
America was not discovered by a Genoese adventurer in 1492. Even the most unenlightened American would struggle to make that mistake now that the very word “Columbus” has transitioned into a verb — meaning to claim something that existed way before you noticed it. Nor was America Columbused by Leif the Lucky, the Viking explorer thought to have stumbled upon the landmass 500 or so years before any other European on an excursion from his Greenland home.
No, the first — and only — humans ever to have discovered America were Russians. They did it 14,000 or so years ago, back in the late Pleistocene, following migrating herds of edible fauna across the landbridge that then connected the easternmost tip of Siberia and the westernmost point of North America. Here were monsters: dire wolves, short-faced bears, sabre-toothed tigers. But there were also huge creatures of abundant dumbness and blubber. It was an Eden of unimaginable plenty. And as with space, the Russians crossed the frontier first.
Now, I realise it is a stretch to call these pioneering Paleo-Siberians “Russian” — existing as they did thousands of years before the idea of the nation state even existed. Still, as a foundation story, this tar-deep history at least lends some much-needed grandeur to the emerging ambition of Tsar Donald’s second reign — Make America Russian Again. How else to read the world’s richest and most powerful nation’s craven subordination to Vladimir Putin and its abandonment of America’s Ukrainian and European allies? The charitable interpretation is that Trump and the boy Vance are avenging the genocide that the native Americans, the descendants of those Siberian wanderers, experienced at the hands of the post-1492 Europeans. Now, they are pivoting back to their true mother country. And if they can grab back Greenland too, well, screw you Vikings — not feeling so lucky now, are you?
As silly as all this may seem, it’s hardly less implausible than the current working scenario, recently outlined by Britain’s former defence secretary Ben Wallace. In this reading, Trump and Vance are “clueless” dupes — victims of Russian propaganda, wilfully naive. They have spent so much time in their MAGA feedback loop that they have come to believe every piece of post-truth fanned their way by Putin’s disinformation machine. Democratic ideals don’t matter; the sovereignty of random backwaters like Ukraine doesn’t matter. The rule of law, the free press, free trade, freedom of speech: all this is so much wokery. All that matters is money and power and the preservation of Trump’s ego as the world’s biggest bully, its Nelson Muntz, haha.
And if you find it hard to believe that the World’s Greatest Democracy could elect a leader that dumb — well the only remaining alternative is that Trump is doing all of this on purpose. He has seen what Putin has achieved in Russia and he wants the same for America — or rather, for himself. Since like a Tsar, Trump is the state, and the richer, the more powerful, the more famous he is, the better for everyone but especially him. Putin has not achieved personal hegemony by strengthening civil society, creating a well-functioning state or improving the lives of ordinary Russians. Instead, he has run Russia like a mafia boss, terrorising his neighbours, destroying his enemies, demoralising his opponents, distorting truths, and basically murdering dissent via conscription — so that the only person anyone has to turn to is him.
Hence, Trump employing his pet oligarch Elon Musk as chief saboteur. The mission of DOGE is, of course, not to make government efficient — remember, we now live in opposite-land, nothing is true and everything is possible. It is rather to get rid of the competent people, the useful programmes, the necessary functions. As the historian of Ukraine Timothy Snyder has argued, a weak state is easier to manipulate. This, Snyder says, is Trump First, a policy of “deliberate weakness” which ultimately puts Musk and Trump’s emotions over the lives of normal Americans.
The great intellectuals of the MAGA movement usually cite Viktor Orbán’s Hungary as a vision of how to dismantle a democracy. But Orbán, naturally, learned most of his antidemocratic tricks from Putin. As with Sputnik, Russia got there first. Chaos, in short, is the point. “For which Russian does not love to drive fast?” wrote Nikolai Gogol in the celebrated conclusion of Dead Souls. “Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head, and to let them go, and to cry, ‘To the Devil with the world!’?”
