Putin brags about his American escort

Among Putin's souvenirs from Akaska the other day was a video of super-stealthy American jet fighters safeguarding him as he returned to his homeland. (This image was clipped from the Kremlin's propaganda channel on Telegraph.) The Anchorage meeting was, altogether, a triumph for the Russian dictator, who could have been arrested for war crimes if he stopped in another country en route to his meeting with Trump.

And what did we get in return? Timothy Snyder of Yale, who knows more about Ukraine than anyone in Washington, says it best: "Trump has made extraordinary concessions to Russia in exchange for nothing at all."

Well, at least we still own Alaska

The butcher of Mariupol got what he wanted: two presidential aircraft on the same tarmac, two world leaders talking peace while Russian drones killed eleven Ukrainian civilians and wounded seventeen. What did Trump get? Nothing. Not for the first time, he made a fool of himself in front of the world, all hat and no cattle.

Some history for Vlad

When Messrs Trump and Putin shake hands in Anchorage today, the Russian dictator plans to display "historical materials" that prove Ukraine to be a part of Russia. The American president should bring along the charter of the United Nations, which 51 independent nations signed in 1945. Among them, at Joseph Stalin's insistence, were Belarus and Ukraine. Like everything that comes out of Moscow, this was of course totally cynical: Stalin wanted a couple extra votes in the General Assembly. But surely what was good enough for the fabled Russian dictator of the 20th century is good enough for his admirer in the 21st.

And while we're revising national boundaries, let's not forget Kaliningrad, the nuclear-armed Russian "exclave" between Poland and Lithuania. In 1940, before Stalin and Hitler started divididng Europe between them, it was known as East Prussia and was part of Germany. Shouldn't it now be restored to Berlin's control?

Thank God for the atomic bombs!

Eighty years ago this week, the Boeing B-29 Enola Gay carried Little Boy to Hiroshima, and Bocks Car followed up by dropping Fat Man on Nagasaki, effectively obliterating both cities and ending the war that Japan had launched by invading China years earlier. To the fury and fitful rebellion of his armed forces, the emperor Hirohito surrendered on August 15 in his first radio address to the Japanese people, though he didn't use the S-word. Instead, he explained that the "the war situation has not necessarily turned in Japan’s favor.... Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives." I am one of a declining age group that remembers those events of August 1945, and who was old enough to skip with joy that the War was over and I wouldn't have to fight in it. Thank God for those atomic bombs!

Paul Fussell was not so blessed. He went to war as a 20-year-old second lieutenant -- a platoon leader, probably the most dangerous job in the infantry -- in France in 1944, where he was wounded in action. He earned a Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart for his wound, recovering in time to be assigned to the 45th Infantry Division for Operation Coronet, the invasion of the Japanese main island of Honshu in March 1946. (Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu island, was scheduled for November 1945 and would have involved American and British Commonwealth troops already in the Pacific theater.)

Lieutenant Fussell was spared by the bombs of August, and he lived to become a noted author and professor. By the 1980s, most scholars and authors and Good People had already turned against the nukes, and he wrote "Thank God for the atom bomb!" for the New Republic, a left-wing magazine but one still willing to publish contrary opinions. (Including mine, in the 1970s.) The essay became the title piece in the similarly named book, now out of print but fairly cheap on AbeBooks online. Or you can download the 14-page text file from Scribd.com for the price of a one-month subscription.

Ceasing fire?

I've been invested in Israeli victories since 1967 (Moshe Dayan with his eye patch!) and with a Ukrainian victory since 2022 (Zelensky saying that he needed "ammo, not a ride" out of Kyiv!). But Cambodia? Thailand? Well, it's nice that they've ceased firing, but what were they firing about in the first place?

I changed planes in Bangkok one time, and had to make a flying wedge with a German doctor and an English nurse to get on the plane to Rangoon. I enjoyed the airport, which had cows grazing between the runways, but not so much that I would take sides in a Thai-Cambodian war. They both seem like nice countries. Why would they go to war? It's as bewildering as Luxembourg invading Belgium!

Trump takes notice

It's been a long time coming, but Mr Trump has finally noticed that Russia is a somewhat shifty colllaborator. "We thought we had that settled numerous times, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever," he said yesterday while on the golf links in Scotland. So he's canceling his 90-day window for Putin to stop shooting. The limit now is 10-12 days, or about August 8. That's progress, provided Mr Trump doesn't forget the ultimatum after he packs up his clubs.

Happily, NATO (except for its perennial deadbeat, Spain) seems to be stepping into the breach, as Germany pledges to deliver 55 of its own IRS-T air-defense launchers to Ukraine. Originally intended as a replacement for the American Sidewinder air-to-air missile, it has now been adapted to the surface-to-air mission, as a shorter-range version of the US Patriot system that we can't seem to manufacture in sufficient quantities.

Will Vladimir be fired?

For 14 years, Donald Trump starred in a "reality" TV show in which, each week, a poor-performing apprentice lost out in a competition for a $250,000 job to promote a Trump property. The host became famous for his tag line: "You're fired!" The joke ended when we hired him as our 45th president in November 2016. I wasn't the only one to suspect that he didn't actually want the job, that his campaign was just another Trump promotion. But he won, and he won again last November, only the second US president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms. Whether he will try for a third is anyone's guess.

Like a fool, I thought Trump would do better by Ukraine than Joe Biden, whose two years of dithering sent just enough help to prevent an outright defeat but never enough to risk Russia's humiliation. Then came that appalling brawl in the Oval Office on February 28, when our president and (worse!) vice-president scolded Zelensky like a fifth-grader who'd dared talk back to Teacher. This was followed by months of pleading with Putin ("Please, Vladimir!") and preemptively ceding fresh regions of Ukraine to Russian occupation.

But now it seems that Putin has overplayed his hand. "We are going to send some weapons," Trump said. "I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin.... We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin.... He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless."

Please, Donald! Fire the bastard!

Red Wedding and Operation Narnia

The Wall Street Journal this morning front-pages the incredible story of Israel's decades-long plans to stop Iran from developing nuclear missiles. Included were assassinations, training flights to Greece, a wink from the US president, drones and munitions smuggled into Iran, and even an actual wedding, that of Netanyahu's son. As a classical military operation, it even overshadows Ukraine's audacious Operation Spiderweb earlier this month. May Israel long be free, from the river to the sea!