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Entene Cordiale in the Balkans

It was on April 1, this year that Hungary and Serbia signed a military agreement. Hungary is a NATO member, Serbia is not. One might be tempted to think that once we have NATO in most of Europe, no other military alliance – agreement – cooperation outside NATO is possible. Lo and behold, it is. Why?

All uniting organizations – whether economic or military – sooner or later (rather sooner) begin to fall apart simply because the interests of the member states are discrepant and also simply because dominant states usually cannot restrain themselves from throwing their weight about, which naturally pushes the weaker players to look for ways out. Now Serbia is a kind of a political odd man out: it neither belongs to the European Union nor does it belong to the Atlantic military alliance. Worse, on March 18 this year in Tirana, Albania, Kosovo and Croatia signed a joint declaration of cooperation on defence, clearly a measure directed against Serbia. Hence, Belgrade needs partners. Hungary is a member of both the EU and NATO, but – as is well known – Hungary’s leadership is not compliant with the policies conducted by Brussels and was not compliant with those of Washington during the time of the Biden administration, reason enough for Budapest to feel insecure and to search for support outside the two mentioned international structures.

The military agreement between Belgrade and Budapest is open to other signatories. Since Brussels has already alienated a number of member states, they might consider joining the Serbia-Hungary bloc. Slovakia comes to mind as first. Its political leaders have repeatedly thrown the gauntlet down for the EU to take up when it comes to the latter’s belligerent policy towards Russia. That would create a vertical north-south axis, which might be further joined by Czechia and Austria if only anti-EU parties take the upper hand there, which is quite possible. We would land up with a military and political bloc uniting most members of the former Austria-Hungary (Habsburg) Dual Monarchy.

Since Serbia has good relations with China, Beijing might try to expand its influence in the Balkans and central Europe a bit further. China means not merely the Middle Kingdom, but also the BRICS countries (of which Russia is one of the more important member). Brussels’ insatiable drive for dominance and the resultant pressure that it keeps exerting on Serbia and Hungary might push those countries into the Chinese embrace. Was not Moscow pushed into the alliance with China by the collective West?

More pressure on the part of the EU on the countries of this region might translate in a loss of influence that Brussels still has here. One needs only to think about Romania and the EU’s unprecedented interference in the presidential election there. Given a victory in the May election of a candidate who is not particularly pro-European, and given the offence that the Romanian nation experienced at the hands of the EU autocrats, all scenarios are on the table.

The Western world pays little attention to such things as the agreement between Serbia and Hungary. They see through such tiny entities, and that’s where they are wrong. The collective West thought little of BRICS for that matter and today BRICS is emerging as quite a threat to both Brussels and Washington. So much so that the declaration on the defence cooperation signed between Belgrade and Hungary might also aim at involving in it Republika Srpska, an autonomous part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which territorially adjoins Serbia. Republika Srpska is a fully artificial political creation of the managers of the world: rather than allow Serbs to live together in one state, the managers of the world have created Serbia outside Serbia, and have subdued this “outer” Serbia to yet another artificial political creation that is known as Bosnia and Herzegovina. A typical tinderbox that only waits for someone playing with matches. Yet, as we have remarked again and again, politicians are not individuals who are conversant with even the recent past to draw lessons from. Thinking about the Balkans, about Serbia proper and outer Serbia, thinking about Bosnia and Herzegovina, they should recall Sarajevo. Not the Sarajevo that became notorious during the wars that were waged in the former Yugoslavia towards the end of the twentieth century, but about the Sarajevo from the beginning of the same century. It was in that city where Gavrilo Princip, a Serb, carried out his successful assassination of Archduke Ferdinand struck the spark that ignited the whole continent. The Austria-Hungary Dual Monarchy – the predecessor of the European Union (made up of Austrians (=Germans), Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, Croatians, Slovenians, Serbs, Poles and Ukrainians), after the initial military success suffered a debacle and disintegrated. It was virtually smashed to smithereens giving rise to a number of independent states which have existed ever since. Are we in for a historic repeat?

The difference between tariffs and sanctions is that there is no difference!