And here is a point that us cosseted and complacent Westerners often fail to grasp. Russia is habitually portrayed as a backwards country, a place that has somehow failed to meet the demands of modernity. That, indeed, is the reality for millions of ordinary Russians, living in “monotowns” such as Ulan-Ude or Krasnoyarsk, at the mercy of malfunctioning infrastructure, arbitrary police power, local corruption, and a lack of viable futures other than enlisting. Much of Dead Souls is taken up with complaints about terrible roads and weird innkeepers and paralytic peasants. But a land so vast, so unruly, also makes an amazing laboratory for the future — the future never arriving all at once, but sporadically, in jolts and leaps. Russia was and remains the most avant garde place on earth.
Certainly, the 20th century was far more Russian in character than American — a point lost amid the Western triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War. Almost all of the West’s artistic leaps (African-American music aside) last century were initially taken by Russians: Stravinsky and Diaghilev’s Rite of Spring; Malevich’s Black Square; Stanislavsky’s productions of Chekhov for the Moscow Arts Theatre. The early Soviet filmmakers Eisenstein and Vertov revolutionised cinema. There has arguably never been a greater concentration of literary talent than the Russian “Silver Age” poets: Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Blok, Mandelstam. The Formalist literary critics — people like Shklovsky and Jakobson — pre-empted the French post-structuralists by decades with their concepts of “defamiliarisation” and “laying bare the device”. Revealing how truth and meaning are constructed, it is little wonder that the worst Soviet artists could be accused of was “formalism”.
But these were just the artistic pioneers. The 1917 Revolutions unleashed the most avant-garde experiments in nationhood ever undertaken. “The streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes,” wrote Mayakovsky in “150,000,000”, his revolutionary poem. The Soviet Union’s rapid industrialisation and collectivisation would be — at the cost of unimaginable human suffering — an inspiration to Chinese communists and Western democrats alike. Free healthcare, social housing, and the advancement of women would soon be offered to Western voters as sweeteners for not turning fully Red. The Russians were also, naturally, the first people to put a dog and then a man and then a woman into orbit. Indeed, the three signature obsessions of contemporary Silicon Valley — colonising space; living forever; and artificial general intelligence — were all core precepts of Cosmism, the quasi-spiritual scientific movement that influenced the Soviet space programme. The Soviet elites were no less obsessed with gerontology than Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos. They too dreamed of capturing Mars. Yet if “New Planet”, a 1921 painting by Konstantin Yuon is anything to go by, the Russians would have done so with a lot more style.
The conventional understanding is that all this breakneck pioneering came to a horrible halt with the fall of the Soviet regime in 1989. In reality, though, the ensuing chaos laid the conditions for a new experiment in capitalist authoritarianism of which Donald Trump is now the shining exemplar. This was where neoliberalism economics were pushed to their limits, oligarchs seized state assets, inequality and insecurity flourished, millions died from deaths of despair — and a vengeful strongman eventually emerged as the only person who could be trusted to keep things vaguely together. And, indeed, for all his disinformation experiments and his non-linear wars, Putin has brought a sheen of modernity to Russia. Hence, a dupe like Tucker Carlson can visit Moscow in a strange 21st-century echo of the visits that Western socialists once made to Soviet Potemkin villages — and be absolutely gobsmacked that there are Metro stations and supermarkets and iPhones and tasting menus.
Of course, for most of recent history, the idea that an American leader might envy his Russian counterpart would be absolutely absurd. Russia and America may both be continent-spanning nations with abundant natural resources and deep histories of slavery — but they have long endured like Cain and Abel, as the cursed and blessed sons. America has the dual aspect oceans, the navigable rivers, the benign climate, the easy-going neighbours, the abundant resources. It is playing Civilisation on chieftain mode — to use an analogy from one of Musk’s favourite video games. Russian leaders, meanwhile, are stuck on deity mode, the hardest setting. Russia has trouble on every frontier; it has vast flatlands that make it easy to invade; it has huge tracts of uninhabitable permafrost; and it is shut out of the Atlantic — hence the obsession with Crimea as a window onto the Mediterranean. Russia’s citizens look upon America’s law courts, its civil society, its businesses, its opportunities, its lavishly funded universities, its blue jeans and rock’n’roll — and sigh.
