Manny does Russia

Sound like the title of a porno film, doesn’t it?

Open on a naked Manny removing Europe’s clothes, slowly and sensuously. He then lays her and himself down on the bed. Cut to Vlad taking off his PVC top to reveal a muscular torso…

Actually pornographic is as good a way as any to describe Manny’s affection for Russia into which he seems to be channelling his inner woman.

This is a recent development, for in the past Manny used to make anti-Putin noises. But then women, inner or otherwise, are known to be fickle.

His affections have a zero-sum element built in: the more he feels for Russia, the less he has left for Nato. Nato, according to him, is “brain dead”, and Europe no longer needs America’s protection. It can take care of its own defence by itself; no outside help needed, thank you very much.

This stance is extraordinarily foolish since Russia outguns Europe by at least a factor of 10 in most categories (more in tanks), including nuclear warheads.

Moreover, since the Russian government isn’t accountable to such extraneous irritants as parliaments and voters, it can increase its military spending exponentially. Europe, on the other hand, especially its high-rent part, would rather spend money on social programmes, foreign aid, bribery of electorates and functionaries’ pensions.

This made Manny’s braggadocio sound like empty bluster, and, clever chap that he is, he realised that. His nimble mind whirred into action and got around the problem with the agility that puts to shame both Solomon with that baby and Alexander with that knot.

Russia, he declared, is our friend. That’s why we don’t have an enemy to protect ourselves against.

“Nato is an organisation of collective defence,” explained Manny with his usual perspicacity. “Against what, against who is it defending itself? Who is our common enemy? This question deserves clarification.”

That was Manny’s response to Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s Secretary-General, and Angela Merkel, who had rebuked him for his puerile anti-Nato diatribes. Reports don’t mention if they told Manny to ask his foster mother Brigitte to come and see them after class.

If Stoltenberg and Merkel were bemused, Eastern Europeans were aghast. They still remember the delights of Russian occupation and dread acting as the destination for Russian tanks.

Manny ought to remember he’s talking about the only European nation that has grabbed foreign territory since 1945. He’s right though: Russia won’t attack the West – because she already has. All around the globe, Putin’s charges confront the West and Western interests.

Not only has Russia launched a bandit raid on the Ukraine, justifying it by trying to prevent further rapprochement between that country and the West, but she also explicitly threatens the Baltics, whose Nato membership is their sole protection.

It’s far from certain that, should those much-suffering countries be attacked, Nato would activate its Article 5 and spring to their defence. But at least that’s a possibility, and this has so far kept Putin on a leash.

Should the Nato umbrella be rolled up, would the mythical European army defend the Baltics and other former parts of the Soviet empire, whose collapse Col. Putin sees as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century”? Or will those Left Bank intellectuals shrug and sneer “Mourir pour Riga?”, which is what they were saying about Danzig in 1939?

Manny ought to remind himself of what happened next, of Hitler dancing in Paris and especially of Edouard Daladier, the appeasing French PM who signed the Munich Treaty only to end up in Buchenwald.

The hysteria of bellicose propaganda in Russia has reached a pitch I never heard back in the 1960s, with the West identified as the enemy and the possible target for a nuclear strike.

It’s not just talk, and neither is it just military action. Yes, Russian boots are treading the stolen soil of the Ukraine and also parts of Syria and Africa. But that’s only one aspect of what their Chief of General Staff called ‘hybrid warfare’.

Russia is conducting a massive programme of electronic terrorism and propaganda aimed at sowing discord among Western allies. She’s also busily trying to undermine Western politics by skewing elections her way, as she has already done in the US, Britain and elsewhere.

To that end, she’s also financing every extremist party in Europe, without discriminating between left and right. As long as the party is a catalyst of social unrest, it’s Russia’s client.

One example of that is Marine Le Pen’s NF, or whatever it’s called these days, which is bankrolled by Putin – but Manny magnanimously doesn’t hold that against the KGB colonel even if he does finance Manny’s political opponents.

It’s not that I think kleptofascist Russia is planning an attack on Paris, London or Rome. That would overstress the second part of that composite adjective at the expense of the more important first, ‘klepto-‘.

If they did to Western Europe what they’ve done to the Ukraine, where would those gangsters in and around the Kremlin keep their palaces and yachts? Where would they go for medical treatment and their wives for shopping? Where would their children go to school?

No, they want Europe to remain as their playground. Similarly, a chess player doesn’t plan to checkmate his opponent. He knows that, once that outcome becomes inevitable, the other chap will resign.

With Nato and its key American component removed from Europe, the Russians will promptly grab the wayward parts of their erstwhile empire and dictate their terms to the EU. They won’t conquer Europe – they’ll dominate it, and I don’t know which is worse.

Manny’s anti-Nato diatribes have two constituents: playing quisling to Putin and hating the US in that haughty way that’s the calling card of the European Left. Both are immoral and strategically idiotic.

Now logically, if Europe doesn’t need Nato because it has no enemies, it doesn’t need its own army either. So what’s all that one hears about the urgent need for one?

“Is our enemy Russia or China as I sometimes hear?” Manny asked Stoltenberg. “… I don’t think so. Our common enemy, it seems, is the terrorism which is striking all our countries.”

If so, all we need is an efficient police force, which would take a lot less than the two per cent of GDP that Nato requires. Happiness all around.

But just out of curiosity, who does he think sponsors today’s international terrorism? Who supplies their weapons and teaches them how to use them? Who does their intelligence and logistics? Who comes up with funds whenever the Saudis get mean?

Manny’s foster mother Brigitte ought to explain to him that the great upsurge in world terrorism coincided with the KGB taking the reins of power 20 years ago through their Kremlin stooge Putin. And that many of the IS chieftains were educated at Russian universities, just as Khmer Rouge murderers were trained at the Sorbonne.

If Brigitte obliges, Manny should listen to his elders. Then he may realise that terrorism and Putin’s Russia are inseparable. It’s all part of the same story, waging war on the West without ostensibly attacking it.

Is Manny perhaps laying the groundwork for a Gazprom job, following in the footsteps of the former German chancellor Schroeder? If so, best of luck to him. The sooner that happens, the less likely is Europe to get screwed.

There, I hope I’ve provided the clarification Manny demanded.