The whole world is talking about the many tariffs that President Donald Trump has imposed and is about to impose on various countries around the globe. That is by the way something that he promised he would do on several occasions before he was elected to the highest office in the United States. The leaders of different countries seem not to have believed a word from what President Donald Trump said he would do. They didn’t believe it because they themselves are in the habit of promising things and not delivering on them, not even thinking of delivering on them. This time they have been confronted with a politician who keeps his word, and that comes as a surprise.

President Donald Trump believes in the benefit of tariffs, that is to say he believes that restrictions on international trade, restrictions on the amount and number of goods imported to the United States are beneficial for American economy. Imposing tariffs he must have reckoned with retaliation, which, indeed, is being applied. In other words, President Donald Trump must also believe in the beneficial effects for American economy of the limited exports. To put it otherwise, President Donald Trump is well aware of the fact that his sanctions seal American economy off from the economies of other countries, and yet he also believes that it is good for the United States.

Since tariffs and the retaliatory measures limit or make impossible exports and imports, they are no different from… sanctions. Sanctions are sort of tariffs: a country that is at the receiving end of sanctions cannot export or import as much as it wishes. The result is the same, or is it? Now President Donald Trump may have believed in the beneficial effects of tariffs a long time ago, but it is also possible that he realized the beneficial effects of tariffs (or his long-standing belief was reinforced) as he observed what happened to the Russian Federation since sanctions were imposed on it. Russian economy not only did not collapse, but seems to have developed its potential.

Just as the Western economists have prophesied that the Russian Federation was just about to collapse due to the thousands of sanctions directed against its economy, so are they now prophesying that President Donald Trump has overreached his hand and rather than helping the United States is going to do it enormous harm. Time will show. Still, the similarity of the economic effect that tariffs and sanctions appear to have is striking. Two labels denoting two seemingly different economic policies and apparently the same result.

Then what’s so basically wrong with the tariffs which the American president is so enarmoured of? Does the European Union not separate itself from the rest of the world by means of tariffs? Does the EU not rely on tariffs to defend its economy against that of China? Why then are so many economists critical of America-imposed tariffs while they remain silent when it comes to the EU-imposed tariffs or – for that matter – sanctions?

It’s interesting to observe that all that glib talk about free trade, free market, free flow of capital, free flow of goods and services, all that glib talk is just another weapon in the arsenal of the powers that be. If they can turn free trade and free flow of goods and services to their advantage, then they are all in favour of it and they go to great lengths to impress it on others how beneficial it is for all players on the world’s stage. The moment, however, free trade and free flow of goods and services does not serve their purposes, they strike a different note. What yesterday was considered economically good, today is considered economically bad. Sure enough, an explanation or a string of explanations is offered and the consumers of information usually buy into such explanations.

Tariffs and sanctions are two sides of the same coin. President Donald Trump has effectively imposed sanctions in the European Union; conversely, one might say, the European Union has been imposing tariffs on the Russian Federation. The result? Russian economy has emerged victorious, and so will American economy emerge victorious. That’s at least the logic of this economic mechanism of separation or protection of one’s own market, of one’s own entrepreneurs and customers (economic protectionism). Economic protectionism is nothing new in the history of mankind. In point of fact, there were periods during which protectionism was the order of the day, and periods during which it was denounced, as the case may be.

Besides, the application of tariffs by the United States clearly shows that the country’s economy has long ceased to be dominant or else why would Washington use this means in the first place?

Lawfare against Le Pen

Marie Le Pen has been found guilty. Whether Marie Marie Le Pen is guilty of the charges or not is a different matter. ECB’s boss Christine Lagarde or EU’s CEO Ursula von der Leyen have also faced charges and weaseled out of responsibility with ease. The former has been “guilty of negligence but” the court “did not hand down any punishment” while the latter was not even forced to as much as resign from her post over the so called Pfizergate affair. Now Marie Le Pen has been indicted and sentenced. Altogether she must pay a financial fine and serve a suspended term in prison, which is compounded by the duty to wear a humiliating electronic bracelet. This is not all. Now comes the gist of the whole matter: Marie Le Pen has been banned from funning for political office. It is the 2027 presidential election that is on the radar of the French establishment.

