The Singapore-Helsinki Express

ISRAEL SHAMIR • JULY 4, 2018

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Helsinki after Singapore! The summit Trump-Putin will hopefully take place this month in the Finnish capital, after being delayed and delayed for ages. We had expected the two strong men to meet right away after Trump’s historic election, but the summit didn’t take place, for Trump had been besieged by Mueller’s Gestapo and accused of being a Russian agent. This frivolous accusation is still floated every time Trump is doing something sensible, but things changed with Trump-Kim summit, an event that grows in importance in perspective almost daily.

Trump before Singapore and after Singapore are entirely different creatures, like a boy before and after his first kiss. Before, he was a Mr Big Mouth, a ruler of his own Twitter account and of preciously little beside it. After the summit, he became Prometheus Unbound, the regal President of the mighty US. By meeting Kim, he denied the wiseguys in the media and in the deep state; he refused to take their orders and did what he thought right. By meeting Putin he will turn his disobedience into full scale revolt.

His adversaries, the Masters of Discourse, were alarmed by Kim summit and horrified by approaching Putin meet.

Let us have a brief look at their reaction to Singapore. (Here you can find a lot more). The Senate Minority leader Chuck (“the Guardian of Israel”) Schumer has expressed “extreme concern”, saying that “Trump has drawn a false equivalency between the legitimate joint military exercises by South Korea and the US, and illegal North Korean nuclear testing (“How can you compare!” – a standard Jewish response) … Nothing should be given to N Koreans until “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program.”… Trump has given “a brutal and repressive dictatorship the international legitimacy it has long craved.”

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times complained that Trump ‘made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea’ while he got nothing in return – “nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying ICBM, nothing about allowing inspectors to return, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification etc”. Noah Rothman, co-editor of the neocon magazine Commentary, called the summit “a disgrace”.

And the “humanitarian interventionists”, that is, the leftists for intervention on humanitarian grounds, have already rolled out complaints of defectors from North Korea to the front pages, and they expectedly demand to never consent to any peace without a complete change of regime, lustration and international control.

President Trump has been presented with a united front of media and experts alarmed with any progress towards peace. For them, the only way to deal with N Korea is the Libya way: disarm first, intervene and bomb later, for it is much safer to bomb a disarmed country. The Korean leader understands that; he is not likely to go the Gorby way. The last Soviet leader disarmed his country, dismantled the Warsaw Treaty, gave East Germany to the West and allowed the US inspectors into the most secret Russian installations after a friendly chat with President Reagan. Kim won’t do it, and China won’t allow him. The last thing Chinese (or Russians) need is an American protectorate in North Korea, a rather short drive from Beijing, Harbin, and Vladivostok. But warm relations between N and S Koreas and the US are certainly possible, if President Trump were to stick to his Singapore line.

However, a few weeks after Singapore, it seems that the naysayers prevailed, as they usually do. The US refused to work towards lifting sanctions in the UN Security Council, and had rejected the Russian-Chinese proposal to begin their dismantling, while the Western media began working up its roll of Kim’s transgressions. Thus the aura of unreliability again surrounded the head of American president.

Putin’s meet had brought forth similar responses. OMG, peace is breaking!

“Fears grow over prospect of Trump ‘peace deal’ with Putin, editorialised The Times.“Britain fears that President Trump will undermine NATO by striking a “peace deal” with President Putin… Cabinet ministers are worried that Mr Trump may be persuaded to downgrade US military commitments in Europe… NATO figures fear that Mr Trump could seek to replicate his “peace agreement” with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, which generated positive coverage. One cabinet minister said: “What we’re nervous of is some kind of Putin-Trump ‘peace deal’ with Trump and Putin saying, ‘Why do we have all this military hardware in Europe?’ and agreeing to jointly remove that.” Other media sources, and politicians are equally unhappy and worried. “European allies hugely worried over Trump’s summit with Putin”, says MSNBC; so does the Atlantic, the Guardian etc.

The nearest to a positive attitude to the Singapore meeting had been displayed by the observer of the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, British Jewish journalist Anshel Pfeffer: of course, an agreement with the bloody tyrant (Kim) is undesirable, but there is a hope that, having reconciled with Kim, Trump will go to war with Iran more easily. He comforted the warmongers that their loss of a Korea war will be made up by a war on Iran. This is the line the comforters take on the Helsinki meeting: Ta rump-Putin summit could be forgiven if it would lead to war on Iran. This is the alternative as presented by the Western MSM: warmongers condemn both summits, comforters say ‘not all is lost, there is still Iran’.

In order to understand why unwilling Americans are being led into war, we shall turn to a recent important piece by Ron Unz. It is a part of his American Pravdaseries investigating modern American history and its [mis]presentation in media and in public memory. Our Great Purge of the 1940s, despite the title, is a decoding of secret codes in American and British public discourse in 20th century. After going through an immense number of newspapers and magazines, Unz discovered that whoever in American public life sided against wars, usually had found himself marginalised, expelled, forgotten, or even assassinated.

