The Train to Helsinki: Entertaining Mr Putin.

US-USSR, now US-Russia, summits used to be no more than glorified ceremonies, grand meetings to sign, or not to sign, essentially nuclear deals that had been thrashed out months before by officials of the two countries: superpowers that had enough weapons between them to destroy humanity and most of other flora and fauna several times over. They are no more than a reaffirmation of the agreement that none will be the first to pull the nuclear trigger. It is as if one is saying to the other: 'hey guy, I know all about the madness involved in MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), so let's shake hands and then use our fingers to commit to paper, put it in black and white, that we we will never use them to make the insanity happen.' You wouldn't know the nuclear weapons they were so frightened to use were the same they had spent billions of resources to make and which they used to send enemies into sleeplessness everyday. These two monsters at the opposite ends of a bipolar world were not going to agree on much else: the Soviet Union wasn't going to back off supporting Vietnam or Cuba and the US wasn't going to stop supplying arms to Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA bandits in Angola or the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. So summits were all about managing the nuclear conundrum. That and a sprinkling of trade and scientific deals.
They could even take on a daub of notoriety. Like the infamous one between Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev in which the US president arrived in a suit so ill-fitting that a journalist was compelled to ask him if the oversized clothes really belonged to him. Regan had not made a hurried visit to a flea shop, it was a measure of how much esteem with which he held the meeting.
Nothing has much changed. It is now Russia instead of the USSR, the nuclear weapons are still there aplenty, but both countries are even less enthusiastic about using them now. If you held a knife to his throat, Putin wouldn't even think of letting go Crimea, an Ukrainian territory he annexed in 2014 to global outrage. And even less reluctant would he be in admitting his country meddled in the US elections that brought Trump to power even if his counterpart prodded him on it till tomorrow. And neither will Trump be in a hurry to lift sanctions the US and its allies imposed on Russia for her arrant misdemeanors all over the world, from Salisbury in England to Abkhazia in Georgia Republic.Trump himself has placed a thick, damp squib on what would have been the major talking point of the summit, by casting serious and deflating aspersions on the findings by his own officials that it was likely Russia meddled in the polls that brought him to power.
It is no surprise many pundits have predicted the summit isn't likely to achieve anything of substance.
But the sightseeing is going to be okay even though Finland is such a flat, colorless country you begin to wonder if bears roamed the streets of Helsinki. And there is no doubt Trump has been overawed by Putin. He has often spoken of his admiration for the Russian strongman. The enormous powers he wields, the grip he has on his country, the crucial matters of life and death he commands on the tips of his fingers were things Trump covets. And which he would like to lay his hands on but which he is highly unlikely to get because of chuffing lawyers and courts and a liberal, squeamish populace in his own country. His backing down on forced family separations of illegal immigrants and the torrid hounding of his officials in restaurants and public places have been chastening indeed. He will never be Putin and the US will never be Russia. But if you cannot be him, why not shake hands with him. High autograph-hunting can be very pleasant.
Which has brought some trepidation that has been thankfully taken care of. The summit will take place four days after a meeting with NATO allies. Officials of the organization were jittery that if it were the other way round, Trump out of some figure worshipping, might agree certain things with Putin. Things that would later put NATO in an awkward position indeed.

Trump

 Putin and Trump

Gorbachev

Regan

Obasanjo Quietens as Buhari's Sword Dangles.

Ex head of state, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has suddenly gone quiet in his public spats with President Muhammadu Buhari. And for good reason. He knows Buhari is a no-nonsense army general and will not hesitate to move against him if only to show the whole world and his critics he does not believe in sacred cows and is not afraid of anybody. The sword of Damocles, read

Buhari

Obasanjo

Buhari, hangs low, ominously over him. Obasanjo was thrown off his strides by the sudden bringing up of the power projects quagmire by Buhari when the Buhari Support Organization paid him a courtesy call. The whole project and the sleaze that came to accompany it was the major black spot of his administration and there was no way he was going to wash his hands clean of it if it comes to judicial scrutiny. And the penalty could be severe. Two long-running cases of graft have of late ended in disaster for Rev Jolly Nyame, ex-governor of the north-eastern state of Taraba, who was sentenced by an Abuja court to 14 years in prison and Joshua Dariye, ex-governor of the nearby state of Plateau, who also bagged the same prison term. All to the glee of Nigerians, who want more big fishes nabbed by the hook of anti-corruption. Obasanjo is 80 and a single day in prison for him is going to be more than a disaster.  And recent history is not on his side. Lula, Brazil's former president has just been sent to prison to corruption and the sky has not split into two. Close aides have been advising him to pipe low as Buhari will just send him to prison for nothing and cronies now loud will not hesitate to abandon him and let him stew in his own juice.
Yet Buhari does not even need to arrest him or send him to jail. He only needs to set up a probe panel and that would be enough to finish Obasanjo. His enemies, who are legion will only be too glad to come to such a panel with sacks of indictments genuine or ludicrous. Many Nigerians will not be able to tell the difference, besides, having suffered terribly at the hands of corruption, they will not care to put accusations to much scrutiny. A probe will be a public, kangaroo trial for Obasanjo and he will hardly get any justice. $16b was wasted on the power projects, perhaps the largest single case of corruption ever in Africa, without a single wink of electricity to show for it and there is no way he is going to escape censure, even though no single instance of graft has been traced to him directly. The whole mess happened under his long watch of 8 years and the buck stopped on his table. It will be very difficult for him to handle the noise, the mayhem, the opprobrium such a probe will spew into the political space.
SAUDI ARABIA GETS A BLOODY NOSE.
The opening match of the current edition of the World Cup going on in Russia has seen Saudi Arabia ship in 5 goals against the host country, making an average Russian team play spectacularly. That is why the tournament is a World Cup and not a cup for the best gladiators. Otherwise a lot of folks will start querying the injustice of Italy staying behind at home and Saudi Arabia attending the tournament. In world football, Saudi Arabia is a midget and Russia is not itself oversized but the Saudis turned them into giants overnight.
Luis 'the snake' Suarez misbites.
The World Cup match between Uruguay and Egypt has just ended. The first half was cagey but the two teams came out in the 2nd half more adventurous and that section was more noteworthy for Luis Suarez's two glaring misses. He might have been more restrained in biting with his teeth but his biting feet seems to have been in remission with that disinclination. That is the stuff of which genius is made of at any rate and we expect him to be sharper in coming matches. In tight matches like this, a half chance might be all that is needed and Uruguay was grateful to seize it via a header by Athletico Madrid's Gimenez. Egypt will have to improve in the final third in subsequent matches.

