First, I’d like to thank President Trump for kindly, if unwittingly, providing most of the text for this article.
To begin with, yesterday he issued an emotional, and amply justified, criticism of Iran’s regime: “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today… They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
I probably could have put it better myself, in form. But in substance, the numerological reference apart, I couldn’t agree more. Iran’s regime, from 1979 onwards has been so evil that no invective about it would sound exaggerated.
It does take scumbags (possibly but not necessarily deranged ones) to declare the annihilation of another nation, our ally, as its long-term objective. It also takes scumbags to sponsor terrorism all over the world, arming, training, and funding murderous gangs.
It definitely takes scumbags to oppress their own population, obliterate free speech, murder dissidents and issue draconian prison sentences for something as innocent as a mildly critical post on social media.
Only scumbags would try to blackmail the world with threats of further terrorism, possibly involving nuclear weapons.
Speaking from a strictly occidental perspective, who but scumbags would hate the West with unmitigated passion and threaten to draw it into a deadly conflict?
So now you know why I welcome every word in Trump’s statement about Iran. But have you noticed something?
Every word about Iran’s offences also applies in spades to Putin’s regime. There are some distinctions between that and Iran’s regime, but no substantial difference.
Putin is every bit as evil as the ayatollahs, as oppressive inside his country and as – or even more – aggressive to its neighbours, as committed to annihilating at least one nation, as threatening to the West or rather more so: Russia is a nuclear power after all.
Granted, for that reason Trump can’t treat Russia the way he is treating Iran. I hope my American friends won’t be upset with me, but in general the US has been rather a flat-track bully for decades. American presidents have desisted from bombing strong, especially nuclear, powers, and wisely so.
But nothing should prevent the leader of a great Western nation, and one expressly aspiring to become even greater, to issue clear moral statements about Putin’s frankly fascist regime — and about the indicted war criminal Putin personally.
The mass murderers, kidnappers, looters and rapists in the Kremlin amply merit sobriquets like ‘scumbags’, rivalling the ayatollahs for that dishonour.
However, the image before my eyes is Trump applauding wildly as Putin walks the red carpet from his plane at Anchorage. No leader of a country allied with the US has ever rated such treatment, way in excess of normal diplomatic protocol.
Nor do I think Trump has ever described Putin in pejorative terms. If you wish to know in what terms Trump has described Putin over the years, here’s a short chronological sample. It starts from 2007, when Putin declared his life’s ambition was to reverse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, that is to rebuild the Soviet empire.
“Look at Putin – what he’s doing with Russia – I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done – whether you like him or don’t like him – he’s doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.”
“Putin has also announced his grand vision: the creation of a ‘Eurasian Union’ made up of former Soviet nations that can dominate the region. I respect Putin…”
“[W]ill he become my new best friend?”
“I think he’s done a really great job of outsmarting our country.”
“When I went to Russia with the Miss Universe pageant, he contacted me and was so nice.”
“They treated me so great. Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present…”
“I believe Putin will continue to re-build the Russian Empire.”
“Putin has become a big hero in Russia with an all-time high popularity.”
“You look at Putin, who is absolutely having a great time. … Russia is like, I mean, they’re really hot stuff. And now you have people in the Ukraine – who knows, set up or not – but it can’t all be set up, I mean they’re marching in favor of joining Russia. … But Russia, I mean what he’s [Putin] done for Russia is really amazing. And he’s done it by outsmarting our country at every single step.”
“I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer, and we had a tremendous success.”
“Putin is a nicer person than I am.”
“I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he is getting an ‘A’…”
“It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”
“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, you know…”
“I said he was a strong leader, which he is. I mean, he might be bad, he might be good. But he’s a strong leader.’”
“If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve already said he is really very much of a leader.”
“I always knew he was very smart!”
“President Putin called me up very nicely to congratulate me on the win of the election. He then called me up extremely nicely to congratulate me on the inauguration, which was terrific.”
“While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia.”
“We have had a very, very good relationship. And we look forward to spending some pretty good time together. A lot of very positive things [are] going to come out of the relationship.”
“This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine – of Ukraine – Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. So, Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. … Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. I know him very well – very, very well.”
“The problem is not that Putin is smart, which, of course, he’s smart. The real problem is that our leaders are dumb.”
“I think he’ll keep his word. I’ve known him for a long time now, and I think he will [halt hostilities in the Ukraine]. I don’t believe he’s going to violate his word. I don’t think he’ll be back when we make a deal. I think the deal is going to hold now.”
“Let me tell you: Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia.”
This is a brief selection that could be easily made longer. Not a word similar to ‘scumbag’ anywhere in evidence – one detects respect, amity, even barely concealed admiration.
Hence, in Trump’s mind, Putin’s regime has to be benign whereas Iran’s is evil. I’d like to see the set of moral and geopolitical criteria Trump applies to this comparative characterisation. If a difference between the two evil regime exists, it’s that Putin’s is infinitely more dangerous for being more powerful.
