Europe Prepares for War as the Democratic Deficit Grows Wider
Is a Color Revolution Underway in Serbia?
There are huge demonstrations taking place in Serbia against pro-Russian President Alexsandar Vucic. His government has been accused of corruption and cost cutting after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad.
.Another Candidate Has Been Barred from Standing in the Romanian Election.
Diana Iovanovici-Sosoaca is, besides being a Presidential contender, an MEP in the European Parliament. She is claiming that the EU commission was behind the decision to bar her from running in the Romanian Presidential election. The reasons given, so far, for banning her was because her anti-Semitic and anti-Western public statements, along with proposing closer relations with Moscow, meant she was a danger to democracy and the country’s position in the European Union and NATO. Last week her opponent, and leading contender in the race, Calin Georgescu, was banned from running for alledgedly lying about campaign contributions. There will, of course, be an investigation after the EU’s choice has been safely elected.
Romanian ‘far-right’ party leader George Simion, who had dropped out of the race in order to support Georgescu, is being allowed to contest the election. He came fourth in the first round with only 13.9% of the vote. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Simion called Russian president Vladimir Putin a war criminal and said that international sanctions against Russia “were not enough”, so he is more acceptable to the EU and NATO. He is currently the vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party.
The most likely winner of the Romanian election is going to be Marcel Ciolacu, who is currently the Prime Minister. He got 19.15% in the cancelled first round of the election behind Georgescu (22.94%) and Elena Lasconi (19.18%); but he is acceptable to the EU, because of his pro-war and anti-Russia views, and so he will benefit from positive press coverage from the European Media.
The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Romania as a “flawed democracy” in 2023. As of 2025, it was classified as a hybrid regime behind a constitutional façade. According to the Copenhagen Criteria, Romania should never have been allowed to join the EU in the first place.
Italy Is One of the Reasons for the “Democratic Recession” in Europe.
According to the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation), Italy was one of five “democracy dismantlers” – along with Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia – that “intentionally undermine the rule of law in nearly all aspects”. Hungary was also mentioned as a persistant offender in their report; however, France and German were held up as “role-model democracies”.
Starmer Is Attacking Labour’s Core Voters
If there is one group of people that are consistent Labour voters, it is people in the creative industry. So, it doesn’t behoove a Labour Prime Minister to annoy them, but Kier Starmer has blundered his way into an almighty row with them by blithely proposing to hand over their work, free of charge, to AI companies. Moreover, it could be costly for the economy.
Statistics from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed that the creative industries generated £119.6billion in gross added value (GAV) to the economy in 2023, accounting for 5.2% of all UK GVA. In 2022 the creative industries grew twice as fast as the UK economy as a whole. IT, software and computer services were the biggest sub-sector, generating £55.4billion GVA, followed by Film, TV, video, radio and photography with £20.8 billion. In March 2024 there were 268,080 creative businesses, representing almost 10% of all UK registered business. The vast majority (93%) of these companies were micro businesses, employing less than ten people.
I hate to break the 4th wall but I must declare an interest here. I published 3 English Grammar textbooks, in the UK, on the areas where people have the most difficulty with the language; namely, verbs, prepositions and how and when to use ‘the’. They are textbooks with cross referencing so they are exactly the type of “data” the AI developers want. They took a long time to write; so, why should they just be handed over by ministerial fiat?
A legal opinion from top copyright lawyer Nicholas Caddick KC says that Sir Keir’s plan may break the Berne Convention – which established that creators’ work is protected the moment it is written or recorded. Mr Caddick believes Labour’s proposal contravenes at least two, if not all three of the conditions pertaining to granting an exception, which are: the exception must apply only in specific, special cases, the use must not deprive the rights holders of income and it must not harm the copyright owner’s interest.
A Government spokesman managed to make matters worse by saying: “The Berne Convention does not make any specific provisions for the interaction of copyright law and artificial intelligence. The Government will continue to consider all international legal commitments and obligations… and any eventual solution will take all of these into account.”
Britain has some of the best out of copyright material, especially books, available and they’re all downloadable at no cost from the Project Gutenberg website.
The Kursk Pocket Is Deflating
The Kiev regime’s hope, that the incursion by the Ukrainian army into the Kursk region of Russia would provide leverage during peace negotiations, has just been dashed. The Ukraine Army is surrounded there and Trump begged Putin to spare their lives after his call for a ceasefire was rebuffed by Moscow.
During the battle of Ilovaisk, back in 2014, the Ukrainian Army was surrounded and Angela Merkel begged for a ceasefire, which Putin achieved over the objections of the Donbass militias doing the actual fighting. The Ukraine army was able to remain intact and so it could be rebuilt.
The ceasefire led to the sham Minsk agreements, which the two main Western guarantors (Germany and France) had no intention of abiding by. This was confirmed by Hollande (French President) and Merkel (German Chancellor) later.
One of the main reasons for the collapse of the Kursk pocket in 4 pictures:
When the Ukraine army stormed into Kursk the pipeline was blown up.
Russian soldiers spent 4 days underground and then crawled 15 Kilometers through the pipeline into the heart of the Ukrainian defense stronghold in Sudzha.
Once the 800 Russian soldiers had crawled through the pipeline the attack begins.
The army groups taking part were: Akhmat (Chechens) special forces, Marines, 11th Airborne Brigade and the 30th Motorized Rifle Regiment “veterans” unit (who led the assault). Contrary to Western Media reports there were no North Koreans involved in the attack.
There are DPRK soldiers in Russia’s Far East where they are currently undergoing training and their fitness levels are being brought up to an acceptable standard.
You can watch details of the attack here.
Germans Helped to Liberate Syria
According to the MSM the Syrians rose up and liberated the country; however, according to reality the ‘liberators’ were a group of Jihadis, under the control of Turiye and paid for by the USA (thanks Mike Pompeo). A significant number of these mercenaries are from Germany something that the Jerusalem Post was warning about back in 2013. They even set up their own townships in North West Syria/Southern Turkey, like the one they had in Pakistan. And these were not all swarthy looking men. For example, here is a pale skinned German Islamist in Syria saying Shia Muslims must convert or be killed, hinting at how many victims there are likely to be.
The Fog of War Gets Murkier
Macron is determined to commit troops to Ukraine, even though the French people are not happy about it. Demonstrations are taking place in Paris with protestors chanting “We will not die for Ukraine”. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said that sending NATO peace-keeps to Ukraine will heighten tensions.
Macron, together with Keir Starmer, was defiant saying that they didn’t need permission from Russia to deploy their troops. President Putin has said that if EU peacekeepers are deployed in Ukraine, it would be viewed as an act of war. President Donald Trump, however, has said that Russia would allow NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine after the SMO is over, but Russia disputed his claim.
Europe Is Coming after its Citizens’ Savings
The EU currently does not have enough cash to restart their moribund collective economy. But Christine Largarde, the President of the European Central Bank has a plan. She intends to liberate the €33.5 trillion in household (i.e. private) savings – more than double the collective EU GDP – that is ‘stuck in banks’ because households prefer cash over market investments.
This push to divert private citizens’ savings into EU ‘investment’ has been brewing since early in 2024 when former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said that the EU’s fragmented capital markets have created a big opportunity to spark growth and future investment in the 27-country single market, by taking people’s savings. This will help the EU put its citizens’ finances to work in the context of the need to find an extra trillion euros a year to fund the digital and green transitions and to meet defense needs. Managing climate change alone calls for finding 2.6 percent of GDP per year.
Countries in Europe have been scrambling to find extra sources of finance in order to boost defense spending towards the €800 Billion that Ursula von der Leyen has called for. The new German Government is being applauded for its plan to lift the debt brake to boost defense spending, even though it increased the country’s borrowing costs, with 30 year bonds rising 25 points to 3.08%, the highest since the fiscal crisis in 1998.
