First time tragedy, second time farce

The last time we talked to Alexander Smukler — for almost half his life of Moscow but since 1991 of the United States, and most of that time of Montclair — he said that the disparate disasters exploding around the world are not discrete nightmares.

They’re all related, he said. “Somebody is initiating these events in their best political interests, and by pulling the strings, they are effectively influencing the even78/5

ts, to the benefit of the major players in the world,” he said last week.

Just connect the dots, he advised.

This week, that’s what we’ll do.

“No more let us falter!” That’s what Great Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill, telegraphed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then in the last few months of his life, as they planned the conference at Yalta, in the Crimea. Those two leaders — both complicated men who left stellar legacies — joined the Soviet Union’s Premier Josef Stalin — whose legacy is overwhelmingly of despair and death — to create the world that existed from the end of World War II till now.

Mr. Smukler compares that meeting at Yalta to an upcoming trilateral meeting that President Donald J. Trump, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and China’s President Xi Jinping are planning for mid-November in Shenzhen, China. He calls that meeting, tentatively set for November 18-19, Yalta 2.

“I have gotten angry comments from readers who ask how we can compare the leaders of the countries that had just destroyed the Germany military, and who were allies in that war, with the situation now, with those three autocrats, who never won any wars,” Mr. Smukler said.

To some extent, they’re right, he acknowledged. There are many differences between the two meetings; the first, most obvious, one is that it will not be in Yalta (although one of the crises roiling the world is in Ukraine and Russia; Yalta is in Crimea, and Crimea now is Russian but has gone back and forth between those two countries). And the moral differences are clear.

“But I’m calling it Yalta 2 because it’s a diplomatic, strategic, and political process that must start right now, because the Global Game of Thrones has reached the point where it has become extremely dangerous,” he said. Yalta 2 — a term that he believes he coined, although recently others have picked it up — “describes the historic process when superpowers meet, decide how to coexist, and divide their zones of interest. It decreases the tensions between them. It’s happened every time that there have been superpowers, and therefore there have been tensions.

“History never repeats itself, but it is a spiral. Yalta 2 is a completely different process, and the decisions are being made by a completely different group of people. But it’s important to remember that the three leaders who defeated the Nazis in 1945 met because they understood that they could not allow a war to continue between them. They had to find a solution that allowed their countries to coexist.

“There really were two superpowers, not three — one was the capitalist powers, the Western world, and the other side of the world was communist. So basically those two superpowers drew a line in between those two worlds, so they wouldn’t clash with each other.

“More than 50 million lives were lost in the two world wars — 13 million during the first war, and 37 million during the second. And there were only 20 years between them. That’s why the superpowers had to meet and somehow give humankind a time to breathe and live peacefully.

“And those lines that they drew existed for more than 80 years.”

That, however, was then.

“Now we have a situation when the tension between the major superpowers is so escalated and so dangerous that one step forward in escalating tensions even more could lead to the Third World War,” Mr. Smukler said.

But despite the similarities, there’s another big difference between Yaltas 1 and 2.

“When the three leaders met back then, in February 1945, they weren’t nuclear superpowers yet. There were not nukes back then.” To be clear, the United States was just about there; a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and another was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. But the world hadn’t seen what a nuclear explosion and its fallout looked like yet.

“Roosevelt already knew about the Manhattan Project, and they all knew that something was cooking, but back in February 1945 they had no idea about the enormous danger. It had a dramatic effect in changing the military relationship between the superpowers.” But that was still in the future, and FDR would die before those bombs were dropped.

“In Yalta, they understood that the war was ending, and they did not want to continue it, because civilization was suffering enough.” Losing 50 million people changes things.

“Now, these three autocrats, Trump, Putin, and Xi, are going to meet and initiate the process I call Yalta 2,” Mr. Smukler said. “They fully understand that if a new war will start, that will be the end of our planet.”

That’s why Putin is involved, he said. There are only two superpowers now — the United States and China, as there were only two at Yalta 1 — the United States and Russia. “Putin is included in the meeting because he is the angry dwarf who holds the whole planet as hostage,” Mr. Smukler said. Russia’s basically a gas station with nukes, as the saying goes, but those nukes are real. “Putin’s sitting on the world’s largest stockpile of nukes, and they could easily destroy the whole world.

“Putin’s inner circle already has said this several times, and so has the former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev,” Mr. Smukler said.

Indeed, in September Medvedev was quoted in aa.com.tr, Turkey’s state news service, as saying that the situation in Ukraine “represents a point of absolute no return for the entire planet, not merely for the warring parties. We recognize our responsibility for the fate of humanity and strive with all our might to avert a global catastrophe.

“However, our patience is not limitless. This ultimate option remains a last resort, to be used only when all other measures have failed. Today, we are but a few steps away from it  — mere seconds on the Doomsday Clock.”

Oh. Just — oh.

