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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Overheard.
| I know the details of this exquisitely because I've talked to all the parties in detail. Within a couple of weeks there was a document exchanged that President Putin had approved that Lavrov had presented that was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankora to listen in detail to what the mediators were doing. Ukraine walked away unilaterally from a near agreement. Why? Because the United States told them to. Because the UK added icing to the cake by having Bojo go in early April to Ukraine and explain and he has recently - and if your security is in the hands of Boris Johnson God help us all - and Starmer turns out to be even worse. It's unimaginable but it is true. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | No, the Baltics, Eastern Europe (Poland) and Turkey will also need them. You lot have already rightly said NATO protection under Trump is discretionary. Germany will defo need them. Japan needs them as well, can't rely on the US. |
As is well known I am highly relaxed about proliferation. It tends to make people have a more circumspect foreign policy.
| The development of the French nuclear weapons programme is an excellent case study for Germany, Japan, Poland, Turkey, etc now the US can't be relied upon. During the Cold War, France suspected that the United States would not use American nuclear weapons in the defence of Europe against any Warsaw Pact forces moving westward. The rationale behind this fear that the United States would be reluctant to defend against the Soviet Union was that they thought that the US believed that the Soviets would then escalate with a nuclear attack against US cities. Yep, the French thought that the United States might bottle it and allow the defeat of NATO forces, fearing a devastating attack on their own US cities. As a result, France logically built its own ‘Force de dissuasion’ (‘Deterrence Force’) just in case. |
I disagree with this over-elaborate rationale. France understood, as Britain and China understood, you needed nukes to stay at the top table.
| The United States originally opposed the French doing this but the French, being suspicious about the US, just went ahead anyway. |
De Gaulle was good at this sort of thing.
| 85% of battlefield casualties are now the result of drones in Ukraine. The World debates how many boots on the ground will be needed to enforce the peace. |
Excellent point.
| Grant wrote: | | The "peace-keepers," if they ever arrive, will not have a clue how to fight the Russians if there is another invasion. Let's face it: the Russians and Ukrainians could unite and take over the whole of Europe if they decided to go mediaeval on our ass. |
So what's your explanation for the fact they seem only capable of taking over small parts of one another?
| Borry wrote: | | Overheard. I know the details of this exquisitely because I've talked to all the parties in detail. Within a couple of weeks there was a document exchanged that President Putin had approved that Lavrov had presented that was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankora to listen in detail to what the mediators were doing. Ukraine walked away unilaterally from a near agreement. Why? Because the United States told them to. Because the UK added icing to the cake by having Bojo go in early April to Ukraine and explain and he has recently - and if your security is in the hands of Boris Johnson God help us all - and Starmer turns out to be even worse. It's unimaginable but it is true. |
I am inclined to accept this in broad outline. I even posted up something on Medium at the time. The West correctly saw that Russia had got itself bogged down in a quagmire and were content to fight Putin to the last Ukrainian. It was only the wretched sanctions that meant the West acquired a vested interest in the war ending.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Ukrainian rare earth minerals are hitting the headlines
So I had better mark your card about what’s really going on.
Everybody keeps bandying about vast figures. Trump wants five hundred billion dollars as a return on America’s investment in defending the free world. Learned commentators speak of Ukrainian reserves being worth trillions.
Rare earth minerals aren’t really rare. They are just available in very small quantities. That is why they are not very profitable to mine and why you hadn’t heard about them until they were found to be essential for various functions to do with ultra-modern technology, and China had had the foresight to snap up lots of rare earth mines before anyone had heard of them.
Rare earth minerals are available everywhere. There are deposits anywhere you care to look. You can, if push really comes to shove, get them by evaporating seawater. It is them being concentrated in exploitable quantities that is rare.
| Relatively rare, that is. |
Up till now these rare earth minerals — what they are changes from time to time — were not the stuff of headlines because nobody was much bothered with them. So nobody was much looking for them. As soon as computers and EV batteries and missile components (the list changes from time to time) needed them in greater quantities than hitherto, people started looking for them, started finding them, started digging mines to get at them.
| Nobody bothered much with the Ukrainian deposits because they were no great shakes. |
* Sure, theoretically, if you add up all the known reserves, they are worth trillions at today’s market values.