But the politics of envy cuts both ways. There is the more straightforward envy that the have-nots hold towards the haves, for their ease and security and luxuries. A far less examined but more potent political force is increasingly the envy of the haves towards the have-nots: for their perceived virtues, for the poetry in their souls, for their resilience and stubbornness. One of the strangest aspects of modern America is that no class seems quite so consumed with envy as the billionaires who now crowd around Trump, who have benefitted from the easy-setting US economy only to find that their billions do not, after all, purchase them the unbending admiration of the masses, nor the power they desire, nor the immortality they crave. I doubt very much that the average resident of Columbus, Ohio or Gary, Indiana would find much to relish about life in Tomsk or Nizhny-Novgorod. But it’s not hard to see why an American would-be autocrat would look to an actual Russian autocrat and think: damn. Look at his weapons. Look at his gold. Look at the fear he inspires.
Russians have their pride too. Just as Americans tend to see their country, albeit without much evidence, as some uniquely free place, so Russians often cherish an image of themselves as a uniquely spiritual people — the tough ones, the hard ones, the ones who can withstand suffering. The ones who, unlike Americans, are never protected from the consequences of their actions and are a good deal less naive as a result.
Gogol saw far enough into the future to perceive an age in which his backwards nation had finally taken the lead. “Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me!” he wrote at the end of Dead Souls, picturing his homeland as an out-of-control troika, rushing headlong into the snow. “But no answer comes. Rent into a thousand shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give you way!” Whether the rest of American society will stand aside quite so obligingly as Trump and Vance, we shall see.
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SubscribeCome back Terry Eagleton, all is forgiven!
Seriously, we’ve had Trump the new Hitler, Trump the would-be Tsar, there’ll be some hack on here next claiming he secretly wants to be the Khan of Khans, and ravage all of Asia.
Trump’s immensely wealthy, has a big healthy (&wealthy) family who don’t have to sneak around Europe pretending they’re not related to him, is the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on Earth, and doesn’t have to fear that his security services or friends might one day do him in. Do you really, really think he envies Putin? And what’s with that ghastly picture?
I don’t agree with everything Trump thinks or does, but if he’s not hell-bent on pointlessly antagonising Russia, might it in fact be because he’s figured that if there are three major military powers in the world, it’s better not to be one vs two?
“He secretly fancies Putin.. he secretly wants to be Putin.. Putin has naughty pictures of Trump and owns him.” This juvenile nonsense is just a left-wing version of the swivel-eyed junk about Democrats killing babies in pizza parlors.
The author has spent too much time taking in Banksy and thought it was the meaning of life.
How can anyone know Trump’s mind and heart? Is the President neurodiverse in some way as yet undetermined?
Someone will just have to write a mocking version of Kipling’s Tommy. It’s Putin this and it’s Putin that, and Putin, ‘ows yer soul?; but it’s better rearm, me boys, when the tanks begin to roll.
I grieve that I can only give your comment one up vote.
This man who wrote this article is perhaps on stage 2 (anger) of the stages of grief. Yet he still has a lot of the stage 1 (denial) in him. Partly I think these people also write what they think will make their friends like them. Well, not so much friends, but people they admire, and might see at parties or events.
Facts are stubborn things, and eventually delusion hits reality, and some people never learn to accept it. The UK used to be a great world power, this is true. It bought into this weasel version of information control, and America’s “special partner” in the unipolar superpower thing, and now that this has ended, and America is pulling back to survive and go into the future, the hollowed out, declining, hates-its-own-citizens UK has to deal with the fact that it sold it’s own soul for what is now an outdated vision and values.
Everyone tends to think that the world will just go on just as it has been, and when things change, they don’t know what to do. Young people are often the most resilient and set to benefit from it or even to direct it. Which is one reason Trump won so big and is so popular with the 18-30 year old voters.
Well, mostly true except that Trump DOES have to worry about his security services doing him in.
Stopped reading after five paragraphs. From the picture, to the off the wall introduction, to the start of the actual article proper, I find everything about this piece abhorrent.
The author is as ignorant as he is hysterical. Really dreadful stuff.
What a phantasmagorical ugly rant! UH- you can do better than such badly written, mean- minded jabber.