In a touching personal way, he tells of his discovery that writers he believed were marginal radicals actually had held supreme positions in MSM and politics of their times, until they were marginalised and presented as extremists.

An example is H.E. Barnes, a highly esteemed and popular commentator on most prestigious tribunes, until “By the end of the 1930s, Barnes had become a leading critic of America’s proposed involvement in World War II, and was permanently “disappeared” as a consequence, barred from all mainstream media outlets, while a major newspaper chain was heavily pressured into abruptly terminating his long-running syndicated national column in May 1940.” He disappeared from memory, says Unz.

A political example is Charles Lindbergh, strong voice for peace in the end of 1930s – beginning of 1940s. Just once he mentioned that three groups in particular were “pressing this country toward war[:] the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration,” and thereby unleashed an enormous firestorm of media attacks and denunciations, writes Unz. That was the end of Lindbergh’ political career, and the US entered the WW2.

In the battle for Hollywood (a very important tool of mass propaganda), the only Gentile studio owner, Disney, a staunch pro-peace force, had his premises occupied by the US Army, tells Unz, on the day after Pearl Harbour.

Was it good or bad, from our present point of view? We should make a strict distinction between the time before and after the beginning of hostilities in Europe. Before, the peace platform was right, for the WW2 could be avoided altogether: if Poland (with British and American encouragement) wouldn’t provoke Germany, Hitler could stay at home and try to turn his country into Nazi paradise. As the war began in earnest, the US had to intervene in Europe to prevent a German victory and subsequent German domination of the whole Eurasian landmass, from English Channel to Vladivostok. As for the war with Japan, it could be avoided if the US didn’t provoke Japan by its oil embargo.

Unz writes that the Jews and the Roosevelt administration prevailed on Britain and Poland to take a strong anti-German line. The Jews were certainly anti-Nazi, and they were willing to take chances of the world war. But F.D. Roosevelt had been elected because he promised peace and neutrality, – and when elected, he made a U-turn and went to war.

It appears to be a permanent feature of American politics: presidents get elected promising peace, and choosing war after their election. F.D. Roosevelt supported the Neutrality Bill, but ushered the US into WW2. G.W. Bush promised “humble foreign policy” and went on to conquer Afghanistan and Iraq. B.H. Obama had been so keen on peace that even received his Nobel in advance, but continued to carry war in Libya and Syria. And now we have Donald Trump, whose election campaign included the promise of ‘no more regime change’ and friendship with Russia, but his presidency (meanwhile) will be remembered by war threats to Iran and N Korea.

Unz in the mentioned article refers to Iraq war, too. Those who objected to this most meaningless and destructive war were marginalised and ostracised:

Phil Donahue had high ratings on MSNBC, but in early 2003 his show was canceled, with a leaked memo indicated that his opposition to the looming war was the cause. Conservative Pat Buchanan and liberal Bill Press, both Iraq War critics, hosted a top-rated debate show on the same network, but it too was cancelled for similar reasons. Bill Odom, the three-star general who ran the NSA for Ronald Reagan was similarly blacklisted from the media for his opposition to the Iraq War. Numerous prominent media voices were “disappeared” around the same time, and even after Iraq became universally recognized as an enormous disaster, most of them never regained their perches.

So there is a force that pushes for war consistently, at least since 1914 till our days. This force coincides with the main vector of American politics, and since 1991, with the Western politics at large. It has a strong Jewish component based in media and universities; a new Church of the West trying to embrace the world. Its wars are ‘crusades’ (מצווהמלחמת, ‘wars for faith’ Joshua-style). That’s Jewish drive for world domination. Jews are shy of admitting that, but once, Jews will admit and recognise it; especially as their drive is intertwined with the American drive for world domination (called Manifest Destiny), and the British ‘White Man’s Burden’.

One of the reasons the Jews parted their company with Russians is the latter’s lack of aggressiveness. Whether in football or in war, the Russians are usually defensive players. Even Josef Stalin, whose name still scares people, hardly ever initiated an aggressive war; he never dreamt to conquer Europe or the world. Other Russian rulers were even more defensive, at best. This does not suit the Jews, who prefer more action.

For Anglo-American civilization has its intrinsic aggressiveness, too. This is not a value judgement, not a condemnation per se: there are grass-eaters and carnivores; we like and make pets of cats and dogs, the predators, not of timid lambs and calves. However, the aggressiveness has to find its limits, otherwise the world will be destroyed. This limit is now being sought, and President Trump who floated trial balloons of leaving NATO and dismantling other aggressive alliances is doing just that.

The Syria Deal

There are hints that Trump wants to do in Syria what Nixon did in Vietnam, namely, to get out of it. This is a wise step, if he will be allowed to take it. According to media reports, Trump has two conditions to be discussed with Putin.

