About 10 days ago, I posted here about John Mearsheimer hitting a foul ball on this issue.
Then, after Bagger Vance as Trump's flunky sandbagging Zelensky, I expanded that on Substack to at least seven sides, along with an extensive rewrite.
But, I missed an eighth side, and missed some things about the original seven that I put into comments to the piece. So, we'll further rectify that back here.
1. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ in the professional governmental and academic world, shading into neocons; almost all Democrats, and Never Trumper Republicans, fall here. So do the NAFO Nazis (sic) on Shitter and elsewhere.
2. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, et al, who probably still represents a plurality of Ukrainians vis a vis the shakedown, without a lot of concrete guarantees, being offered for peace. This of course does not excuse him not wanting a peace deal that would include letting go of the Donbas, without a Trumpian shakedown. (And, just because Boris Johnson allegedly sabotaged things in 2022 doesn’t mean that Zelensky would have gone along then, either. That said, he didn't actually sabotage them. We'll get there.)
3. Trump and his sheeple. (On Substack, I thought that would cut more than "MAGAts".)
4. John Mearsheimer-types who, while not Trumpian sheeple, have as their ultimate desire on this issue the desire of owning the neocons to the point that they can't condemn Trump. (A LOT of people on his Friday afternoon YouTube said, too bad he and Bagger Vance won't talk to Bibi that way. Mearsheimer wishes that were so, and the Trumpian sheeple do not. Link coming up below; his Feb. 27 Substack post, of discussion with Andrew Napolitano, pre-Trump/Zelensky clusterfuck, spills the beans enough.
That said, on March 7, he said he wants "Ukraine to get the best deal possible," about a minute into that short video. OTOH, he then quickly spoiled it again by saying that "Donald Trump wants peace. He wants to improve relations with the Russians and he wants to help create a security architecture in Europe so everybody can prosper and we don't have any more war."
No, he wants to create his own, transactionalist and grifting version of the American imperium. It's what he wants in Gaza, but Ukraine is too big for his direct control, unlike his dreams for Gaza.
Mondoweiss gets it totally right here, in talking about Trump and direct negotiations with Hamas, which have some in Israel worried.
Donald
Trump is very difficult to predict. His mercurial, transactional, and
self-centered approach to policy is often ill-defined and is subject to
change on a whim as he fancies himself more king than president.
Well put. If only Mearsheimer would put that on an equal footing with his desire to own the neocons.
Trump may not be a warmonger, in part because he's like the bully afraid of getting punched in the face. But, peacemonger?
The difference between Ukraine and Gaza is there's nothing to exploit in Gaza, other than Israeli tourists looking for beachfront sand in Trump's eyes.
4A. Simplicius, if he's not in Group 6. Per his piece after the dust-up, I was open to putting him there. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he, unlike the Dissident and people like me, ignores that Trump wants to establish an American imperium, just like the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™. It's a different one, and a nakedly transactional one, but it's still an American imperium.
That said, with this piece March 13 and this one March 11 about Trump's fake cease-fire plan, he has redeemed himself to a fair degree. But not totally. He still gets one skeptical eyeball from me.
5. Norman Finkelstein and types like him who think Putin’s invasion was “justified.”
6. Putin blank-checkers of various sorts. These are often Communists of some sort who, delusionally, think Putin is one. A subset is non-Communist anti-imperialists of the left, non-skeptical version, who can't condemn Russian and American imperialism both.
7. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté types. Grifters. They may have some sincerity of being in Group 6 as well, but still.
These two, 5 and 6, are in some degree triangulations on 4, but still separate.
8. People who read the likes of Ivan Katchanovski, and are well informed about Tsarist Russia, USSR and post-breakup history of Russia and Ukraine, but don’t fall into any of the above groups.
OK, now the hot takes.
The first group can shut the fuck up until admitting they’re Cold War 2.0 warmongers, with NATO expansion, etc. There's nothing further to be said to my typical audience.
The second group? Zelensky can semi-shut up, but still with fucks, until he can get non-US members of NATO, and the EU, to propose peace talks that accept some version of accepting reality on the ground. I covered this is much more detail in my "Zelensky as Churchill" piece.
The third group? Trump himself, Bagger Vance (Trump’s Dan Quayle, it appears more and more, see below), and Trump’s sheeple can definitely STFU, just as much as the Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™.
The fourth? Mearsheimer and any others in his orbit or line of thought? They can shut up for now, without fucks, until they, per the Dissident, accept that Trump is proposing his own form of American imperium. The more Mearsheimer cuts Trump blank checks by not calling him out, the further downward he goes in my estimation. (Trump’s sheeple already know this and are applauding.)
To put it as bluntly as hell for the Mearsheimer types? Trump’s proposal is about as trustworthy as his plan to “own Gaza” and rebuild it as “Tel Aviv South Beach.” The only difference here is that in this case, Trump is trying to rope the American government in as backstop. Mearsheimer can also STFU until he talks to some leftists of the world, not just the Napolitanos and the RT-paid talking heads like Glenn Diesen, even if Diesen reportedly opposed Putin's invasion. Has a, say, Counterpunch Radio asked to talk to you, John, and you said no?
Simplicius? Not in comments because he only lets subscribers comment, but in quote/restacks, I first politely, then moderately less politely, called him out. If he gets worse, he gets a STFU up too, and I suspect that, by not getting better, he'll get worse.
The fifth? Without mentioning Finkelstein by name, nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece rejecting the idea of “justified” war in Ukraine. (Per Walter Kaufman, and rejecting the idea of “justified” vs “unjustified” on many serious moral issues, I also reject the idea of it being “unjustified”; trying to call it either one, for any of groups 1-6, is bad framing.) On the likes of Finkelstein, another reason I don't use "justified" or "unjustified" about the Russia-Ukraine war is that risks falling into another version of twosider framing.
The sixth? I've not directly run into anybody, by full posts, on Substack. But, they're all over the place on Shitter.
The seventh? No, I don’t know if Max is getting paid in any way by Russia (or China); if he is, which is certainly possible and even plausible, it’s being laundered through sufficient third, fourth and fifth parties to disguise its origins. In addition, per Ken Silverstein, I just remember who Max’s dad is to think about the likelihood of his grifting. Also per Ken, I just think about Assad’s minders leading Aaron Maté around the nose several years ago. To the degree people like this are right, I don’t have to cite them as support. And won’t.
Let's not forget that, besides his long-ago RT work, RT was found to be laundering money to multiple conservative pundits last year. (That said, has there ever been a similar investigation related to Chinese $$, because I know Max is wrong on things like Xinjiang and plenty of good leftists have the goods on that? Folks, Max is full of shit on Xinjiang, on Danny Ortega in Nicaragua and more. And, I don't believe it's for entirely idealistic reasons. That said, beyond Max, many other alleged left-liberals and leftists, including Green Party thought leaders, are full of shit on Xinjiang; it's another argument in favor of the reality of horseshoe theory.)
The eighth? Maybe I’ll have further triangulation in the future, but that’s enough for now.