Precisely, thank you for saving me the effort.
An interesting way of looking at Trump’s ambitions and motivations, though not really convincing.
But hard to see how someone can seriously write this:
“Certainly, the 20th century was far more Russian in character than American”.
The stench of Marxism is impossible to remove,
Impressively written fiction article. When you start merging the theoretical into the actual you get false reality.
Imagine if you put your talents into a less Socialist more scientific mode of writing. There are all kinds of great facts here made trivial by lazy analysis and political intent.
This one was way over the top. Like McSweeney’s-level satire meets the tone on Salon circa 2012. As you point out, he totally ruined the parts that could’ve worked by presuming to peer into Trump’s psyche. And in what world was the 20th century more Russian than American? Behind the Iron Curtain maybe.
When did Unherd start doing satire?
*unfunny satire
What an absolute embarrassment for UnHerd.
I think it reflects well on them that they publish such a wide range of stuff
Well, frankly, I could do with a little bit narrower range.
Or, better even, it would be good to read a wide range of intelligent and fact-based stuff.
If these accusations are true, why is Trump is unique among western politicians? The democratic party or the EU don’t offer a credible alternative. Considering their censorship, propoganda, credentialism, group think, and bureaucracy, these parties borrow the worst aspects of Russian authoritarianism.
Trump may be bad, he could be awful. But his critics stupidly assume his opponents are any better.
The TDS shines strong in Richard Godwin. But the joke is on him. Trump is far from dumb. In fact one underestimates him at one’s peril which is why he won the biggest comeback in electoral history. He is also popular in the US and right now is doing an excellent job. Trump doesn’t want to be a Tsar. What is the author talking about. My recommendation to Richard Godwin. Get a life, get out of your parents basement and do something useful ratgher than write complete drivel.
Sigh..
The headline was enough for me to skip this article and go to the comment section. The headline was classic TDS.
This was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. No where in that rambling nonsensical response was there anything even close to approaching a rational thought. Everyone in the room is now dumber for having heard you say that. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
This article is unworthy of UnHerd. It doesn’t even work as comedy.
This article spreads stupidity like some sort of childhood measles. Godwin’s anthropological illiteracy is only matched by his historical illiteracy. Which is only surpassed by his reactionary world view.
This article is delightfully written. I can’t tell if Godwin actually believes that Trump and Vance might really be controlled by Putin though. It’s such a tedious delusion.
It’s actually the Mysterons. They’ve put a hex on Captain Orange.
We know you can hear us Earthmen..
Are you sure it wasn’t The MEKON?
In her diaries Frances Burney recorded a conversation between a Russian officer and some young female acquaintances of hers in the late 18th century.
The Russian, aware of how much his country was misunderstood, teased the girls. He asked them which country he came from. “You are a French man”, one girl replied, sniffily. “Why do you say that”, the officer asked. “Because of those tassels on your sword”, came the reply.
Explaining that all officers wore such things, the Russian said, mockingly, but of course in Russia we all sit on ice and eat bark, as you know. Seeing that she was being made fun of, the girl sought refuge in Frances’ company.
What a idiotic article, stop reading after few minutes.
UnHerd, you can do better.. I cringed at the article’s name but decided to give it a shot… No. That was exactly as expected .. sigh
Is there a contest to see who can the most insane bit of TDS-addled drivel? Because this a contender, from the shopworn talking points of Trump as dictator to the Russia bit. Remind me again – who was trying to jail political opponents? Who was hostile to free speech? Who was openly contemptuous toward half the country? Because Trump is not the answer to any of those questions.
Personally, I regret the passing of the Aztec and Inca civilisations. It would have been fascinating to visit these as tourists to see what human beings could achieve as the summit of a stone age civilisation.
This article needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt but has an interesting take on Russian history nevertheless (the America/Russia current ‘politics’ stuff is bogus and to be ignored) But…. Ever since 1917 – and despite the huge artistic and ethnic links between our cultures – Western establishments have got into a pathological fix on Russia which they didn’t seem able to rid themselves of. Meanwhile Russia’s huge contribution to European culture just gets airbrushed out….Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Solzhenitsyn……etc. Where else on the planet is there a culture with such links to our own.