The first condition, Iran. The US wants Russia to limit its collaboration with Iran or even oust Iran from Syria. For that, the United States is proposing to drop its “Assad must leave” demand; to stop insisting that Syria should be governed by a new provisional government without Assad. The US is ready to agree that the elections in Syria will take place in 2021, and until then this topic will be removed from the agenda. Moreover, the US tempts Russia with lifting some sanctions on Russia proper. This bargain had been proposed to the Russians a few weeks ago, and it had been elaborated upon ever since.

Iran is the enemy of choice for Israel. Donald Trump had made a temporary alliance with Zionists, a Jewish group that is interested mainly in the Middle East, as opposed to the ‘Liberal’ Jews who are after world domination. Liberal Jews are strongly opposed to Trump; while for Zionist Jews the liberal agenda in the US and Europe (immigration, gender, outsourcing, free trade) is less important, while the Middle East (Israel, Iran, Syria) is more important. Trump tries to satisfy Zionist appetites hoping that they will limit their brethren’s attacks on him, in return. Provided that Putin is also friendly to Zionists while the Liberals are hostile to him, two presidents can find an acceptable compromise. But it won’t be what Israel dreams of.

Russia does not intend to quarrel with Iran; it can’t possibly oust Iran from Syria, even if it would like to. As soon as this issue was discussed in the press, there appeared a lengthy interview with President Assad, in which he stressed that Iran’s alliance is most important for him. After all, the Iranians fought on Assad’s side when the Russians were onlookers.

But the Iranians are in a quandary. They do not want confrontation with Russia, nor with the United States, neither with Israel. When Putin launched his trial balloon, saying that all foreign troops should withdraw from Syria, the Iranians did not object, but said: “We can leave, if we are asked”. The Iranians can leave Syria, but Damascus does not want this.

However, Iran agreed not to participate in the current struggle for the south-west of Syria, for the territory adjacent to the borders of Jordan and Israel. There, the legitimate army of Syria is conducting a successful offensive against the rebels with Russian aerial support and without Iranian participation.

Perhaps, this absence of Iranians near Israeli borders will be presented by Trump to Israel as his achievement. Trump wants Russia to create an exclusive Iranian-free zone next to Jordanian and Israeli borders. Russia does not control the situation in Syria to such an extent that it can undertake it. But Russia can negotiate with the Iranians to prevent the Shiite militias from entering this region. They did it once: when the Syrian troops approached the Israeli border in Kuneitra area, Israel demanded that the Shiite militias stay 50-70 km away. The Russians said: “No, but we’ll arrange for you a few kilometres of separation.” Hence, this kind of agreement is possible, if the parties are flexible enough, but there will be no “Russia betrayed Iran” kind of deal.

The second is the fate of the rebels.

Trump does not want the withdrawal of American soldiers to be accompanied by a blood bath. While the US representative to the United Nations accused Russia of violating the ceasefire and not observing the deconfliction zone, the White House said that America would morally support the rebels, but it would not fight for them. “You should not base your decisions on the assumption or expectation of a military intervention by us”, was the message.

This was a signal of approaching end of rebellion. Robert Fisk thinks their collapse is imminent. The Russians won match and set. Some rebel groups already surrendered and went over to the Damascus’ side. The stubborn ones in their thousands retreated to Israeli and Jordanian borders, but neither Israel nor Jordan intends to let them in.

Trump reasonably does not want them to be slaughtered. He does not need screaming media reporting on massacred Syrian freedom fighters and their children and pregnant women betrayed by the Russian agent Trump. He needs an agreement that the Syrian troops will behave and allow the rebels to reconcile with the legitimate government or leave unharmed. This demand suits Russia. From the very beginning and to this day Russians believed and insisted that it is necessary to drag the disparate rebel bands to the side of Damascus. And it suits Assad, for wherever the Syrian troops came as liberators or conquerors, whether in Eastern Ghuta or in Aleppo, they did not indulge in revenge or debt-settling. I am sure that President Putin will help President Trump to leave Syria without losing face.

I understand that for many of my readers it is difficult or impossible to support Trump. The tragedy of Richard Nixon may yet be repeated, for the president who made peace with China and Vietnam had been hated by warmongers and by all media-influenced Americans, and was forced to retire. He was the last independent and peace-loving president; those who condemned him were punished by a long run of inferior rulers. Trump has many faults, but he still wants to avoid a great war. He deserves a chance.

As for Putin, I am certain he will be friendly and charming with the American, and mercifully he won’t be tempted to make big concessions to Trump, for Trump’s powers are still quite limited; his decisions are likely to be blocked by the Congress and possibly overturned by his successor. Only a rash person would make with him a complicated long-term deal, and prudent Putin probably will be satisfied with ad hoc dealing.

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

This article was first published at The Unz Review.

http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-singapore-helsinki-express/