The Fruits of Appeasement.
That word again
In the book, The Man in the Ice, about the discovery of Ötzi, the 5,300 year old Chalcolithic hunter frozen in a Tyrolean glacier [1], the author describes another archaeological site containing numerous skeletons of different ages which are now believed to be the remains of a prehistoric massacre. Ötzi himself died with an arrowhead buried in his chest near his left scapula. Untreated, it would be a fatal injury.
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The central theme in the unholy union between narcissism and fascism is the human drive to dominate. Forget altruism, or the search for meaning, or pleasure or any of the other ideas that have been touted from time to time, all that counts in human affairs is domination. Domination over each other and over the total environment. In fact, it’s so basic to our existence that we built religions around it:
Gen. 1-26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Humans wrote this and take it literally because it’s what they want to hear, although it doesn’t mention “dominion over each other.” That is implied through all the stories of carnage in the Old Testament. There is hardly an aspect of our lives that isn’t in some way involved in or directed at elevating us over our peers. Perhaps singing under the shower isn’t about winning but politics, which is a bit more important, definitely is. All our lives, we have lived under the shadow of one titanic struggle for dominance or another. For 45 years until 1990, it was the Cold War where the forces of light and democracy stood eyeball to eyeball to resist the dark lords of the communist menace, although it wasn’t always clear who was the menace. Anyway, that fell apart but the space for Lords of Darkness was quickly occupied by Islamist terrorists, then it was China, no, Russia, and now back to China again. You have to hand it to Orwell, he really nailed the idea of perpetual war.
But now, still uncertain who this week’s enemies are, we have yet another convulsion on our hands. After $105billion and innumerable oaths of devoted support and standing ovations in Congress, the US, meaning Trump and his gang, has decided to ditch plucky Ukraine. Even NATO, that indispensable bastion, that bulwark and force of good in the world, may well be heading for the memory hole itself. Instead of the time-honoured ritual of all Western leaders swearing allegiance to the four-pointed star, Mr Trump is making noises like Europe may have to look after itself for a change. He feels they’ve had a free ride for the last 75 or so years but, as the US has more to worry about than shepherding a bunch of bleating Europeans, it’s about to come to an end.
As an aside, commentators constantly refer to Trump as “transactional.” This means he approaches every issue, big or small, from the point of view of a business transaction. For him, there are no issues such as “Who’s in the right?” or “What’s the moral move?” or even “You helped us before so of course we’ll help you now.” In the Trumpian world, it is only ever: “What’s in it for me?” It’s the politics of greed, selfishness and venality writ large. “So,” you ask, “what’s new? How is this different from the last hundred years?” Only this: now it’s right out in the open for all to see. No shame, no subterfuge, just “We set the rules and you swallow it.”
At first glance, this sudden change in policy is contradictory. The US pulls all the strings in NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, they dominate the dominators, so why would they walk away? And if they do, won’t that arch-villain, Putin the Terrible, let his blood-drenched legions swarm through to the Atlantic? Confusion reigns, much of it coming from the Orange Man himself who doesn’t know what he will say next until he says it, with the rest due to long overdue changes seizing the moment. But, the commentators are squealing, if the US abandons Ukraine in its righteous battle, isn’t that re-running appeasement? Aha, appeasement. It doesn’t take long for somebody to throw this particular red herring into the arena. What does the dictionary say?
Appease: vb, to placate or pacify somebody by acceding to their demands; to assuage or satisfy (a demand or a feeling).
Over the years, however, it has acquired a somewhat different meaning: to give in to a bully; to act weakly when firmness is required; to avoid conflict now but to set oneself up for a much bigger fight later. To appease is now seen as dishonourable, something to avoid at all costs. It goes back to the 1930s when, as we were all taught, every time Hitler made another demand, the Western powers, meaning France and UK, gave in. They “appeased” his demands in the hope that he would be satisfied and wouldn’t ask for more. It didn’t work, of course, and they would have been far better off to have resisted before Germany rearmed. Now we’re hearing the same thing, only this time it’s Trump giving in and appeasing Putin’s Russia: “Let them have Ukraine, then they’ll be happy and we won’t hear from them again.” At least, that’s the story. As part of the same story, we’re told that even though Russia’s economy is on the verge of collapse, it is at the same time one step away from invading Europe, so Poland, for one, needs nuclear weapons because the US is disengaging from NATO so it can focus on its existential enemy, China.