* Sure, in principle, you will make a few million, even a few billion, by digging them out of the ground.
* Sure, in practice, Zelensky will sign away the rights to some American mining company to keep Trump happy. He doesn’t give a monkeys who mines Ukraine’s rare earth mineral deposits because there are no Ukrainian companies with the necessary expertise to do it. And it’s not worth creating a Ukrainian rare earth mining industry from scratch because there are a thousand and one better things for Ukraine to be getting on with right now. (But they may well nationalise the American mines when the dust clears.)
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Boreades wrote: | Overheard.
| I know the details of this exquisitely because I've talked to all the parties in detail. Within a couple of weeks there was a document exchanged that President Putin had approved that Lavrov had presented that was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankora to listen in detail to what the mediators were doing. Ukraine walked away unilaterally from a near agreement. Why? Because the United States told them to. Because the UK added icing to the cake by having Bojo go in early April to Ukraine and explain and he has recently - and if your security is in the hands of Boris Johnson God help us all - and Starmer turns out to be even worse. It's unimaginable but it is true. | |
The quote is an extract from Jeffrey Sachs' address to the European Parliament hosted by Michael von der Schulenburg, a German MEP and former UN Assistant Secretary General
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD_KEFpuIro
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Why is everyone saying (a) the Europeans will put a peacekeeping force into Ukraine if (b) the Americans will provide a security guarantee? I just don't see the link, the logic or the necessity. (I'm not sure which, I'm trying to work it out in real time.) So let's see...
1. If the peacekeeping force does its job, no American security guarantee is required. (And maybe the peacekeeping force wasn't necessary.)
2. If the peacekeeping force does not do its job, it means the Russians didn't believe in the American security guarantee. (And presumably they were either right or it's World War Three.)
3. Presumably the theory is that the Russians will be minorly dissuaded by the European peacekeeping force and majorly dissuaded by the American security guarantee. But then what is the purpose of the European peacekeeping force?
4. It is an AE problem.
A fatal refusal--a careful ignoral, if you will--to decide what a peace-keeping force is. It is not meant to be large enough to actually fight a war (against the breakers of the peace) but it is supposed to act as a tripwire to bring in forces that will fight that war. But that has to be a reality. We all recall the Dutch peacekeepers at Srebrenica. They realised at the last minute nobody was coming to rescue them so they had to surrender their peacekeeping role. The Serbs paid no price--apart from obloquy--for occupying the town and... um... disposing of its inhabitants.
Now presumably a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine will not be in a 'Dutch' position--even the Dutch troops among them. Several mother countries will come flying to their aid. Except they won't. It has been made perfectly clear the force will not be in the classic UN position, patrolling the Green Line. They are, it has been announced, to be 'stationed in Ukraine'. They are to be tripwires up in the attic. They are to be flown out in good time if the Russians invade and the Europeans and the Americans will be in the position they were in in February 2022.
If I can't work it out...
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I can't help thinking Trump has missed a trick by not billing Kuwait post facto as well. At least the US did the job that time. As it is, Kuwait seems to have got away with paying out nothing and got another $52.4 billion from Iraq for reparations.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Good news for Starmer!
YouGov survey
| How good or bad do you think Keir Starmer will be at negotiating with Donald Trump? |
Very good 4%
Fairly good 19%
Fairly bad 29%
Very bad 28%
Don’t know 21% (who's Starmer?)
Why is this good news?
People's expectations are so low that any crumbs that Trump gives him will seem like a triumph of Plucky Brit talking sense to Bad Orange Man.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wiley prediction is that Trump will not allow the Chagos deal and Starmer will accept this. We will have no say on anything else. We just need to grant Trump a state visit, and up our defence spending.
