The US, George Orwell And The New Cold War.

In light of recent events, the rhythms of the Transatlantic cooperation, or Western solidarity, now that the cold war is fully back, have been sounding eerily Orwellian. It must be right if the US says it is right. A faux pas that is a bit worn, a cliche that doesn't even hold water in present day animal kingdoms. The US is not always right, as Tony Blair found out after his tactless haste to deploy British troops to oust Saddam Hussein, an American misadventure based on the fake intelligence that Iraq was brimming with weapons of mass destruction. It is instructive that the architect of that hoax was John Bolton, the then US envoy to the UN under President George Bush and now Secretary of State under President Trump. Not a single phial of chemical weapons was found in Iraq and the whole fiasco should have served as a restraint to Theresa May, an otherwise sensible girl. The presence of John Bolton alone should have sent the alarm bells ringing and with Trump at the helm of affairs, the horror of two reckless Napoleons, crude hardliners, veritable loose canons, should have reinforced caution. Russia is not the same as Iraq and incidents that could trigger skirmishes with a nuclear power need to be handled with utmost restraint. There is simply no guarantee that a missile will not go astray and land in a very wrong place. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is already in place in Syria and acceptable caution dictates that concerned paties should have waited for its findings. A report of culpability would have secured a reasonable mandate from the UN and then the missile strikes would have had a greater impact than the silly show of fireworks many people are now claiming it to be. With his tweets and loose tongue, Trump was always going to err on the side of impulse and Jeremy Corbyne was right in asking huge questions about British involvement in the strikes. Britain is a power on its own and doesn't have to be corralled into doing whatever the US does
 No power is as effective as one that is cautious, reasonable and based on facts. Corbyne has a point and he would have a huge ammunition indeed if it turns out that the OPCW team finds out that that the allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Douma might have been more complex than thought. The UN was established to handle situations like this and its chief was right to remind the allies of their obligations to the UN charter. The Syrian civil war is indeed a very, very complex conflict and truths emanating from such spheres need to be handled carefully, intractabilities Trump was inclined to simplify. Simplicities made worse by preemptive accusations of Russia tampering with the attack site
 The OPCW is a well-resourced technical organization and it should not be difficult for it to ascertain a chemical weapon was used in a place, even a year ago. The next few days should be revealing indeed.

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.