With the presidential election cancelled in Romania, with the threats of delegalizing Germany’s AfD, with Brussels’ similar acts of interference in Italy and Austria, one cannot rid oneself of the impression that a certain pattern is in play. It appears, the EU commissioners overlooked the “threat” rising in Bucharest and then were forced to act in a panic mode by resorting to ridiculous pretexts on which the cancellation of the election was based, so now they decided to act preemptively in Paris. Why wait for Marie Le Pen’s victory? It is much more advisable to nip the problem in the bud. Since Marie Le Pen and her National Rally become more and more popular, they need to be stopped in the tracks. The make such a verdict justified to the public, the leftist media across Europe and in the United States reporting on the case and writing about Marie Le Pen and her National Rally are going to great lengths to impress the reader or the viewer with the term “far-right”: Marie Le Pen and her National Rally are far-right.

Everybody and any organization that does not comply with the party line of the Western self-styled elites is automatically called “far-right”, while the consumers of information circulated by the mass media have been trained for years to make a straightforward association between the term far-right and Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler’s henchmen, though waving red flags and professing their belief in socialism are somehow not referred to as left or – still better – far-left but right, far-right. Which is to say in other words that such “capitalists” and “financiers” as Hitler, Heß, Goebbels, Göring and Borman were far-right, you see?

What does this far-right mean? The association that is imposed on the consumers of information suggests nothing less than concentration camps and witch hunts. In reality, the National Rally wants to make France French again. The National Rally wants to stop immigration, make peace with Russia, put a ban on the propaganda of rainbow sexuality and a few other normal things, things that were regarded as pillars of society and culture twenty-thirty years ago. That’s what far-right stands for in reality. Since most people would like the same goals to be pursued, another association has been created by the powers that be: that of “nazis”. Somehow even this rabid propaganda against Marie Le Pen and the National Rally turned out to become less and less effective, hence the powers that be decided to resort to lawfare. Marie Le Pen had to be stopped from taking part in the 2027 presidential election by hook or by crook or else France might run the risk of having a female counterpart of President Donald Trump, which is unpalatable to the European elites in general and French elites in particular.

Doomed to make the same mistakes

Nations are in very many aspects just like individual people: some are stronger, some are weaker, some are capable of controlling others, and some are prone to falling prey to such control. Nations seem to be like individual people also in this respect that they appear never to learn from the past or that they appear never to draw inferences from the mistakes made by others.

Yes, stronger nations tend to control weaker nations. Still, just as it is among individual people, a weaker partner is not doomed to being controlled by a stronger partner. You become controlled mainly because you let yourself be controlled. Similarly, you become cheated because you let yourself be cheated. Within the European Union it is such small nations like Hungary and Slovakia that do not toe the EU party line. They are small, and yet they are following reason more than ideology. They are small, and yet they know how to defend their own interests. On the one hand we have much bigger countries and their leaders have brought them to utter ruin.

Look at Ukraine. It has let itself be used as a tool at the hands of the collective West. It has put all its trust in the seemingly all-powerful Western world and it has lost miserably. The best proof that Ukraine has been and continues to be the West’s instrument (against Russia) is the fact that whether the hostilities are prolonged or are about to be stopped depends entirely on either the United States or the European Union. The decision-making lies outside Kiev. The talks that are held at present over the war in Ukraine are the talks between Moscow and Washington, with Kiev acting as a supporting actor at best. The fact that Ukraine decided to wage war with Russia was in turn the result of the diktat on the part of the European Union, and the Biden administration. Now the United States wishes to end the war, the European Union wishes to continue the conflict till 2029. Ukraine appears to have absolutely no say. It has been serving two masters and now when these masters have divergent interests, Kiev is falling between two stools. The question is, could Ukraine’s leaders not have envisioned it long ago? Of course they could. A cursory knowledge of recent history of their own country would have been enough, let alone common sense.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War Ukraine was split between the Soviet Union (the greater part) and Poland (a much smaller part). Ukrainian chauvinism was particularly rampant in the Polish part because the Polish government was not so ruthless as its Soviet counterpart and because it is in the westernmost part of Ukraine where national sentiment is the strongest. This part was outside Russia the longest. Ukrainians let themselves be used and abused many times in their history, but we want to call the reader’s attention to the events occurring in the run-up to the Second World War, during the same war and in the wake of it. Strange that present-day Ukrainian leaders did not have a similar reflection, strange that they did not want to learn from the recent past of the nation.

