‘Every time the sun comes up, I’m in trouble,’ sings Sharon Van Etten. After a pair of missiles struck Poland yesterday, killing two innocent human beings and making the Poles request a NATO article 4 consultative meeting, I can’t seem to shake that sentence.
In trouble, huh? Yes. Trouble, around the clock and lots of it. The Brits, in a rather German attempt at capturing everything under the sun in one word, have invented the term “permacrisis” to describe what they’re going through. In Florida, humourless fascist clown Trump has just announced his renewed bid for the presidency. Germany under Scholz has abdicated from any semblance of international responsibility, even respectability. French president Macron can’t open his mouth without reassuring the world he still believes in a negotiated end to the war. The G20 summit in Bali, now on its final day, have meant nothing and will lead nowhere. Simply put, the West is the weakest we have seen it for many generations.
The massive Russian air strikes against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine yesterday (October 15) were the worst since the outbreak of the full-scale war in February. Even US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken managed to sound somewhat upset in his comments. But comment, it seems, is all we will get. Again.
With much-needed luck of timing after some messy coalition negotiations during the better part of autumn, the new Swedish PM Ulf Kristersson was able to announce – on the morning after the massive Russian terror bombings – our biggest package of arms support for Ukraine to date. The Ukrainians will get the kind of air defense systems they have been asking us for, whatever that might be: out of security concerns the information was short of any real specifics.
Unfortunately, Kristersson is a man infamous for not honouring his word. (A few years ago, he swore to a Holocaust survivor he’d never collaborate with the Putinist-populist Sweden Democrats. Only last week, his government’s first budget, dependent on support from that very party, was a long list of stuff that broke his voters’ hearts, as well as most of his promises made on the campaign trail.) For all his outrage during summer about Sweden not delivering Archer artillery systems to Ukraine, then, we shouldn’t be all that shocked by his announcement today that … No, chaps, terribly sorry. Not for the foreseeable future, no. Next question?
President Biden, still in Bali for the G20 charade, was quick to say that the missiles against Poland had, in all likelihood, not been fired by the Russians. Very quick indeed. The man could have just kept silent, you know. He could have kept the Russians sweating for a day or two. Subjected to uncertainty like that, living through increasingly panicked hours like that, unstable regimes like the one in the Kremlin have a certain tendency to collapse. No such luck, of course. As long as Jake Sullivan remains National Security Advisor we shall have to make do with this administrations’s historically unique – and extremely un-american – combination of weakness and stupidity.
I swear to God, every time the sun comes up, the Russians laugh at us.