A strange ennui and distracted attention envelops the West today. Hat-tip to Simplicius’ Bones of Tomorrow, in which he reflects on a Culture that has become debased; its lures that used to trap us into the “Myth of the West” lie withered, as patently false...
Alastair Crooke
Trickery, Humiliation, Death – and the Timeless Hunger for ‘Honour and Glory’
by Alastair Crooke | Jan 3, 2024 | Featured Articles
One major theme of Homer’s Iliad – which somehow seems as fresh and as vivid today as when first written – is its description of how even the greatest of states in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to...
Netanyahu Outsmarted by ‘Wily’ Biden? No, Biden Is the One Being Played
by Alastair Crooke | Dec 27, 2023 | Featured Articles
Biden smirked and responded, “I know”, when told by a guest that Netanyahu is drawing the U.S. into a civilisational conflict – and further that Netanyahu blames him (Biden), complaining that the White House wants to block Israel from getting at the root of...
Black Pattern Forming?
by Alastair Crooke | Dec 6, 2023 | Featured Articles
A number of serious commentators – one being U.S. Professor Victor Hanson – are warning: “Brace yourself for what’s coming in 2024”. Hansen sees bad omens darkening the future. Is he exaggerating? Perhaps not. One cannot but notice how bad tempered Americans and...
Will the Scorpion Sting the U.S. Frog?
by Alastair Crooke | Nov 21, 2023 | Featured Articles
The allegory is one in which a scorpion depends on the frog for its passage across a flooded river, by hitching a lift on the frog’s back. The frog distrusts the scorpion; but reluctantly agrees. During the crossing the scorpion fatally stings the frog swimming the...
The Great Schism – Will It Be Quietly Ignored?
by Alastair Crooke | Nov 7, 2023 | Featured Articles
Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France’s opposition to the Iraq war, recently described the term “Occidentalism” (currently the prevalent sentiment in much of Europe) as being the notion that “the West, which for five centuries...
Escalations Cannot Be Stopped – The White House Is Rattled; Escalations Might All Fuse Into ‘One’
by Alastair Crooke | Oct 27, 2023 | Featured Articles
Tom Friedman uttered his dire warning in the New York Times on Thursday last: I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now [unilaterally] to destroy Hamas — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American...
Pulling the Roof Down on Today’s Paradigm
by Alastair Crooke | Oct 17, 2023 | Featured Articles
I wrote last week that the root to the current US conflict with Russia was the omission, at the end of WW2, of a written treaty setting out the boundary and definition of western “interests,” and pari passu, those of Russia cum China’s security and commercial...
The ‘Last Man’ Teleology and the Fall of the West
by Alastair Crooke | Sep 26, 2023 | Featured Articles
As is well known, the Mackinder ‘Pivot of History’ doctrine (1904) of ‘he who controls the Asian heartland controls the world’ was cemented into the US zeitgeist as the unassailable doctrine that a united Heartland – which might challenge the US – must never be...
Open Questions on the War: The Black Sea, Out-of-View ‘War’
by Alastair Crooke | Aug 15, 2023 | Featured Articles
The Ukrainian offensive has petered out – even CNN says it: '[The Ukrainians are] still going to see, [whether] in the next couple of weeks, there is a chance of making some progress. But for them really to make the progress that would alter the balance to this...
The Great Unravelling: ‘For All That Is Ours, We Must Fight’
by Alastair Crooke | Aug 7, 2023 | Featured Articles
It is getting very messy. Verging on insanity. A new indictment with four charges in respect to the events of 6 Jan has been issued to former President Trump – who has now been charged with more than 75 crimes. These latest charges however are likely only to further...
The ‘Scandal Implosion’ Stratagem: Will It Work for Ukraine?
by Alastair Crooke | Aug 1, 2023 | Featured Articles
Biden: “Putin has already lost the war … Putin has a real problem: How does he move from here? What does he do?” Secretary Blinken repeats ad infinitum the same mantra: ‘Russia has lost’. So does the head of MI6, and Bill Burns, the head of CIA, opines, (replete with...
Counter-Revolution – ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’
by Alastair Crooke | Jul 25, 2023 | Featured Articles
To be blunt, both the US and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making. Caught in the lies and deceit woven around a claimed inheritance of superior cultural DNA, (vouchsafing, it is said, almost certain victory), the West is awakening to a...
A Bonfire of the Vanities
by Alastair Crooke | Jul 19, 2023 | Featured Articles
Hubris consists in believing that a contrived narrative can, in and of itself, bring victory. It is a fantasy that has swept through the West – most emphatically since the 17th century. Recently, the Daily Telegraph published a ridiculous nine minute video purporting...
The Negotiator’s Nightmare
by Alastair Crooke | Jun 27, 2023 | Featured Articles
President Putin has said that he is open, at any time, to talks with an American interlocutor. Why then, has no one come forward? Why, when there is growing anxiety amongst the American public that the war in Ukraine seems locked into forever escalation, and fears are...
A Chaotic Re-Sorting: Europe’s ‘Seminal Shift’ Is (Broadly) Moving in the Same Direction as U.S. Politics
by Alastair Crooke | Jun 13, 2023 | Featured Articles
The backlash has started. It has been slow to emerge, and is lagging that of the US, yet it has begun in earnest. It is, as Wolfgang Münchau, a former FT journalist and editor of EuroIntelligence, has observed: “a seminal shift (for Europe), with important...
‘Give War a Chance’ – A ‘War That Even Pacifists Can Get Behind’
by Alastair Crooke | Jun 9, 2023 | Featured Articles
More than a year into Russia’s Special Operation, the initial burst of European excitement at western push-back on Russia has dissipated. The mood instead has turned to “existential dread, a nagging suspicion that [western] civilisation may destroy itself,” Professor...
Big Gambles Heading Into Gusting Headwinds
by Alastair Crooke | May 16, 2023 | Featured Articles
The economic forces – those post war strong tailwinds – that have shaped the last 35 years, and which accelerated gilded journeys through the western “plentiful era,” are no longer blowing in a favourable direction. They were already slowing, but now are reversing....
Decent Into Débâcle: Pyrrhic Victories, Lies and Strategic Miscalculations
by Alastair Crooke | May 9, 2023 | Featured Articles
The sense that things are bad, and getting worse, is palpable. There is an undeniable eschatological tint to today’s zeitgeist. Spiralling geo-political factors all suggest extreme turbulence ahead. Biden and the Democrats discover – to their surprise – that they are...
Europe Has Lost Its Guiding Myth
by Alastair Crooke | Apr 26, 2023 | Featured Articles
The message sent by the Chinese Defence Minister’s three-day visit to Russia is clear. His reception – a high-profile event – was intentionally invested with high visibility. And at its symbolic centre was a meeting with President Putin on (Orthodox) Easter Day which...
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