Luis 'the snake' Suarez.

World Cup of Scrutiny.

Another soccer World Cup starts today in Russia. Congratulations everyone! We really look forward to a real football fest. Which is what the World Cup should be all about: grand displays of the world most popular sport that one is ever unlikely to find on another platform. We are constrained to dwell a bit on global expectations of this fiesta because the last two editions have not been, generally speaking, all that edifying. The 2010 edition in South Africa was more notable for the hideous noises vuvuzelas were making, the poor pitches and the mayhem in the French national team than for any footballing spectacle. The last edition in Brazil did produce a footballing spectacle, the 7-1 drubbing of the host nation by Germany in the semi-finals. The Horizonte Massacre, as this incredible defeat became known, after the city in which the match was played, has been dubbed Brazil's darkest hour. And rightly so. No national distress in the country is ever going to replicate people weeping openly in the streets as the match wore on and in the aftermath. But before that, in one of the group matches, obstreperous headlines had been made by Luis 'the Snake' Suarez,  the talented but flawed Uruguayan player who had little restraint in reprising his notorious biting inclinations on the Italian player, Giorgio Chellini.
We rather want to see spectacular scissors and scorpion kicks in this edition. We don't want to see Maradona's infamous Hand of God but his famous half field dribbling that eventually nailed England in the 1986 World Cup, we simply want to see what we saw in 1970, 1982, 19...
Yet we cannot help bringing up two things to scrutiny. The first is the rather curious theory that football can be separated from politics or political behavior. This bunkum used to be promoted by the erstwhile FIFA Secretary-General, Sepp Blatter, and his predecessor, Jao Havelange.. Blatter has since been disgraced in a corruption scandal and falling into disrepute too is his theory. The host country, Russia, have been behaving very badly in the international arena. In 2014, it annexed Crimea, a region that geographically belongs to its weaker neighbor, Ukraine, against strident international opposition and that would have been a hefty outrage on its own but Putin has compounded mayhem by sowing seeds of subversion in the eastern parts of the country. Ukraine is now practically partitioned into two and the Donetsk region seems in all respects, a buffer zone to Russia. It is difficult telling what would have happened if Ukraine had qualified for the tournament but clashes in the streets of Russia between fans of the two countries would not have been out of place and the police would have had a hectic time separating them, just as it is now separating politics from football. Or the fake murder of the journalist, Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, in Kiev from the distressing comedy the relationship between the two countries has become.
Still Russia had enough mischief left to attempt to kill ex-double spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England with a particularly poisonous nerve agent, Novichok. Although Russia has strenuously denied culpability, few people are convinced and the idiotic, amateurish assassination attempt has visited on Russia a fresh round of international sanctions. England matches in Russia will surely be focus of international attention in this tournament and that will hardly be because of footballing reasons. 
Under close scrutiny too will be the the fate of the two biggest superstars in world football: Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and the Argentine, Lionel Messi. If any of these two countries fail to win this tournament, then the chance might as well be gone that they will ever be regarded as real greats. Check out all the illustrious names in world football: Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, perhaps the only thing that separates t

hem into the exalted realm they belong is that they all won the World Cup. If Messi or Ronaldo fails to win it, they will be superstars, for a period or era, but never all time greats. We hope they will strive to reach above themselves, have a magical tournament and catapult themselves into that realm that the likes of Pele belong.  

G-7 Minus One Gentleman.