Just as the tensions between the Third Reich and the Polish Republic grew in the 1930s, Ukrainian nationalists operating on Polish territory saw a ray of hope: they dreamed about Germany weakening Poland and helping them gain independence of Warsaw. Germany, sure enough, was more than willing to employ Ukrainian national sentiment and Ukrainian readiness to fight against the Poles. Germans launched a project of creating clandestine Ukrainian military units. It was planned that they would sabotage the Polish war effort once the hostilities between the Third Reich and the Polish Republic erupted. Then war broke out. Germany launched an all-out assault on Poland, which gave rise to the beginning of what later would be termed Second World War. The Polish state was swiftly subdued, the Polish government collapsed and fled abroad, while the armed forces were defeated and dispersed, with some of the soldiers and officers working their way to other countries, with some others of the soldiers and officers being taken prisoner of war, with still some others – going underground and continuing the fight. The campaign was so swift that the Ukrainian clandestine unit did not manage to participate in it, though there were some 400 instances of Ukrainian saboteurs thwarting the Polish war effort. With Poland defeated, one might think, the hour of Ukrainian independence or at least autonomy had eventually arrived. Alas!

It had been a few days prior to the outbreak of the hostilities that the Third Reich and the Soviet Union struck a deal (Ribbentrop-Molotov) partitioning Polish territory between the two aggressors. Neither of the signatories to this deal included in his plans Ukraine’s independence. The whole of Polish Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union and joined to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. That was not precisely what Ukrainian nationalists had hoped for.

Even if Germany had conquered the whole of Poland and had occupied all of its territory, would they have carved out a chunk of it and allowed Ukrainians to have an independent state? What kind of state would that have been? Landlocked, small, with few natural resources, wedged between mighty Germany and the mighty Soviet Union. This Ukrainian state would have had to act as dictated to by Berlin. Think for comparison about the then Slovakia, a country – a nation – that with the aid of the Third Reich gained independence from Czechia only to become fully dependent on Germany.

We don’t even need to think about what if Germany had conquered the whole of Poland because three years later as the Third Reich attacked the Soviet Union all prewar Polish territory was occupied by Germany. Did Berlin think about creating a Ukrainian state, even one with limited autonomy? Hell, no! A part of Western Ukraine was joined by the German authorities to the General Government (German: Generalgouvernement), which was the administrative region under German rule recognized by Berlin as (occupied) “Poland”. So, territories around the city of Lvov became again part of Poland, even if occupied by Germany. And these were the territories with the strongest Ukrainian national sentiment! Neither did a Ukrainian state emerge later on although Ukrainians served the Third Reich hand and foot, even forming in 1943 the notorious 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) made up of Ukrainians, which fought on the eastern front. Did Ukrainian leaders draw inferences? Did they learn a lesson? Far be it from them! They continued to serve their perceived protectors and their perceived benefactors.

Ukrainian nationalist leaders and ideologues along with the commanders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army were somehow tolerated by Berlin during the war and by Bonn after it. Tolerated, yes, that’s the word for it. The leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – Stepan Bandera – ultimately found refuge after the war in West Germany. It is noteworthy that during the war he was arrested by the Germans for a time, including in… the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp! Why? His political aspirations concerning creating a Ukrainian state were too high… Bandera wanted to serve Germany, to ally Ukrainians with Germany and those were his wages… And yet, he was to be used further after the war in the political combat between Washington and Moscow. Did he learn his lesson? As if! He could be used again after the war but at the same time his war record and the record of the deeds of his followers was such that his presence and political activity in Germany was not particularly palatable to his new German masters. The world got word about the numerous massacres that his subordinates and his followers perpetrated during the war against tens of thousands of Polish, Jewish and Russian civilians. So he became more of a political and moral burden, and as such was not protected enough by West German services. The effect was that a Soviet agent could track him down and eliminate him in broad daylight in Munich. No hint.

