When domestic abuse goes global
Don’t read or listen to a word he says. He and his billionaire handlers know that words are meaningless, now. Today, Zelenskyy is a dictator; tomorrow, the President of Ukraine has started to see sense. Today, tariffs of such-and-such are imposed on so-and-so; tomorrow they are delayed (so his billionaire handlers can play the markets). Today, he declares war against Mars; tomorrow, it was only a joke. Today, he promises to drain the Pacific Ocean; tomorrow, it is a fine body of water.
This chaos has one objective: to create uncertainty and anxiety. Like a domestic abuser enjoying the mental as well as the physical pain he inflicts on his wife and children, he wants you to be scared, to worry what he will say or do next, to fear what mood he will be in at any given moment, and to fear if he will, at random, decide to hurt you or someone you care about.
Today’s regime in Washington is domestic abuse gone global. You can now only relax at the weekends, when the global abuser goes off to play golf and accept tribute from sycophants who must pay millions to gain his ear.
Do not read or listen to a word he says. Look at his actions. Since he and his deranged acolytes took over, they have sided with Russia at the UN, stopped the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, and stopped sharing intel with Ukraine. Already, Russia is able to murder – and is murdering – more Ukrainian civilians as a result of his treacherous betrayal. But this is about more than a former Soviet state.
Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Putin has repeatedly called it the greatest geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century. Putin’s objective since he took over Russia on 31 December 1999 has been the regaining of those countries lost and the restoration of the Soviet Union’s former empire. The one barrier standing in his way was the United States of America. Putin has always known that the primary strategic imperative to restoring his beloved Soviet Union was the defeat of the USA. However, this could never be achieved by conventional military means: the fiscal ramifications of the USSR’s collapse in 1989 gutted the Soviet armed forces. Even today, the Russian economy is little bigger than Italy’s. No, if Putin were to regain the countries that he believes rightfully belong to Russia, the USA had to be neutralised in a non-military way.
And this, after 25 long years, is what Putin has finally achieved. The United States of America stands today not as the leader of the free world, but neutralised. Side-lined. Castrated by a traitorous enemy within.
I grew up during the Cold War. I’ve followed Putin’s career for the last 25 years. His unprovoked invasions. His murders of critical journalists and political opponents. I saw Angela Merkel swoon and flutter her eyelashes when Putin gave her flowers and she made Germany dependent on Russian natural resources. All the time, Putin wore the face of a typical Russian tzar: that blank, fish-eyed expression of soulless callousness; just waiting, patiently, for those foolish Western career politicians to succumb to Russian bribery, coercion and honeytraps.
And now, Putin’s patience has been rewarded. Growing up in the 1980s, I never entertained for a minute the possibility that the Soviet Union could really defeat the West. But time is a thief, and the decades have sped by too quickly. Today, the United States of America has indeed been defeated. Not by a stronger army. Not by nuclear weapons. But by a third-rate KGB goon who murdered and bribed his way to control of the Kremlin and Russia. The West thought it had won the Cold War. We were wrong. Today, a gormless rapist, failed businessman and shallow coward open to bribery by anyone willing to pay the right price has cut the meniscuses of the most powerful country on Earth, and the world stares in disbelief as it stumbles to its knees, hostage to the killer in the Kremlin; outsmarted, outmanoeuvred, and defeated by the enemy within.
The Cold War didn’t end in 1989. That was just the first leg. And now, 36 years later, Russia has won the return fixture. When will the tiebreaker be?