“That is the only reason why the angry dwarf has to be at the Yalta 2 meeting,” Mr. Smukler said. “It’s not because he is like Stalin, who lost 27 million people and occupied half of Europe and defeated the Nazis. It’s because Stalin left him such a strong power — an existential power — which brings him to the table.” It’s because Stalin and his successor built so many bombs, which now are at least metaphorically ticking.

“I’m not comparing Trump to Roosevelt,” Mr. Smukler said. “I am trying to explain that the tensions and the regional wars that are taking place in different parts of the world are all connected. And they have reached the greatest point of escalation. Just one more step forward and that could easily lead to the Third World War and the destruction of the world.”

So it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of Donald Trump, or of anyone else he might appoint to work on the issues that arise at Yalta 2. “In order for us to exist into the future, and for our children to continue to exist, these men have to meet, and somehow draw lines, and somehow find ground for coexistence.

“I understand that the three leaders who will meet are not Roosevelt or Churchill — I don’t even want to say the name Stalin in this context — but those who sat at Yalta created the rules that quickly led the world, yes, to the Cold War, but at least that war was cold. And it lasted for 85 years.”

So if Yalta 1 was in response to unthinkable tragedy, the meeting set for China next month will be failed farce. “The three of them want to have their names written into world history,” Mr. Smukler said.

“So let’s try to figure out what they’ll say. How are they going to discuss dividing the world?

“Trump will say that Latin America will be in our zone of interest. Xi obviously will want to control the South Pacific. Trump will have to accept the idea that Taiwan will be under Chinese control — but he’s already made it clear that he doesn’t care about Taiwan anyway.

“The whole world, which is now at such a dangerous point, will look entirely differently when they leave. And then there will be a second meeting, and a third meeting, and I hope that after that, our children will have a chance to live in a peaceful world. But the world will be completely different. The Game of Thrones will continue, but in a completely different political and strategic environment.

“That’s because those leaders cannot divide the world. There is no simple line that they can draw.

“Trump has already said that he wants Canada, and the Arctic Ocean and its trade routes. He wants Greenland, and possibly Europe, or at least northern Europe. And he might possibly want the Middle East. But he cannot just grab everything and not give China anything.

“China obviously will control Russia, because Russia already is under China’s control. It will control the Russian part of the Arctic, and Central Asia, including all the former Soviet republics. Obviously, it will control the Korean situation.

“After the exhausting war with Ukraine, Russia probably will get a piece of it, and Russia will participate in developing their part of the Arctic. But basically Putin can’t ask for anything except maybe to have the sanctions lifted, so he can sell his oil and minerals and raw material, to restore his financial ability to exist.

“Russia definitely is not a player in the game between the two superpowers — but he’s at the meeting because it’s true that he can blow up the whole planet.”

The superpowers will have to either recreate the United Nations or blow it all up and invent a new world body. The United Nations “is completely toothless and impotent, but there is a need for an institution that allows the two superpowers to stop regional conflicts, which will be dangerous for their major strategic development. 

“So this is why I call Yalta 2 a necessary historic event that will take place very soon.”

After the meeting the war in Ukraine will stop, or at least enter a new, cold phase, Mr. Smukler said.  “Regional conflicts will be stopped, one way or the other. One of the central issues of the meeting will be the future of Ukraine — whether or not it will exist as an independent state.

“And now we get to the Middle East.”

Wait one minute, though, Mr. Smukler. There is at least some evidence that our president is, to put it mildly, not at the top of his game right now. 

No, that doesn’t really matter, Mr. Smukler said, not willing to be drawn into a discussion of President Trump’s abilities. “He’s just a figure. He’s an institution. He represents the superpower. It doesn’t matter who is president. The point is that the global conflicts that are taking place in the world right now must be stopped.”

So let’s get back to connecting the dots.

“It’s been three years since October 7,” when Hamas stormed over the border with Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, many of whom they tortured and some of whom they killed, Mr. Smukler said. “Immediately I said that it was cooked, prepared, and served by Russia, because that was the only way for Putin to get out of the corner.” That was the corner he’d painted himself into with his inability to win the war he’d started with such high expectations in 2022. “Putin had to switch world attention from his aggression in Ukraine to the Middle East.

“Look what happened during these three years. Hamas is completely destroyed. It lost its leadership, and lost everything in Gaza. The people of Gaza are suffering terribly. Hezbollah is defeated. Israel becomes much, much stronger, but it’s also bleeding, fighting on several different fronts, and it’s lost its reputation.

“All of the participants in October 7 lost so much. But there is a beneficiary. So who won? It’s the person sitting in the Kremlin.

“It won with weaponry. The United States rerouted weaponry to Israel, so Ukraine started getting much less help. The media and public opinion completely forgot about Ukraine, and the civilian casualties there. The whole world is concentrating on Gaza now. Europeans have no time to think about Ukraine. They have to think about their internal situations.

“They think about what’s going on in France,” with the unrest, often tipping over into riots. “There also is unrest in Italy and in Spain,” Mr. Smukler said.