Disputes are not new to the G-7, a group of wealthy, industrialized and advanced nations that is made up of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Being an association of countries with diverse economic, social and political histories, disagreements were bound to be plenty and loud but the good news was that they always managed to resolve them, or at least paper over the cracks. Simply because it was supposed to be a club of gentlemen well-versed in boardroom antics of compromise and hand-shaking. National leaders who must carry with them the negotiating skills and dignity of their respective countries The not-so-good news now is that the good news seem to be finding it very difficult and awkward to fan out. All because one of them does not now care a hoot about being a gentleman, cracking up huge fissures in the organization.
It is well-known President Trump of the US has a predilection for prowling on the battlefield, not in the boardroom, despite his corporate background, and, not surprisingly, did not think it twice before firing hefty salvos at gentlemen supposed to be his comrades in the G-7, slapping huge tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico. The president argued the move would protect domestic producers of such commodities and help to boost national security. He conveniently forgot to add most of those home producers were struggling. And his colleagues in the EU, still smarting from his unilateral and very peremptory abrogation of the Iran deal which they helped to bring to the table with a great deal of effort and to which they were signatories, wasted no time in retaliating, announcing counter-tariffs on a wide range of goods from the US. In fact, the G-7 now looks like a madhouse, with a huge madcap of retaliations reminiscent of cold war battles. The schism has been widening since last year over conflicting positions on climate change, differences that came to a head with Trump's subsequent announcement to unilaterally withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement on climate change. This year G-7 summit in Canada is even expected to generate less agreement. Meetings have been at best fractious with leaders speaking loudly and unreservedly about divisions and Trump's body language suggesting his forthcoming June 12 summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un in Singapore was of far greater interest to him than sitting down in Canada to resolve a host of differences with his G-7 allies. Which is as well, as he has long been suspected of being uncomfortable at negotiating with groups as opposed to one-on-one, man-to-man, mano-o-mano negotiations that the summit with Kim envisages. And he has just dropped a cat in the cage of pigeons by suggesting Russia should be readmitted into the body. He knows it is a suggestion that will raise the decibel of commotion a shade further, giving him ample cover to sneak out of Canada.
As for the G-7 itself, the convulsions extend beyond Trump and may take some time quietening. It is too exclusive a club, practically needing the Crown Jewels for admittance. Requirements will have to be lowered and there is no reason for countries like South Korea and China and India and indeed Russia not to come in. The body might corner 60% of global wealth now but it is a share that is not going to increase in the near future. Many nations are coming up and a rival body might not be out of place. It is instructive to note that as the summit in Canada taking place, China was hosting a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security block, inviting Russia to the event. The G-7 should look over its shoulders in its squabbles.
AND THE GIRL LIFTS IT.
Simona Halep has just won the French Open, beating Sloane Stephens in the process. It would be her first Grand Slam, having lost on all three previous occasions she would reach the final. Still she remained unbowed, just like Chris Evert who faced exactly an ordeal in her career,

Simona Halep

and has just confirmed the suspicion that despair and defeat are not always linked. Congrats, girl.

Trump

G-7

Signing another non-aggression pact.

History repeats itself and in no department of it is this more pronounced than political history. Over time, we had a succession of political monsters that were almost perfect clones of one another: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler...or political processes that are, in crucial respects, replicas in actualities or reverse. On 23rd August, 1939, with the 2nd Word War imminent in Europe, the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, was compelled to sign a non-aggression pact with another dictator, the rampaging German Nazi monster, Adolf Hitler.  Both sides pledged to refrain from attacking each other, sought cooperation in neutralizing common enemies and so on. But the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the two countries' foreign ministers was actually no more than mere paper, a document Hitler would tear to shreds barely two years later by invading Soviet positions in eastern Poland.
Fast forward to 2018, almost 79 years later, and one could see another non-aggression pact taking shape again between the two countries. In the reverse. A lot have changed, certainly. The Soviet Union now exists as a rump called Russia and communism that used to be the foundation of the state is now gone. Dictatorship now exists in other forms, propped up by an imperfect democracy but a democracy nevertheless. Germany had lost East Prussia, a third of its territory, is now a pure democracy, if any such thing exists, and now has a woman calling the shots in Berlin. The country is now an economic power but it now relies practically on the United States of America to protect her. Of recent, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been setting her sights on the East, on erstwhile bitter foe, Russia, strangely on a country the US has sworn to protect her from. It is just like extricating oneself from a very gentle handshake and then delving into the suffocating embrace of a bear hug. Strange, yet it is a reassessment that is very inevitable. The so-called handshake across the Atlantic has been gradually turning into a fist lock. Physically, President Trump's hands might be small but the grip they enforce could be really humiliating. And in no way is this demonstrated more than the recent peremptory cancellation of the Iran deal, an agreement Merkel and the European powers of Britain and France helped put on the table at great pains. Talk about making allies look small, ineffectual and pathetic! These three countries have had their diplomatic reputation torn to shreds and the outrage from their own nationals and economic concerns have been loud, reverberating. Merkel, a professor of physics, must have been miffed even further that the chap  making them look so inconsequential is one who could not really tell the difference between HIV and HPV, two classes of organisms so dissimilar. And so appalling was the remission that Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, had to explain it to him twice, according to the billionaire's testimony. There are very audible grumblings in Europe by folks there that they cannot continue to be treated like vassals and Merkel must have been listening to the discontent of her own subjects.
Merkel knows that her Achilles' heels, and that of Europe, is ironically, an economic power that is hugely entwined with that of the United States. Even long before these European leaders had started trying to voice some determination, restating their resolve to shore up the Iran deal, many of their companies and big businesses such as the French energy giant, Total, were already pulling out of Iran. Deweaning Europe of the alliance with the US is going to be tough,  very tough, long and laborious but as a scientist, Merkel very much knows it is never too late taking a first step, no matter how small it is. She knows too that the Transatlantic Alliance is one that needs reappraisal. The world is not what it used to be. There is a new military power in the shape of China which also has a vast economic power. Asia's economy, if we factor in the influence of the Asian Tigers, is rumbling and in the foreseeable future, American economic power might not be decisive again. No doubt, Russia, although a rump of the former Soviet Union, is still an enormous military power and has in fact been behaving badly of late in its annexation of Crimea and elsewhere in Britain and Ukraine but the military picture is not the same as the one that drove it into the arms of the US.. Soviet satellites such as Bulgaria, Poland e.t.c. are now fully independent states with their own credible armies. The same for countries that used to be part and parcel of the Soviet Union itself. Sovereign states such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and so on. Russia  will have to roll its tanks through these obstacles to get to western Europe.
Hence in this peace, as in that war, Germany can always forge some partnership with Russia, if not an alliance. For now, Merkel has little to fear from Russia, besides Putin will not be there for ever. Increasing partnership with Russia and China means decreasing alliance, read reliance, with the US. If it gives a new world order, it will also secure Germany's vital gas supplies from Russia. A new non-aggression pact makes sense.

