5th March 2025
Some things are changing rather fundamentally and the way we think should perhaps change too
There is that scene in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail where an armed knight crashes and easily wastes a wedding party.
And of course, this armed knight is able to cause so much damage at a wedding party – nobody would expect this to happen and so nobody would think to to stop him.
He shows that it is really not very difficult to move fast and break things.
The surviving gate guard outside just looks on bemused at this, and he says, “hey”.
This is pretty much what many are also doing as they watch what is happening in the United States.
They see what is happening, and their response is also a bemused “hey”.
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Students on university history courses often study historiography – the study of historians and how they write about history.
Sometimes this study of historiography includes a look at how different historians have used certain words and concepts, such as ‘revolution’.
And those students then find that such words and concepts have been used at different times and in different ways.
So, for example, students looking at ‘revolution’ may come across the so-called ‘diplomatic revolution’ of 1756.
In early 2025 we seem to be having a similar ‘diplomatic revolution’ – in real time, and this feels odd as in the United Kingdom we have not really had one for a long while.
When I mentioned this on social media, this was one insightful response:
The United States’ current deliberate alienation (and worse) of its long-term allies is a similarly fundamental – and, no doubt, similarly consequential – shift.
And although one should hesitate before saying anything as pointed as describing president Trump and Vice-President as Russian assets, their conduct is indistinguishable from them being so.
Everything they are doing appears to increase Russian power and to limit United States power.
There seems to be no other explanatory model that explains as much.
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This is not to say that they are necessarily actively corrupt: one is reminded of an old joke-poem about Fleet Street journalism:
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.
In addition to any actual corruption, there seems to be also an ideological commitment to promote and protect Russia at the expense of everyone else.
Perhaps the ghost of Stalin is now kicking itself – had he only described his regime as Russian nationalist as opposed to communist, he may not have been bothered by American cold war policy and 1950s McCarthyism and so on.
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One thing about a (genuine) revolution, like a (genuine) crisis, is that they are unpredictable in their course and in their outcome.
And another thing about a (genuine) revolution is that it often requires there to be new concepts and new words, so as to describe things which are new.
Imagine living through the French Revolution without the benefit of hindsight: from the storming of the Bastille and the ending of the monarchy to the Terror, and from the Terror to the rise of Bonapartism, and from Bonapartism to a massive war and imperial conquest, and from a massive war and imperial conquest to a total defeat and the restoration of the monarchy.
And at each stage, nobody knowing what will happen and everything always confused and foggy and (frankly) terrifying.
Events unfold into things which were not only unexpected but also unprecedented.
Decades later, of course, the frenzy settles down to calm historical narratives.
But at the time, things did not seem like that.
As somebody once said of “realistic” war films, the only realistic war film would have bullets spraying out randomly from the cinema screen.
The same can be said about reading about social and political upheavals.
*
Revolutions are thereby not often fun – despite (or because of) the enthusiasm of self-appointed revolutionaries.
Wise conservative once knew this. There is a good case that modern conservatism (at least in Europe) came out from the reaction to the French Revolution – with its philosophy articulated by Edmund Burke and its statecraft practiced by Metternich.
Constitutional arrangements and the international order were regarded as fragile things – to be, well, conserved.
(Hence, conservatism.)
Yes, one could (to be anarchistic) move fast and break things. But that was neither clever nor wise. One can imagine the looks at the faces of Burke and Metternich and others at the antics of Elon Musk and DOGE
And the reason and the motive to oppose liberals, progressives and radicals was for Burke and Metternich that in their demands for reform and progress the liberals, progressives and radicals risked the fragility of constitutional arrangements and the international order.
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One of the most remarkable features of current “conservatism” is that that it turns this conservatism of Burke and Metternich on its head.
It is almost as if the word and concept of conservatism has had its own revolution, and it has now become the very thing it once opposed.
The only common quality is that both old-style and new conservatism grasp the fragility of constitutional arrangements and the international order.
But instead of the caution of old-style conservatives, the new conservatives see that very fragility as an opportunity to trash and do damage.
