Two conditions to end civilisation: one, “wokeness”; two, defeat of Israel. Part 2
It is interesting to compare the life of Donald Trump to that of Otto von Bismarck, both great empire builders. Neither man’s early life had prepared him for state-building and both had taken on formidable tasks. The former wants to make America great; the latter pursued the same for Prussia. The defining difference between them was that while Trump is a dealmaker, Bismarck was an alliance-builder. Trump does 180s on a whim. It’s the art of the deal. Bismarck made and broke alliances, for sure, but in a long game extending over decades. The point at which Trump decides to settle has nothing to do with whatever he might have discussed with anyone before he joined the negotiating table. Bismarck had to think of who had what interests before he started negotiating, and who might respond how to whatever he decided to settle on.
To be clear, Bismarck’s statecraft was a great deal more manipulative than Trump’s dealmaking – the old bull had no interest in being a nice guy – yet while the businessman’s mindset escapes many of the pressures and constraints of politics, he lacks the patient multi-level strategising towards a longterm viable goal. It is telling that Trump is unable to pick up the Abraham Accords where he left off, reduced to quietly asking Muhammad bin Salman to join the Accords as a personal favour to him, at least, that’s the rumour. While a personality like Trump might see no need to think beyond the deal, it is also possible that he is unable to.
In the White House, before the world's cameras, President Trump told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in no uncertain terms where he stands: "You've got no cards". In other words, take whatever you're given, and, as Tymofiy Mylovanov put it on X, Trump's deal that was sure to, "end the war so fast, you won't even believe it," was:
Russia keeps Crimea, occupied land, blocks Ukraine's NATO bid, gets sanctions relief.
Leaving aside the extreme disrespect shown towards President Zelenskyy, if Trump says Ukraine has "no cards", then why, in Heaven's name, should Putin not demand everything? Just because Trump's mantra is "You gotta make a deal," does not mean that everyone else is thus persuaded. Unsurprisingly, Putin declined, and "demanded control over Ukraine's sovereignty." On 1 June 2025, Zelenskyy replied to that demand. Ukraine pulled off the equivalent of Israel's beeper job on Hezbollah. By remote control, Ukraine launched drone attacks on five Russian airbases up to 6,000Km apart: one inside the Arctic Circle, one in Central Siberia, one in the Far-East (aborted) and two right beside Moscow simultaneously, successfully wiping out up to one third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet. The attacks were launched from within Russian territory, without incurring a single Ukrainian loss. One estimate puts the damage at $7 billion. These planes are irreplaceable, since their Soviet production lines have long since been dismantled. One source puts the replacement cost at $10 billion. One day no cards; the next day, a straight flush. That's not the art of the deal; that's the art of war.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just solved several major strategic challenges not only for the United States, but for NATO. The Arctic is now safe for the US and NATO, the Pacific is now safe for the US (this will put strain on the "combination of Fascisms" as China wants access to the Arctic Ocean), and all of Europe is now safe for NATO. Kaliningrad is now ripe for the taking. Let us see whether Donald Trump or JD Vance is going to say thank you even once. Will Ukraine join NATO? After this, it is more a question of NATO joining Ukraine, that is to say, will NATO, especially the US, finally catch up with Ukraine? Crippling Russia's strategic bomber force also safeguards Ukraine from the silent enemy, Turkey, that has long coveted Crimea as integral to Erdoğan's irredentist dreams.
The time is fast approaching for Zelenskyy to out-Trump Trump by pulling out of the minerals deal as "a bad deal", and forcing Trump to renegotiate it. Zelenskyy defying Trump to get rid of an existential threat in a hostile state is also an object lesson for Israel. Note that Zelenskyy has no "ironclad support" to worry about and so is free to act in the best interests of his country. The Ukrainian leader does not care to impress anyone. He dresses like a leader whose country is at war. When he is on the world stage, his people see him there for them, not for himself. Some perspective is in order here; arch-terrorist Arafat, a man always in military uniform, got a Presidential handshake (or even a hug, if memory serves).