The UK has a different approach to the same problem. Tony Blair, fresh from his ‘success’ as the erstwhile Middle East Peace Envoy has another plan. He wants to ‘unlock’ Britain’s private pension funds by taking them away from professional actuaries and turning them into giant superfunds, no doubt controlled by his namesake institute. He said that the root cause of the problems associated with the pension crisis in 2022 (when Truss was, briefly, the Prime Minister) can be traced to accounting and regulatory changes to the UK’s tax and pension systems in the early 2000s. In other words, he caused the problem, as he was the Prime Minster when these changes occurred, but he and his team are just the people needed to fix it.
The current UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, backs Blair’s ideas about pension reform, superfunds and the need to ‘unlock’ Britain’s pensions, which she outlined during her Mansion House Speech. She also said she was aiming to direct pension savings into higher risk, higher growth UK companies. Much of this investment will actually be earmarked for the defense industry.
The EU can’t follow the Blair Institute’s lead because some of them have already taken their private pensions to fund budget shortfalls.
Unsurprisingly European defense firms’ share prices have been rocketing during the Ukraine SMO and will soar further on the news.
If there is any topic you’d like to see covered or have any suggestions then please leave a comment below.
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Major General Butler is surely rolling over in his grave.
Thanks for the report. The latest Alastair Crooke column–now available in full–is not so much about Europe as about the conflict between Israel’s original Europen founders and the newer residents who want a theocracy and possibly no democracy.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/03/17/kingdom-of-judea-vs-state-of-israel/
Crooke says Trump is mistaken if he thinks the present government–which will fall without the theocratic branch–wants some kind of “art of the deal” and that an apocalyptic war may be their goal as the only way of achieving “Greater Israel.” While the entire column is worth a here’s the wind up in full.
We hear a lot about Christian Nationalists but there’s at least one country where–right now–religion is threatening to take over completely. At least so says Alastair.
Alistair may be right, but he’s getting his religions mixed up. Revelation (Apocalypse of John) is a Christian document, written in what passes for Greek. And while many of their Christian supporters are Darby-ite premillennialists, I don’t think the Israeli religious right shares that eschatology popular among some of MAGA’s Left Behind readers. I know nothing about what the Talmudic or Midrash traditions have to say about the Last Things, but the Hebrew bible doesn’t talk about a universal catastrophe befalling the world–remember the promise to Noah. Instead, calamity befalls the enemies of Judah or Israel in the prophecies of the prophets, against Tyre or Sidon or Babylon. Such prophecies might include fire raining down from heaven as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s more than a bit frightening what Bibi’s “partners” might have in mind.
I trust Crooke on this one. He knows Israel very well.
Just searching Jewish messiah brings up this for instance on eschatology, which indeed would explain a lot of their homocidal/suicidal behavior
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_eschatology
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_in_Judaism
I believe I heard on “The Bible Geek” of Robert M. Price about a theory that Revelation was originally a Jewish apocalyptic writing, but was subsequent ally edited for Christians. The imagery was Jewish, but the 666 bit was for contemporary readers (666 or 616 = Nero).
I defer to your expertise. And I would even say that one is allowed to be a bit skeptical re the religious excuses of colonialists in general. Of course our Southern planters once thought that the Bible gives slavery a thumbs up.
But the antebellum South might be an instructive comparison because the planters too thought their vicitms might rise up and kill them if given any freedom and they too were defending a lifestyle as well as a religion. Being reasonable was never part of it.
Sorry you are absolutely wrong about the Israeli religious right. They ARE eschatological. Other experts confirm Crooke on this.
You are showing your ignorance about Crooke to question him. He has been deeply involved in the region since at least since the early 2000, knows many of the principals on both sides personally, and has done hostage and ceasefire negotiations.
I interpreted “revelation” in Crooke’s words to mean “supernatural disclosure of truth from the Deity”, not as a specific reference to the Apocalypse of John,
He explicity referred to the duty of obedience to Divine commands, such as the OT command to exterminate Amalek. I don’t think AC is confusing religions.
Also, there is some apocalyptic literature in the Hebrew Bible. I suspect that present day Jewish apocalypticists learn heavily on the book of Daniel, as (so I have read) they did at the time of Jesus, a few decades before the catastrophic war with Rome of AD66-73. Perhaps the stories of the defeat of the Syrians in the books of Maccabees provides some inspiration, too.
You’re probably right about this. The “R” should not be capitalized.
Otherwise, my point was not that the Hebrew bible contained no eschatological materials, but that none of the eschatological writings found within it bear much similarity to what’s found in the Apocalypse of John or certainly the premillenniaism of the Darby-ites.
As for what right-wing Israelis believe about the Eschaton, this article on a Lubavitcher website might provide a start. As the article says, it’s complicated. The emphasis is on the arrival of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the temple.
The Lubavachers are Russia origin, meaning European. Crooke has made clear that the eschatological bent in Israel politics comes from the Mizrahim, who are African Jews. Your example is off point.
I suggest you use a search engine. Why don’t you start with the long Wikipedia article on Jewish eschatology rather than double down with irrelevant evidence? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_eschatology
“Israel is shredding itself on the blade of this debate.”
“‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. “
Has Italy been misbehaving? Cited for “heavy intolerance to media criticism”, attempting to give ““open-ended powers” to the justice ministry”. Call me when their wine sucks.
I’m guessing Simion does’t have a chance which I wager is what the NATO masters want.
“Democratic recession”, lol, democracy, long weary of circling the drain begs for someone/anyone to pull the chain.
mrsyk:
Either the Guardian did some heavy editing, or the original report is that addled. To wit: “In Italy, researchers highlighted how Giorgia Meloni’s government had drafted proposals to give “open-ended powers” to the justice ministry over prosecutors, which would increase political control over the judiciary. The Italian contributors also flagged “unprecedented levels of interference in public service media”, such as the cancellation of the author Antonio Scurati’s “anti-fascist manifesto” and the disciplinary case opened against the host of the talkshow in which the speech was to have been performed.”
–First, there are definite concerns about attack on the judiciary, but “open-ended powers” misstates the problem. Italy has a unified magistracy, with prosecutors and judges in one system. The government of conservatives wants to separate the careers, which would tend to politicize prosecutors. The government has also managed to abolish the crime of abuse of office — now that’s a weird kind of dismantling.
–Scurati’s appearance was canceled, and what followed was not edifying, with everyone blaming everyone for the cancellation. I followed the story fairly closely, and I still can’t figure out who pulled his invitation.
–Italy’s media problem is fairly acute, that is, concentration in ownership of media. Berlusconi and heirs own Mediaset, the main private TV group, as well as Mondadori, one of the country’s largest publishers. La Stampa, the main newspaper of the Chocolate City, is still quite obviously the mouthpiece of the alta borghesia — the first twenty or so pages of each day’s edition is a tightly controlled swamp of warmongering, virtue-signalling well-placed ladies, genocide-abetting fantasy, and neoliberal catechism-a-ganza.
–Meddling in the media, for various reasons, goes on quite a bit in Italy, much like every other paragon of democracy. Compared to the mainstream media in lockstep in the Anglosphere and in Germany (Putin = evil, neoliberalism = The One Way, Biden = a genius in our time), Italy’s outlets still have plenty of debate, some of which gets rather salty.
The civil-liberties hero Scurati also made a series of warmongering statements the other day that rather, errrrr, tarnished his reputation as national hero, ne. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Thanks, that almost sounds pleasantly navigable compared to what’s going on here in the US.
BTW, is the chocolate on par with the wine?