If we later avoid tariffs by doing this, Starmer's visit will be judged a triumph.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I reckon Zelensky is doing a Salmond oil, ie selling 125% of known rare earth reserves for future projects (in Ukraine's case more weapons).
You can't blame a nationalist for trying.......
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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In all the excitement, not a lot of people have noticed that the mineral resources being mentioned are the parts left over and not already mortgaged and promised to vulture capitalists like BlackRock. Which is the parts in the Western Ukraine already offered as guarantees for the previous US loans.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Alas, poor Anneliese Dodds
| Anneliese Dodds has quit as International Development Minister over Keir Starmer’s decision slash the aid budget by 40% to pay for higher defence spending, saying it looks like following in Trump’s footsteps. |
Now notice the sleight of hand.
| In her resignation letter, Ms Dodds warned that cutting foreign aid would bolster Russia and encourage China to rewrite global rules on the international order. |
How can that be? Surely all our International Development aid was just doing nice charity work and being nice to people?
Anneliese Dodds might be outraged that Starmer is borrowing an idea from Trump, and the USAID cuts .
Noticed elsewhere was that hidden in the USAID funding was a lot of money funnelled to some very shady "Non-Government Organisations". In quotes, because some might wonder how these NGOs are "Non-Government" if they are funded by Government. Be that as it may.
We already know from people like Rory Stewart that significant parts of what was billed as International Development aid money was funnelled to "non charity" work with arms-length TLA. So a government has plausible deniability if it goes wrong.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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How to lose a war in Washington
Zelensky blows a gasket and blows the peace
Zelensky made a catastrophic error losing his rag in the White House. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and smile sweetly as Trump and Vance did their good cop/bad cop double act.
| You don’t get into arguments with blowhards you are relying on by becoming a blowhard yourself. |
Zelensky knew in advance he was not going to get an American guarantee so it was just plain stoopid allowing it to get mixed up with rare earth mineral negotiations. Which he must have known were mostly smoke and mirrors anyway.
| When you are dealing with simple minds you keep things simple. |
So we are now going to have to look for ways to rescue President Zelensky from his own folly. First, what he must not do:
1. Apologise to Trump and return cap in hand. This will put him in the worst of both worlds. Trump will immediately go into triumphant, told-you-so mode, agree a maximalist peace with Putin and tell Zelensky he either accepts it or he is on his own as far as America is concerned. That would leave Ukraine to accept an unhappy peace or fight a war they are gradually losing to an opponent who now knows there is nothing preventing them gradually winning it. The war will end with either a minimalist Ukraine or no Ukraine at all.
2. Appeal to the Europeans. To be fair to the Europeans they have been left holding a shitty stick. They know that even if they increase their support to fill the American gap, they will just recreate the status quo: Russia gradually winning, Ukraine gradually losing. They can’t send in their vaunted ‘peacekeeping forces’ before there is a peace because they know, and the Russians know, without American engagement the slightest rattle of the nuclear spectre will be unanswerable. Not that there is one chance in hell the Europeans would agree to either course of action. It is hard enough them agreeing on anything, much less an adventurous something.
3. Appeal to the Ukrainians. It is possible for Zelensky to propose Ukraine adopt a Total War policy. Start conscripting 18–25 year-olds. That sort of thing. Going over to a total war economy and mortgaging the future by buying arms on the open market. That sort of thing. The two obvious and fatal drawbacks are (a) the Ukrainians won’t buy it, they’ve already demonstrated what they will and won’t do (b) the Russians will go into Total War mode themselves and Ukraine will be in the same mess but a ratcheted-up mess.
| What to do? Zelensky has two cards: the American people and European governments. |
Both at the moment are in a love-Trump trance and, while Trump does not have the remotest interest in the wellbeing of Ukraine, he is congenitally dependent on love-Trump trances. The one thing that might jeopardise the besottedness was if Trump is seen to throw Ukraine to ravening Russian wolves. He can do that in smoke-filled rooms but not in the full glare of day. Zelensky has inadvertently made sure of that.
| So he throws himself and Ukraine at the mercy of Trump. |
“We cannot continue the war without the selfless support of our great allies. We therefore ask our American friends to open negotiations with President Putin immediately and we will abide by whatever formula they come up with.”