Trump Promised Fireworks: He Hasn't Even Struck A Match.

The President was always going to err on the side of impulse. His tongue and tweets were too quick for caution. As the news of the alleged chemical attacks in by Syrian government forces in Douma, Eastern Ghoutta, broke out, Trump raced out of the blocks instantly, promising retaliation in form of big, bright bombs that were coming in numbers. Of course the flow of adrenalin had ebbed a couple of days later and subsequent tweets on the issue weren't as enthusiastic. Trump should have then proceeded with his tour of Latin America, that itinerary would have certainly yielded more returns than throwing 105 missiles into facilities no one, except Syrian regime officials, can really say with certainty still contain a single phial of chlorine or other chemical agents. If you're going to attack a place, why announce it so loudly? Why shout your intentions from the rooftops? The Russians and Syrians are no fools. The facilities attacked would certainly contain underground passages with designed exigencies to ferry materials through them very quickly. As it is, a president in the habit of shooting off the cuff must have given them sufficient time and warning to do so. It gave the Russians sufficient time to move their big warships out of their base in the Syrian port of Tartaus and there is nothing to suggest evacuation of smaller chemical containers will pose greater difficulty. Hence this brings us back in time, to President Clinton lobbing criise missiles into terrorist training camps in Eastern Afghanistan. As it turned out to be, the camps were empty and the outcome was that al-Qaeda got bin Laden got emboldened and encouraged to the extent of launching the devastating 9/11 attacks on the US. The missiles launched by Allies into Syria are more likely, as Assad had threatened, to emboldened the Russians and Iranians and Syrians into launching attacks on Idlib, the last major rebel-held enclave in Syria. The place had been a dumping ground for defeated rebels in the country and if it should fall, as it certainly will, then we may as well witness the dumping of defeated enemies into the sea. If the rebels are going to fight to death, having nowhere else to run, will their wives and children show the same determination?
The pyrotechnics weren't even spectacular. Israel does a better job of it with far fewer missiles. Better, quieter and more constant jobs. More efficient jobs. Of course the Russians are making huge propaganda capital out of the announcement that 65 of the missiles were shot down by Syrian air defences that were based on batteries manufactured in the old Soviet Union, 30 years ago. This has been corroborated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that has been fairly accurate in its reporting and even if can still take this with a pinch of salt, the attacks are not the perfect strikes Trump claims they are. The body language of Gen. McKenzie says it all during his Pentagon briefing. It was apparent he wasn't comfortable with his assurances the missiles achieved all their goals. The whole attack is turning into the most expensive pyrotechnics ever organized. Sadly, we see even a better spectacle at the Sydney harbour, during New Year celebrations.

Putin isn't Strongman of the World.

Russia is a superpower, a country that has enormous human and technical resources to prove simply it wasn't behind the notorious poisoning of ex-Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. It has chosen not to, relying rather on verbal denials that nobody was going to believe. If Putin was going to wash his hands off the whole mess, he was going to need more than water, and he hasn't even held up a drop. Now even his most ardent supporters will need some convincing the Russian state wasn't behind this insanely stupid attempted murder.
And now, rightly so, Russia is being censured all over the world. Even President Trump has now joined the bandwagon of Russian bashing. Sixty Russian diplomats based in Washington and at the UN in New York have been expelled by the US and Putin should consider this remarkable, knowing he could always count on Trump as a faint ally, very few of which he has on earth. Indeed, Trump had chosen to tread a cautious line over the whole matter, refusing to blame Russia until more evidence had been provided. A lot of people felt the same way all over the earth, rationalizing that Putin and Russian intelligence were too smart to have embarked on such a stupid adventure. The Novichok group of nerve agents used in the attack could be so easily traced to Russia. This medium has even suggested a rogue scientist could have sold the formula to a rogue state or organization with an axe to grind against Russia. Putin and Russia itself has not done anything to encourage such skeptics and for Trump to have moved the way he did, it seems some materials very damaging to the image of the great nation of Russia is circulating somewhere in the labyrinths of international diplomacy.
The response is the same in Russia's backyard, Europe. Germany, France and Ukraine have also expelled Russian diplomats and countries like Latvia and Poland have summoned Russian ambassadors to their foreign ministries. According to them, in solidarity with British friends. A very natural thing to do. If such a brazen murder attempt could be carried out far away in Britain, only God knows what infernal plots could be incubated and hatched in these East European countries so close to Russia. But then there is something faintly grand about that line about solidarity. Ukraine has suffered enormously at the hands of Russia, what with the annexation of Crimea and the switching on and off of gas pipelines from Russia at will by GAZPROM. This is certainly an opportunity to kick some ass in return by Petro Poroshenko. It is a kick at a bully that the Ukrainian president should deservedly relish and which Putin and his Russia deserve for now. He might be liked by his subjects in Russia but Putin is not strongman of the whole world.

Putin: Russia's Strange Love for Tyrants.