It is a fair bet that this stunning Ukrainian achievement is not going to endear Zelenskyy to Trump. The bomber bombing at once shows up Trump's misjudgement of both Zelenskyy and Putin, and the American President has behaved with the imperiousness of a big boss accustomed to never being questioned, rather than the measured, if calculated, actions of a head of state. It is a curious thing to insist that "the killing must stop" without making a distinction between unprovoked, deliberate and sustained attacks on civilians, and a self-defence war waged strictly against military targets. It is even more curious to press the victim—and only the victim—to "stop the killing" so you can secure a minerals deal out of him, even sell the deal to him this way. Such offensive behaviour comes from one of the countries that guaranteed Ukraine's security when she handed over her nuclear weapons, heavy artillery and the Soviet Black Sea fleet to Russia! Against such a background, it is especially galling to say to Zelenskyy, "You have no cards."
This is a leader who has held his country together through three years of defensive war, scrupulously obeying all the rules, against a many-times more powerful hyper-aggressive foe wantonly committing every war crime in the book to put Ukraine out of existence. You gotta make a deal. Donald Trump harbours something akin to envy for Zelenskyy's substance, perhaps even resentment for his having expressed support for Kamala Harris. The American President's his complex feelings towards Zelenskyy manifest as spiteful exaggerated accommodation of the gangster-dictator Putin, a guy he "gets along with." It speaks volumes for Zelenskyy that he puts up with all this for the sake of his country.
It is even more telling that when Vladimir Putin spurned Trump's deal, the latter described him as having suddenly "gone crazy," a description that would never, of course, cross anyone's mind when a clear-thinking, level-headed dictator invades a neighbouring country intent on obliterating it, occupies and tries to annex 20 percent of its land, bombs its citizens asleep in their apartments, tortures and rapes them in basement cages, massacres one of their town, abducts thousands of their children, steals their grain and oil, attacks their hospitals and shopping centres, collapses their dams and floods their cities, bombs their power plants and grain silos, and puts large populations in several countries at risk of starvation. Nothing remarkable there. You have to walk away from a Trump deal before there is something amiss with you.
The past weeks have shown the Ukrainian President to be by far the better statesman, understanding that Putin himself, simply by being Putin, will reject Trump's "deal" and thereby provide Zelenskyy the opportunity to cripple Russia's strategic bomber fleet, effectively also rejecting Trump's deal, but without actually doing so, thereby radically "changing the equation", so that should the time come when Zelenskyy's hand is forced, Russia will be too weakened to enable Putin to do very much. Both Zelenskyy and Putin, precisely by avoiding a deal, have made a future war less likely. All of this is beyond the US President.
Those who rely on Trump politically, especially in foreign relations, may find him here today and gone tomorrow. It’s just business.
Bismarck ended up entirely redrawing the map of Europe, and orchestrated the drawing of the first colonial map of Africa as a necessary adjunct to making Prussia great, despite the extremely modest colonial gains in it for Prussia. This is not something a dealmaker could have achieved. Trump might well end up making America great again, but at what cost to his free allies who depend on him?
Something additional could be at play to account for Trump’s fickle behaviour. Exactly how many separate deals has the Muslim Brotherhood amassed in America, and how much power does it wield through their cumulative effect, including through its agent, Qatar, and its fifth column within NATO, Turkey? A different pressure, one not in the public eye, might be bearing down on Trump. When Donald Trump admitted on camera that it was “not appropriate” at this time for Israel to destroy an existential threat hanging over her, Trump’s body language was not that of triumph for having tied down Iran, but of shame. There is more to Donald Trump’s evasion than just evading eye contact.
Mitchell Bard, in an article titled “Et tu, Rubio?” in JNS, provides an alarming list of Trump’s actions “undeniably” detrimental to Israel. These include:
- He forced Israel into ceasefires with both Hamas and Hezbollah.