*
And so all sorts of things are now being unleashed.
Here are a couple of literary examples of horrors being unleashed in their giddy destructive excitement.
*
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
*
Or in the words of C. S. Lewis:
“But such people! […] bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures whom I won’t describe because if I did the grown-ups would probably not let you read this book—Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the Witch’s side […]”
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Alas, unlike the original literary texts from which those quotes are extracted, we are perhaps unlikely to be saved by a second coming, or even a first one.
*
What has been done in the last few weeks by Trump and his cronies cannot – at least on a conceptual level – be undone.
They have shown just how fragile are their constitutional arrangements and the international order.
That cannot be un-invented.
Other countries would now be prudent to regulate their affairs so as to minimise or eliminate their dependency on the United States – it is no longer a question of waiting out until the next United States elections.
And other political systems would be wise to limit what can be done within their own constitutions by executive order, and to strengthen the roles of the legislature and the judiciary (and also of internal independent legal advice within government).
What is happening in the United States can happen elsewhere.
It can happen here.
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Any political culture has a stockpile of political anecdotes, precedents and other antecedents, examples and illustrations, fables and proverbs.
“Peel did this” and “Roosevelt did that” and “This is just like the 1930s”.
There is nothing wrong with this – indeed it is an inevitable part of any political culture, essentially it is a shared set of memes and gifs that help us make sense of what is going on around us.
The problem is that old categories and concepts often do not match the novelty of what is now unfolding.
We many need to think about things in a new way – so as to work out to defeat what is unwelcome.
We may need to have a revolution in our own minds.
And not just go “hey” instead.
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(And to my history tutors from the early 1990s, I am really sorry this historiography essay is thirty-five years too late.)
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How easily I forget the lessons of the Lion, the Witch and the wardrobe: “spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants”.
Thanks for the reminder.
Is Donald Trump shackling his USA to the corpse of Vladimir Putin’s Russia?
What happens if Vladimir Putin suddenly leaves office without even nominating a successor?
Putin’s is the regime where a single man embodies it.
Him.
There is no known successor to take on running Putin’s corrupt regime, its decaying society and its failing ex Soviet economy.
I pose the question of what happens next, because the Commentariat seem to assume all the key players will be hale and hearty for years to come.
That, for example, the US President will not fall prey to the occupational hazard of being a US President or the leader of China will not fall ill with his position taken over by someone who maintains him as a cut out.
Unlike in the days of Putin’s youth, we do not even have the indicator of a possible successor to the man in the Kremlin provided by who is standing next to whom at the May Day Parade.
And it is hard to imagine Putin ever allowing himself to be pushed around in a wheelchair by any potential successor.
Putin will not live forever and “Après moi, le déluge!” will be his epitaph, at least in the context of Russia.
There would be a certain irony if the man who wanted to put the Russian Empire firmly back on the map turned out to be its last Emperor.
Putin’s naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean, secured in Syria, a prize much sought after by past Russian rulers over the centuries, may prove the high watermark of his reign.
The Russian presence in the port is quietly being run down whilst the eyes of the world are on Washington DC.
As I’ve said here before, I think this is the end of the American Empire. The Roman Empire lasted 400-500 years, the British Empire about 250, diminishing returns, so 80 years for the American Empire would be about right. How long will the next empire last?
Move fast and break things – “I said, blow the bloody doors off”.
“I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren’t there.”
The Ninth Doctor
If last year’s General Election in the UK was the Net Cord General Election, with the ball falling on the right side of the net for the Labour Party to win the tournament, then this has to be the Clown Car Revolution.
This is thought-provoking. Absolutely agree on embedding protections into the system. I hope that isn’t code for a written constitution ;-).
I feel focusing on Russia is a bit Cold War and – dare I say it – not changing our thinking.
The real beneficiaries of the US’s step back from its role as world police officer are China, India, and perhaps also the EU. The US is saying “you have to look after yourselves”.