It is relatively recent history. It was some eighty years ago that Ukrainians let themselves be used against Poland and then against the Soviet Union by Germany. The result? Germany lost the war, Poland emerged from the war without any part of Ukraine, while the whole of Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Was that what Ukrainian nationalists had been dreaming of? Not really. Is it not similar today? Ukraine let itself be used by the collective West against Russia. After three years of devastating war, Russia is emerging victorious, the United States seeks to wash its hands of this war, while the European Union puts a bold face on its political, economic and military impotence. Ukraine? Ukraine has suffered enormous losses. Millions of people have been killed or physically and psychologically mutilated, millions of people have left the country for good. The economy is ruined, the state territory has shrunk, white the country’s debt has skyrocketed. Today even Yulia Tymoshenko, known for her passionate hatred of Russia, was shocked as she heard Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius say that war in Ukraine ought to last till 2029 to allow the European Union to prepare for a conflict with Russia. Even Yulia Tymoshenko awakened to the realization that Ukraine had been used as a tool to weaken Russia, that Europeans or Americans do not care two hoots about how much Ukrainian blood has been spilled, is being spilled and is going to be spilled.

Ukraine sustained enormous losses because Kiev’s leaders wanted to join NATO and because they thought that Russia would be intimidated by the West and do nothing to prevent Ukraine from becoming a member of this alliance. Ukraine’s leaders sacrificed millions of people and territory and billions of dollars to join a military alliance. They could have stopped the war in its tracks during the Istanbul talks, but they preferred to trust in the collective West, they preferred to part with commonsense. Now it is clear to everybody and anybody that Ukraine is not going to join NATO. What was this war for then? There seems to be virtually nothing whatsoever that Ukraine might gain from the three years of suffering, the three years of bloodshed, the three years of sacrifice. The country’s leaders preferred to obey Ursula von der Leyen and Boris Johnson, to act at the behest of Joe Biden and Jens Stoltenberg rather than serve and spare their own nation, rather than look for guidance into recent history. What a bitter outcome! What a bitter lesson. Yet, a lesson that will not be learned. You may rest assured that in a few decades’ time precisely the same mistake will be made by Ukrainians and – for that matter – by any other nation whose leaders wish to please their Western overlords more than to work for the benefit of their own people. Look at the Baltic states. Tiny though they are like mice, their leaders are as bellicose as tigers. So it goes.

Two explanations for such policymaking on the part of the leaders of such small nations can be offered. Either they are patriotic but deprived of the faculties of reasoning (in which case why they are leaders in the first place?) or they are placed as governors by the stronger states, governors who do not care about their nations, governors whose families and bank accounts are outside their own countries, governors who can always rely on a safe landing promised to them by those from whom they take their orders.

The Trojan Horse of Sudzha

Almost 16 kilometers in darkness, four long days, with little oxygen, with little food or water, almost suffocating from the remnants of methane. Four long days of marching, half-bent, inside a disused gas pipeline with a diameter of merely 170 cm. Man after man after another man, five hundred of them, tenaciously pressing forward. High spirits, excitement of adventure, and the awareness of being part of something grand. Four long days, kilometer after kilometer, gasping for breath, sharing the little food that they have and the little water that they are supplied with. They reach the proverbial end of the tunnel but it is not the the end of their trail. What follows are Jonas-like two days of wait, two days of lying low in the whale’s maw. Their emergence from the maw must be coordinated with the efforts of the comrades in arms operating in the open. They can hear the pounding of the guns, they can hear the movement of the tanks and that of the armoured vehicles. A thought that their presence might be detected prematurely by the enemy sparks anxiety in their minds. These two days of inaction are perhaps the most difficult.

As is known, warfare is not merely a clash of arms. Nor is it merely a contest of strategical thinking. Warfare involves also subterfuge. The most famous is represented by the iconic Trojan Horse. The Achaeans did not conquer the city of Troy by arms, by the ten-year siege, betrayal of some of the Trojans. The Achaeans won the war by means of an ingenious stratagem, by means of cunning and deception, by means of surprise. Similar feats would be employed in the centuries to come by various contesting parties. Such military feats are also pulled off today.

It was in August 2024 that the Ukrainian military forces decided to break through the front line in the direction of Kursk. As the Russians were taken by surprise, Ukrainians managed to conquer over 400 square kilometers and pursued their goal of capturing the nuclear power station in Kurchatov. What was the intention of the Ukrainian general staff and the Ukrainian civilian leaders?

First, the Ukrainian authorities wanted to raise the morale of the society. Months of retreat, months of Russian advance had played havoc with the will to fight or to resist the enemy.

