Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the hero in a Greek tragedy

It has not been unusual for emotions to have taken precedence over reason in the choosing of leaders by an electorate. With all his flaws, George H.W. Bush was an effective President of the United States. He was derided as “Chicken Kiev” by his opponents by the measured way in which he responded to the Soviet leadership, rather than adopt the hysterical tone favoured by many in the US towards the USSR. Through an outward show of bonhomie combined with the denial of any substantive concessions (even while getting unilateral concession from a trusting Mikhail S. Gorbachev), President Bush ensured that General Secretary Gorbachev of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR) retained enough support within the inner councils of the party until it became too late to rescue the USSR from collapse. That did not prevent George H.W. Bush from losing the 1992 Presidential election to W.J. Clinton, who exuded the youth and charm of John F. Kennedy, while lacking the substance of either Kennedy or indeed Bush. Under Clinton, both the Wahhabi International as well as the PRC grew exponentially, making inevitable the launch of mass terror exemplified in the 9/11 attack. It was Clinton’s enabling the Taliban to take over power in Kabul in 1996 that made Osama bin Laden’s attack on the US possible, although he has never been blamed for that tragedy. President Clinton rolled out a welcome mat for China’s accession to the WTO and accelerated the earlier Nixon-Carter-Reagan-Bush policy of opening up US technology and commerce to China. At the same time, he looked the other way as the PRC developed Pakistan as a proxy nuclear power, while doubling down on efforts to give China a nuclear monopoly in Asia by seeking the shutdown of India’s nuclear weapons program, not to mention its delivery systems. Clinton also worked hard to persuade the Indian leadership to follow in the footsteps of Jawaharlal Nehru and surrender huge tracts of land in Kashmir to Pakistan. George W. Bush, who succeeded Clinton in the White House, deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, botched up the US occupation of that country in a manner that made inevitable the emergence of parts of the country as a terror hub. Biden has done the same by surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban.
Given the lack of clear strategic thinking within so many countries in Europe illustrated by the warlike hysteria about Russia and Putin, its people are experiencing the difference that gets made by replacing a bad with a good leader or vice-versa. Or the good fortune of a good leader being succeeded by another, and the misfortune caused by the succession of a bad leader with someone even worse. Despite his angularities, President Trump was effective in safeguarding several US interests. His successor Joe Biden has instincts reflecting honesty. But this may not be the only quality that needed, but other, somewhat less sublime, qualities. Although US and EU media have almost completely blacked out news of the suffering of the Afghan people as a consequence of Taliban rule in their obsession with Ukraine and Vladimir Putin, much of this is a direct consequence of the manner of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, just as much of the travails of the Iraqis have been caused by policy errors made by President George W. Bush from the morning after he toppled the Saddam regime. Or those in Libya by the chaos that was created by President Barack Obama’s joining his British, French and Italian counterparts in destroying the Libyan regime without giving thought to what could, or should, follow after such a change. The manner in which Joe Biden and Boris Johnson in particular are harming the interests even of the US by the short-sightedness of their policies involving Ukraine. What is being witnessed in that unfortunate country has the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, with the hero, Volodymyr Zelensky, leading his people to disaster because of his belief that NATO will use Ukraine as anything other than a bone which the leaders of the alliance calculate will get stuck in Putin’s throat and choke his regime fatally. The NATO leadership have long held a death watch for Vladimir Putin, and the present unfolding tragedy caused by this is enveloping Ukraine and finally Europe and the rest of the world in an economic and societal tragedy of immense scale.
MDN