Rubbish. Rubbish from beginning to end. When Hitler occupied the Rhineland in 1936, French troops actually entered Germany and went several kms inland, with no resistance from the Wehrmacht because it was incapable of resisting. Then, like the Grand Old Duke of York, they turned and marched out again. Why? Because Britain and France were terrified that if they blocked the German move, Hitler would be gone by morning. He would be overthrown, the Bolsheviks would take power, they would ally themselves to the USSR and together subdue the intervening countries, move into the Middle East and then it would be goodnight John Bull, so long Froggies. It was the same with each move: Hitler got away with his audacious demands because the Western powers were too scared to say “Eff off Adolph.” Because they knew Hitler’s hold on power was tenuous, they deliberately allowed the Nazis to pull off their remarkable coups. They didn’t like Hitler, they thought he was an upstart but, given their hatred and loathing for Bolshevism – and Russians – knew no bounds, the choice between the Nazis and the Communists was a no-brainer.
That was the entire basis of the 1930s “policy” of appeasement. What’s going on in Ukraine and Europe today has nothing to do with that. Ukraine is/was being used to weaken and destabilise Russia, because, as Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf, that has been the West’s goal since Lebensraum. Once weakened, the collective West hoped that Putin would be toppled, the republics would declare independence in a reprise of 1991’s collapse of the USSR, and the West could move in and start looting the place. It hasn’t happened. Putin is much smarter and plays a long game. Trump, who has zero capacity to think long term and never makes plans, reflexively rejected Biden’s support for the war, looked at the balance sheet and said “We’re outa here.” For a few weeks, the NSA/CIA complex tempted him with stories of Ukraine’s fabulous mineral wealth which made Trump’s nose twitch, so he decided to make Kiev an offer they couldn’t refuse. However, just before his meeting with Zelensky on February 28th, somebody got to him and explained that Ukraine’s wealth is actually its black soil; most of its mineral wealth, such as it is, is located squarely in the Donbass; and hell will freeze over before Russia hands that back. That changed everything.
Because Trump knows he can’t fool Putin, they decided to pick a very public argument with Zelensky and turf him out. It was the classic schoolyard bully tactic. A little kid has something to sell. You say you’ll buy it from him. The kid’s really pleased but when he brings it around to your place, you’ve changed your mind so you pick an argument, blame the kid (“That’s not what you promised, that’s worthless, get out of here”) and you walk away. The opening question to Zelensky from the right wing reporter (“Why don’t you wear a suit to the White House?”) was a set up, to jangle him. Vance’s open aggression was planned beforehand, no Veep has ever spoken to a foreign head of state like that – well, since Spiro Anagnostopoulos. Rules for Veeps, No. 1: Veeps don’t speek. Read your job description: Sit in the corner and smile and nod when you’re told. That’s it. International relations reduced to the level of squabbling schoolboys.
As for NATO, Trump doesn’t like it, he never has. He doesn’t like Europeans, he especially doesn’t like being polite to them as he knows they despise him and laugh when he leaves the room. Above all, he hates the idea of somebody getting a free ride on his ticket. He sees helping them as a losing investment so this is his way of hitting back. International politics reduced to the level of spite. He isn’t scared of Russia because he knows they won’t cross the Atlantic (he probably doesn’t know about the Bering Strait) and he quite enjoys watching them pound the shit out of some of their neighbours. He’s more concerned with China as he doesn’t like Chinese and he knows they’re getting ready to knock the US of its perch as No. 1 in the world, which offends him mightily. He’s not an industrialist, he doesn’t think in terms of huge plants belching steam and smoke; not a miner so he doesn’t think in terms of holes in the ground; and he knows he can’t compete with their property developers so he wants to pull up the drawbridge on the Western Hemisphere, boot the Chinks out of Panama, knee the Mexicans in the cojones, scare the dumb Canucks into handing over the family silver and chase the Danes (the who?) from where they’ve got a toehold on what is clearly an American island. Then he can do a Napoleon and declare himself emperor, or at least the greatest since Washington. As he said to a gaggle of governors after his upside down Bible stunt in Lafayette Square:
You have to dominate, if you don't dominate you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you. You're going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.