Second, the Ukrainians had hoped to distract the Russian forces from the other segments of the front line and thus make it easier for Ukrainian soldiers to withstand Russian assaults there.

Third, the Kursk region, if captured and permanently held by Ukrainians, might become a bargaining chip in future negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. Kursk could be exchanged for one or a few or all the provinces claimed by Russia.

So far, so good. It was to the Ukrainians’ disadvantage that Russians had numerical superiority in manpower and equipment, so they could quickly mobilize troops that had been held in reserve and launch a counteroffensive. Strictly speaking it was not a counteroffensive in the true meaning of the word. Rather, Kutuzov-like harrowing. The Russian troops limited themselves to pounding the enemy by means of their artillery and drones, and severing the enemy’s supply lines. It took a lot of time but it proved to be successful. That’s what General Kutuzov opted for when Napoleon invaded Russia. Rather than fighting a series of spectacular battles, he enticed the enemy deep inside the country and let the European troops overreach themselves, to exhaust themselves. Didn’t Ukrainians know about it?

One of the focal points during the fight over the Kursk region was the town of Sudzha. It is here where the Trojan Horse comes into play. It happens so that a disused gas pipeline runs by Sudzha and this pipeline was to be employed by some five hundred selected Russian soldiers. At first the engineers presented the blueprints of the pipeline. They were available because the pipeline was constructed during the times of the Soviet Union. Then some of the remnants of the gas was pumped out as much as it was feasible. Despite these efforts, a lot remained inside. Next, the selected fighters entered the dark chasm. It took four days for the 500 soldiers to move almost 16 kilometers along the pipeline whose diameter is 1.7 meter. They had difficulties breathing and they were running low on their food and water supplies. When they reached the outlet of the pipe, they they stayed put two more days, waiting for the opportune moment to emerge and attack the enemy. When they eventually carried out an assault, the Ukrainian troops were taken by surprise and went into panic. You can only imagine the feeling of suddenly discovering that the enemy is shooting not only from the front but also from the rear.

Though the place from which the Russian troops were emerging was soon localized by Ukrainian drones and consequently shelled by the artillery, the overwhelming majority of the Russian fighters (if not all of them) had already left the belly of the Trojan Horse – the chasm of the pipeline – and were engaging the enemy. The days or rather hours of the Kursk salient were counted. Before the month of March expired, Ukrainians lost the Kursk salient to Russians.

The Kursk salient! It resonates with Russian historical memory! It was in this Kursk region that the greatest battle of tanks was fought during World War Two between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. It was fought in 1943. Who would have thought that eighty-three years later Russians would fight in the same place… this time against Ukrainians? Who would have thought back then that those Russians and Ukrainians who were united within the ranks of the Red Army would in eighty-three years’ time be at each other’s throats? Who would have thought back then that in eighty-three years one Slavic tribe going by the name of Ukrainians would be equipped with German – German! – tanks and combat the other Slavic tribe known as Russians? The Führer must have made a terrible blunder back then. He sacrificed precious German blood in a war against Russians and Ukrainians making up the Red Army rather than pitting the latter against the former, rather than providing the latter with his Tiger and Panther tanks and idly watching the two ethnicities bleeding themselves dry! Who knows, maybe at present this blunder is being put right…?

Russian soldier mopping up conquered terrain in and around Sudzha. Notice the religious emblems on his outfit.

Gefira 92: Tectonic plates disrupt the lithosphere

When tectonic plates move, they press against each other, they produce tension and eventually bring about either earthquakes or eruptions of volcanoes. Figuratively, in international relations, national interests are such tectonic plates. Such tectonic plates are also the interests of supra- or international entities. They naturally have different interests, these interests conflict and produce tensions, and in due time tensions erupt in social turmoil or military conflicts: nations against nations, organizations against organizations, organizations against nations. We have been recently seeing a series of such eruptions. The pressure that the collective West brought to bear against Russia erupted in the Russo-Ukrainian war, in point of fact a proxy war between the West and the Russian Federation. The pressure that globalists exerted on Western societies in that they sought to deconstruct and reconstruct social conduct, tradition and custom, resulted in the political earthquake in the United States, where Donald Trump, a representative of anti-globalists, has been elected president and has put an end to the madness that has enveloped American society.

