This new Sweden of ours

 I commented the last election in this fair(ly) hyperborean non-republic in dubious and not-friendly-to-estimate-terms, with the capital solution that either the liberal parties would be squeezed out and join a bloc of left, or the ostensible left, in opposition to a right-far right complacency, or else the ostensible far right would link hands with their presumed (and very much courted) brethren to oust the Labour predominance still in the air - and now reaffirmed, in a strong kind, in this very precarious crisis-ridden election of ours. Now both these events have occurred, and a resurgent right... somewhat resurgent, and somewhat of the right, is returned into power, and only the limitations of a deeply divided, schizophrenic Liberal party group and the inevitable 

Come on, now they're rising up

 The revocation of Italian society and - emphasise superfluous - politics of Fascism, capital F imposed to make the Italian ending superfluous as well, has been a story of many twists and turns. Its constitution makes both the republic unassailable and the reconstituting of the (1943) dethroned and defrocked fascist party illegal (an event which thus occurred already before the provision was enacted; a rare case of pre-constitutional unconstitutionalism) 

A small service to Her Majesty

Among the scariest events are those who - like our own, never-to-be-experienced mortality - are those whose arrival are not only common, but inexorable. The counting down, from the inevitable (although delayed to such a point transcending immortality) or mother and namesake Elizabeth to that of the good consort, to 

A Toast to Gorby

Barely four years ago, a time which now seems ever distant, I wrote a column upholding - or perhaps condemning - the Soviet Union's first leader Vladimir Lenin as one of the greats of the 20th century. It is an era now come to a peculiarly end, almost a century later, with the death of the man whose tutelage marked the final years of the Soviet empire.  

On Martyrdom and Beards

 

There are, amongst the names frequently mentioned as influencing Putin's drive, or bid, for control of Eastern Europe and the (re)establishment of a sphere guaranteeing this independence, one which is names quantitatively often but also with a special zeal. His name, as you will know, is Dugin, and his brain is - according to the proverbial statement - Putin's own. I cannot but shrink in disbelief, or at least frown, and move to a distance away from the proverbial speaker, not so much because Dugin's lack of enthusiasm as his laudable idealism and tendency towards the abstract. While hard-fact pragmatic can-do men can also be idealogical, such as Bannon, and the Rasputins of the world change its course from time to time, Dugin has that diabolical quality of being a man who actually believes in what he is saying, is thinking. 

Simon Jenkins is an lean, skinny idiot and otherwise right as often as not

 

In my previous exchange, if you call it that, with The Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, emphasising his support for - I will not call it otherwise - the Assad regime's imminent victory in Syria, describing beyond all reasonable doubt that it was a good thing, and that all former colonial powers - as well as non-French or -Turkish ones - should merely stand idly by as this passing of inexorable phases of human conduct occurred, I held the view that he was, and likely would continue in a state of being, wrong as well as cynical. Being a keen, educated, sophisticated - to a degree - liberal columnist, and emphasising his support so civilly for a pan-Arab, national socialist dictator (I'd say fascist, but in solidarity with undue victims of the phrase, I stand by the longeuresque designation) was worthy of some scorn. But like to hate as you may, his previous, just as defaitist - and far more relevant - critique of western inability to align interests in Syria with not-as-bad dictator Putin, rang a sordid and very evident truth. I have spoken, too little, of the need to ground reasonably sceptical views of foreign, authoritarian superpowers - I am talking, again, of the great red dragon - in coexistence with a post-Communist Russian state, whether a fascist or democratic-robber baronesque or their synthesis, the Putinist one - and in the Syrian case, the decision or non-decision to walk alongside Assad's daring bluff to turn the conflict into one against audacious bath-robed, Kalashnikov-wriggling blackbeards has certainly left an open hole void of reason and tactfulness in failing to synchronise efforts with Russia's colder, but just as emphatic and, I suppose, correct derision against said blackbeards in order to contain its own very real presence of such forces within her (recognised) borders. Well, in a world where foreign policy is not governed by Palme-esque idealist loudmouthery (and for all said or shouted on the subject, it very seldom is) one would tend to cooperate with actors with similar interests, and similar foes. Whatever could be spoken of Nixon, could not be said of Clinton, and often in the negative sense. And the failure to conscript, as well as lift, a post-revolutionary, post-authoritarian Russia into just that, and a beacon of liberty and light or something vaguely resembling it, and even a member of the western alliance, is returning like proverbial roosters, now sordidly recognised as the most undesirable aliens. 

On this topic, now brought into the very present and a presence by the edge of "Europe", however defined in Western (European) terms, has now elongated into a very real proxy war between "West" and "East", as the factual "East" is still rising. And whatever could be spoken on the subject of arming an enemy of Russia, as well as a former subject-republic, in open war against its former master country, the inability to provide direct or adequate aid, the repercussions and consequences of the frozen wasteland the elongated frontier is coagulating into, we must countenance that the prime act of Western effort, or aggression, of toppling the Russian economy and isolating it in a fashion akin to, say, the former Afrikaner regime, has utterly and at the same time gradually failed. Whereas "stronger than ever" is a cliché, and while the many outrageous rumours of Putin's crumbling health cannot conceal the inevitably descendant circle of his natural age and the political repercussions it will produce - now being the longest Russian leader since Stalin, he has soon outlived him too - there is absolutely nothing we did not know a year, or eight years in the past, which suggests that either he or the Russian state is crumbling. And for his very questioned longevity, the two are not the same. A successor, let alone a Navalny, may be a tougher nut, and more fatal. The benefits of Putinism, for those who would recognise it, may not be (truly) recognised in Grozny, but a hand has been continuously offered, prodded, waved off and slapped, and only sympathy for the former subjects of the Russian yoke has kept it in the cold. Now, my question is, how much longer will the West endure, in the faint hope that our grand strategy would result in what Western leaders have wanted for decades, nay, centuries; a complete Russian collapse and a new order in the East, by whatever name and nature it is desired? 

I think, with all the unrecognisable variables in the air, that the situation is like to remind of the "solutions" of 2014 and 2015, with the war grinding down, greater Russian bounties to a higher and higher price, and a final - if unspoken - settlement. This may be for the sake of bringing peace, or restoring Europe to something before the energy crisis, or for the actual purpose of bettering the conditions of the subjects of Putinism - who must then just as well be more likely to rise up and alter the system which, we hear, is not theirs - but under no circumstances will the current war of roubles and dollars last, unless it is upped in direction of total and complete annihilation. This should never be ruled out, but I hold it as unlikely as Europeans, emphasis on Germans, will look in direction of different solutions. In this, Ukrainians will only serve as cheaper and cheaper pawns, and while Putin's aim of distancing Ukraine from the west has forever failed - at least for any such future he may be part of - it is a knowledge he must hold closer to heart than Ukrainians, or Russians, ever were. 

The French Resurgence

 

The Empire which, with the exception of the Napoleonic project, endured a stylish and ludicrous crawl towards obscurity, has nevertheless displayed a stunning ability not to die. And with the self-expulsion of the United Kingdom from the European community, and not just the union, and Germany's haphazard and nothing if not reluctant attempt to rise from the long struggle of not-quite-sovereign nationhood imposed alongside liberal democracy, and which has marked (or marred) the federal republic, France still stands - or believe itself to be.