One of the most recurring charades and characters in international politics has just played itself out; for the umpteenth time. The revolving wheel of tomfoolery has come full cycle again with the arrow pointing to Vladimir Putin as the president of Russia for the next six years. For as long as one could remember now, if he was powerful president, the hapless Roy Medvedev  would be puppet prime minister and in a most macabre exchange you could find anywhere, in another round of selections we call elections out of pure courtesy, Medvedev would switch to puppet president and Putin would be powerful prime minister. Dictatorship could be very outlandish at times and nowhere is it more bizarre than in present Russia.
A very predictable oddity. Opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, the only candidate who could have given him a good contest was barred from the polls on trumped up charges by a kangaroo court, leaving the field for a curious posse of contestants that included a reality TV star, Russia's pathetic version of President Trump, and that most pathetic of all comedians, the old, rable-rousing Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Only one outcome could be reasonably expected: a landslide that was going to bury Russia's and Putin's credibility. If only credibility still mattered. Instead of the brute, bare-faced power that now commands respect.
So Putin has another six years, at least, to gloat over his annexation of Crimea and continue with the bullying of near and far neighbors which include Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and independent states that formerly made up the Soviet Union. He has already dismembered Georgia and could at will send crude, unrefined exterminators to murder or poison opposition activists and enemies abroad. Putin's authoritarian excesses stretch far and wide.
Whenever he mentions his grandfather was chef to that most heinous of all dictators, Josef Stalin, you could feel undercurrents of pride in his voice. It shows those that he admired. He seems to tell us that nothing has really changed in the Kremlin and that he would be too happy to carry on the tradition of repression and serfdom and Tsarist conquests. That is Putin is a continuation of bad news to neighbors far and near.
But of certain good news to Russians themselves, the folks that tolerate him, adore him and prop him up. Strange folks who seem to thrive very well under tyrants. Check out the list: Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Vladimir Putin. Someone once said there is no Russia without her tyrants. It is difficult arguing with that postulation in the light of present events. Russians will rather take the poetry and folklore that their tyrants give them than raise a whimper under these conditions of brazen assault on democracy.
Could you blame them? Even those enamored of democracy, if not congratulating him, are accepting whatever is coming out of the sham elections with numbed resignation. They could do better. Russia is a member of the UN Security Council, a veto-wielding nation and the least that is expected of the international community is insistence on greater transparency in the selection of who leads such an important place. Gary Kasparov, the great chess champion, has said it all, admonishing democracies now warming up to Putin over the elections that their behavior is a salient commentary on their own democracies. You cannot dine with the devil and not get something stuck in your teeth.
It could start from the US but nobody is expecting much from Donald Trump. His most coherent foreign policies are on his tongue and it is often that that piece of equipment gets stuck to his cheeks, He would get something into his tweets but it would be so ambiguous that the murky investigations into alleged Russian meddling in his election would seem clearer in comparison. Right now, Putin has no opposition, both at home and abroad.

Rex Tillerson: Serving God and Mammnon.

The oil industry where Rex Tillerson made his mark was a fairly certain arena. The newly-drilled oil-well is guaranteed to produce; new technology was going to make shale oil commercially available and the shady atmosphere enveloping Nigerian oil was always going to get cruder and darker. Only instability in the prices of oil was going to be of much challenge but that too wasn't exactly rocket science and for a man who had risen to the top echelons of his calling, he could be counted on safely to handle that. In short, the world he was familiar with was stable, rational, fairly predictable: always within his grasp. It was a place of gentlemen and handshakes.
So, it must have been a shock to him when he decided to switch jobs and throw himself into politics. Politics is a calling rough enough and American politics is a particularly toxic variant. It wasn't an arena for gentlemen, handshakes being very, very rare and fists in ample display and use and nobody was going to pull punches. And the most combative of the pugilists was the man he was going to serve as Secretary of State, President Donald Trump, a boxer who was going to play very unfairly, not hesitating a moment to punch below the belt. And the most volatile part of American politics would certainly be found in the State Department, in foreign policy. There he would have to deal with players even worse than his master. A place as stable as earthquake-engendered tsunami. An arena where the appalling Rohingya crisis could break out at any time, where Russian hackers and exterminators were going to cause trouble at any time. An arena filled with irrational souls as Mugabe, Kim Jong-un. A theater savaged by unpredictability such as the North Korean rascal making a volte-face and proposing talks with the US all of a sudden. Moments defined by not only not knowing when the next nuclear test will take place but also not knowing whether the missile was flying towards Hawaii, or flying over Japanese mainland or was going to end up shortly in the Pacific Ocean. Torrid moments of terrorists freshly abducting schoolgirls in Nigeria. Intolerable situations in which Turkey, a NATO ally would attack  Syrian Kurds, America's staunchest allies in the Middle East, and both the president and his top diplomat would be tongue tied. Tillerson was stepping into an insane world he was never prepared for, both by training and temperament.
A world that was perfect fit for his master, by temperament. Tillerson was supposed to be America's face to the outside world but it was an America that that gone Trump, a guy who was as brash and unpredictable and unrestrained as his worst adversaries in the diplomatic boxing ring. A chap whose remarks are often off cuff and whose most coherent foreign policies could be found only on his lips and tweets. It was eerily difficult imagining Tillerson as Trump's Secretary of   State. The Rasputin Coefficient was horribly non-correlative. Tillerson, in Trump administration, was practically serving God and Mammon at the same time.
Hence he would think the Iranian deal to be reasonable while Trump would savage it as nonsense. He would lay into Russia over the Salisbury spy poisoning while his president would be uncharacteristically taciturn and quiet all of a sudden. You would think that if the president was going to accept talks with North Korea, he would consult his secretary first. A dove, so to say, wasn't going to serve a hawk. Tillerson was more studied, careful, restrained than he was a pacifist but he wasn't going to do well in a regime stuffed with hardliners and of which head was a sheriff likely to shoot first before asking questions later.
Trump admitted he didn't agree with Tillerson on most issues. Sacking him behind his back was his most poignant testament to that disagreement.   

Maybe Kim Jong-un's Sister is the Miracle Worker.