- He has, like former President Biden, micromanaged aspects of Israel’s wars with Hezbollah and Hamas, as when he warned Israel not to target infrastructure in Beirut and delay “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” in Gaza.
- He imposed a 17% tariff on Israeli imports, effectively punishing one of America’s closest allies.
- He eliminated USAID funding for Israel when he dismantled the agency.
- He legitimized negotiations with jihadist enemies of Israel and their supporters—the ISIS leader of Syria, the Islamist president of Turkey, the Hamas-sponsoring Qatari emir, and the Iranian mullahs—while offering Israel nothing in return.
- He initiated direct talks with Hamas, reversing decades of bipartisan American policy that refused to legitimize the terror group.
We agree with Bard that Donald Trump is effectively doing an Obama on Israel, albeit without Obama’s evil intent. Israel has no choice, but to go it alone in dealing with Iran as she sees fit. Strictly speaking, thus has it ever been. The longer Israel waits, the more Trump will harden against any Israeli action at all. Trump precious deal might well include the US protecting Iran against Israel, exactly where we were with Obama. It is safer for Israel to assume such is indeed the case. This brings us to the link between, “We must defend ourselves by ourselves,” and George Orwell’s “…so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.” To remind the reader of Orwell’s insight:
…Against that …world in which black may be white tomorrow, …there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it… The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive. Let Fascism, or possibly even a combination of several Fascisms, conquer the whole world, and those two conditions no longer exist. (My emphasis)
The Western liberal populations are in a far worse ideological condition post-October 7 than they were in the final years of the Vietnam War. See our essay on Western ideological capitulation here. George Orwell’s first condition for the end of freedom, a “world in which black may be white tomorrow,” is already established. The Palestinian Arabs attempt a genocide in Israel; the world accuses Israel of genocide of the Palestinians. Israel sends convoys of food into Gaza; the world accuses Israel of starving the Gazans. Israel goes above and beyond the requirements of International Law; the ICC issues arrest warrants for war crimes against Israel’s leaders. The West laps up this communist speciality of denials by counter-accusation as puppies lap up milk. One might add to Orwell's, “however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing... behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it,” but this, nonetheless, does not stop the denials. Debunk one denial and they simply segue across to the next denial, oblivious to the degradation of their own philosophy.
The entire Western world, its education systems dumbed down to the level of madrassas and ideological bullying, i.e., thought-policing, now a virtue, is reduced to thinking the way Muslims think. In those parts of the earth already so conquered, denials of Palestinian Arab evil as expressed through their champion Hamas by inverting it against Israel, become psychological attacks on the people of Israel. To be a Zionist has now joined “Islamophobe” and “racist” as another equivalent of kufr, that is, treason, and the offender is similarly damned. Of course they’re not anti-Semitic; they’re only anti-Zionist. For now, they still need to play this semantic game.
Israel and Ukraine (and Taiwan) stand between “a combination of several Fascisms conquer[ing] the whole world,” and the obliteration of “those two conditions” by which “the liberal tradition” is preserved. The alternative is “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” It is an alternative that does not have to come to pass if Israel recognises her unshakeable allies: everyone else that Islam considers “enemies of Allah,” i.e., everyone else that Muslims are commanded to slaughter (their Qur’an’s word) “until all religion is for Allah” – Christians, Druze, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., but especially former Muslims, Israel’s most important and least recognised allies. Kowtowing to the fickle and appeasing Muslims are not the only ways of avoiding isolation; embracing the steadfast is another.
Jihad is a religious war. Religious war is ideological war. The final outcome, one way or the other, can only be absolute.
Picture credits:
Screenshot from https://youtu.be/Ha0SXJe2F3E?list=PLt8JsUtTyxu7N50vxyDaMMd-WLtpacekB
Screenshot from https://youtu.be/NtW19adNEKA