Moscow Dynamo 4 DC United 0
I do not – and would never – make the case for admiring Vladimir Putin, because he’s at best a global-sized ego on legs. But it is oddly satisfying to watch an experienced player at work, tormenting a defence that knows nothing beyond tedious process and man to man marking.
His first goal within minutes of the start of Ukraine destabilisation threw the EU into confusion thereafter, and his next strike – straight through to Sebastopol and the ‘democratic’ annexation of Crimea – left the incumbent fascists and their CIA insurgents for dead. His third – to launch an all-out attack on US-created anarchy in Syria – was probably the individual goal of the season. But his latest – to backheel into the net and then withdraw gracefully – was sublime.
Time to cruise, save his energy, and knock the ball about in a satisfyingly humiliating manner. “C’mon,” he seems to say, “this is too easy fellas….gimme a game”.
The only problem is that, in this very one-sided match, there isn’t a credible referee. Everyone is aligned and tainted one way or another, and the UN is all over the place. This is particularly concerning because Putin is a star player in the old mould of Diego Maradonna: everyone would like to sign him, but everyone knows he cheats.
You may not realise this, but what I’m doing here is making another argument not just for Brexit – but for Brexit with the sincere hope that the action collapses the EU. I think it will (in the unlikely event it is allowed to happen) and that is precisely what Europe now needs: to dismantle the single currency, dump federalism, but keep all the economic advantages of being an interdependent free trade bloc.
The sensible view to take of the Vote Leave campaign is to think of Britain as a reforming radical, forcing the EU to take the distasteful medicine it so badly needs. The removal of power from the Ivory Towers of Babel in Brussels and Frankfurt would be the first step in a process brilliantly summed up by Kate Hoey: “This is really about the People taking power back from the Establishment”.
The problem geopolitical diplomacy faces in the 21st Century is there are no honest brokers to command respect any more, because the world is rapidly coalescing into blocs.
The Syrian mess in, say, De Gaulle’s time would’ve been a classic for dear old Charlie Grandnez to walk serenely onto the stage and get a lasting deal done. France is good at this stuff: but France is in NATO’s pocket these days… and President Zéro knows he must do as he is bidden by the Black Dude. This is a lost opportunity for genuine peace, because De Gaulle would’ve thought “I don’t want the Yanks to corner the market in oil”, and “I don’t want a bunch of Jihadist nutters screwing up my trade with the old colonies”.
Unless something puts the US back in its box, this sort of anti-continental drift process will become increasingly inflexible and cemented firmly in place. Russo-Chinese strategy is, very sensibly, to create a counterbalance to American financial transmission and economic colonialism. One of them – perhaps more likely China – is going to align the emerging markets behind itself as the EM Daddy of them all. It is also moving swiftly towards (and investing heavily in) a black African presence. This will leave Russia with but one option: to create unaligned buffer States against the West, and focus on at last one big EU member as a trading friend. The obvious choice is Germany.
If and when we thus wind up with the US, Russian, and Chinese trading blocs, to have an incompetent, expansionist and Washington-controlled EU as the fourth one is not going to create a stool to sit on: more likely, it will create the sort of stool that hits fans and flings smelly stuff in all directions.
The World needs honest brokers. When it came to the MH17 false flag, Australia tried to do exactly that job….but they’ve been forced by the EUNATONS to shut up about where the guilt lies. As I suggest, with single power-source hegemony (which we have now) such brokers cannot do their job. In the medium term, what we need is powerful unaligned voices on the diplomatic stage and geopolitical counterbalance to allow them to be heard.
In the long term, as most of you know already, I am for vibrant entrepreneurial communitarian local democracy: the model seems to me far easier to manage, much more nimble, more likely to give citizens back their responsibilities, and best of all a way of destroying national/international disconnected bubble politics forever.
It isn’t going to happen in my lifetime, and it isn’t going to come without hardship, struggle, violence and a great deal of individual growing up. These things never do.
But it is the only chance our species has to survive.
The Slog 