On the night of October 27, 1962, the then Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev  was close, perilously close to a nuclear holocaust. Or he could have been well several hours into it were it not for the restraint of a Soviet naval officer aboard a submarine. Earlier, US forces had dropped depth charges on the submarine and the standard operational response from the warship was to fire nuclear-tipped torpedoes, a move that would have likely triggered a nuclear confrontation. However, all the three officers aboard would have to agree to the retaliation. It was the restraint of Vasili Arkhipov on submarine B59 that saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Still, on the night of the 27th, the Cuban Missile Crisis was far from being resolved and Khrushchev must have sat in a very quiet corner of the Kremlin, mind wrapped in trenchant introspection, a lot of 'what is the point?' going on in his mind.
What is the point of putting the vast, almighty Soviet Union on the firing line for the sake of tiny Cuba thousands of miles away? What is the point of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba when a single Intercontinental Ballistic Missile(ICBM) launched from Russia can equally make the same statement? A lot has been said about the strategic ICBM superiority of the US over that of Russia in that period but placing medium and intermediate-range missiles in Cuba was not really going to bridge the gap overnight. What's the point of the whole crisis? And that train of reflection, perhaps aided by the sight of his young son nearby, must have engendered the biggest of them all. What is the point of building nuclear weapons?
Perhaps North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un had experienced the same epiphany of recent. He has just agreed to hold presidential-level talks with the US, a move a lot of folks now regard as a miracle, and which a greater number now attribute to the huge sanctions imposed on the pariah state by the international community in wake of well-publicized nuclear tests by Kim. In international politics, emphasis is mostly placed on cold, biting calculations. Hardly is there a place for emotions. It might be as well but there is really no hard evidence to suggest that Kim's sudden change of heart, if it is real, was triggered by sanctions. The sanctions have been biting, no doubt, especially with the active cooperation of China, North Korea biggest trading partner, in making them effective but stiffer sanctions had been imposed on Iraq, Iran, Liberia, on many brutal regimes, and there is no single instance in which a positive correlation has been safely recorded between pressure and capitulation. In fact, the US had to move in troops on Iraq and the West African peace-keeping force, ECOMOG, had to go into Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia when it became clear tough sanctions imposed were not working. It is very simple to see. No matter how devastating the sanctions are, some resources will still have to flow in and the brutal dictator only has to appropriate most of these for his cronies and repressive forces for him to continue in power, the sufferings of his people not mattering a jot. Many commentators point to Iran but the sanctions were a diversion for leaders who were increasingly grappling with a young population with whom Great Satan rhetorics were not going to resonate much and who were equally going to be disenchanted with their country's involvement in costly foreign wars. At any rate, Iranian clerics must have come too to the inevitable question: 'What's exactly the point in acquiring nuclear weapons?" Weapons nobody, even a madman, is not likely to fire. The destruction a single one can wreak is so mind-boggling that it even weighs down the hand. Khrushchev's son himself said that his father cut a very forlorn subject on the night of October 27, 1962, clearly unwilling to go down in history as the first person to start a nuclear war. By the following morning, his mind was made up. In fact, he had to accept the terms put forward by President Kennedy for ending the stalemate without consulting the Politburo, the highest decision-making body in the Soviet Union at that time. The capitulation was a severe humiliation for the USSR and was later to pave way for Khrushchev fall from power two years after. He was never a fan of nuclear weapons again and if he had stayed in power longer, there was credible likelihood he would have actively sought their complete elimination. Weapons he had spent billions producing.
Hence there are feelings, emotions, attached to nuclear weapons many of us are not conversant with but which those who produce or control them are too well aware of. The tough, thuggish, Khrushchev was not immune to them and there is no reason to believe the bad Kim Jong-un will be too. Perhaps the guy realized that he was to fear the unreliable, unpredictable Donald Trump more than the American president was to fear him. His own sister, Kim Yo-Jong has been prominent of late and the lady might have had a calming influence on him. And for those enamored of cold, hard calculations, what stops him from coming to the futility of putting all his aces in a couple of nuclear weapons most of which American anti-ballistic missiles are likely to intercept anywhere. The US has thousands of more sophisticated, more reliable ones, five of which can obliterate the whole of North Korea in a couple of minutes.
Still on cold, hard facts, which nobody has exempted Kim from deducing, he and his sister could have stood side by side gazing south of the border, envying the incredible luxury (luxury she was well-acquainted with in her recent visit to South Korea during the Winter Olympics) their kith and kin are living in. Without manufacturing nuclear weapons. Goods that nobody is going to use or use without a single benefit. Goods that invariably constitute a drainpipe.
Goods worse than grasses the often tactless Putin claimed the North Koreans would rather eat than give up nukes. Castro and the Cubans came to the inevitable conclusion they could not go on feeding for ever on sugar cane, another form of grass, so to say. Kim and his sister might have realized that they and their suffering citizens might do better by investing lean resources on pizza or chicken or bread or pills. And not on nuclear weapons America and Russia keep on manufacturing in thousands. And keep on dismantling in thousands.   