Well, Germany has set the wheels in motion to allow that to happen by disapplying its debt brake and I think the gravity model of trade – which was of course poo-poo-ed by the Farageists and Spartans – will also apply to military cooperation as European defence spending increases (assuming it does).
It won’t happen overnight, but you’re right – the vacuum Trump is creating will need to be filled with something(s).
Of course, this is the opposite of MAGA, but no one who doesn’t realise this will thank me for pointing it out.
MAGA is a contradiction on its face. Make America Great Again, but it’s constantly drummed in that the United States is the Greatest Country on Earth™. Does it stop being great when a Democrat is in the White House?
This exercise is one of reminding the world of American Exceptionalism. They will no longer prop us up. If the outcome of this is that Europe drastically curtails its business with the US, I will not cry over it.
I would like to propose my own bumper sticker acronym: PAIIP = Put America in its Place.
Thank you, Mr Green. I think you and I are in full agreement on all the key points: on the perspicacity of Burke, on the need for rule-of-law, and on the threat Moscow and Washington now pose to rule-of-law.
I would like to make a very SMALL contribution to this discussion, by posting my own very LIMITED analysis of the 2025-02-27 Oval Office diplomatic disaster. In this analysis, I argue that the Oval Office incident was scripted by the Trump administration, but in my current state of puzzlement I do not try saying what further objective their scripting might have been meant to serve:
((LIMITED_ANALYSIS))
(1) The meeting broke with what are surely normal procedures, since not only was a promised bilateral agreement not signed, but an envisaged signatory got physically thrown out of the White House. (President Z got first taken to a separate room, near the Oval Office, and in that room got told that he must leave the building. He was seen by the media cameras to proceed in haste from a White House door to his waiting vehicle, perhaps one or two metres from the door.) I think, subject to correction, that this event has no precedent in American diplomatic work.
(2) It was a departure from normal procedure that the American Vice-President took a substantive role in the meeting. In such a meeting, it is normal for the Vice-President to say little, and for everything to proceed as a two-way between the POTUS and whatever head of state or head of government may be visiting him in the Oval Office. This suggests to me – but I may be wrong – that the disaster was scripted: the script, as I am now trying to construct it, perhaps envisaged opening discourtesies from the POTUS, and then a covering barrage from the Vice-President. The covering barrage was perhaps put into the script as a contingency measure, to be used only in case the opening discourtesies failed to achieve their desired effect of provoking the visitor into a display of emotion. In the event, President Z did not respond in a particularly strong way to the opening discourtesies, and it was then that the USA team resorted to its covering barrage – activating, on this reconstruction of the scripting, its so-to-speak “Plan B”.
(3) It is at any rate ALLEGED to have been a departure from normal procedure that the press (including, in this case, at least one person from the Russian press) were kept in the Oval Office for the entire meeting, from start to end. It is instead alleged to be normal in the Oval Office work, when an international bilateral agreement is to be signed, to have the press present for a few minutes, so that photographs can be taken, and for the press then to be excused. My own feeling is that such an arrangement is made normal because it forestalls emergencies, as when some wily visiting head-of-government springs some sort of surprise remark on the POTUS: the POTUS might suffer political embarrassment if the visitor were to make a surprise remark in the full glare of media publicity, and indeed an unscrupulous visitor might be tempted to use the presence of the press to score own-country political points. The retention of the press in the room, contrary to allegedly normal Oval Office working procedure, suggests to me, as does point “(2)” above, that the diplomatic disaster was scripted beforehand by the POTUS team.
((/LIMITED_ANALYSIS))
Sincerely,
Toomas Karmo, in Nõo Rural Municipality, Estonia
It was a departure for sure, but I don’t think it was scripted to go the way it did. I think Trump fully expected to be seen offering a take-it-or-leave-it deal that Zelenskyy would be forced to accept. This would show all the world what a great statesman he is. Vance was there because he’s a hawk on Ukraine, and because he has opinions.
Then when it didn’t go to plan (the bullying and extortion didn’t work), Trump got angry and stormed off. Zelenskyy was then bundled out.