Vucic is straddling two chairs and crying “It’s a color revolution!” to the Russians, and “It’s a Russian plot!” to the Europeans. In fact it’s neither, it’s Serbians being thoroughly and authentically fed up with the corruption of his government, with the 14 killed by the falling, newly renovated bus station overhang as the catalyst for the protests.
Besides, the EU and the US have no reason to replace Vucic – he’s been thoroughly cooperative in serving their interests in regards to the Rio Tinto lithiuconcessions, which has also mobilized huge resistance. In fact, the US ambassador’s statements re the concessions and in support of Vucic’s cooperation have enraged even the Servian liberals, who view the ambassador’s words and deeds as an American betrayal.
Yep. The protest is about canopy collapse as much as WWI was about teenager shooting a guy with a big moustache. As I wrote the other day, he is pro-Russian as much as Pashinyan is (except that Pashinyan dares to meet Putin).
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03/links-3-15-2025.html#comment-4189848
Well, Vucic digging in his heels to play it strong backfired bigly on him. Why, pray tell, does the EU need to go to all the trouble and complications to light fire under his chair? As I said, the canopy collapse only added to the anger he brought upon himself by lifting the mining prohibition for lithium to serve the EU’s resource needs. It comes at a pretty steep to many Serbians in a very fertile region and the resistance to it was nationwide even before Novi Sad, so it really is far simpler than the elaborate and messy alternative you offer.
I wrote “yep”, and you think that I am contradicting you? I do not offer elaborate and messy alternative, or any alternative. Situation is way too complicated to be put in a “comment on the Internet”, and lithium (and canopy) is just the tip of the iceberg.
My heritage – here- goes back 125 years from grandma and grandpa arriving from – what is supposed to be arch enemy of Serbia . All good with them here, from Chicago metro to where I live now (undisclosed location). It all leads to London in 1914 and now. Luongo and Krainer solved the Rubics Cube.
“If there is any topic you’d like to see covered or have any suggestions then please leave a comment below.”
Requesting assignments? Wow, that’s a 180. Alrighty then, there was an NC link from Nature Communications some time ago that I’d love to see discussed by those more well informed on the topic than I.
Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy
It would seem that insofar as Global North workers are to some degree beneficiaries of the inequality described, their material incentives would be to support hegemonic policies and projects. If so, this does not bode well for anti-imperialist movements within the hegemon. This is a troublesome line of thinking for me.
Maybe something for BRICS to address? Multipolar world and all…
You appear to have a reading comprehension issue. He is asking for suggestions, not assignments.
In related news, a European monarch’s decapitated head turns up – https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/irish-rap-trio-deliver-insane-melbourne-show-display-decapitated-king-george-vs-head/news-story/f5718ebf11d261a78951f2241b0e0781
I find all of this, especially the crowd size, encouraging!
And I expect Kneecap to be declared a terrorist organization tout de suite, as they say in the land of the guillotine.
My first NC convert to the Kneecap cause! Tá fáilte romhat, Lyman Alpha Blob.
Kneecap are a wonderful thing. They’re a class act (and perhaps what Lambert would have called the helpers). They are radical socialist anti-imperialists with a wicked sense of humour. They annoy all the right people.
Please read more about them, even if you don’t like their music. Happy to provide some links for you and others – or even a guest article if it passed muster with Yves.
And if you do like at least some of their music (because it covers the map from punk and trad via rap to rock and rave), they are on tour in the USA in October. The fan base is a broad church, at least 40% over 30 with a lot of people in their 50’s and 60’s. Everybody’s welcome!
I am a bit jubilant about Bulgaria being bestowed with the dubious honor of being included in the “democracy dismantler” club. One of the reasons for the inclusion is a corrupt and ecologically disastrous scheme to build the largest waste incinerator in Europe in my hometown. I’ve played a role in the successful (so far) local resistance to the scheme, which garnered national attention for being both large and fiercely independent of any of the usual political party scheming.
Still, the report doesn’t quite do justice to the role played in the scheme by some of the “role-model democracies” like Germany, Switzerland and Austria in terms of providing financing, technology and know-how. It would have turned my region into what Chris Hedges calls ‘sacrifice zone’: Europe exports its trash to Bulgaria to be burned to provide electricity for the melting of the high-quality basalt that the area is rich in, with the produced rock wool exported to Europe to create more energy efficient buildings. Thus Europe will bask in its “green credentials,” while my region would have paid the environmental bills for it. All of this enabled by and itself enabling the corruption Bulgaria is known for.
That’s quite the democratic role-modeling, ain’t it…
Good luck. NYC used to send boatloads of garbage to landfills in lower SC and the Barnwell nuclear reprocessing plant may still be operating. I’ll have to look it up.
Meanwhile in my upstate I was just inspecting our new ballpark to host a Texas Rangers farm team starting April 15. This part of the state is booming and we now have our firecracker Senator Lindsey to defend us from those Yankee despoilers /s
Time was the Southern economy was mostly military with bases like Fort Jackson (think you know that one). Even my nearby state park and “natural area” was once a WW2 military base.
Barnwell closed in the early 80s. Mainly because no one wanted to buy it from the managing partners after Carter’s order in 1977 ending nuclear reprocessing in the US.
I get protecting copyright for some period of time in a creator’s life, but the current regime needs a serious re-work toward that end. What is a reasonable protection period from your perspective ?
Well Jesus Christ had a brother named Jimmy Christ and his descendants are trying to get the copyright for the Bible right now.
Observation by Branko Milanovic. I think he is fundamentally right and describes a very general problem in “democratic” regimes (defined broadly).
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/the-break-down-of-the-representative
The incumbent government, in most countries, are “unpopular” in some form or another. However, many if not most survive in power because no alternative can be formed to supplant it. Sometimes, the problem is sociological–the society is itself so fractured that forming a cohesive movement that can actually contest elections in a meaningful way and form a government is exceedingly difficult. Often, the problem is institutional: there are legal and bureaucratic barriers that make organizing an opposition movement that can contest elections (and meaningfully offer to take power) seriously and credibly is difficult. In cases of practically every alleged and actual “democratic” governments, both exist, even if some are higher than others and drawing a clear boundary where a government ceases to be “democratic,” I think everyone can agree, is a difficult chore.
What the “opposition” in Serbia seems to be doing, per Brankovic’s description, seems to be the a sort of “anonymous Trump (or AFD or Brexit or whatever),” something that draws on the rather inchoate dissatisfcation with the status quo and all its components (including the so-called established opposition) without any association with the status quo. But this carries the danger that, once you give the status quo the middle finger, you still need to get a government and that goverment will need to have a face and a program–which, inevitably, will offend large swaths of people, or, in other words, even if you vote for an anonymous Trump or Obama, you still wind up with someone in charge. This spectre, in turn, can be conjured up by the governing regime practiclaly at will and used to justify its hold on power via increasingly dubious means (which, of course, is what Brankovic is getting at). Funny thing is that, as I was reading his post, I kept thinking about the collective Biden and the continued invocation of the TDS. This, tbh, seems to be the best reason, despite all the warts, you need an occasional Trump voted into office, if only to smash up or at least throw into chaos the networks of insiders. Jefferson thought a revolution or two every now and then is a good thing. I believe that a madman or two elected to high office is a better alternative that, hopefully, achieves the same goal.
(I suppose this is where I get to express my frustration at the fascination with sortition that many people seem to have. One advantage of sortition, I suppose, is that it places “somebody” (or a group of them) “in charge” somehow that are probably not members of the widely unpopular ruling clique. But you, the voters, don’t get a choice over who that will be. Even if it works as expected, it’ll be a completely random draw, of a collection of people who don’t have any good reason to cooperate with one another (or have any incentive to listen to anyone else). This seems to be one heck of way to ensure that the government drowns in a bathtub.)