That’s it, the entirety of his life in four sentences because for him, money means domination. Having heaps of money doesn’t mean intelligent or industrious or favoured by God, it just means you’re smart, you’re on top and everybody has to bow and scrape, or as Lou Reed sang:
Little Joe never once gave it away, Ev'rybody had to pay and pay.
A hustle here and a hustle there, New York city is no place where they said
“Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.”
That’s also a summary of US foreign policy for the last 249 years, make them pay. Domination means lots of money, and more money means more domination. However, there may well be a slight upheaval among the money lenders and money grabbers of the Western world as the startled Europeans suddenly get used to the idea that, quel horreur, they’re alone in the dark on the same continent as Vlad the Impaler. You’ve got to sympathise with them, here we have 600 million innocent and civilised people menaced by 145 million dark and vengeful Russians, and let’s not forget the money: at $20trillion, the EU GDP is barely ten times Russia’s muscular $2trillion. It’s just so unbalanced, they’ll have to call the referee to cancel the match.
Or perhaps the Europeans can appease the hordes from Eurasia, just give in, grant them suzerainty over their piddling patchwork of pipsqueak nations, just as they gave it to the US of A. As the Yanks stamp out in a huff, the Russians could slip into their seat while it’s still warm and start repressing. But wait, on reflection that’s not such a good idea. Why would the heirs of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky want to bother themselves trying to govern the fractious French, the perfidious English and hysterical Italians (I mean, they gave the world the concept of the prima donna), not to mention the morosely pedantic Germans and boringly virtuous Swedes? Who could govern the Europeans? They can’t even govern them f…g selves. You may not like Bro. Putin but you can’t wish that fate on him, he’s not a young man. No, I don’t think that’s going to work but there’s one other idea that hasn’t been tried. Not by anybody. Ever. Hang on to your hats, it’s this:
Europe and Russia will have to learn to get along like mature adults.
OK, I know that shocked you but look at it this way. When the US takes its 80,000 troops and 30,000 spies and agents provocateurs and all its nuclear armed bombers and ships and missiles and tanks and god only knows what, I’m sure they don’t even know themselves, and STOPS THREATENING RUSSIA, then maybe the Russians will relax and stop being so twitchy every time they hear a squeak or rattle from over their Western border. Is that possible? Remember, Russia/USSR was invaded five times in 38 years last century, and lost about 25million people during the Great Patriotic War, not to mention the devastation of their heartlands. If anybody, they are justified in being twitchy: if it had happened to us, we’d be twitchy too. I mean, look how twitchy the US got after just a few thousand people were blown away in Noo Yark.
So that’s it, that’s my suggestion. If the Great Dominator That Can Do No Wrong just pisses off back to where it came from, stops blowing up other people’s gas pipelines and stops threatening everybody so they can get on with their business, maybe, just maybe, they’ll do just that: mind their own business. Now somebody is sure to say “You’ve got America wrong, we/they are a force for good, for apple pie, motherhood, Church and boy scouts, a force opposed to evil, cross-dressing and masturbation.” True, they believe that, it’s exactly what the dim-witted GW Bush said after the World Trade Centre attacks:
How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it because I know how good we are.
Breathtaking, isn’t it. This is the same bloke who had 850 heavily armed military bases around the world arranged to point directly at the hearts of his appointed enemies. This is the country that has issued 100,000 sanctions and counting (which are actually acts of war), blocks trade, invades countries willy-nilly, threatens allies, steals and plunders, interferes mercilessly in elections everywhere, spies, mounts coups, trains sadists at the School of the Americas, murders generals and its own citizens, tortures uncharged prisoners, actively facilitates and encourages genocide in Gaza, on and on, and he can’t see that other people are not comfortable with that? Really?