Because Trump is not a good statesman. He is a woefully awful statesman whose opinion of his abilities is a case study in the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
A good statesman, indeed any diplomat, would think about how the scene was going to play out at home in Ukraine and realise that the president of Ukraine could not be seen to be capitulating in that situation.
I’m sure this wasn’t scripted. What has been gained? What was there to be gained? All he’s done is brought Europe closer together and the UK closer to Europe.
“And although one should hesitate before saying anything as pointed as describing president Trump and Vice-President as Russian assets, their conduct is indistinguishable from them being so.”
This is precisely right, and it worries me that so few commentators have remarked on this (albeit words would have to be chosen very carefully to avoid unpleasant consequences, I assume). Seriously, if Trump were a Russian asset entirely under Kremlin control, what would be different in the way he has behaved since inauguration?
The messaging is curious, Europeans are presented with the ‘poor little Ukraine’ schtick but in Trump land the message is ‘jumped up comedian and dictator’. This is at odds with the usual ‘Russia all bad’ story. We might ponder why.
Perhaps US strategists have bigger fish to fry. The threat to the US over the next 20 years is not Russia or Europe but China and possibly Asia. Let Russia and Europe waste their energy squabbling over a few cornfields while the big boys concentrate on the big problems. The minerals merely a sop to bring Z back to the table – on US terms.
Which usefully leaves Europe with the problem – what to do when Putin has another go. The US can crush Russia any time it chooses, hardly worth bothering with, but Europe can’t. A useful (to the US) legacy of the Trump diplomatic ‘coup’, Europe is emasculated and will behave itself. Which means we may need a new modernised Metternich, a little less elegant and mannered perhaps, a bit more kick-ass.
From a vulgar business persons viewpoint diplomats may look like so much useless baggage. The lessons of Burke and Metternich belonging to the days of swords and sailing ships and politesse. Our discomfort may stem from there being a spark of truth in that notion.
There’s much wisdom in the post, but I will pick up on the one point I don’t quite agree with:
“Everything they are doing appears to increase Russian power and to limit United States power.”
I think that what we are witnessing is a division of the world into three spheres of power. Trump loses nothing by letting Russia expand across Europe provided the USA expands its reach over the whole of the Americas. For example BlackRock has just acquired control of the Panama Ports Company from Hutchison Holdings. According to the Panamanian press, Trump intervened to make this happen. BlackRock is also a major shareholder in First Quantum, the company whose Panamanian copper mining was shut down after widespread public protests and a ruling from Panama’s Supreme Court. As soon as Trump was elected, First Quantum appealed to him for help. Meanwhile Panama has become a holding place for people expelled from the USA, stuck in a legal limbo.
I take it that “Everything” in “Everything they are doing…” means everything that happened between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy, and is not meant to imply that Trump is not increasing his reach elsewhere in the world. But it might reveal something about Trump’s modus operandi, and his vision of the world. Direct confrontation between the three great powers can be used as a threat, but will not become a reality. Small nations must become vassals, never allies. They may be permitted to fly their own flag, but not to control their own resources. With his treatment of Ukraine, Trump has sent out a very stark message: true sovereignty is not an option. Submit or be thrown to the wolves and the great bear.
Hi Ben
Thank you for this superb comment which, in passing, exposes my Eurocentrism.
I think you may well be right – and my views are thereby modified accordingly.
I fear that it has already happened here in the UK over Brexit. Without raking over the coals of past tragedies too much, Mr Johnson challenged the reliance on the “good chap” system of governance by proroguing Parliament and lying to the Queen. Then there was the matter of him breaking his own laws. That was a small revolution in its own way though the US are now demonstrating how to do it properly
I read that Mahatma Gandhi once said something like “If there is an idiot in power it’s because those who elected him are well represented.”
Humble open mindedness requires one to accept that Trump and Co. might not be idiots, but one also wonders how the view of their electors will evolve as the fallout of the executive’s “courageous” approach to international affairs turns into domestic economic consequences. They’re armed and recent history suggests, similarly prone to acts of political courage.
Doubtless the Mandarin’s are pleased that we westerners are living in interesting times.