Contemporary tectonic changes are only comparable to those at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the eastern political bloc of the so-called socialist countries shook off its Soviet harness, when the Warsaw Pact dissolved and NATO began to expand eastwards. Still earlier, the Second World War was such an epic change, preceded by World War One, preceded by the Napoleonic Wars and the French Revolution, preceded by the Thirty Years’ War… Each of those planetary events would cancel the ruling international order and introduce new order that would last a few decades to be inevitably replaced by yet another change, yet another set of rules by which international players attempted to play the game of politics.

What are the changes that we are witnessing nowadays? First, globalists seem to have been defeated. Whether temporarily or for good remains to be seen. As for now, they have been defeated in China when the Shanghai-based communist pro-American (i.e. pro-globalist) faction was foiled in its plans; they have been defeated in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has been keeping a firm grip on the Russian state, and hindered the process of subjugation of the country to the Western oligarchs; lastly, they have been defeated in the United States, where Donald Trump rallied anti-globalist forces among the powerful and among much of the American citizenry.

Second, the world dominated by the United States and the countries gathered under G7 – the so-called unipolar world – is disintegrating. There emerge two other powerful players: Russia and China, with the so-called global south – India, Brazil, Indonesia – being on the rise. Some of the countries of the Third World – also politely referred to as emerging economies – are about to economically threaten and surpass the old colonial powers because…

…third, the former colonial powers acting under the umbrella of the European Union have become irrelevant within the last two-three years. Due to the de-industrialization of Germany, due to the devastating woke ideology, due to the policy of ethnic replacement, and, lastly, due to the harebrained crusade against Russia, the Old Continent has put itself out of the equation of international policy making. Talks that are held between Americans and Russians are no longer taking place in Vienna or Paris, in Helsinki or Geneva, that is in places where the talks between the United States and the Soviet Union used to be held: they are taking place in Saudi Arabia. To make things worse for the pretentious European Union, European top leaders like France’s President Macron, Germany’s Chancellor März, United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Starmer or EU’s leader von der Leyen have not even been invited nor are they consulted on anything of importance. Merely three years earlier Europeans dreamed – nay – were sure that they would bring Russia to its knees and put Vladimir Putin on trial like they put on trial Slobodan Milošević. For three years Ukraine’s President Zelensky was showered with praises and honours while the red carpet was rolled out before him wherever he set his foot in Europe or the United States. Today? Today for Washington he is a persona non grata. European leaders, while making believe that they want to continue the war effort and support Zelensky, in their heart of hearts, left by Washington to their own devices, are helpless and powerless. They are putting a brave face on a lost game. These are, tectonic changes, indeed.

Gefira Financial Bulletin #92 is available now

A Point of Bifurcation
America for peace, Europe for war
Calvin Klein – attack on the traditional family model
Retreat from the sinking ship of the DEI

Trump wants to cause a recession

The American president changed his approach to the stock market in his second term. To the extent that he paid homage to Wall Street during his first term, he recently said in an interview for Fox News that he needs to build a strong country without looking at the stock market. The average American cares because retirement funds are operating on risky assets and many small investors are putting their savings into the stock market instead of keeping their money in low-interest accounts like Germans or most Europeans.

Trump believes that we are now facing a transition that will eventually lead to the return of wealth to America. Incoming Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent later added fuel to the fire when he said during his interview that if anyone thinks Trump will change his policies to stop the stock market decline, they will be disappointed. Bessent is of the opinion that we are currently in a “detox period” – a transition from reliance on public spending to private spending – and any negative market behavior is the legacy of Joe Biden and his policies to stimulate the economy with debt and deficits.

The new managers on the Potomac point out that the indicators are falling and Wall Street appears to be heading for a deeper correction.

What is also falling are the indicators of economic activity: the ISM Manufacturing (PMI) (activity in the US manufacturing sector), while ISM Manufacturing Price (change in the prices manufacturers pay for raw materials and other materials for production) is rising significantly. In the case of the former, it was above 50 points, i.e. above the threshold above which the economy is assumed to be developing, but well below the previous value and also below forecasts. In the case of the latter, it may be a return of higher inflation. In addition, orders in the US manufacturing sector are falling. Unemployment is also rising – Trump’s (or Musk’s) redundancies in the public sector are important here.

