Another Munich

True colonialism has never been tried! War update: Drones, Starlink, Donbass, the south.

Faced with economic erosion, the west is eager to reverse the tide. Not through its own economic successes, but through the barrel of a gun. Today we’ll examine this impressive ‘new’ ideology’, and assess just how effective Western Civilization is at the frontlines.

Another Munich

Back in 2023, the Munich security conference made a rather belated effort to ‘include the global south’. This lip service is no longer necessary.

Marco Rubio’s speech has justifiably dominated discussion of this year’s conference. Not just because, of course, because ‘the west’ is irrelevant without Washington. But also because of Rubio’s confidence in delivering his view of the world. It unites the unapologetically murderous attitude of frontier settlers with the transatlanticism of the old eastern establishment.

Let’s go through the arguments of his speech. The first isn’t particularly controversial — it is that the west was most united during the cold war, due to the presence of the communist enemy. Following 1991, holding together transatlantic unity has become more difficult than ever. Though he doesn’t say this, ‘terrorism’ was too ephemeral to unite the two continents. A resurgent Russia, of course, does much better, though it still doesn’t quite match the grand terror the miserable European burghers faced before Red Moscow.

His next argument is that the post-91 order was mistaken for other reasons. For one, ‘free and unfettered trade’ led to the ‘shuttering of our plants, resulting in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.’ Naturally, he doesn’t forget to jab at the Europeans, mentioning that this occurred ‘even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours.’

As usual, the populist western right refuses to acknowledge that outsourcing production to Asians working on a dollar a day wasn’t merely an exercise in abject cruelty by the nefarious liberal internationalist elite. The much-suffering population of north America and western Europe received cheap consumer goods in return, and got to work in comparatively safe and easy office and service jobs.

Sure, marketing or waiting tables isn’t the most intellectually stimulating or emotionally fulfilling line of work. But try telling that to a Cambodian working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, laboring away to produce the latest cheap trinkets demanded by the sensitive western consumer. Or to one of the latin american migrants picking fruits for US citizens.

I also won’t dispute the fact that European protectionism has indeed been most malicious for the rest of the world. But Trump is certainly not interested in lessening the economic woes of poor countries that have signed colonial free trade agreements with the EU, whether Ukraine or Tunisia. He simply wants the EU to enter a more colonial arrangement with the USA, which the EU is probably expected to pay for by squeezing more out of its own subjects and those abroad. Something that European leaders seem quite eager to do.

Rubio has other issues with the post-91 order. Whether Reagan or Trump, the message is the same: time for less social spending, more bombs. The lazy Europeans ‘invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves.’ He points to ‘other countries’ that apparently ‘invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests’.

Anyway, I presume this last part must refer to Russia and China, though several problems arise. First, only Russia has been using ‘hard power’ — China’s last military operation was in 1979, against Vietnam. Second, though I’m sure that China has been constructing a great deal of weapons, the fact remains that US military spending remains three times higher. Moving on.

the USS Abraham Lincoln

Next, Rubio complains about the malevolent migrant menace. Indeed, the US would do well to reconsider a few of its recent entries, particularly those from Cuba and with a family background in large-scale drug trafficking to the USA.

Rubio then embarks on a truly spectacular exercise in imperial logorrhea:

Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.

For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.

And so this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our counsel. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe. The reason why, my friends, is because we care deeply. We care deeply about your future and ours. And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected – not just economically, not just militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours, because we know – (applause) – because we know that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.

National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions – how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions. They are. But they are not the fundamental one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.

It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born. It was here in Europe where the world – which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution. It was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels. They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future. But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our political future.

For people! For nation! For way of life! For the Beatles and the Rolling Stones! Truly, if there is anyone as spiritually plugged into Evropa’s profound mysteries, it must be Little Marco from Florida. After all, they have their own Saint Petersburg there as well, which must be just as much a window to Europe as the original.

After complaining some more about migration and deindustrialization, Rubio goes on to demonstrate just how much the Trump presidency is opposed to foreign interventions. Some of my readers may remember the premier neocon think-tank of the 90s and 2000s, ‘the Project for a New American Century’. Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria Nuland, did his utmost in that Project to push for all the middle eastern forever wars that Trump loves to rail against. Kagan, of course, was about as perfect an embodiment of ‘the swamp’ as anyone.

Here’s Rubio’s entirely new conception — a ‘new western century’:

But the work of this new alliance should not be focused just on military cooperation and reclaiming the industries of the past. It should also be focused on, together, advancing our mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century. Commercial space travel and cutting-edge artificial intelligence; industrial automation and flex manufacturing; creating a Western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers; and a unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the Global South. Together we can not only take back control of our own industries and supply chains – we can prosper in the areas that will define the 21st century.

