Time for a new Iron Curtain?

Whenever this terrible war in Ukraine ends – and it looks ever-likely that Ukraine’s brave President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be bludgeoned into accepting a peace agreement carving away large chunks of his territory to reward the illegal invader – this new boundary should mark the eastern frontier of Europe, shutting off Russia from free, democratic and civilised society.

Russia has forfeited the right to call itself a European nation. What values does it share with Europe? By what measure can the Moscow regime rank alongside the parliaments and assemblies of France, Berlin or London?

What right has the lapdog media of Izvestiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda or Rossiya 1, to be mentioned in the same breath as Deutsche Welle, Le Monde or the BBC?

And what right has the smirking Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who in US President Trump’s own words, talks about peace and the next night sends drones to blow up a nursing home, to be considered alongside Starmer, Macron and von der Leyen?

At 17.1 million square kilometres, Russia is by far the biggest country in the world in land mass, almost double the size of the next largest, yet in the last two decades it has nibbled away at Georgia, and Moldova and launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine – all in the spurious claim of protecting ethic Russians and Russian speakers who live within those societies.

Yet while the Russian leader is prepared to go to war over Russians who live beyond his country he is not so concerned over his citizens at home. In no measure of living standards does Russia rank within the top 50 of nations, while in many remote areas life has little changed, or improved, since the days of the Tzars.

It is no wonder that Ukrainians so strenuously resist efforts to incorporate them into Putin’s paradise with its sustained population decline brought about by low birth rates, high death rates, alcoholism and despite the carefully choreographed shows of support, rampant pessimism over the future.

In his refusal to accept these facts about his nation, to allow even constructive debate over how improvements can be made, Putin more closely resembles the leaders of The People’s Republic of China and North Korea than any in the West. He has elected to keep company with the Asian dictatorships and there Russia must remain.  

Europe can do nothing about this, but every effort should be made to ensure Russia remains forever within its western borders. It may be time for a new Iron Curtain to be erected.  

Putin has played fast and loose with the nations it still terms as its “near abroad” for long enough and it is time for a united cry from European capitals, with or without the backing of Washington, that it ends now.     

 

Government by gerontocracy in a suffering world

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946. I was born on September 19 in that same year. That makes Trump two months and five days older than me.

 I live in a retirement village in Canberra, Australia. I am unusual among my peers in that I still do a little work — an afternoon of editing other people’s material for a local website.

 Donald Trump is the President of the United States, responsible for decisions that in one way or another have the potential to affect the lives of every person on the planet. 

 I enjoy a social life inside and outside the village. I attend the monthly happy hour, enjoy the occasional lunch in the community centre and at least twice a week take a 20-minute walk to my favourite café for a coffee and an occasional chat with friends.

 Donald Trump has to manage multiple crises at home and abroad, many resulting from his own decisions. He has introduced a system of tariffs that have thrown world economies into chaos. His failure to deal with the war in Ukraine has given impetus to the illegal invaders.

 I can spend my day quietly reading or attending the regular bingo sessions the Village Social Committee organises. There’s a monthly history talk and I can learn new things at University of the Third Age (U3A) lectures.

Donald Trump signs lots of Executive Orders, sacks people whose work makes him ‘look bad’ and plays a lot of golf.

I have been diagnosed with mild cognitive decline.

Trump has doctors who claim he is perfectly capable of performing what many of his predecessors have described as the loneliest most challenging in the world — one of whom (Lyndon Johnson) said could not be done in less than a regular 16-hour day.

Even so, The White House medical opinion appears to be that he will be able to perform these herculean tasks well into his 80s.

This is dangerous. It is irresponsible and for those of us who care for the planet and the people who live on it — it is profoundly worrying.

I am writing this because I can claim lived experience of what it takes to be a functioning human being in their late 70s. I know that outwardly I can still present a reasonable face to the world, hold a decent conversation, even sign an update to my will.

Yet behind the scenes, when a piece of food on my fork misses my mouth and drops on the floor, when my arthritic knee complains in wet weather, and when I go to the cupboard, then wonder why I went there, I know I have limitations that were not there in my 60s.

There are days when I am glad my evenings require no more than a dose of television and an early night; when on a grey miserable morning I have no duties other than to feed and play with the cats.

I am thankful I have a companion of 40 years with whom I can share memories and plan adventures with, even if they are rather tame compared with what we did together in our youth and middle age.

No one, not even the President of the United States, can withstand the march of time. Arteries harden, muscles weaken, memory becomes less reliable.

Maybe a leader in his late seventies and early eighties can survive with good people around him, Churchill managed it in 1950s Britain even if he did occasionally doze off in Cabinet meetings, but Trump’s monstrous ego demands that he should always be seen in charge, and in his second Administration he has weeded out anyone who might question his judgement however irrational, dangerous or downright stupid.

The people of the US are responsible for this second Trump catastrophe and it will be up to them to put it right, to seek to understand how they have allowed a person more than a decade beyond the widely accepted age of retirement to find his way into the most powerful office in the world.

For the billions of non-US citizens who are still young enough to want a future in this world, there is little that can be done other than to put their heads down and hope that America’s flirtation with gerontocracy (after all Biden was 82 when he left office) will end in 2028.