The US is simply incapable of seeing that other people see them as aggressive. They believe, as the idiot Bush said, that they are pure to their core and therefore unable to do bad things. They believe every right thinking person in the world will see it their way and anybody who doesn’t (like 75% of the world) must be evil by nature and therefore, according to God’s message hand-delivered to the US by the unspeakable charlatan Paula White (this one subtitled by Mrs Betty Bowers, must watch), must be invaded, strangled, sanctioned, tariffed (it’s not a verb) or surrounded by nuclear weapons and squeezed until their pips squeak. Even George Bush, total fool that he is, should be able to see that if I point a loaded shotgun at my neighbour’s head as he walks around his garden, and he gets upset, I cannot argue that since my intentions are virtuous, he shouldn’t feel threatened but if he does, it’s because he’s opposing a virtuous act and is therefore evil and I need to shoot him. That’s the level of “reasoning” the US has imposed on the world for the past 80 years.
Anyway, back to Trump and Ukraine. Apart from wanting to make money, he has no idea what he’s doing. His only thoughts are: “Don’t gimme any of that saving democracy or freedom or human rights or decency or Christian way of life shit, just show me your money and we’ll talk business.” Like Little Joe working the streets of Brooklyn, he’s a hustler, that’s what he is, right to the blackened core of his withered soul. In fact, he doesn’t have a soul, he has a cash register because, for him, having more money proves he’s better. It’s all about domination but, unlike Biden and the Clintons and Bushes and Obama and all the rest, he doesn’t think in terms of ships and bombers and servile dictators, he thinks, lives, breathes, talks, eats and shits cash. He doesn’t have any other values or sentiments or beliefs, just “How much can I rip off these bastards?”
In that, he is no different from any other US president (see Marine Gen. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket), the only difference is that he’s a dim-witted, uneducated petty gangster from Queens who doesn’t know better than serving KFC in the White House, so he says these things out loud, in public, and repeats them. To a man and a woman, the American establishment despise him. They didn’t take him seriously and now what’s happened? He’s got his stubby fingers in their guts and he’s pulling bits out and chucking them around. He can’t find a way of doing that to Europe and he’s not interested, so he’ll pick an argument and walk away.
The single difference between Trump and all other presidents is that they kept quiet about their larceny while his is openly for sale. What’s the difference between Trump abandoning Ukraine and the US and UK overthrowing the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953? In reality, there’s none, the only difference is the theatre. In ’53, they trumpeted “We’re saving Iran from godless communism” when what they meant was “It’s our oil under your sand so hand it over.” In Ukraine, it’s “Hand over your wealth or we’ll let Vladimir the Horrible through the gate.”
Trump doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine, he still doesn’t know where it is. If he walks away from it and dumps NATO, maybe that’s the best thing that could ever happen to that benighted continent. They would have to grow up, learn to cooperate and live peaceably. Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals without everybody trying to dominate and murder each other? Instead of spending nearly €1trillion rearming, could they try being respectful toward each other? They’ve never tried it so it may just work.
After at least 5,300 years of slaughter and mayhem, what a total revolution that would be. Is it asking too much?
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1. Spindler K (1994). The Man in the Ice. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
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FYI, here is a short list of words banned or otherwise erased by the Trump administration.
https://dianeravitch.net/2025/03/08/trumps-list-of-banned-words-its-worse-than-you-thought/
It is rumoured that these and other orders are to be printed in a Little Orange Book that all government employees and contractors, all students and educational staff, all prisoners and anybody who wants either to prove devotion to the president or a quiet life will be obliged to buy for one Trump Crypto coin (currently $27.00 although the price is expected to rise abruptly with demand) and carry at all times, including to the obligatory “self-improvement by ritual confession” sessions, in order to wave them to each other in salute or donate them to beggars, while the much larger hardback version can be used to hit homeless people on the head.
It should be noted that while male and men are approved words, all references to women, females and pregnant persons or people are non-words, the purpose being to help everybody forget that those Homo sapiens equipped for child-bearing have ever existed.
For anybody who asks, this list was compiled by the president himself. Comments to the effect that it greatly exceeds his known vocabulary will result in interminable legal action for defamation or an order to attend the White House for a KFC dinner.