Must say that all the reports of ‘Agent Krasnov’ make fascinating reading—like one of those old school, thick-as-a-brick bestsellers that Irving Wallace and Robert Ludlum used to write. A younger, thinner, almost-handsome Donald Trump, newly wed to his beautiful Czech wife, being wined and dined by the inscrutable men of the KGB! It is certainly an irresistible theory—perhaps because it feels so karmic—payback time to the US for all the times the CIA has carried out ‘regime change’ around the world—to find that whatever goes around has come around, and that they are now lumped with a head of state carefully picked, groomed and backed by the Russians.
You can almost hear the best screenwriters in Hollywood spitting on their hands as they sit before their laptops to hammer out the blockbuster film—‘Our Man in DC’, perhaps, or, ‘Agent Trump’, or inspired by a recent article in The Observer, ‘Putin’s Bitch’. Anyway, even if Trump isn’t a stooge but just a white-supremacist fanboy with a massive Putin crush, there was no need for him and J.D. Vance to launch a ‘peace through rudeness’ offensive.
The level of ugliness, gaslighting and vulgar bullying in the Oval Office was straight out of a domestic violence case—entirely counter-productive! Because, really, till this public dressing-down of the man in the black shirt by the bullies in suits in the Oval Office, a lot of people in our part of the world were sympathetic to the Russian point of view. We felt that the US had no business man-spreading itself through NATO all the way till Russia’s front door like the proverbial pushy camel in the tent.
Imaging: Deni Lal
So even when Russia (fearing that Ukraine was going to be given NATO membership) broke the promise they along with the US and the UK had made in the Budapest Memorandum (to never invade Ukraine because it had given up its nuclear arsenal), and went ahead and invaded Ukraine anyway, the move, somehow, felt justified. Like it was just Russia being put in a situation where they had to emphasise that nyet means nyet. Because, realistically, if you are a little guy it is on you to keep the big boys in your neighbourhood charmed and happy and on your team. That is what diplomacy is all about. Being calm, shrewd, polite and getting along with everybody—or at least everybody important in your neighbourhood—is what career diplomats do.
But Ukraine, for whatever reason, decided instead to keep the distant Americans happy—even though they have, to quote Zelensky, “a nice big ocean in between” which makes it very hard for them to come save him quickly.
So anyway, here we were, not very concerned about the Ukrainians, till Trump took a rude public dump on him, and now he’s global underdog #1 and cute images of him are being printed on T-shirts all over Sarojini Nagar, Delhi, Hill Road, Mumbai, and Commercial Street, Bengaluru. What to even say to the young people buying these T-shirts? That, perhaps, Zelensky isn’t such an underdog, after all? That, perhaps, the lesson to be learnt from his humiliation is that, given how unhinged and unpredictable the globe is getting, we can’t allow ‘external affairs’ to mean just hugging people and accepting awards and doing MAGA-MIGA.
It is imperative that our government does what Europe is busy doing—putting its neighbourhood first. Also, ensure that our ties with Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, the Middle East and Russia—are well-tended, respectful and mutually beneficial.
editor@theweek.in