‘A western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers’. What a delightful way to rephrase invading other countries and abducting their leaders to control their resources.

Next, Rubio complains once again about migrants.

Then, we learn that the United Nations is not entirely hopeless, though it faces many problems. It couldn’t end the war in Gaza, as ‘it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce.’ I was unaware that Washington freed the ten thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s torture-rape camps, I suppose I must have been paying too much attention to Ukraine’s many riveting events.

After that, we find out that ‘14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers’ have managed to ‘constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran’. Not everyone is convinced that the dastardly Mullahs have really seen their nuclear program so shattered by America’s brave stealth bombers, but moving on.

Rubio also boasts that his country’s special forces (capitalized) brought the ‘fugitive narcoterrorist dictator’ of Venezuela to justice. As far as I am aware, no American court has actually pronounced a verdict on the six foot three strongman, but no doubt the towering Rubio has already sentenced Maduro with the full force of the law in his colorful daydreams.

At this point, we reach the true apotheosis of Rubio’s treacly fantasies. It is time, apparently, for the west to return to the colonial practices of the 17th century. Clearly nothing has changed in the international balance of forces to prevent the use of such a strategy:

we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.

This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again. For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.

But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.

Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.

And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.

How delightful. As some have pointed out online, Rubio seems to link the decline of the west with 1945. After that point, the argument must go, western civilization no longer produced any brave Warrior-Leaders. Now the once hopelessly Cosmopolitan Americans claim to have produced their own Caesar. To use Spengler’s terms. I am reminded of the fact that the American Europhile, Hitlerophile philosopher Francis Yockey ghostwrote the speeches for Trump’s spiritual predecessor, Joseph McCarthy.

We are then treated to some more of Rubio’s favorite definitely-not-abstractions:

And above all, an alliance based on the recognition that we, the West, have inherited together – what we have inherited together is something that is unique and distinctive and irreplaceable, because this, after all, is the very foundation of the transatlantic bond.

And he ends with more exaltation of the figure of the cowboy:

Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos – the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West – these were born in Spain.

So, what about the Europeans?

They, of course, were overjoyed to hear Daddy Rubio’s words. This was the first response to his speech:

Mr. Secretary, I’m not sure you heard the sigh of relief through this hall when we were just listening to what I would interpret as a message of reassurance, of partnership.

Reuters also gathered together the ecstasy Europeans experienced at Rubio’s words.

EU COMMISSION CHIEF URSULA VON DER LEYEN

“I was very much reassured by the speech of the Secretary of State. We know him. He’s a good friend, a strong ally ... and this was, for me, very reassuring to listen to him. We know that in the administration, some have a harsher tone on these topics. But the Secretary of State was very clear. He said ‘We want strong Europe in the Alliance’, and this is what we are working for intensively in the European Union.”

FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER JEAN-NOEL BARROT

“Referring to (our) common legacy can only be welcomed with applause in Europe. The second thing that Secretary Rubio mentioned that I think is also very important and that is very consistent with the view of European countries is that some challenges cannot be addressed by a single nation, as powerful and as rich as it may be ...

And so on. The war in Ukraine has truly given the golden opportunity for Europe to throw off all pretence of concern about human rights. Now it can revel in the ‘strong Europe’ of colonial bygone, the ‘common legacy’ of invasion, plunder and murder it shares with its energetic child to the west. It can finally preach what it has always practiced.

But the Europeans still criticize Washington on some points. Many European leaders are terribly concerned about whether he will do anything to stop Israel’s never-ending slaughter, with each day bringing a new mass murder of Palestinians.

Sorry, I must have gotten my materials mixed up. Naturally, the Europeans were anxious to know whether Trump really is set on the terrible idea of ending the war in Ukraine. Rubio’s answer is quite telling (my bolding):

I hear your point about – the answer is we don’t know. We don’t know the Russians are serious about ending the war; they say they are – and under what terms they were willing to do it and whether we can find terms that are acceptable to Ukraine that Russia will always agree to. But we’re going to continue to test it.

In the meantime, everything else continues to happen. The United States has imposed additional sanctions on Russia’s oil. In our conversations with India, we’ve gotten their commitment to stop buying additional Russian oil. Europe has taken its set of steps moving forward. The PURL Program continues in which American weaponry is being sold for the Ukrainian war effort. So all these things continue. Nothing has stopped in the interim. So there’s no buying of time here in that regard.