I find that when trying to explain what DOGE is (Pronounced “Doggie”) it helps to substitute “The Party” for “DOGE” and “Political Commissar” for “DOGE Team Leader”.
Has anyone pointed out to our beloved elites that screwing over veterans might be unwise?
Quite a few of them took their oath to “Defend the Constitution against all enemies Foreign and Domestic” seriously.
There are a lot of them and they have Guns.
>>>Has anyone pointed out to our beloved elites that screwing over veterans might be unwise?
Aside from common sense, reading a little history would do, but I think they think they are like gods upon the earth, having no need to think about the mass of disposables. But hey, pride does go before the fall, and if we weren’t all under the shadows of the collapse, I would happily keep a bowl of popcorn and some beers for the event.
Everybody in the US has guns. I think I am considered left-ish and I have five of them. I just sold three guns. I am getting rid of possessions so in the event of my death (not imminent), my wife has less to clean up after me.
From eight to mere five? Someone explained me that minimal needs are a deer rifle, shotgun for small game, a carbine for bears and a handgun for fun shooting. And that for every adult in the family (younguns could have fewer). Does it mean that you had enough for the minimal needs of a couple whose adult progeny moved out? So what now: bear hunting no more?
Gilbert Doctorow has some interesting thoughts today. He suggests the Trumpies may be preparing to accept Putin’s terms rather than vice versa.
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/17/deputy-foreign-minister-alexander-grushko-and-russias-terms-for-a-cease-fire/
I hate to assign work to any of the hard working people behind the operation of this site. However, if you find this suggestion interesting, I would appreciate either an open thread or thoughts from you and others about why so many in Europe and the UK seem so rabidly anti-Russian. My friends in the UK are so anti-Russian they make Rachel Maddow seem mild by comparison. Vicky Cookies Nuland is a sweet old woman compared to how these people go off on the topic. There is no reason behind it that I understand. They seem committed to the thought train that modern Russia = the USSR = Stalin = H!tl€r = tHe mOsT eViLest Thing in the World (Baggins! We hates it forever!)
I can appreciate why the US would want Russia to be isolated from the EU. I can understand why the EU would want to carve up Russia. I can’t see how the current state of affairs helps the EU or the UK in any way. They’re losing access to markets, cheap energy, tourism, AND they now have to take money they were formerly using for social programs to attempt to re-arm. What is the reason why people continue to pursue this? Why are even common people with no social standing or large incomes so against Russia in the EU and UK? It boggles the mind.
Equally boggling is the repeated assertions of what people prefer as if they are a significant factor in reality. I am awash in memes and comments in my feed asking about “how much of your country would you sacrifice for peace?” as if my opinions or philosophical mumbling mattered against a superior force. Russia is going to keep territory that it has gained during the SMO because no one is going to be able to remove them from it and they don’t want to give it up. The want to maintain a security buffer. Ignoring that reality is madness.
Equally looney is the assertion that Putin will roll through Europe once he’s done with Ukraine. The recent US experience in Iraq should put the lie to that. At one point, Gen. Eric Shishenski opined that fully containing Iraq required a minimum of 500k soldiers. Iraq being smaller, with less committed partisans, no enemy drones, and an easier to survey country, required 500k people to take and hold. Ukraine is bigger, filled with zealots, with terrible terrain features, a muddy season, is inventing new drones every day, and partisans are coming in to support them on all sides. But supposedly the amount of people Putin has in Ukraine now is enough to hold it and the run through Germany? I don’t understand why people think this is going to happen.
I don’t want to whine and ask for you to make this make sense. But I would appreciate some kind of background for the unreasonable hatred we’re witnessing. It would help me to manage this topic with friends.
Thanks for continuing to provide interesting things for us to read in the afternoon.
The only English people who hate Russians are toffs. Toffs are wealthy second-rate prats who went to private schools where their form masters beat the idea into them. Unfortunately the upper reaches of the political class, the media, and the military are filled entirely with toffs.
I would advance several tentative reasons. Tsar Paul was outraged by the disintegration of the First Coalition against France and blamed Pitt. He was also incensed by the treatment of Russian soldiers housed in the Isle of Wight, and by British reluctance to allow him to take Malta. He therefore decided upon an invasion of India which commenced in 1801, but which was abandoned following his assassination.
The rapid advance of Russia into Central Asia in the second quarter of the 19th century also caused alarm in Calcutta and London, especially as Britain was then advancing into the Indus Valley. Political agents like Burnes and Macnaghten grew alarmed by stories of Russian penetration in the states of Bukhara and Kiva (later to become Russian protectorates), which led to Britain’s first disastrous escapade in Afghanistan. However, recent analysis of Russian archives has shown that British fears were baseless: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/russian-conquest-of-central-asia/60AD9B4DF95196BEA2F8EF67AF0CB8BB.
However, the ‘Great Game’ was also politically convenient for the Raj. It provided justification for the maintenance of a large permanent military establishment at the expense of the Indian taxpayer (when the real reason for that establishment was to function as a reserve imperial police force or to allow Britain to conduct colonial wars in the Indian Ocean region at a discount): https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.635. The external ‘threat’ had to be inflated in order to give substance to the covert rationale.
The October Revolution gave renewed traction to the myth. The Soviets repudiated their debts (to France), which meant that France could not pay the UK and the UK, in turn, could not redeem its debts to the US. The Soviets also menaced Transcaucasia and Iran and so, again, raised the spectre of an invasion of India. The Raj once more devoted enormous energies to detecting Soviet penetration of Congress, and the rapidly declining political legitimacy of the Raj worked to increase British paranoia about Soviet intentions: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/revolutionary-pasts/EC00040043DA6E52F5AD278166B0ACFC. Thus, by the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact British Russophobia had become entrenched.
The wider relationship has recently been assessed here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-first-cold-war/
Present British policymakers are therefore repeating the moronic and opportunistic tropes espoused in clubland as far back as the 1820s. Or was it all down to Peter the Great wrecking John Evelyn’s famous gardens at Deptford during his clandestine sojourn in England?
I think that background conditions a disposition but why would UK institutions make contemporary policy based on past fears? If we assume they are rational, there must be something more.
My hunch is that it is an evolution of Lord Ismay’s quip about NATO being to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. Without NATO and a US alliance, the current UK national security policy falls apart. It is therefore imperative to preserve the drivers for NATO, if not NATO itself. So the Russians must be sold as a threat. And even simultaneously as an opportunity (all those silly maps of Baljanused Russia) of geological riches beyond measure.
Until the UK recovers a notion of IRS own interests in Europe as holding a balance of power rather holding its American nursemaid’s hand, it will remain anti-Russian.
One piece of evidence in favour of this analysis is that the UK is very reluctantly amfi-Chinese – because there is no plausible China threat to the US via Europe, only one directly across the Pacific….
Baljanused = Balkanised (after having been run through some pan-slavic translator between my head and fingers, apparently)
Beetlejuiced
As far as fingers are concerned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjpcLplkMUs
You are so very right – many thanks! Almost the entire objective of British policy since its WW2 insolvency was to leverage the power of the US in order to retain a measure of influence in the World, but without having to incur the pre-war costs. The US was prepared to tolerate this if the UK functioned as an auxiliary policeman in those parts of the World where it still enjoyed some influence, not least because overseas military spending was a debit on the US current account, and if the UK did provide such support it would slow the bleed.
This, then, is why the UK is desperate to keep the US in Europe. As the UK withdrew from other parts of the World after the 1967 defence review (implemented by 1971) the UK became one of several North Atlantic powers. If the US withdraws into its own hemisphere then the UK can no longer leverage waning US might and instantly falls from being a second or third rate power to a fourth or fifth rate power. The realisation of that possibility would grievously wound the amour-propre of those British diplomats, generals and politicians who get a frisson from paying court at the White House and being treated with a measure of respect (though perhaps not behind their backs – as Alistair Crooke noted last weekend, the UK is now perceived by many in Washington as the ‘ultimate parasite’).