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 2

So President Erdogan  sends troops, tanks and warplanes into Syria at will to attack the Kurds while President Trump and Secretary Tillerson look on numbly like rabbits caught plumb in powerful headlights. It does not really matter that Syria is supposed to be a sovereign state, the country had long been partitioned among Russians, Iranians, The Gulf States, Saudis, Turks, Kurds and just anybody that could arm a miscreant with a rifle. This inaction, even silent acquiescence, on the part of the US is even more baffling in the sense that the Kurds remain the only sensible option for securing the porous borders and crossing points  from Syria to Iraq and even to Turkey itself. Hence the decision of the US to convert the YPG to a border force is a well thought out policy, the only effective way to stop the IS from regrouping. After all, Turkey with all its huge army and security paranoia was unable to prevent would-be militants from Europe and elsewhere from using the country as transit points to join  the shitty caliphate in Syria and Iraq at the height of IS ascendancy. Hordes of them were crossing the borders in broad daylight and Turkish officials were looking the other way as a result of compromise or sheer incompetence. The Kurds represent the only credible and capable buffer force in those climes, a fact Trump well recognizes. Hence shrugging helplessly while Erdogan attacks and decimates the forces required to carry out the all-important policing can only be as a result of a foreign policy that is at best, formulated in tweets. Trump is horribly incoherent in his foreign policy and in no instance is this more demonstrated than his inertia in coming to the defense of his most dependable allies in the Middle East. It seems as if he had gathered the Kurds in a police compound for training and then he sends in a bomb-laden suicide truck to blow up the whole place. When policies are set out in tweets, or on a glib tongue, the obvious victims are organization, logic and unity. Senselessness supplanting sense and vice versa.
Maybe Trump thinks that it is a choice between NATO and the Kurds. Then it is equally a choice between where he could put his two feet in and a place that could, in all honesty, admit in other feet. It is leaving immediate, pressing certainty for a long-term certainty, if we can even qualify it as such. It is the Kurds that are in the demand books of the US now, not the Turks. A country that the EU would not even allow in.
Someone said he was confused as to what the US could have done when Turkey sent in its forces into Afrin. Very simple, a couple of US soldiers stationed in very visible places in the enclave. There was no need to do anything combative. No need to unleash warplanes to protect her allies. Something very symbolic would have stopped the tanks. Erdogan's attack on Afrin was no more than a diplomatic test of will, just like Hitler's re-militarization of Rhineland. He was really expecting a firmness from Trump that an attack on YPG and Kurds would be an attack on US troops itself. A couple of  unarmed Green Berets placed on Afrin roads would have driven that home quite trenchantly.
Just like Hitler, all he got in response was sordid appeasement.
After Rhineland, Austria was next and then Czechoslovakia. After Afrin, Manbij, Raqqa and other Kurdish enclaves.
Appeasement is defined as letting a bully have his way always. 

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 1

President Trump's most coherent foreign policies are on his lips, so it is a huge wonder that he is presently tongue-tied as Turkey sends tanks and troops to attack the only slice of influence the US has left in Syria: the sliver of territories controlled by Kurds in the eastern margins of the country. Putin and his Iranian allies call all the shots now in wider Syria, committing men and materiel to underline an influence growing by leaps and bounds every hour while the US has been hiding in the deserts of eastern Syria. Right from Obama, the country didn't even have a plan A in Syria, not to talk of a plan B or C. In other words, Russia had a focus it was going to enforce with a trenchant ruthlessness now yielding immense results while the US simply did not know what to do, looking back fearfully at an American public that had grown so weary of war.
But the US was lucky, so to say. It did not have to move in thousands of troops or an aircraft carrier brimming with warplanes. Like in Afghanistan during the invasion, all it needed on ground was a proxy army. And no proxy army could ever be more reliable than the Kurds, sturdy individuals with fighting skills and resilience that easily put to flight the famed capabilities of the Northern Alliance. Their heroics in Kobane is well known, a battle that showed everyone that the Islamic State was not an invincible evil horde before which every resistance must melt. The Islamic State impaled itself on the chimneys of Kobane and once they were defeated there, their days were numbered, just as Nazi Germany days were numbered after Stalingrad. The Kurds, under their YPG militia, were to later play the crucial role in driving the IS out of their fiefdoms in Raqqa, Manbij and several other towns and territories in eastern parts of the country, aided by Arab allies and US airstrikes. Without the Kurds, maybe IS would have been defeated but there was little doubt it would have been a very protracted conflict: infinitely sapping on morale and public opinion.
Faithful and largely peaceable individuals the pugnacious, rabble-rousing Erdogan now label as terrorists despite the fact that not a single instance of terrorism on Turkish soil, whether tenuous or even contrived, has ever been linked to the YPG. The border crossings now controlled by the YPG used to be manned by the evil IS fighters and not a single shot was fired by Turkey into Syrian territory then. Naturally, Erdogan would be more comfy with Daesh. Convoys of trucks laden with fuel stolen from Syrian oilfields were crossing the Turkish border in broad daylight on a daily basis, driven by IS terrorists while they held sway in areas now controlled by Kurds. Perhaps Erdogan feared a bullet would ignite one of the trucks and set off a fearsome conflagration.
So it is easy to understand Erdogan's contrived animosity towards the Syrian Kurds. What is far more nebulous is the US silence and inaction. Save for a couple of rhetorics that do not even qualify for a whimper, Trump and his Secretary, Tillerson, have watched with soporific eyes as Turkey rolls its tanks deeper and deeper into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria.  

The Curse of Liberators.