What we can’t answer – but we’re going to continue to test – is whether there is an outcome that Ukraine can live with and that Russia will accept.

I don’t think anybody in this room would be against a negotiated settlement to this war so long as the conditions are just and sustainable. And that’s what we aim to achieve, and we’re going to continue to try to achieve it, even as all these other things continue to happen on the sanctions front and so forth.

So. The war in Ukraine can end — but only on conditions that the Ukrainian government finds acceptable. That is, the war in Ukraine will not end. Is this any different from the approach so beloved by the Democrats and Brussels?

Apart from that, Rubio revels in covering all the ways that the US is still selling weapons to Ukraine or increasing its economic pressure on Russia. Note that as American military commentators point out, the PURL program does not merely involve Europe buying American weapons for Ukraine at a 10% markup. It also prioritizes all new American military production for export to Ukraine. Hardly the de-prioritization of the Russia-Ukraine war that Trump seemed to portend.

As I’ve written since his election in 2024, Trump isn’t going to end the war in Ukraine. If Moscow gave in to the terms he demands, he’d be more than happy to never stop reminding television audiences that he stopped the war in Ukraine. But Russia considers itself to be winning on the battlefield, and is hence unwilling to listen to Trump’s entreaties, no matter how charming he considers himself.

Trump, like any good American, finds it impossible to conceive of the idea that his interlocutor might have his own interests. And more importantly, continuing the war in Ukraine is an excellent way to make sure the Europeans buy American energy and weapons.

Some Europeans have a vision of a new synthesis to bring together both sides of the Atlantic. Members of the German ruling coalition from the Christian Social Union called once again to deport draft-age Ukrainians back home for them to ‘defend their country’. Deporting immigrants to continue the war in Ukraine, finally something that both Eurocrats and Washington can agree on.

No doubt American Democrats will still claim that the evil Trump is pursuing an entirely rogue foreign policy that they have nothing to do with. Hillary Clinton also made an appearance at the Munich Security Conference, calling for the west to send more Tomohawks and anti-air missiles to Ukraine.

She seems to have forgotten that the few remaining items of the latter category are indeed prioritized for export to Ukraine. In general, of course, there is absolutely no point in even trying to argue with Mrs Clinton about just how likely it is that Moscow will give up on the battlefield after experiencing Ukro-American ballistic missiles striking Moscow. Perhaps more importantly, if doing so was such a good idea, why didn’t Trump send them?

The reality is that both Trump and the Democrats are united on the basics. The great progressive hope AOC told Munich that ‘there can be no conversation about Ukraine without Ukraine’, playing the old Biden fiddle. All sides of the American political spectrum agree that the war in Ukraine must continue, unless Russia agrees to all their demands.

Pushing back on the popular theory that Trump ‘wants to give over or divide up Europe with Putin’, the Ukrainian publication strana.ua makes a much more convincing argument. Namely, that Donny Deals is hardly that generous. He wants Europe to be purely an American vassal, to only buy American energy, consumer goods, and military production. In their words, he wants to milk Europe on his own.

And the Europeans certainly have plenty of milk to give, at least of the ineffable type. Yesterday, head of NATO Mark Rutte experienced the sublime. Looking into the eyes of Ukraine’s mine-sniffer mascot Patron the dog, he knew that Ukraine’s victory is inevitable, that the brave country would ‘never give up’.

Indeed, it’s rather hard to do so when leaving this oasis of freedom is illegal, sometimes resulting in a bullet between the shoulders.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the frontlines. How is Western Civilization progressing in its grand struggle for People, Nation, and the Beatles? Unfortunately, I lack the insights doubtlessly granted by one-on-one meetings with Patron.

Ukrainian soldiers and military experts are not quite as high-spirited as Mr Rutte. First, we’ll examine the latest difficulties in Ukraine’s drone industrial complex. Plenty of Ukrainian complaints about western selfishness here.

Next, the worsening situation on the Donbass frontlines. Despite the loss of Starlink access, Russian drones continue to further strangle Ukrainian logistics. There is also some interesting new analysis from Ukrainian military bloggers about how Russia is replacing the 10% of its military communications that used Starlink.

Finally, we’ll examine claims of a massive but secret Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. Though some on Twitter are overjoyed about it, Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts are quite unenthusiastic. They point out that at most, a few deserted locations with a handful of Russian troops now have Ukrainian trips hiding nearby. This has taken place at the cost of significant Ukrainian losses in the notorious assault units.

Drones

First, for a rather sensitive topic. This is the matter of collateral damage during Russian aerial strikes on Ukrainian cities.