Here we need to note that British official amour-propre is itself a rapidly wasting habit of mind. The private schools and elite universities which schooled successive generations of imperial and post-imperial administrators have, over the last decade and a half or so, gone from being moderately cosmopolitan to hyper-cosmopolitan. In many such schools ‘native’ Britons are now in a minority, or are likely to become so soon. With school fees often being in excess of £40k p/a, ever fewer British families can afford it, even with equity withdrawal and/or assistance from grandparents. I suspect that in the near future the British elite will, as a result, become hyper-globalist (even as the mass of the population moves in the contrary direction), but it might possibly care less and less about Britain’s place in the World other than as just another spoke in the wheel of international finance capital.
Here is an excellent new biography of Ismay by a retired three star general, who has lately reinvented himself as a very fine historian: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/general-hastings-pug-ismay/. NATO was a fairly unremarkable coda to Ismay’s career – the high points of which were in India (as ADC to Willingdon and, latterly, as a very reluctant assistant to Mountbatten), in the Committee of Imperial Defence and, above all, as Churchill’s right hand man during WW2 (there was a less happy stint as Commonwealth Relations secretary under Churchill in the early 1950s).
Apologies for the wall’o’text, but here goes.
We must go back to the year of 1815. Napoleon had been finally beaten, for good. Great Britain was about to get as great as it was ever to be – France was in ruins, Ottoman Empire was in decline, Austrian Empire was suffering the aftermath of Napoleon inspired wave of nationalism and separatism. Only one other empire stayed in the way: Russia was the one who actually beat Napoleon, Russia dominated the Conference of Vienna, the continental population and elite were admiring many things Russian.
As UK foreign policy was to an extent dependent on popular support, Russophobia became a weapon in British internal politics. There were “barbarians” and “despots” at the gates, and the current government was doing nothing about it. And of course, the expanding empire in the Mediterranean, Caucasus and India was under “constant and serious” threat from the same “barbarians” and “despots”.
There had been an inconvenient incident in 1788, when Russians took the Ochakov fortress from the Ottomans (in modern Kherson region), and prime minister Pitt wanted so send an expedition to force Catherine to withdraw. To Pitt’s dismay, the general British public saw no reason for Great Britain to intervene in matters that had no significance to them. So, no expedition sailed.
It was the first time in British history when public opinion forced the government to back down in foreign policy. It became apparent, that from now on, a good dose of propaganda was needed to prepare the public opinion to be more responsive to government’s policies.
So, when Alexander I in the Congress of Vienna became also the king of Poland and thus took away the British main leverage of causing trouble for Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia (I wonder how many Poles knows why Poland was divided so many times), the political system in Great Britain had a new target and the first – completely made up – anti-Russian articles appeared quickly.
The main ones were reiterating the absolutely forged Peter the Great’s testament, and a claim that Alexander and Napoleon had made a secret agreement with Russia and Persia for the latter to conquer British India. By 1817 it was common for a British newspaper to publish an article of Russia and you-name-it country planning an alliance to take this-or-that part of British Empire to satisfy the Russian need “to rule the world”.
In 1821 the Greek revolted against Ottoman rule, and even though Alexander I was “protector of Orthodoxy” on the Ottoman lands (a legal position since 1774), he was more keen to follow the Treaty of Vienna and did not intervene. His son, Nikolai I, did finally intervene in 1826 and while the British and French expeditions were involved too, Nikolai I became the liberator in Europe after Greece gained independence in 1830.
This gain of prestige just made the British media barking mad. So, when during the Polish uprising in the same year, the Great Britain remained neutral (being afraid to weaken Russia in the light of resurgent French nationalism) it went on overdrive and made Russia the source of every ill in the continent.
In 1833 against all expectations, Russia and the Ottoman Empire made a peace treaty. Ottoman’s were in deep trouble, and instead of taking advantage of this, Russia tried to stabilize the Ottoman descend to keep things calm in the southern parts of Russian Empire. To the British, who had for over a decade been fed the fantasy that Russia wanted to “take Constantinople” and the Dardanelles to “burst into” the Mediterranean and thus cause havoc to both the French and the British Empires, this was “the horror”. From then on, The Great Game was on, even though Russia knew nothing about this.
Whenever anything happened in Levant or Central Asia, Great Britain saw the Russian hand behind it and went hysterical. By 1840 in the common British mind Russian czar was a despotic barbarian hell-bent on conquering the know world. During the Crimean War it was already possible to claim that fighting for the Ottoman Empire was actually defending the Palestinian Christians against a tyranny.
A little know fact is that Bram Stroker’s brother was a doctor who participated in the Russo-Turkish war in the 1870’s on the Ottoman side, and after returning depicted the Turkish as noble heroes and the Bulgarians as semi-human barbarians, capable of any inhuman cruelty. Bram then turned all this propaganda to a famous story of count Dracula – an Ivan the Terriblesque creature living off from other people, sexually depraved and wanting to destroy England (already in 1850’s the czar was often caricatured with bat wings in the British press).
In 1909 Bran Stroker wrote “The Lady of the Shroud”, which was even more directly Russophobic, but by then Great Britain was more afraid of the rising Germany, and the book did not gain much readership. Also, in the 20th century twice more Russia would come to the help of Great Britain, for no reward but scorn and deceit.
Criag Murray already had his “wait, are we the baddies?” moment after Gaza, that made him to re-evaluate a lot of his previous convictions, but I assume most in the United Kingdom have yet to arrive on that uncomfortable place.
For more on the subject, see:
John Howes Gleason, 1971, The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain
Peter Hopkirk, 1990, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
Guy Mettan, 2017, Creating Russophobia – From the Great Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria
Back to your 1815 point. This may be minor but sometimes minor are like wounds from grains of sand that wind up generating big infections.
It was remarkable that France was allowed to keep its pre-Napoleonic adventurism boundaries after France was defeated. This was due almost single-handedly to Talleyrand’s diplomacy. Much to the fury of Napoleon, Talleyrand was in communication with France’s enemies while France was in retreat, critically (and extensively) Tsar Alexander I of Russia. At least one of the bios I have read of Talleyrand (and they are all Talleyrand-favoring) depicted the extent of their bargaining as treasonous and Napoleon likely would have dispatched Talleyrand had he been well appraised of the extent of Talleyrand’s double dealing.
Of course, in the long run Talleyrand was right. He was operating in the interest of France if not Napoleon.
So….when did the Brits become aware of Talleyrand working with the Tsar, with the intent of preserving France, which was almost certainly contrary to the interests of the UK?
I think they were for the most part aware of it. Alexander did not hide the fact that he wanted to restore Europe as it had been before Napoleon (minus the Bourbons, he preferred his new friend, Bernadotte, to rule France).
I’d also assume that Great Britain also wanted to retain France but in a weakened form. The alliance against Napoleon made already in January 1814 an agreement in Langres on how to proceed with the coming peace – contain France within it’s “natural borders” and restore monarchy.
Other than that, Russia did not really care much about France or Great Britain. Both were far away, the first would be “contained” and and the other was a sea power – “how can a whale fight an elephant” (as Bismarck said). Russia’s concern was taming Poland and Prussia in order to start “pacifying” the southern parts of Russia and deal with the Ottoman Empire. For the Russian strategic thinkers the war against Napoleon ended when his forces were driven out of Russia – the rest was not really in Russia’s interests.
It was also Britain that gained most from the Paris peace, and they even signed the secret defensive alliance with Talleyrand and Metternich against Prussia and Russia, so whatever dealings had been going on between Alexander and Talleyrand were neutralized or even reversed by January 1815.
