Another Carthaginian Peace

 During the first year of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, I spent a lot of time on this blog quoting John Maynard Keynes's line (written in the wake of the Versailles treaty) about the dangers of imposing a "Carthaginian peace" on a defeated adversary. I was very concerned about plans that some Western leaders were floating to seize Russian central bank assets and impose ruinous reparations on the country, after the war. I thought (and still think) this would be an unjust form of collective punishment for Putin's crimes that would chiefly harm innocent Russian civilians. On prudential grounds, I also thought it would breed generations of resentment and ultimately cause more conflict down the road. 

What I could not have foreseen at the time, however, is that—just three years later—the U.S. government would indeed be trying to impose a "Carthaginian peace" on one of the parties to the war—except, they would be trying to impose it on our ally, Ukraine, rather than on Putin's Russia. But I know of no other way to describe the mineral rights "deal" that the Trump administration is currently trying to force down the throat of Ukraine's (rightly) reluctant leadership. While Ukraine's negotiators originally floated the idea of a mineral rights partnership—as a way to appeal to Trump's "transactional" character—the U.S. seems to have twisted the original idea into a form of ruinous one-sided reparations. 

Specifically, reporting indicates that the Trump-backed version of the deal would grant the U.S. rights to $500 billion worth of Ukrainian minerals—with no concrete security guarantees in exchange. Even more despicably, the administration has openly framed these payments as "compensation" for past U.S. aid—suggesting that they would truly imply nothing about future U.S. behavior. Such an exploitative deal is absurdly lopsided—both because the U.S. gave only roughly a fifth of that amount to Ukraine in military aid in the first place, and because the U.S. had offered this support as a grant (which went to the U.S.'s own contractors)—not a loan—so Trump is trying to impose new terms on a deal that was already made. 

And this is not even to mention the fact that the $500 billion Trump is trying to extract from Ukraine, while its back is against the wall, is roughly equivalent to the estimated cost that it will take to repair and reconstruct Ukraine's economy after the war. So, in effect, the Trump administration is actively trying to double the costs Ukraine faces, at the very moment it is fighting for its life in the face of Putin's lawless aggression. Talk about the "last poor plunder from a bleeding land" (Byron). The Trump team truly is trying to impose a "Carthaginian peace" in the Ukraine-Russia war—except they are trying to impose it on our own ally in the face of Putin's direct threat to their existence!

There are many possible ways to explain this obscene situation. One is that Trump may be in some way beholden to Moscow. Another is that he is just such an utterly rotten human being that he simply cannot see another person or country in a position of vulnerability and not rush to find some way to exploit it. But still another explanation is an X-factor that I truly did not take into consideration, in my early analyses of the war. When I was writing about this at the outset of the invasion—three years ago—what I did not see coming was how much of the U.S. conservative movement would actively embrace Putin's regime and actually prefer his authoritarian system to our own democracy. 

Yet, this is clearly what is happening. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Putin has created a new visa category for Americans to emigrate to Russia in order to practice "traditional values." In essence, it amounts to an immigration program for disloyal American conservatives who want to defect to Putin's regime. And—disturbingly—a number of people are taking Putin up on the offer. They are following the lead of right-wing influencers like Tucker Carlson who have evolved into avowed supporters of Putin's authoritarian government. As one analyst notes—we seem to be witnessing the modern right-wing equivalent of the leftist pro-Soviet "fellow-travelers" of yesteryear. 

To this, I can only reply as E.E. Cummings did—in his experimental travelogue/modernist epic poem about his visit to the Stalinist-era Soviet Union, Eimi. For the most part, in Eimi, Cummings refrains from overtly editorializing. He meets a number of self-deluded American fellow-travelers who have moved to the Soviet Union, and he simply gives them enough rope to hang themselves, rhetorically. He lets them drone on and on about the wonders of the worker's state and how overstated all those Western reports one hears about the crimes of the "Gee Pee Yoo" really are. In short—Cummings lets them make themselves look ridiculous, and they proceed to do so—with very little help from him. 

And so too—the Tucker Carlsons and the right-wing bros dumb enough to take up Putin's offer of a visa to promote "traditional values" serve as their own refutation. But Cummings does offer one brief phrase that aptly sums up the whole Soviet experiment that applies just as well to Putin's post-Soviet autocracy. Stripped of all the pro-regime propaganda and the willfully deluded reports of Western apologists, Cummings observes, Soviet society really just amounted to a "joyless experiment in force and fear." And that is all Putin's bloodthirsty regime amounts to as well. Anyone with eyes can see it—as he kidnaps children and commits war crimes in Ukraine. "Force and fear" is all he has to offer.