I think that much of Russian behavior historically can be viewed as a kind of sulk at being rejected by the West. In the 19th c. Russia wanted desperately to be part of the European fold. And again in 1990 there was a great opportunity to embrace Russia; which opportunity was foolishly wasted (especially by the Americans and Brits). Russia’s geopolitical perspective (and every country has one of those) was casually trampled on. The naive thinking went something like this: either you instantly re-invent yourselves as a full-on liberal democracy from day one or you go straight back to the world’s naughty corner as enemy number one.
“Vladimir Putin may be a paranoid autocrat but when he talks about people in the West who want to “destroy [its]traditional values and impose their pseudo-values… which would corrode [it] from within” you surely have to ask yourself if does have a point?” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
This comment is at least fair. As analysis of Trumpism, the article is rubbish. This sentence made me wince: “The rule of law, the free press, free trade, freedom of speech: all this is so much wokery.” (Okay, I get the point—Trump sees established “norms” as flimsy—but is MAGA, in fighting our Washington establishment, really somehow undoing “the rule of law, the free press,” etc.? Has Godwin maybe been in a coma since Obama 2? Is that it?)
Yet his analysis of the dynamic between Russia and the West is sharp. He gets at key elements, then you fill out some of what’s missing.
It’s a wonder the havoc TDS can wreak on otherwise subtle minds, no?
Get well soon, Richard. You’re better than this.
I nominate Richard Godwin for the Nebbish Intelligentsia of the Year Award—where deep thoughts meet shallow understanding!
I don’t really know where to begin with this one…
I suppose the juxtaposition of ideas and systems has always been a big deal between Russian and the West
When Russia had absolute monarchy, the West had constitutional monarchy (or democracy in the rare case of the USA). Russia was viewed as a bumpkin backwater with a high birthrate which alarmed all of its neighbours to Russia’s sheer dumb military potential.
Then there was world war 1, a war that ended empires, and a catalyst to Russia’s very own revolution. While others fell into smaller chunks, the freshly minted Soviet Union somehow rearranged itself into an even bigger landmass with more people – go figure. In the next 7 decades it did things that ranged from amazing to awful, and some were simply just odd. It was a menace, an ally, a trade partner, and an enemy to the West.
It was scary and other and mysterious.
Then it fell. And it pivoted. It knew that it fell because it was so very, very wrong about society and economics. It flew straight into the thing that won – good old capitalism as modelled by its enemy of yore – the West.
Except this was the end of history, wasn’t it? There was no more dichotomy, no more juxtaposition. It was just one big capitalist world. And Russia was struggling, because all of this was new. Private property – that was new, profit – new, import stuff – new, enterprise – that was new too, everything was new and nothing was the same. But it really didn’t want to fall again – that’s important. So it stuck with capitalism and it discovered that capitalism works. Unlike what some misguided western people believed capitalism didn’t magically and automatically result in democracy. So Russia kept being whatever it always was, as it tried and reached for capitalist splendor.
What it never thought it would see though is the ideas that finished the Soviet Union off being paraded as something new and good by the West, yes, the same West that once stood as the big and powerful deterrent to communist expansion. That same West was parroting words that were proven to lead to destruction and bankruptcy. And it was doing so with no regard to history or to lessons that have already been learnt by the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. Because of course it was disregarded the same way it always had been in the past – as inferior and stupid.
If the Soviet Union fell due to mishandling the economy and had shortages and low productivity and DEI and government supplied housing (of which there was always a shortage) and waitlists in hospitals and clunky public transportation and huge governmental bloat, overregulation, and it sent financial support to a bunch of foreign countries so they would fight to establish their own communist havens… Well, that was because it was the inferior and stupid Soviet Union.
If we do the same in Europe and the US we will, in fact, succeed, as we have always done and always shall, because we are morally and economically superior to Russia.