Thank you for that longish but interesting overview on the roots of English Russophobia Polar Socialist.
I’m sure the general facts you lay out about Russiaphobia are correct, but linking it to Bram Stoker is not consistent with the scholarship that I’m aware of. But his fame has led to some odd fringe theories being attached to him and his book, usually by academics/writers with little to no knowledge of the peculiarities of Irish literature and its context.
Bram Stoker was not British but Irish – a Home Ruler – his source for the Dracula story has been the subject to mountains of scholarship. As it happens I grew up down the road from his birthplace in north Dublin. The initial literary source for Dracula was almost certainly the very similar story written by the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, in particular his book Camilla. The deeper origins of the story of Dracula lie in a mix of Irish folklore and European Gothic literary traditions going back to at least the 18th Century. Most of the writing I’ve read on Dracula note that the initial drafts of the story were set in southern Austria, but were shifted east as Stoker probably didn’t want people drawing too many comparisons with Camilla, which Le Fanu set in Styria in modern Austria.
Stoker had three brothers who were in the medical field, two of whom were army medics and one was a very prominent neurologist (as they are all prominent graduates of the Royal College of Surgeons and Trinity College in Dublin, there has been a lot of historical interest in their life and times). One is on record of being in Crimea as Surgeon General to the Ottoman Army – George Stoker. He was also, according to the family history, the Chief Medic of the Bulgarian Relief Fund, which I believe was set up after the Stara Zagora massacre, so its hard to see him as having been particularly anti-Bulgarian, although I guess its possible – I don’t know the intricacies of the internal politics of the region and what role Stoker or his brothers had there. Stoker certainly incorporated his brothers medical knowledge into the book, but although he was a Liberal and Home Ruler, neither he nor his brothers had much record of being particularly interested in international politics, although no doubt they had the usual prejudices of their class and times, but even for a London based Anglo-Irishmen, those prejudices would have been distinctly different from English ones.
The Anglo Irish of the late 19th Century in general had a strong interest in Russian literature as a counterpoint to the English or American tradition, but if they were of the Home Rule or Fenian tradition tended to lump in Russia with one of the dying, rotting old Imperial powers (which at the time for many, included the British one). There were celebrations on the streets of Dublin after the Battle of Tsushima because it was seen (somewhat naively of course) as a victory for a ‘little country’ over an imperial power and as such a model for Ireland. There was also strong sympathies for the Boers, despite many Irish being in the British Army serving there at the time.
Then, perhaps, you may expand your scholarship knowledge to Jimmie E. Cain’s Bram Stoker and Russophobia: Evidence of the British Fear of Russia in Dracula and The Lady of the Shroud (amazon.com)?
He refers, I’m told, researchers such as Felix Oinas (wiley.com) as Dracula definitely being a Slavic creature and so forth.
I’m not saying it holds true, I’m merely referring what I have read of research that has reached the conclusion that Bram’s brother George did scold British journalists for reporting Turkish atrocities and that an eastern, alien, perverted, blood sucking monster fit rather well in the contemporary British narrative/image of Russia.
Thanks, I haven’t read that book, I wasn’t aware o fit, but it should be said that there are mountains of dubious books out there that add the ‘Dracula’ and ‘Bram Stoker’ to their titles because it increases sales – minor American academics being particular offenders in this.
I’m no literary scholar, but I’ve long had an interest in Stoker – so far as I’m aware the overwhelming consensus among Stoker researchers is that the origins of Dracula lie firmly within Irish horror and Gothic literature at the time, with added spice from local stories he heard when he moved to Yorkshire. The Slavic element was a very late addition to a book which originally was just located in a vague Central European location, and chosen largely to distance his story from Le Fanu’s very similar story (he’d probably have been sued if he’d written it today). Most think his choice of Transylvania was pretty much random and probably prompted by dinner time conversations with his better travelled brothers.
The word vampire, at least, has fairly well-documented Serbian origins and vampires were strongly associated with the South Slavic cultural region. On the other hand, you could find more or less similar creatures in folklore all over the world… and even the word itself had reached the British Isles a while before Stoker. So I suppose he may well have started working on a vampire novel with no connection to the area where vampires under that name first came from, before returning to their roots, as it were. It’s a bit uncanny for it to be wholly random, though.
(On the other hand, Wallachia isn’t even Slavic and I’m not sure if Dracula was considered a vampire before…)
I have found a long essay by Stephan Korinth and Paul Schreyer (June 2023) on Russophobia and its origins which is longish but i believe very informative.
The Long Lineage of Russophobia
They do not mention Bram Stoker though they talk about the phenomenon in the UK, where the term Russophobia was coined (though they describe this as a more general character of the West:
The English term “Russophobia” was coined in Great Britain at the beginning of the 19th century, when, after Napoleon’s demise, the country’s politicians and leading media positioned Russia in the public consciousness as a new, dangerous adversary of the Empire. This phenomenon was not new at the time; it was simply that a concise term for it was coined. The term Russophobia was centered on fear – fear of Russian expansion into the zones of influence of the British Empire, in Iran or India, for example. This “Russian scare” assumed such vast proportions that even the remote island nation of New Zealand built a series of coastal forts in the 1880s to ward off a perceived Russian attack
“One is on record of being in Crimea as Surgeon General to the Ottoman Army – George Stoker.”
Not in Crimea, apparently, having been born during the Crimean War. He served in the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish War. I accept your point about the difference between Irish and British attitudes, but a European doctor working for the Ottoman military during a war in which many Bulgarians were actively working or fighting for the other side taking a dim view of Bulgarians doesn’t seem all that unlikely. While it would be more odd, it’s not incompatible with charitable work on behalf of the same Bulgarians (I recall some European philanthropists who did plenty of genuinely useful work in Africa regarding the people they were helping as stupid children).
Apparently George Stoker wrote a book about his experience called “With “the unspeakables” or, two years’ campaigning in European and Asiatic Turkey”, which is widely cited as being Russophobic and/or Slavophobic. What that actually means is hard to say without reading it, though if the “the typical Bulgarian…is given to strong drink and, as a rule, a liar and a cheat” quote I found is representative it does suggest the attitude I speculate about above (i.e. he may help them as a matter of duty but that doesn’t make him very well-inclined to them).
It’s entirely possible – my reading about George Stoker comes from various autobiographical dictionaries produced by Trinity College here, and they are generally inclined to overlook the less savoury opinions of their old boys. Or at least they used to be, there is an increasing tendency these days to go the other way and indulge in moralistic self flagellation over former icons.
There is an interesting side story to this which I came across in researching family histories. My surname is often considered an anglicisation of Eastern European Jewish names and it turns out that quite a few east Jewish Europeans refugees from various late 19th Century wars (mostly in the Baltics) found themselves in Dublin, and were promptly paid handsome sums to hop back on the boat and continue west to America. The source of the sums was the Dublin Jewish community, which was highly anglicised and integrated and had a terror that orthodox East European jewish settlers could provoke the anti-semitism that was largely absent in Ireland at the time (at least by European standards). This seems to be one reason (apart from its poverty) that Ireland attracted very few refugees from wars east of France or Germany in contrast to many English and Scottish cities.
As another aside, one branch of my family all have Russian names – thanks to a recently deceased aunt who grew up with an enormous love of Tolstoy. That wasn’t all that unusual in Ireland (there is even a tiny village called Moscow, named by local coal miners in honour of the Russian Revolution and no doubt to annoy the local landlords). But for the most part, for Irish at the time, educated or not, Europe pretty much stopped at France, except when it came to literature or getting a job in the army.
