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Russamerica and Old Lady Oi
February 21, 2025
This week, the Trump administration, which has been doing outrageous things since day one, did something even more outrageous than all the outrageous things done in the past month: it refused to “condemn Russian aggression” in a draft UN resolution planned for
tomorrow. Yes, indeed, the Bad Orange Man went way, way, way too far with a single little step and he will suffer well deserved consequences for this. Or not, because nobody cares what the UN does — we’re too busy watching a geopolitical earthquake in real time.
For years, like millions of others, I’ve been watching the disintegration of Russian-American relations and have been accepting this as a natural process stemming from apparently irreconcilable conflicts between Russian and American interests, Cold War mentality, and Hollywood action movies. I’m not shy about the capabilities of my imagination but even with that imagination I never really contemplated the possibility of Russia and America actually coming together and mending fences — and neither did anyone in Europe’s circle of power, apparently.
Now, it bears noting that what we have seen in the past few days is early steps, any peace deal the two try to negotiate may yet fall through — although I doubt it for reasons that, shall we say, have to do with the difference between narrative and reality — and the whole thing could end with more animosity than it started. Again, I doubt it. Because what I see on both sides is pragmatism and an “I’m too old for this shit” attitude. In evidence of the genuine warming between the Bears team and the Eagles team, the liberal denizens of the internet are having the mother of all meltdowns. That’s enough for me to know that Trump and Putin are doing something right.
Now, before I cause a meltdown here as well, let me hasten to add that mutual trust is not really the defining characteristic of this recent thawing in bilateral relations. Russian commentators say “Don’t trust the Americans, they always lie.” Western commentators say “Don’t trust the Russians, they always lie.” But you see, you don’t need brotherly trust to do politics together. All you need is a mutual
interest. And war is bad for business.
Guess who missed that lesson in foreign relations school? Yep. Old Lady Oi, also known as Europe, also known as the Moron Repository — seriously, the EU has a certifiably stupid individual as head of foreign policy in the company of equally certifiable bureaucrats of all sorts. They just celebrated the 16th, that’s sixteenth, package of sanctions against Russia, after the previous fifteen failed to do anything much besides hit the sanctioners, repeatedly. Europe has turned into a joke — it may yet progress to a cruel joke if it really stays on the road to alienating the two largest energy producers — and nuclear warhead hosts — in the world.
Not that it really meant to annoy them both. Europe only wanted Russia to suffer, hopefully die and disintegrate, and then Europe would celebrate with its American friends and help itself to all the goodies nestled between the Volga and Kamchatka. Imagine the shock when the American friends lost the elections and other Americans who were not so friendly took office. And then these Americans said they didn’t to be enemies with Russia. I will try to explain just how existentially dangerous this is for Europe’s current identity.
Imagine, if you will, a menopausal climate activist. She’s a lady of means and little in the way of responsibilities. She has a big, butch husband who’s always around to protect her from dangers real and imaginary. But those hormones are playing up, the lady is bored, restless, has hot flushes, and is looking for someone to blame for the natural processes that are making her so.
The enemy is perfectly easy to find — history has taken care of that. So the lady sets her butch husband on that enemy, whom we shall call climate change for convenience, and enjoys the fight, egging him on at every step — until the husband steps on his own rake, suffers a blow to
the head and changes, refusing to fight a pointless fight that also happens to cost a pretty penny and those butch pockets are not bottomless.
Butch husband declares game over. Lady has hysterics. Butch husband threatens divorce. What’s a lady, who is not particularly smart to begin with but has worked hard to becomeg more pointedly stupid since The Change began, to do? Well, blame climate change, of course.
Because I have a creeping suspicion I’m being too cryptic, here it is straight: Europe is drowning in complacency. It assumed it would always be able to rely on the U.S. to defend it, no matter how aggressively it picks on its historical foe because it has nothing better to do and it needs to define itself somehow, so it has chosen to define itself in opposition to Russia, even if this definition involves so much projection it’s scary as hell and twice as funny. It assumed all Americans hated Russia with the same vengeance as the majority of the European political class. It is now discovering how dangerous assumptions can be, especially at this extreme degree.
The U.S. got fed up, because it has better things to do with its time, money, and troops than pander to Europe’s identity crisis. Now, Europe acts surprised. Europe feels cheated. Europe is not getting its way when it was sure it would keep getting its way with the U.S. forever because it’s smart and the U.S. is dumb. Europe is the continental equivalent of Peggy Bundy, without the wit, and the bonbons are gone. Europe has managed to make itself so geopolitically toxic in the past decade or so it deserves an award.
Worse, what the Trump administration has demonstrated is that Europe has also managed to make itself rather irrelevant by descending into as severe a form of infantilism in foreign relations as in energy. Europe will need quite a kick to emerge from this state. It
looks like Trump was more than happy to deliver it — unlike Putin, he is not a patient man. They make a great match. For Europe, it’s going to be a really difficult year. Hopefully, it will emerge from it wiser.
Some quick clarifications:
1. “But Russia is a dictatorship as bad as North Korea.” — Yes, and the “Terminator” series is a documentary.
2. “At least Europe is on the right side of history in this war.” — Only in geographical terms with relation to the U.S. if you’re looking at them both from Africa.
3. (My favourite, as seen on X) “So Putin took over America.” — Can’t help here, this requires professional intervention. I blame “independent media”.
I leave you with a rhetorical question: Why is Europe expending so much resources on fuelling anti-Russian sentiment and unquestioning support for the government in Kiev? Because that lady is on a runaway bike she made herself and if she falls, it will hurt. A lot. The bike’s called Energy Transition.