

The implications of this for Europe, could be positive if it unshackled itself from the socialist part of the EU project, and helped set its economies free, but it is unlikely that will happen.

 

The more serious concern ought to be about the decline of the United States, what is means not so much for the global economy, but for the international order.  For decades many in the West have rallied against Pax Americana, more than a few will cheer a New World Order that does not resemble what George Bush (Sr.) declared at the end of the Cold War.   

However, bear in mind what it represents.  It means Asia being dominated militarily as well as economically by China, and India, both nuclear powers.  It means the Middle East being dominated by Saudi Arabia and Israel, it means Europe being dominated by NATO and Russia, and it means the United States doing what Obama has royally done, opting out of the world by withdrawing.

The so-called "peace movement" will proclaim the world is a safer place as a result, although if it is a place where the United States no longer carries a banner, and sword, for freedom, one wonders how true that will be (not that the "peace movement" ever believed in freedom).   Some US libertarians welcome this, not wanting the US to be "World Police" (not that it ever really was), but what it leaves is a philosophical vacuum - one that is increasingly filled with "make money wherever you can regardless of individual or property rights" as the Russia and Middle Eastern kleptocracies move forward and China seeks a 21st century imperialism over African natural resources to replicate the 19th century Western equivalent.   Islam may fill part of it, corporatist state capitalism will fill some more, as will knuckle-dragging nationalism based on ethnicity. 

However, consider this.  If you were in Poland, with a relatively chilly authoritarian neighbour to the east, and you saw the US withdraw its presence in Europe - given the past 70 years of history - would you be feeler safer as a result?

Watch Syria, for that's the future

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Bashar el-Assad has turned the army on protestors and has shown little hesitation to create rivers of blood among his subjects.  Tanks firing on civilians, sniper taking out protestors, blocking hospitals to stop protestors entering according to a report from The Independent.   With reports of heavy machine gun fire, tanks shelling buildings and electricity and water being cut off from the city of Hama (where Assad's bloodthirsty father had massacred reportedly over 10,000 in 1982), it appears the regime will stop at nothing to remain in power.  Another report talks of tanks running over people.   Some claim over 1,600 have been killed by the regime since protests started in March, whilst this is likely to be somewhat exagerrated there can be little doubt the regime has been engaging on a spree of oppression.

It did try in recent years to put on a more moderate face.  Some thought that as Bashar Assad had been trained as an opthamologist and had not originally been seen as the successor to his father (his far more ruthless and "Uday Hussein" like brother Basil had been, before he died in a car crash), he would be more moderate, and there had been signs of a loosening of the totalitarian state his father Hafez had instituted, but it would be more like moving from Stalin to Khrushchev.   It didn't stop Vogue writing a gushing piece about Bashar's wife late last year (which it wisely has removed from its website). 

However, the truth is out.  Bashar wants to retain absolute authority and power, like his father.  He has the support of the armed forces, and the brutal Ba'athist socialist legacy of the ruling party continues.

President Obama has rightly condemned what has been going on, as have other Western leaders.  The regime's response has been to sponsor attacks against the US and French embassies.   Meanwhile you'll notice two major differences between the foreign reaction to Syria and the reactions to Libya, Serbia and other examples of what is typically referred to as "humanitarian intervention".

Firstly, the Western world is financially and politically exhausted as regards "saving the world" from the brutality of dictatorships.  Barack Obama has no appetite or inclination to do anything to intervene in Syria, not least because of the cost, but also because he firmly believes that it is for the UN Security Council to authorise any such action.  Is he pushing for this?  Well no, because he knows it wont be politically popular, he knows he'd struggle to pay for it and as he didn't support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (and was subdued on Libya) he doesn't believe the US should project itself militarily, in order to save the lives of others.  Meanwhile, as the UK and France effectively lead the continued presence over Libya, they are not so inclined to go into Syria either, because of money.  Germany opposed intervention in Libya at all.   Of course neither Russia nor China are in any way inclined to support intervention against a government that turns on its own people, given that both are quite adept murderers of their own domestic populations.

So the post-Cold War age of humanitarian intervention, which has had mixed results including the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Liberia and Libya (I count Afghanistan as being action against those that harboured an aggressor and Iraq as action against a proven threat to international peace and security), is now over.

You'll have to get used to watching TV coverage or hearing/reading reports of governments massacring their own people.  For the US and European powers are no longer willing to save them.  That is, in part, because they have nearly bankrupted their own economies through many years of overspending on bribing voters and interest groups with future taxpayers' money. It is also because the cost in lives and money of such interventions (and the organised forces against them from the left) have made it politically more difficult to support.   The UK was embarrassed about its previous sycophancy for the proven mass murderer Muammar Gaddafi, so could not stand by as he used helicopters to take out civilian protestors.  However, Syria has never been a friend of the West, so the guilt isn't there.