Januarius MacGahan was an Irish-American journalist who in Bulgaria is venerated as a hero for Bulgarian freedom. His coverage of the Batak Massacre and other cruelties by the Ottomans in the aftermath of Bulgarians’ April Uprising of 1876 was instrumental for turning public opinion in Great Britain against Disraeli and the Ottomans, thus allowing Great Britain to remain on the sidelines in 1877-78.
MacGahan certainly had a different perspective on Bulgarians than Stoker. Perhaps being an American had something to do with that, as Mark Twain also had quite a different perspective on the Ottomans and Slavs than that of the cousins in GB.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Januarius_MacGahan
Thanks for that. It’s kinda difficult to get unbiased opinions on Bulgaria at the moment here in UK.
My former barber (Bulgarian immigrant) asked why the heck did the EU ever let his corrupt country in. I of course tried to stay neutral and factor in that his family were probably one of the ones who DIDN’T take bribes etc.
This question is very reasonable, actually, and I have asked it rhetorically more than once. To me the answer is obvious: the EU doesn’t care one bit about corruption as long as the local elites vote as they are told by the EU “bosses.”
Last June there were 2-in-1 elections in Bulgaria: EU and national elections. Ursula von der Leyen and the EPP party bosses came to Bulgaria to stump for the very corrupt Boyko Borissov and his GERB party, as EPP having a majority in the Euro Parliament was deemed more important than his corruption more important than his corruption. Not coincidentally, Borissov has more than once referred to the Eurocrats as his “bosses” on TV and media…
Many, though certainly not all, 19th century British writers sympathised with the Muslim Ottomans more than with their Christian subjects. After all, the Turks were a civilised imperial race, though decadent and Muslim. Good enough by the region’s standard. While the South Slavs were barbarian clannish hillfolk addicted to alcohol and violence, and the Greeks were little different (the common disappointment at the obvious differences between modern and idealised ancient Greeks may have played into this). It’s a curious twist on much-discussed British Orientalism. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was absent or at least a lot less common in America.
Churchill was well-known for his abiding dislike for Bulgaria, going as far as advocating for its partition amongst its neighbors in the aftermath of WW2. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed. But it goes to show how deep certain imperial imprints go in the UK ruling classes
Do you have more on this partition proposal? The only thing I could find on short notice is the agreement about influence percentages with Stalin, which isn’t quite that. I have trouble imagining along what lines Bulgaria could’ve been partitioned between its neighbours at the time (Turkey gets southeast, Yugoslavia gets west, Romania gets northeast…?), though I wouldn’t put a scheme like that past Churchill.
Churchill also had the brilliant idea to not invade on the east coast of France and head straight for the Ruhr to knock Germany out of the war but instead to slog their way through the hills and mountains of the Balkans instead just like in Italy. Eisenhower shut him down.
Here’s a discussion on the topic. It was never an official position, but certainly considered:
“The official British position was milder than alternatives investigated within the FO. For example, Douglas Howard, Head of the Southern Department, predicted that the resolution of the Bulgarian question lay either in ‘carving up Bulgaria between Yugoslavia and Greece with perhaps a separate Macedonian state or, annexation of some sort by Soviet Russia’. Such explicit opinions were, however, an exception among British diplomats and civil servants.”
Given certain anti-Bulgarian sentiments expressed by Churchill ever since Bulgaria joined the Axis in WW1 and threw a wrench in GB’s Balkan campaign, that position of the FO, rightly or wrongly, has been attributed to Churchill’s dislikes.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/72245/did-stalin-prevent-the-partitioning-of-bulgaria-by-the-western-allies-after-ww2
I enthusiastically second Chris’s suggestion, and would like to extend it to the US population.
In my late 70s, I lived through almost all the cold war (though did not experience McCarthyism with adult consciousness), was raised in a military family, and am totally befuddled that 70-90% of the folks I know and apparently equivalent proportions of the population at large in both the US and the EU (where I now live) are absolutely convinced Russophobes.
Has no one noticed that the USSR went out of business and the new management (despite their prior jobs) espouses almost diametrically opposite doctrine? And even as they were being economically raped by Ivy League “experts” in the ’90s they STILL begged to join the Western club? Given Russia’s natural resources, educated population (blue- and white-collar), and dominant Christian orientation, that would have been a marriage made in heaven (unless, of course, you are worried about someone else being the biggest dog in the pack).
The only theory I can come up with is the almost unlimited power of Hollywood and western advertising to brainwash the population from top to bottom. Is that really the whole story?
Try ‘The Long Lineage of Russophobia’ by Korinth and Schreyer, appeared in the Multipolar Magazine in June 2023 and was recently reviewed by Karl Sanchez on his Karloff1 Geopolitical Gymnasium substack site.
Thank you for those pointers. Very interesting. It’s still hard for me to believe that such unsupported prejudice can be so widely and unquestioningly absorbed, but the articles’ citations of racism and antisemitism as similar phenomena support their argument pretty convincingly. Guess despite superficial advances, our 21st century societies are no more evolved then their forebears of several centuries ago.
How are Lloyd’s and the Syndicates doing?
Like the TBTF banks here in 2008?
Full disclosure: I don’t fancy warm beer.
Helluva coverage this with lots to chew over but will note one thing about that Sudzha pipeline mission that the Russians undertook which you can see in that photo. Because of the restrictions of the pipeline those guys went in without body armour or even helmets which meant that when they went into action, they had no protection at all and just depended on speed and the element of surprise. Talk about your light infantry.
At risk of sounding very naive and financially illiterate, I didn’t realise governments can simply seize and redirect money from pension funds, or rather that they do this regularly and without so much as a fig leaf. It seems like the stuff in that old CSM article shouldn’t be legal, let alone so easy. Thanks for shedding light on this, though I’m still not sure I understand how Largarde’s scheme works. More of the same, but on a bigger scale? Or (as it seems from the Economist article) they’re going to try to lure investments from these funds through “better securities products” and so on, rather than simply seize them?
I am almost certainly more financially illiterate than you and have very much the same concerns that you have expressed. I have stated below that my gut feelings are that Lagarde’s take (which are shared by all the EU establishment and, for instance pushed by the European Economic and Social Committee) is nothing but magical thinking and that money “put to work” would almost certainly result in the inflation of assets with very little effect on innovation and growth.
Instead of placing my comment below I should have read yours first and followed your lead.
I haven’t seen any detail on the operational side of this vision/threat. My guess is that nothing as crass as confiscation from individual savers is required. European banks and pension funds will be strong armed to invest more in favoured sectors by upping the allocations in default portfolios.
This is already happening in the UK with the Mansion House Compact, where the (Tory) government threatened and bribed the pension funds to increase their allocation to alternative assets to 10% of NAV, half if which is to go to venture capital (of which mainly growth and late stage by capital weighting). The funds are coming from defined contribution pensions. The “bribes” are:
– the relaxation of fee caps (fees are the enemy of the widow’s mite and have been strictly capped for retail pension products) so that carried interest (tax advantaged performance fees) is excluded from the fee caps;
– the creation of an entirely new investment structure, the long term asset fund, to provide a flexible tax-deferred master wrapper which enables the creation and destruction of investment units in the portfolio (like a privately held ETF or unit trust) *and* crucially permits significant gating of withdrawals (e.g. no withdrawal in first X years, only Y% I’m a the period, possible temporary bars on eithdrawls in market turbulence etc) to prevent a fund invested in illiquid assets having to rush for cash and blow up.
These LTAF’s are not directly accessible by retail investors, they are inside vehicles that the pension fund / assurer can use to wrap illiquid assets so that its many different internal funds can allocate to illiquid assets in the knowledge there is liquidity (albeit managed). In my view it is fake liquidity, dependent on the insurer’s proprietary capital to backstop it or, worse still, on one bunch of pension holders being used as “stuffees” for the others. Pensions in payment will get the cash and the illiquid dregs will be given to the 20 and 30-somethings because “it will come good in the end…”.