Fast forward 30 years, Moscow is far from a Potemkin village – 10% of Russia lives here, it’s big, it’s functional, it’s growing. Its free clinics have more diagnostic equipment than the NHS, they also don’t have waitlists or any barriers to getting an appointment – it’s simply done through an app. The metro is expanding at an unprecedented rate, the new train cars have Aircon and usb charging. Each district has free activities for pensioners engaging them in dancing, languages, martial arts, ikebana, drawing, knitting and all sorts of other hobbies. No one freezes in their flats because they can’t afford heating. If you call the cops, the fire dept, or the medical emergency department, at most you would have to wait for 10 minutes, usually they arrive much faster. All of this is live and working and expanding and updating at a time of war with no sizeable growing budget deficit. I remind you – Russia is a tiny economy compared to the US and EU, miniscule, negligible.
Is Trump a Putin bootlicker or is he looking at this huge unwieldy universally cancelled famously corrupt country with lower taxation, a much smaller economy, and paradoxically revived and well run public services, and simply wondering where has all of US hard earned cash gone?
Why aren’t we all wondering the same about ours?
An extremely interesting comment! Might have got more readers if not started with “I don’t really know where to begin”. I don’t have as much experience with Russians as I’d like to, but for example several colleages spent a few weeks in Moscow back in 2018 and were very impressed inline with what you say.
Absolute tripe
Hope I’m not related to the author.
Orban fought Communism under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
Despite the fact that democracy is a system of temporary autocracy rather than a full blown permanent autocracy then the attempt to caricature Trump as a wanna be Tsar is temporarily correct.
In fact in the UK we have Quango heads who are called Tsars so perhaps Britain is the intercontinental link after all.
Of course if we closely inspect the leader of the EU Commission, we actually have a more permanent Tsar since who the hell voted her in. So it seems the more eastwards we go towards Russia, leaders become more Tsar like.
That said, this article did peak my interest in Russia and why as a European outcast there isn’t more street protests invoking their inviolable rights as a discriminated nation. In other words, why aren’t Russians considered European like us.
Our dear Russians aren’t Asian by any stretch of the imagination except perhaps on the Eastern fringe including Mongolia since they indeed do look Asian. But when we think of Eurasia then our dear Russian friends are most surely European both in looks and culture.
So the only explanation for Russophobia is the internalised narratives of yore when they were the demonised Communists of the Cold War.
So can we please embrace Russia as a part of Europe and end this merry go round of fear.
An interesting take on Russia, and a totally demented take on Trump/Vance.
TL;DR: a particularly acute case of TDS.
Seriously, UnHerd, could you do a bit better than that?
First there was that article by Poppy S., rehashing the untrue accusations levelled at Trump and Musk.
Now you have published this errr… text.
I am very much in favour of reading different opinions, but please, please, please, make sure that they are intelligent and based on facts.
I stopped reading when I got to the ‘genocide’ perpetrated by Europeans against Native Americans. This author just throws it out there as an aside without any context or justification, just flippantly references it as if it were just as obvious as the sky is blue. That’s pretty much where this author lost any and all credibility with me. I suppose I should have been clued in when he thought ‘everyone’ knew that Columbus was a verb now.
Number one, there was no such thing as ‘genocide’ during the time period in which this occurred. I have no respect or time to waste on those who make moral judgements on history based upon moral concepts that flatly did not exist during the time in question in the minds of any of the people in question on either side. Such hubris as judging past acts through the lenses of current political and social values is an invention of 20th century intellectuals to promote their own political and quasi-religious worldviews, a topic with sufficient depth and scope I won’t go further into here. I find it to be a vulgar and offensive display of hubris perpetrated by modern man upon his ancestors, who genetically would be nearly indistinguishable from someone born yesterday.
Point number two, there was no organized purposeful action by any person or government that could be called genocide even by modern standards. What actually happened was the in 1492 for the islands visited by Columbus, and again in 1520 when Cortes conquered the Aztecs and established a European presence on the mainland was that diseases such as smallpox, long present in Europe but centuries absent in the New World, diseases that Europeans had developed natural immunity to, either through natural selection or from personally surviving the diseases themselves, as many did. Even smallpox and plague did not have a 100% fatality rate. They had a much higher fatality rate in natives that were exposed to them. These diseases are the primary cause of the population crash that followed the arrival of Europeans, not the Europeans themselves. What the Europeans did was occupy or re-occupy a continent that was at an earlier stage of civilization with less technology and a lower population density that was then depopulated by diseases that killed up to half of the already lower population of natives.
