The Evil Trio

By Tina Queen

In a letter to his son Christopher during WW2 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien once wrote:

All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their “causes” and “effects”. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis.


The statement accurately applies to the political processes taking place in the US today. Whether for the sake of it or for a good reason, Americans have set out to place bets on the outcome of the upcoming election with 54% staking on Donald Trump and the remaining 46% on Kamala Harris. Despite the Democrats’ tireless efforts to shift the blame for their own failures, including but not limited to those associated with foreign policies on Joe Biden’s predecessor, the odds are still in favor of the former president. Why? Here’s a bit of background.

Having landed the post of US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken promised to “reverse” Trump’s “failed” policies and he did by turning everything upside-down. Now the Department of State has turned into a “War Department” becoming even more hawkish than the Pentagon. Together with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, he has pushed the nation and its allies onto the path of violence. Unwilling to settle the tensions in Ukraine, they have repeatedly voiced their approval of the use of long-range weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia. The Pentagon and intelligence agencies, however, are taking a less categorical stance on the issue. They argue that the escalation of conflict is unlikely to give Kyiv a decisive advantage. The need for diplomacy has been also stressed by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and his successor Charles Brown Jr.

Yet, Blinken doesn’t care. He is convinced that the threat of war is the only way to achieve peace with the Kremlin. The rationale for such an approach is two-fold. Firstly, the official in question is not a negotiator by nature or inclination, which is evidenced by the fact that at the end of his four-year term in office the Department of State doesn’t have a single diplomatic victory to boast about. All his efforts in respect of Venezuela, Iran and, most importantly, North Korea (regarding which he was going to “reverse” one of Trump’s policies) have failed flat.

It follows that the only skill Blinken seems to have down to a fine art is that of adding fuel to the fire - be it the conflict between Russia and Ukraine or the one in the Middle East. On one occasion he went so far as to show utter disrespect for the Congress by ignoring the evidence of the US failures in Afghanistan which ultimately resulted in unnecessary casualties among American military personnel.

Prior to Blinken, Washington and Moscow had enjoyed fruitful cooperation on Afghan issues, particularly those pertaining to anti-terrorist activities such as the use of Russia-operated transit corridors for cargo transportation initiated by the US. It was also the Secretary of State who back in December 2021 turned down Vladimir Putin’s draft treaty aimed at defining a new European security order establishing security guarantees both for Russia and Ukraine. It’s therefore no overstatement to suggest that the trio of Blinken, Biden and Harris is to be held accountable for the ongoing tensions on the other side of the Atlantic at the expense of American taxpayers.
 
If elected, K. Harris won’t change her tune, which brings us to the second reason why the current administration is determined to stay on the war path. The longer the conflicts last, the better, considering the enormous profits generated by supplying military equipment to combat zones. Why should the evil trio care about the lives of Ukrainians, Palestinians or the Lebanese as long as they benefit?

What inspires some hope, though, is one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s other quotes from his letter to Christopher: “evil labors with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in”.