Now you and I know (and we must pray Zelensky knows) that with Donald Trump now cast in the role of de facto leader of the Ukrainian delegation negotiating with da Bear, the result will be at the maximalist end for Ukraine. And what’s more, if Donald Trump is personally responsible for the deal, the Great Dealmaker will guarantee it in a way no words on paper could ever do.
And if this doesn’t happen? If Trump does throw them to wolves? Zelensky says fuck you and Ukraine is in the same position they are in now anyway.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The US will walk away from Ukraine, enter into a tariff war with Europe (EU) and threaten to exit NATO under Trump.
You don't have anyone crafting anything with allies, or trusted partners. It's a case of the Team Trump are going to knock the established architecture down. To be fair they are doing it within the US as well.
And why not, after years of refusing (polite requests by the US) to up defence spending, just look how we Brits then reward Team Trump's behaviour with the opposite, ie excessive flattery and yet another state visit.
Is it a surprise that now Trump and Flounce won't do basic security things, we are stupidly trying to beg or bribe them with money, toys, and treats. Naturally they want more. Or if we now say no, they will take their toys.......
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Well, that didn't last long.
| During a visit to the White House earlier this week, the French leader promised that Europe would “step up” in both its support for Ukraine and defence spending. |
But
| Macron ‘blocking’ €30bn EU weapons programme despite promise to Trump |
What programme?
| The plan, outlined in a paper seen by The Telegraph, aims to deliver 1.5 million artillery rounds, precision-strike missiles, air-defence systems, drones and provide training for Ukrainian recruits this year. |
What's Micron done now?
| Before the talks, which aim to strengthen support for Ukraine in anticipation of a potential ceasefire with Russia, French officials were branded the “biggest spoilers” of the EU’s plan. Diplomatic sources said Paris was leading a coalition of southern European countries attempting to “kill it in committee”. |
Toys are now departing the EU pram
An EU diplomat told The Telegraph: “Macron has set himself up as the de facto leader for Europe vis-à-vis Trump on everything on Ukraine. He talks a big game about understanding how to play Trump, how to talk tough.
“He goes to Washington, plays the part, and by the time he lands, Trump has announced massive trade tariffs on Europe. Meanwhile, France does absolutely f--- all on support to Ukraine and is the biggest spoiler on the one serious idea that’s on the table.” |
Quelle dommage.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Keep it simple, stupid
It is baffling to me why there is so much disagreement about the Ukraine War and the prospects of it ending. There is only one salient fact and only one reasonably certain qualifier
| Russia is advancing. There is nothing around that can stop her. |
* We know American and European aid hasn’t done it
* We know there is no prospect of this aid increasing substantially
* We know there isn’t anything else of great relevance
* We know there is only one factor with any leverage over Vladimir Putin
* We know that factor is Donald Trump
* We know therefore ‘peace negotiations’ will amount to a very simple question and answer session:
Donald Trump: What will it take to stop you fighting?
Vladimir Putin [pointing to map]: This.
Donald Trump: Back a bit.
Vladimir Putin [moves pointer back a bit]: This.
Donald Trump: OK.
That’s it. All this stuff about peacekeeping forces and guarantees and belonging to NATO and rare earth minerals is just so much verbiage. Either Ukraine accepts what Trump and Putin have agreed is to be the Ukraine/ Russia border or
* Trump goes home
* The Europeans wring their hands
* Russia continues advancing
* Ukraine continues retreating until
Vladimir Putin [pointing to map]: Here.
Volodymyr Zelinski: OK.
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