St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) is well-attended this year: 76 countries are taking part. However, those churlish European NATO members aren’t among them – most of them are boycotting ‘Putin’s Davos’.
However, Trump has sent a representative, partly to let European leaders know yet again that his special relationship is with Putin and not any of them. This is the first time since 2017-2018 that the US has so honoured Putin’s travesties, and Trump was president then, as he is now.
Rodney Mims Cook Jr, US delegate, is chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, and it’s unlikely that his sphere of immediate interest will feature prominently at the SPIEF. But his presence, said Putin aide Ushakov, will promote “dialogue between cultures”, or rather between Mr Cook and Putin’s court jester, conductor Valery Gergiev.
How such chitchat will affect world economy isn’t immediately clear, but its function is purely symbolic. What it symbolises is Trump’s preference for Putin over any of those effete Europeans, and the Donald seldom misses an opportunity to send that message.
The Ukraine has also announced her presence, albeit in a rather unorthodox way. Acting as her delegates were a swarm of drones that blew up a major oil port just 12 miles down the road from the SPIEF venue.
As black smoke began to dominate Petersburg’s skyline, the Russians triumphantly announced that they had downed 50 Ukrainian drones. They didn’t say how many had got through, but the fireworks plainly visible from everywhere in the city didn’t let them deny that some drones had found their target.
Other drones hit the Russian naval base at Kronstadt, damaging four warships. That base is about 30 miles from the city centre, but I wonder if the Ukrainians may be planning on sending their airborne representatives to the actual forum venue.
That would add a whole new meaning to the forum’s theme, “Pragmatic dialogue – the path to a stable future”. A dialogue doesn’t have to be semantic to be pragmatic. It can well be semiotic, with drones acting as words in a sign language.
I wonder how Putin plans to get out of the situation he himself created. The Russian economy is breaking up, unable to sustain the endless war. But there is good news too: unemployment is going down, and Vlad must be complimented on discovering an effective way to combat that blight.
One traditional way is to galvanise the economy and create masses of new jobs, but that option is clearly unavailable for Putin. But the other way works as well: reducing the number of job seekers by having a couple of million of them killed or crippled in an aggressive war.
That’s the option Putin chose, and as a result Russia has begun to import labour. Thus, over 50,000 Indians are now doing menial jobs in places like Petersburg, and India is just one example of a country eager to lend a helping hand. China, Vietnam and North Korea are also sending workers to Russia, but so far Trump has refrained from following suit. Then again, I doubt he’d find many American takers even if he decided to plug some holes in the Russian job market.
Meanwhile, the Russians have accused the three Baltic NATO members of allowing the Ukrainians to launch those drones from their territory. Crying foul under the current circumstances strikes me as odd and quite cynical.
After all, Russia launched her massive 2022 invasion of the Ukraine mainly from Belarus. That’s what allies are for, but what’s sauce for the Putin goose must also be sauce for the Zelensky gander. Rather than denying their involvement, the Baltics ought to be proud of it.
European countries should communicate to Russia’s fascist regime that they stand united with the Ukraine in the face of Putin’s aggression. That point has been made clear already, but then repetition is the mother of all learning.
A major strategic realignment is under way in the West, with Trump’s America remaining a NATO ally only nominally. Trump’s novel approach to geopolitics and diplomacy has gone a long way towards alienating America’s traditional allies, including European NATO members, the Persian Gulf countries – and even Israel.
The other day Trump accused Netanyahu of being “f***ing crazy”. In Trump’s eyes, Israel’s prime minister proved his emotional instability by continuing to fight Hezbollah even though American drivers are now paying more at the pumps.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel began to reorient her foreign policy towards Europe and away from the US – if the Ukraine could do it, so can Israel. The standard MAGA reaction to such developments is “we don’t care”, but they should.
Trump’s personal preference for an alliance with despots like Putin and Xi, whom he sees as his typological brothers and role models, is at odds with US history, constitutional tradition and culture. Most Americans feel civilisationally closer to the countries that boycotted ‘Putin’s Davos’ than to those that didn’t.
That preference will probably be communicated in November’s mid-term elections, when Republicans are likely to lose their majority in at least one House and possibly both. But meanwhile Cook is conducting his cultural dialogue with Gergiev. “What do you think of Aaron Copland then, Valery?” “Well, Tchaikovsky he ain’t, Rodney.”
“Pragmatic dialogue” may indeed be “the path to a stable future”, but no pragmatic dialogue is possible with a criminal regime threatening the whole European continent. That regime can respond only to the language spoken to it so loudly and eloquently by Ukrainian drones.
Putin has already forced his house-trained ‘oligarchs’, like Mandelson’s friend Deripaska, to loosen their purse strings and feed billions into the Russian war machine. The ongoing forum is an attempt to extort more billions from Russia’s allies, mainly in Asia and Latin America.
If the attempt succeeds, Russia will get her own version of demographic displacement. Young Russians will continue to die in droves at the front, while the jobs they’d otherwise be doing in the economy will be taken by Indians, Vietnamese and North Koreans.
Meanwhile, congratulations to the Ukrainians for another brilliant raid. Theirs is a valuable contribution to the “cultural dialogue”.