One of the common accusations of modern observers who make accusations of genocide is that Europeans spread smallpox purposefully by giving contaminated blankets to natives. Such accounts are questionable given how little was known about how diseases spread, but there is some evidence this did indeed occur some few times. However, there are similar accounts of people using similar tactics going back much further in history. People didn’t understand that diseases were usually caused by pathogens like viruses and bacteria, but they deduced that many were contagious despite not knowing the means, hence the existence of leper colonies. They also understood that some substances were poisonous despite not knowing why. Thus, there are accounts of biological and chemical warfare going back to Biblical times. The history of biological and chemical warfare is nearly as old as the history of warfare itself, actually, and was not considered to be a cruel or inhumane tactic. Humane wasn’t really a concept that man would have understood until the last couple of centuries. Attempts at biological and chemical warfare were uncommon because such attempts were rarely effective. Those people didn’t understand enough about biology to use these tactics effectively, so it was rather hit and miss as to what worked and what didn’t. The commonest reason to try such tactics was during a siege of a walled city, where the idea was to encircle a city, cut them off from supplies, and wait until hunger and thirst compel them to surrender, or until starvation weakens them sufficiently they can’t put up much of a fight. This was about as humane as chemical and biological warfare, and it was basically standard military practice for most of history. It was pretty cruel and pretty awful, and it never gets mentioned. Revisionist historians who moan about ‘genocide’ in previous eras never seem to notice all the acts of barbarism and cruelty practiced by blacks against other blacks, whites against other whites, or by any city, state, or tribe against a neighbor who would be physically indistinguishable from them, because it’s really about their politics in the present, not the history.
There are things that can be criticized legitimately in the dealings between Europeans and Native Americans, such as the numerous times the US government signed treaties with tribes and then broke them because they could, though that too has to be put in the context of what opposing nations did to each other. The US was not the first nation to break a treaty with a much weaker neighbor, and they would not be the last. I believe that’s happened at least twice in Europe over the past eleven years, once in 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea, and again in 2022 when they decided they wanted the rest of Ukraine also.
This is what the article is actually about. I take it this author is unhappy with Trump for trying to force Ukraine into making peace with Russia. I sympathize with his moral reasoning. Russia was the aggressor and Ukraine has suffered greatly as a result, far more than Russia has. At the same time, wars always have two sides, and for a war to end, both sides have to agree to stop fighting, or one side has to be utterly destroyed. Most of us would prefer the former to the latter, and making peace rather than fighting on often means making difficult choices about what we can accept and what we risk by continuing the fight. Moral absolutists who insist that Ukraine is the aggrieved party and no outcome other than Russia’s total defeat should be accepted or countenanced, because that would mean *gasp* the bad guy wins, will not be able to negotiate a peace treaty and frankly have no place in geopolitics. The reality is that wars are won and lost on the battlefield regardless of who was right and who was wrong. No warring party just gives away what they’ve already fought to get, so Russia will not give back the land they now occupy. Further, the strategic situation matters. Because Russia has greater resources and manpower, a war of attrition favors them. The longer the war goes on, the greater the possibility that Ukraine will suffer further losses up to and including a complete conquest, which Russia has already attempted and may attempt again. Thus any negotiated peace will likely require Ukraine to give up even more than they have already lost because the alternative, continuing the war, is favorable to their enemy. That’s the reality any serious military strategist understands, and it’s the reality Trump has to work with, and the bottom line is that reality reality can be a b***h.
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Brilliant piece, if only for getting all the unherd Trumpists in an uproar, there is no doubt that Trump/Vance are morally bankrupt dictator wannabes, supported by billionaire oligarchs, so yes there are many similarities to Putinism.
What a clever article! You’ve figured it out at last.
10 out of 10 for irony sir. Well done!