As a result, Americans are less willing to spend their money, which means that domestic demand, one of the main drivers of the US economy, is falling. After all, consumer spending accounts for 68% of US GDP!

Can such a situation suit the Trump administration? Paradoxically: Yes!

It is well known that the Fed is maintaining high interest rates (4.5%) in response to persistent inflation of around 3% (target is 2%). High interest rates lead to higher bond yields. Considering that the US needs to refinance a large portion of its debt this year (a good 25% of the total), it would be best for it to do so at the lowest price – i.e. the lowest interest rate on bonds. It is well known that it will not be easy to get the Fed to lower interest rates in the face of increased inflation, so a recession is the best solution. With limited economic growth and demand (see above), inflation may ease considerably and the associated layoffs could prompt the Fed to cut rates to stimulate economic growth.

Hence the tariffs, hence the trade wars – the aim is to bring production back to America, to increase the attractiveness of US products for domestic consumers and… to initiate a new, better period for the American economy after the recession.

The EU under “Führer Ursula” is not a peaceful project, says Lavrov

A few days ago, this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to three Americans: Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, and Mario Nawfal. Judge Napolitano runs a popular YouTube channel Judging Freedom, Larry Johnson is a former CIA operative, while Mario Nawfal runs his own channel on YouTube. A few days prior to the Lavrov interview, the last of the three mentioned interviewed Belarus’ President Alexandr Lukashenko. The interview with Minister Lavrov lasted an hour and a half and was conducted in English without an interpreter.

Go and have a listen before it is not taken down by YouTube. If you think you can form your own judgement, you need to know what the other side to the conflict has to say. Especially from the horse’s mouth, so much so that Minister Lavrov did 95% of the talking. Below a few take-aways from the interview.

① Russia is a Christian country, a Christian nation with Christian values. The United States and Western Europe have departed from Christianity and have been pursuing deviant ideas of the alphabet sexuality, unisex toilets and the like.

② The West promised Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastwards by an inch and broke its promise. Even if it were not formulated in written form (it was), a man of honour keeps his word.

③ Security cannot be divisible, i.e. one country cannot provide for its security at the expense of another country. Expanding NATO may increase the West’s security, but it certainly decreases the security of the Russian Federation.

④ Ukraine itself is to blame for the losses that it has sustained. Had there be no coup d’etat as a result of which legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych was made to flee the country, Ukraine would not have lost Crimea; had Kiev abided by the Minsk I and Minsk II Accords, Ukraine would not have lost the four eastern provinces.

⑤ Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president who was toppled by the coup in 2014, had every right to reconsider Ukraine’s association with the European Union. There was no malice on his part, nor was he a Russophile. The decision of associating Ukraine with the European Union had very serious economic consequences. At that time there were no tariffs between Ukraine and Russia, but there were tariffs between Ukraine and the European Union. An association with the European Union meant lifting the tariffs between the EU and Ukraine, which would have meant the necessity of imposing such tariffs between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as the Russian Federation needed to protect its market against European products. Since Ukraine’s trade with Russia was way larger than that with the EU, an association with the EU would have meant huge economic losses for the country.

⑥ The European Union is not a peaceful project. Minister Lavrov quoted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who said that “peace in Ukraine could actually be more dangerous than the war that is currently taking place,” and quoted Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, who floated an idea of expanding the alliance or the alliance’s tentacles as far east as China, Korea and the Pacific Ocean. One of the most bellicose politicians of the European Union is its leader Führer Ursula, as Lavrov put it, and mentioned the 800 billion earmarked by her for the re-militarization of the continent.

⑦ All the anti-Russian campaigns like those centered around the downing of the Malaysian airliner, the Skripal and the Navalny cases, the Bucha massacre allegedly perpetrated by Russians were aimed at harming the international image of the Russian Federation. This is easy to prove because in each of the aforementioned cases Russia’s request to have access to the medical, chemical, legal and other documentation was denied.

⑧ Human rights have been weaponized by the West. Human rights only serve as a pretext to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations and as a justification for assaulting them militarily.

That’s Minister Lavrov’s understanding of the ongoing conflict between the West and the Russian Federation, that’s in a nutshell Russia’s view of the current political situation and its causes.

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