You won’t see it quite written down that way in MSMbut that is what happened (full disclosure, I am trying to raise my own fund if the back of this “DC into VC” wave of capital allocations).
In the UK’s defence, this started before the UK’s defence! It’s been a City project for twenty years or more….
I can understand why the City likes it. Whether such “financial innovation”, apart from higher fees and other niceties results in significant “growth, entrepreneurship and innovation (in general)” i very much doubt it. Please understand me, I am in favour of savings management in as long as the managers keep things clear with the participants. This doesn’t look very much the case of LTAFs per your description which look quite opaque with risks hidden in an ocean of financial complexities.
What bothers me is that entrepreneurship has changed very much and currently it is mostly about little changes in services with little real (societal) value added, little quality employment added, and resulting mostly in wealth transfers rather than real growth. AI, for instance, can be used primarily to… destroy employment and transfer wealth. Not to mention gaming markets, search for monopoly power or any kind of information advantage. I mean, being creative these days doesn’t mean the same as in the 19th century. Not that there aren’t real innovations which bring added value but most bring only marginal improvements, which are then profited by very few, and are nearly insignificant in a sea of more destructive “innovations”. To tell the truth the very obsession with growth seems to me misguided. We should care much more now on distribution.
Thank you. I’m all at sea when it comes to this topic, but I think I got the gist of it. That does sound like what Lagarde has been talking about: subtler tweaks to get the money moving in the desired directions while nominally not taking away from the pensioners.
Although I’m curious about the threats you mentioned (“threatened and bribed”).
The threat was that Reeves would legislate for pension trustees to have an obligation to allocate to specific asset classes. Instead, the sheep lined up for shearing “voluntarily”. Her threats were empty – it would overturn the concept of fiduciary duty – but they fell for it.
An apparently anodyne write-up is here:
https://corporate-adviser.com/pensions-to-be-key-focus-of-chancellors-first-mansion-house-speech/
Read results from a search like
“https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mansion+house+compact+threat&ia=web”
to get a real feel for the “nice asset management business, shame if something happened to it” flavour of the chatter.
Check out the Stockholm syndrome here:
https://www.abi.org.uk/globalassets/files/publications/public/lts/2024/abi-mansion-house-compact.pdf
And breaking news, now this:
https://www.pionline.com/pension-funds/uk-officials-urge-pension-funds-invest-10-assets-home
The Mansion House compact is being rebooted to force allocation to domestic equities generally. Because the well connected rats are fleeing a sinking ship and need retail bagholders.
And, slightly older, this:
https://www.ftadviser.com/defined-benefit/2025/1/27/reeves-rumoured-db-pension-changes-would-be-significant-step/
Rachel Reeves is going to allow the defined benefit schemes (a different part of the industry) to treat their paper surpluses as realised capital and invest it in more of what she wants.
NB: I actually believe in mandating domestic capital formation – but only on a pari passu basis where rich and poor alike must find opportunities at home, not this “financial repression for thee and global returns for me” hypocrisy.
Thanks again. Not sure how safe any concept is these days… and I suppose that uncertainty is very helpful to making this kind of bluff work.
Yep maybe I should check what the UK and Aussie govts are doing with the pension pots I’ve accumulated in each…..
Though, and in agreement with my sister following discussions…..I never bothered much about pensions because there’s a very strong chance my heart will give out before I ever get a chance to draw on them…..
‘If there is any topic you’d like to see covered or have any suggestions then please leave a comment below.’
I was thinking perhaps a post on the big picture – the 20,000 foot view. Trump may be bellowing and daily grabbing headlines but he too will pass. But the trends, that is what is important. Churchill himself said that he did not stress too badly over a battle lost so long as the trends were in their favour. See what you think is the big geopolitical picture is to provide some context to daily news. But to be realistic, maybe put this in the context of depleting resources and climate change. Hmmm, come to think of it, such a post would come to resemble ‘War and Peace’ in size so maybe just some generalities instead.
I really have not the financial education which would allow for an informed opinion but my intuition tells me that there is a lot of magical thinking in Lagarde’s report on how to turn European savings into investment, innovation and growth. What i suspect is that if it is managed to mobilize such funds, it will only result on the inflation of certain assets which will result mostly in transfers of EU savings to financial vultures.
One topic that I have been wondering about is what, if anything, is happening with the ownership of farms in the EU. The reason why I have been wondering about it is that there has been quite a few policies which have hit farmers (as a secondary effect) in the EU:
-dairy-farmers in Finland (possibly a few other nations) were hit hard when sanctions were introduced to stop Russia from buying milk
-grain-farmers in Poland (possibly a few other nations) were hit hard when Ukrainian grain got access to the EU-market
-farmers in the Netherlands were hit hard due to new regulations
-the cost of fertilizer increased due to sanctions against Russia
-cost of energy/diesel increased
-the consolidation (close to monopoly) of seeds
All those things might drive smaller farms in the EU into losses and/or bankruptcy thus leading to consolidation of farms. I’ve not seen much coverage, possibly because it is not happening, possibly because it is happening but it is not interesting.
Anyway, it might be a topic worth considering to cover. Or not as it might not interest that many outside of the farming-industry.
I’d say agriculture is or should be of general interest. Especially when it’s under stress, as now for all the reasons you mentioned. Changes in that area may not matter to people outside the industry until they start affecting the food supply.
Farming in the UK is extremely negative about the future. I was talking to the family who graze our land. The daughter has two big dairy farms in Cornwall and the parents use our land for dry cows, beef calves etc. The in-laws have a lot of money from the sale of a farm which they could shelter from CGT (at lest 10%, possibly 20%) by rolling it over into new farming assets. They decided not to whereas previously they would have bought new land without question….
That’s very concerning, especially with all I’ve been hearing about growing hunger and malnutrition in Britain in the last few years.
Farming is at the interface between energy prices, effective demand for basic needs (“can I buy food” and economic “rents”. It is also a way of life rather than waged labour.
When farmers are quitting, something is very wrong with your country’s balance of energy, demand and “rent” extraction….
Kevin, I really appreciate this succinct round-up of ‘across-the-pond- news. Thanks!
Incorrect statements regarding Romania:
– “Romanian ‘far-right’ party leader George Simion, who had dropped out of the race in order to support Georgescu” – If you are referring to the May presidential run, Simion will run. Once Georgescu was rejected, Simion joined the race.
– “The most likely winner of the Romanian election is going to be Marcel Ciolacu” – Ciolacu is not running. He is backing Crin Antonescu, a figure who represents the current coalition PSD-PNL-UDMR.
– “According to the Copenhagen Criteria, Romania should never have been allowed to join the EU in the first place” – what is your source for this information? Romania was accepted and monitored for many years after joining to make sure the criteria is met not only at accession time.
You can still see the lads in:
Salt Lake City 15th April (after Coachella)
Philly – Oct 8th
Boston – Oct 11th
Toronto – Oct 15th
Columbus – Oct 17th
Chicago – Oct 18th
Minneapolis – Oct 20th
Oakland – Oct 28th
All the other 14 dates in the US are SOLD OUT!
http://www.kneecap.is or nitter.poast.org/kneecapceol for more info!
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCR8_tdf_kr2tn01dFmRK6wQ to hear what they’re all about.
Is this a paid ad?
No, LOL, it is a misplaced post. I was trying to reply to Lyman Alpha Blob and lure him down the rabbit hole of Kneecap.
Check out the link he posted above to the fun the lads had with King George V’s head in Australia (which mirrors the fun in the 60’s or 70’s that some Irish lads had with Nelson’s head when his Dublin column was blown up…).
I posted their USA tour dates for which tickets are still available. They are very NC, you should all go! :-)