
“There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” said Hamlet, a victim of two pandemic blights: relativism and solipsism. Both eventually led to the belief that no absolutes exist outside each man’s own perception of the world.
When applied to matters philosophical, religious, cultural and generally civilisational, relativism is deadly. Yet when applied to politics, it’s essential. A government that obtusely refuses to budge on political principles may be as harmful as one that has no principles at all.
The same policies may be good or bad depending on the situation and the rationale behind them. Tariffs are a case in point.
They are fool’s gold when introduced for purely economic reasons, as a way of making the economy stronger. The opposite effect is much more likely.
Modern economies are driven by markets, and markets are ultimately driven by consumers. Since tariffs raise the price of imports, and economic autarkies no longer exist, consumers suffer and markets rebel.
President Trump finds this out every time he goes crazy on tariffs: markets just won’t wear it, and it’s impossible to disfranchise them in a market economy. Each time this happens, Trump backs down, as he did yesterday, magnanimously allowing the EU an extra month to relocate its export manufacturing stateside.
Chances are, come 1 July, he’ll back down again. Hitting America’s best allies with 50 per cent tariffs on top of those that exist already is bound to elicit retaliation in kind, and no one ever wins a trade war. Everyone loses, every economy comes out the poorer.
Yet politics doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, live by economy alone. Sometimes economic suffering may be justified, and has to be endured, by strategic necessity, in which case economic first principles must be set aside for a while.
Hence tariffs can have an important role to play in the drama of geopolitical strategy. They can reward good behaviour, punish misbehaviour and discourage future lapses in conduct. That’s why I have to praise senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican and Trump’s golf chum, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat.
Appalled by the continuing slaughter of Ukrainian civilians, they introduced legislation to hit with crippling secondary sanctions countries keeping Putin’s economy afloat. These include a 500 per cent tariff on any country that buys Russian oil, gas, uranium and other products, and I hope Xi is listening. He’ll have to choose between being Putin’s friend and America’s trading partner, a choice that can only go one way, as things stand at the moment.
Apparently, at least 70 senators support the bill, which means they can override a possible presidential veto. The situation in the lower House is less clear-cut, and there Trump could expect to kill the bill by vetoing it.
But will he veto it? Since, contrary to what Bertie Russell thought, the past is the only reliable predictor of the future, one has to fear he will.
Trump has said many times that sanctioning Russia could cause Putin to walk away from peace talks, which argument is defeated by a simple question: What peace talks? Those in which Putin has been expertly giving Trump the run-around, stringing him along while continuing his murderous war?
One hates to accuse a president of the United States of bad will, but it’s hard to explain this president’s actions and statements in any other way. For example, when Trump introduced sweeping tariffs in the first days of his White House tenancy, he exempted Russia – but not his European allies and nor, tellingly, the Ukraine.
However, barring NATO’s direct military involvement, the only way for the West to stop the fascist onslaught on Europe is to cut off the economic lifeline of Putin’s regime. The senators seem to realise this, but the statement Trump issued yesterday, after the largest aerial attack on Kiev in this war so far, makes one doubt he does.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” wrote Trump. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY!.. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.”
Putin hasn’t gone “absolutely CRAZY”. He has always been absolutely EVIL, which has never prevented Trump from having “a very good relationship” with him, too good for some tastes. Yet the notion of evil doesn’t sit comfortably with the modern idea of progress, with the world supposedly going from strength to moral strength.
It’s more natural for today’s lot to ascribe evil acts to emotional instability rather than an immanent flaw in human nature revealing itself as savage brutality in extremis. Yet chaps like Stalin or Hitler weren’t mad – they were rational and consistent evil-doers. So is Putin.
In his very next sentence Trump contradicted himself. Putin, he wrote, “wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it”. That’s reason enough, wouldn’t you say? Massive morale-sapping attacks on civilians are the stock in trade of modern wars.
Using this tactic isn’t a symptom of madness. It’s a result of cold-blooded calculation.
Americans didn’t nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the cities’ military importance, did they? Without passing judgement one way or the other, that was done to save American lives that would have been lost in trying to take the Japanese islands one by one.
Whether Putin is crazy or evil or both, surely his intention of swallowing “ALL of Ukraine” ought to be thwarted, if only because it’ll be much costlier to stop the Russian juggernaut once it rolls over the Ukraine and beyond. So can we expect the president to endorse the bill? Not so fast.
Because Trump then offset his opprobrium of Putin by displaying ill-advised even-handedness. Contrary to all incontrovertible evidence, the president likes to insist that both Putin and Zelensky are equally culpable in igniting the war, especially Zelensky.
Thus, he wrote, “Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”
President Zelensky is trying to rally his country in its heroic effort to resist the invader who “wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it”. Hence Trump’s statement is yet another variation on the same theme: there’s nothing to choose between Putin and Zelensky. The former is guilty of attacking, the latter of not capitulating (having first provoked Putin, there Trump also echoes the Kremlin dictator).
One suspects that Trump’s real problem with Zelensky isn’t “everything out of his mouth”, but everything that isn’t: sufficiently ardent gluteal obeisance to the Donald. And the scenic route to his heart has to start from that point of departure, which non-negotiable condition Zelensky hasn’t fully grasped.
I hope that the emerging bipartisan support for the Graham-Blumenthal bill will hammer some sense into Trump, on this issue at least. Whether or not it does, it’s good to see that some people in DC see this war for what it is: a barbarian assault on the West, not just the Ukraine.