“And who is the beneficiary of Trump’s unprepared military action in Iran? Russia! Russia is fully involved in the U.S.-Iranian conflict. It’s providing Iran with intelligence and target identification. Iran has no way to get target identification without the help of China or Russia, because Iran does not have a sophisticated satellite fleet.

“So when we speak about connecting dots, I say that nothing happens in this world without somebody who has an interest in it or benefitting from it being involved.

“We see that Russia is pulling strings to find out weaknesses and to defeat its enemies. And keep in mind Russian official propaganda, which says that Russia is not fighting with Ukraine. Russia is fighting with NATO and Europe, which is attacking Russian cities with drones and missiles.

“So Russia is saying that the Ukrainians are just a proxy, and that the Western world is standing against Russia. I’m speaking about Russian minds and the Russian character and Russian public opinion. Russians think that this is a war similar to the one in 1941, against the Nazis.

“When we connect the dots, we realize that if the superpowers continue to pull the strings in different parts of the world, if they continue their tensions, the war that started in Europe in February of 2022” — when Russia invaded Ukraine, expecting a cakewalk and finding disaster — “that war can lead to the most dangerous conflict in the world. That’s why I hope that the meeting in Shenzhen will lead to at least the temporary resolution of the tensions that exist between the superpowers now.”

Why is Donald Trump doing this?

“I don’t believe that he will be able to find a solution, but he doesn’t care about anything except the money — and even more, about his legacy.

“He is paranoid about his name being written in world history, and his legacy is the most important thing in the world for him. That’s why he’s in a hurry. He’s going to be a lame duck right after the midterm, if he isn’t already, right now.

“If there will be no Nobel Prize for him, he wants his name remembered.”

It’s about power even more than it’s about money, even though its secondarily about money, Mr. Smukler said. (And yes, he conceded, it perhaps is primarily about money for some members of Trump’s family.)

“The psychology of the person who possesses a billion dollars is completely different than the psychology of all other people,” he said. “For Trump to be in a club of billionaires — his personal wealth is something like $1.5 billion — sitting next to Elon Musk, who is almost a trillionaire, is difficult.

“But trust me, this is a secondary thing. 

“When you possess as much power as Trump possesses, money becomes secondary.

“He’s 80. What is he thinking about? That he’ll just be buried in Arlington, because he’s president. He will be. But what will give him satisfaction? What will treat his pride? What will be his legacy.

“He doesn’t want the word Trump to be only on his gravestone. He wants to see the word Trump written in world history. He wants every student in the class to open history textbooks and read that in 2026, the leaders of the superpowers met in Shenzhen and divided the world, and the world still is existing peacefully.”

Trump’s pursuit of his legacy reminds Mr. Smukler of the Russian fairy tale that Alexander Pushkin put into verse and published in 1835.

It’s about a desperately poor fisherman who catches a golden fish. The fish is magic, and gives him three wishes. He becomes the czar of all Russia. “And in the minute when he becomes the czar of all Russia, he said, ‘I don’t want to be a czar of all Russia. I’ve had enough of that already. I know how it works.

“‘I want to be ruler of the universe.’ 

“And the fish said, ‘You already spent your three wishes. But if you want the fourth wish, I will give it to you.’ And the fisherman said, ‘I want to be the ruler of the universe.’

“And then once again he became the poor fisherman, back in the shed where he started.

“That’s the story. It’s a story about Trump, and it’s a story about Xi, and especially it’s a story about Putin.”

Yes, Mr. Smukler said, Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. “Then suddenly the planets give him the chance to become the most powerful man in the world, not once but twice. So when you’re sitting in the White House, and you’re the most powerful man in the world, but you’re 80 years old, what do you wish for? To be the ruler of the universe? You can’t be. But your name, Trump, can be all over, and people can think of it when they think about when the war stopped and the planet started to move forward peacefully.

“And Putin? Putin’s great-grandparents were slaves in Russia. He came from a family of the poorest peasants. His parents were uneducated. And then suddenly he became a ruler of Russia. He became the czar who ruled Russia longer than ay other czar in the history of Russia. He ruled Russia. Russia belonged to him. He became the richest man in the world. He controls enormous amounts of mineral resoures and oil.

“What is his legacy? He is a war criminal. So his legacy would be to sit in Shenzhen and become like Stalin. When an American kid reads about Stalin and Yalta, let’s say there’s one sentence in a modern history textbook, the book doesn’t say that Stalin was a monster who killed millions of people in labor camps.

“So Putin’s intention today is to become the Great Putin. Like Peter the Great. Like Catherine the Great. Who remembers how many heads Peter cut off before he became Great?

“It’s the same thing for Xi,” Mr. Smukler added. 

So how could we have predicted all of this? How could we have forseen that history would move in this direction? We couldn’t, and we didn’t, Mr. Smukler said. These autocratic leaders were voted into their positions. “So how do we know what will come?”

We can’t know. But we can keep our eyes open. And we can try to figure out what we’re seeing; to make sense of it is perhaps to know what to do next. At least we can connect the dots.