All countries on earth, without a single exception, have been under one sort of occupation or the other before attaining their present sovereign/independent status. Either the occupiers were foreigners, or were native rulers who had visited so much toil, ruin, suffering and unease on their own people that they soon grew to become horrid, repulsive aliens.In both cases, they had to be driven out by largely peaceful but intense political pressure- India, Nigeria, Ghana- or by violent insurrection, uprising: Russia, China, the US, Zimbabwe, South Africa.
But it is expedient to look into recent political history to understand better a scourge that is just becoming well-defined but which has always ravaged, on all fours, polities as diverse as Liberia and Ukraine. We have all heard of the curse of resources in Nigeria and Congo, yet it is the same African continent that has seen the worst of the curse of the freedom fighter, a pestilence that ate its cancer so unobtrusively into the social, political and economic fabric of the countries under its invasion that it is only now the full extent of the hideous damage it had wrought is being fully felt. Yes, we are talking about ANC, ZANU-PF, FLN, to mention a few of the insurgent groups that played a key role in the decolonization or, to use a more glamorous term, liberation of Africa. But we are not talking about the copious atrocities they too committed even on their own populations while driving away the much-hated, arrogant foreigners: excesses that have been poorly recorded, acknowledged, Excesses that were even celebrated in the euphoria of grand heroism. What eventually mattered was what they did with the power they wrestled from the terrible occupiers. The present scourge in Zimbabwe did not start with the British, it started when that hero of liberation, Mugabe, started entrenching himself as a long-term dictator: too long for his own good or for the good of his country. It was a common plague in Africa. Hardly had the colonial masters left when they were supplanted by the torrid dictatorships of Gaddafi, Siaka Stevens, Sekou Toure, Dauda Jawara; freedom fighters and independence heroes of yesteryears. It could be argued that similar outcomes unraveled in Russia, China, Vietnam, but rickety republics like Nigeria Liberia, Burundi had no technological prowess, economic resilience or organizational acumen to paper over the defaults and in many cases of these African countries, fresh political upheavals such as coups and  mass rebellions had to inevitably erupt  to resolve some of the scourge. Often unsatisfactorily. The victims have been social, political and economic progress. The symptoms have been appalling poverty, telling political repression and a wave of migration most of which end up in the watery graves of the Mediterranean.
Authoritarian regimes or lines of party succession that were as far from democracy as Timbuktu is far from Toronto and likely to throw up characters as outlandish as Jacob Zuma. Succession that implied George Washington telling Americans: "Hi folks! We did well to secure your freedom from the infernal Brits and it is legit if your leaders till eternity come out of a line anchored on me, or my comrades." It wouldn't be monarchy, but certain blood must prevail.
The blood is increasingly going under the microscope and folks must necessarily turn to China, a country whose influence is growing very powerfully in Africa and whose leaders have become very adept at tweaking the line. In Zimbabwe, the military had to step in to effect a mini purge, before Grace Mugabe got too powerful, a situation that looked like a perfect recreation of the Gang of Four conundrum after the death of Chairman Mao. And still borrowing from China, the ANC has done very well to ease out Zuma. Jacob Zuma is actually a likeable guy but the controversies surrounding him were getting a bit tiring and he could have been more careful of his association with the Guptas. As shopkeepers or as managers of big enterprises, Indians have a business reputation a bit on the unsavory side in Africa. Of course nothing really has been proven yet. It might even have been a myth made popular by the infamous Idi Amin but Zuma should have realized his hobnobbing with the Guptas was going to profit him little.
He had to go. Not for his own good but for the continued good of the ANC. Cyril Ramaphosa has his work cut out and perhaps our Zuma would have more time to perfect his celebrated recipe for AIDS cure.

Ukraine, Russia, Crimea, Pushkin and two Revolutions.

Politically, Crimea did not belong to anybody. The independent Crimean Khanate was annexed by Imperial Russia in 1783 as a consequence of the Russo-Turkish War. Before that time, the enclave had been bossed by powers as diverse as the Cimmerians and the Golden Horde.
Geographically, Crimea is part of Ukraine, even though some folks consider the Isthmus of Perekop that connects it to the Ukrainian mainland to be too narrow. Too bad geography does not determine national boundaries, otherwise the US will not be US and Russia will not be Russia. Many of the rickety republics in Africa would not have existed. A country is a sum of its political history, especially violent political history. Which brings to the mind two revolutions: the Russian Revolution of 1917 that would eventually bring Nikita Khrushchev, an Ukrainian, to power in the old Soviet Union. Honestly, when the old boy was transferring Crimea from Russian to Ukraine, it is very doubtful he envisaged the almighty Soviet Union would disintegrate one day. It bizarrely did in another revolution, a sort of revolution and Russia would part ways with Ukraine, though not completely and some folks in Russia must have cast a very rueful glance at a historic part, political part that seemed lost forever.
It was another revolution that would return it to Russia:  the colorful revolutions in Ukraine  that would eventually lead to the sacking of the pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2014. Folks in the Russia-leaning east did not like it, did not like it at all, and the beautiful country got partitioned, effectively, into three: Kiev, Donetsk and Crimea. It didn't take Putin much effort to annex Crimea. The 1997 Partition Treaty and the 2010 Kharkiv Pact, now in retrospect, seemed to have been a gross indiscretion on the part of Ukraine. It left a foreign navy, a much bigger foreign navy on its own soil. The Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol was to play the crucial role in the annexation of Crimea. So Crimea had been a puppet on strings, revolutionary strings.
Which brings to mind Alexander Pushkin's, Russia's greatest poet, take on revolutions. In his novella, 'The Captain's Daughter', the hero was to see the the carnage of an insurrection  and remark that the most enduring changes he had witnessed were those effected by peaceful negotiations and not violent revolutions.
So another revolution might yet change the status of Ukraine. A lesson those frenzied faces in the Orange and Pink Revolutions in Kiev might have well heeded. Be very careful, very careful of what you wish for and try as much as possible to take into account the feelings of others. The outcomes of revolutions are very difficult to predict: Stalin, guillotine, Islamic State.
A revolution brought Crimea into Ukraine, another revolution took it away. Another revolution might take it back. After all, apart from rain and taxes, the only constant things are revolutions.