Trump’s double standard explains why, in the midst of America’s just war on Iran, he responded to the highly predictable oil crisis by ringing his savvy best friend Putin and striking a deal with him.
Countries, specifically India, will no longer be punished with sanctions for buying Russian oil, and US sanctions on Russia will be eased – allegedly temporarily but in reality permanently.
Coupled with the rocketing oil prices, Russia will get a huge influx of money for its war chest, which is bad news indeed for all her neighbours, not just the Ukraine. Thus a president who vowed to end Russia’s war on the Ukraine within 24 hours, has 14 months later done all he could to enable Putin to fight on indefinitely.
Linking this development directly with Trump’s favourable opinion of Putin would be going too far, one hopes. This would imply collusion, which isn’t an accusation to bandy about lightly.
But I’d dearly like to hear Trump identify the more salient differences he detects between the two evil regimes, and specifically between their chieftains.
It took a few years to discover that Russia was going to be the principal beneficiary of the Second World War. It’s taken only a few days to discover that Russia is going to be the principal beneficiary of the Iran War.
Both wars are just wars. But there needs to be some adjustment to the definition of just wars when the unjust manipulators on the fringes so often emerge as the real winners.
As for Mr Trump, it seems clear that he never means what he says, because he continually says mutually contradictory things in successive pronouncements. In other words, it’s the phatic content, not the semantic content, that’s significant. And the phatic content is that Mr Trump and Mr Putin are friendly rivals for leadership and deputy leadership of the same gang, while everybody else is excluded. Warmth between equals, varying degrees of coolness and coldness for inferiors.
Question: does Mr Putin reciprocate? Is the phatic temperature of his speeches more important than their rational meaning?
Emphatically not. Putin doesn’t reciprocate, he runs — agents, that is. He doesn’t befriend, he develops. He doesn’t socialise, he recruits. He’s a career intelligence officer, and in that capacity he was rather small time. After years of loyal service, all he got from the KGB was a post in Dresden, then part of another communist country. Not even East Berlin, and forget about the West part. Putin was only a major at an age at which some of his co-evals were generals (he was bumped up to lieutenant-colonel at his retirement, which was a common practice in the KGB). Still, a low-level professional he might be, but a professional nonetheless. Combining those skills with experience in organised crime, he instantly rose to the top when Russia’s government became an amalgam of the KGB and mafia. All in all, he doesn’t regard Trump as a friend. He regards him as a mark, a rank amateur with lots of buttons a pro can push to elicit the right response.
So what I call the “phatic temperature” of Mr Trump’s babble is controlled by Mr Putin’s cynical hand on the thermostat?
By the way, what happened to those KGB Generals who outstripped Mr Putin’s achievements as professional terrorisers and torturers? Did they all die suddenly and simultaneously of accidental causes, or what?
(It’s an honour to have the opportunity to ask you questions about Russia. It’s like having the opportunity to ask the expatriated Xenophon or Euripides questions about Athens.)
Some of them did die in the manner you mentioned. Some, like Gen. Kalugin (the youngest general in the history of the KGB) emigrated to the West. Some (like Gen. Bopkov) became partners — in effect, case officers — of the so-called oligarchs. Some became politicians whom Putin outmaneuvered. At the time he became president, there were two other candidates for the post, Stepashin and Primakov, both KGB generals. There have also been several of them in various Putin governments. (Incidentally, a KGB officer was two tiers higher on the pay scale and overall pecking order than an army officer of the same rank.)
But, and this is conjecture, some remained in the shadows, a sort of éminences grises, to form the de facto government of Russia. Several serious analysts believe that Putin still takes orders, perhaps insistent advice, from the FSB Collegium. That, however, is unsupported by any hard evidence. It seems to me that Putin did start as merely a figurehead but, once he consolidated his position, he began to call the shots.
You see what happens when you ask me about Russia (and by the way, thank you for that fulsome comparison — but perhaps I’m more Alcibiades than those two)? I boringly tell you more than you want to know.
It’s neither boring nor more than I wanted to know.
I once wrote a little article (unpublished and now probably lost) in which I compared Mr Michael Heseltine to Alcibiades. Although Alcibiades won every point of the comparison, he’s still not fit to be compared to any decent man.
By the way, I can offer you some assistance in your laudable efforts to improve your English by studying the language of sports commentators. Yesterday a Rugby commentator on the radio was describing Scotland’s admirable win against France the previous week, and said, “It was almost obscene how efficient they were.” The word “almost” reassures me that the players’ efficiency didn’t quite deprave and corrupt the spectators.
Actually, I don’t mind this usage quite as much as some others. If I remember my linguistics, this is called a contronym, a word that can have two opposite meanings. I’m sure you must have said “awfully nice of you” at some point in your life, or even that a performance was “terrific”, although this is more questionable. Now had that commentator said “literally obscene”, which I’m sure he was capable of, then it would be really awful.