Tea at Trianon: How Trump Pulled Us Back from the Brink of World War III

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, May 5, 2025

How Trump Pulled Us Back from the Brink of World War III

From Amuse on X:

There is a view, once dismissed as alarmist, now vindicated by events and evidence. It holds that under President Biden, the United States was not merely aiding Ukraine but actively accelerating toward a military confrontation with Russia. This was not incidental. It was the logical endpoint of a policy of steady escalation, one decision compounding the next, all without a discernible off-ramp. Only the change in presidential administration averted disaster.
At the outset of the Ukraine conflict in early 2022, President Biden acknowledged the gravity of escalation. He warned that transferring high-grade American weapons such as Abrams tanks, ATACMS missiles, and F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, or enabling strikes within Russian territory, risked triggering World War III. He used the term "Armageddon" to describe what might follow if these lines were crossed. Such a pronouncement ought to have anchored restraint. Instead, it served as a prelude to each of those very lines being crossed.
The list of armaments eventually transferred speaks for itself: M1 Abrams tanks, HIMARS artillery systems, Patriot missiles, ATACMS, F-16s. Each item represented a rung on the escalation ladder. At each juncture, the administration justified the move as proportionate, necessary, and within the bounds of deterrence. Yet this rhetorical restraint could not disguise the operational reality. By spring 2024, U.S.-supplied missiles were striking Russian soil. The red line Biden once vowed to respect had not only been crossed, it had been rendered meaningless.
To grasp the full measure of recklessness here, one must understand the nature of modern warfare. The concept of the "kill chain" refers to the process of finding, fixing, tracking, targeting, engaging, and assessing a military objective. In traditional wars, sovereign militaries execute these steps autonomously. But Ukraine, by its own admission and by the New York Times’ reporting, depends heavily on U.S. satellite intelligence, targeting coordination, and battlefield planning. We are not simply the arsenal of democracy, we are part of the targeting process itself. That is, a co-belligerent in all but name. (Read more.)