All of this should please the so-called peace movement and human rights advocates from the left who opposed the Allied invasion of Iraq and overthrow of that Ba'athist dictatorship, as well as the smaller group who thought the Taliban should have been left alone in Afghanistan, to keep harbouring Al Qaeda and enforce a dark ages Islamist year zero ultra-patriarchy.   The same people have been relatively quiet over Libya, except the usual tiresome claim that its only about oil.  

You see, the so-called peace movement have long held up Afghanistan, Iraq and even Libya as of late as being "the fault of the West".  This is a line whereby all NATO members and Western allies of military intervention in all these cases, must carry the blame for the actions of previous western governments in the Cold War.  Never ever is the finger pointed at Russia or the governments of the former Warsaw Pact countries and the like.

Afghanistan was the fault of the West supporting the Mujahideen against the brutal Soviet backed Najibullah regime.  The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, after all, supported by Keith Locke of all people.   It takes a peculiar contortion of one's belief in human rights, womens' rights and freedom of speech to oppose the overthrow of the Taliban, but that is what the far left did (it would have been ok had the Afghan people done it on their own efforts though - like how it would have been good if the Jews had overthrown the Nazis in Germany).  Support for the Islamists in Afghanistan was a mistake, but it doesn't mean one cannot rectify it when they not only have proven to be brutally sadistic, but harbouring those who attack you.

Iraq was also the fault of the West, for the support Saddam Hussein got against the Iranian Islamists.  That piece of realpolitik (your enemy's enemy is your friend) was an appalling miscalculation, which was eventually figured out in the late 1980s when the West stopped arming and supporting Hussein (though one shouldn't forget the French help for Hussein's first attempt at building a nuclear reactor, which Israel swiftly dealt to).   Of course, the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries also extensively armed and assisted Saddam, but Russia and its former allies are forgiven, somehow.  However, that doesn't matter now, for notwithstanding Saddam's use of chemical weapons against his own people, his invasion and occupation of a neighbouring state (for oil) and his extended oppression and brutality against anyone who opposed him, he was deemed protected by international law by the so-called peace movement.  Invasion against this dictatorship was "illegal" and "unjustified" as the borders of a dictatorship are considered inviolable.  The left considered Saddam's regime as having at least enough moral authority for the actions to overthrow him to be considered less justifiable than letting him be.  

This Ba'athist hereditory dictatorship in Syria has so many hallmarks of being abominable it should be more surprising that it didn't long ago raise anger and activism among the legions of self-styled human rights protestors in Western countries.  You know, the ones who will raise a flotilla for the Gaza Strip, or rally against apartheid, or protest against the Chinese one-party state.

However, Syria's past can't be easily blamed on the West.  It gained independence in 1946, but between then and 1956 was marked by multiple military coups.  In 1956 it became explicitly allied with the USSR, and merged with Egypt in the ill-fated "United Arab Republic" of Nasser in 1958, before withdrawing in 1961.  A 1963 coup led by the socialist Ba'ath Party set the stage for the future of the country.  With Hafez Assad staging his own coup within the regime in 1970, he held power for 30 years, with an iron fist and a personality cult to match, with Bashar taking on the legacy in 2000.  Throughout the entire period since 1956, Syria has been allied with the USSR, and subsequently maintained warm relationships with Russia, Iran, North Korea and other regimes with an overtly anti-Western stance.

So for now, you can watch Syria's regime massacring its own people.  In the knowledge that the Western advocates of peace and human rights are rather quiet on it all, expressing concern, but not at all supporting intervention (how could they).  They will be quiet about a regime they have ignored for decades, because it never had Western support and was always antagonistic towards Israel (although Israel has for some years sought a peace treaty based on progressively handing back the Golan Heights, but Syria wont make peace until the Palestinian situation has been resolved).  

Meanwhile, with Obama in the White House, and largely uninterested in international affairs.  With Western leadership dependent on a fairly wet British Prime Minister who is in coalition with anti-interventionists, it may be up the the French (given Syria was a French colony) to seek action.   Yet, as China and Russia have no inclination to support it (and since few dare to ignore the UN Security Council nowadays), expect to see more blood flowing in Syria with no intervention.

It is, after all, the consequence of a policy of non-intervention and what the so-called peace movement and human rights movements want as a response.