What Just Happened #65
The Tweet That Smoked
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While the president was riding in carriages with the king, we stayed home to ponder three short, specific issues: his ‘Smoking Tweet’ last weekend urging the NATO alliance to do “as I say,” the state of Moldova’s election, which feels existential to the locals, and how the would-be strongman of Argentina, who begs for derision, is faring in his midterm election.
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Let’s talk about the Smoking Tweet, the one in which this week the American president confirmed his permanent intention not to lead an international alliance. Or anything else, really, except his MAGA loyalists:
Sorry, but to really consider it, I’m afraid we’re going to have to read it. But we can go through it together:
A LETTER SENT BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP TO ALL NATO NATIONS AND, THE WORLD: “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA.
[The president would be loathe to compare himself to the Obama administration, but this sounds a lot like “leading from behind,” doesn’t it? I’m ready, but you do stuff first. Doesn’t it?]
As you know, NATO’S commitment to WIN has been far less than 100%,
[Stop right there: we all know NATO’s commitment to anything is highly contingent on whether or not the Americans are all in, which this administration is not. And we are all also aware that in 2025, during this second Trump administration, the US paused funding, for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine.
In contrast, right now, at this moment in 2025, all 32 NATO allies meet their two percent of GDP contribution target.]
and the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.
[The European Union’s share of oil imported from Russia has dropped from nearly 30% before the war to just 2% by the middle of this year. Gas imports fell similarly. Only Turkey, Hungary, Slovakia still import Russian crude in meaningful amounts, and Hungary and Slovakia, in particular, are Russia-friendly.
The overwhelming majority of NATO countries have largely divested themselves of dependence on Russian oil, some of them incurring considerable disruption to their own economies. Scarcely two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania became entirely independent of Russian gas, and then Estonia and Finland, like Lithuania, leased liquid natural gas floating storage units to import LNG. It also probably escapes the president that in 2022, over eighty percent of Lithuania’s LNG cargo came from U.S. suppliers, something most American presidents would welcome. You can make the argument that buying any Russian oil is buying too much. But an argument that ‘buying Russian oil’ weakens European bargaining power over Russia is facile. But okay. Let’s say all NATO countries suddenly stop buying all oil from Russia. Anything else?]
Anyway, I am ready to “go” when you are. Just say when? I believe that this, plus NATO, as a group, placing 50% to 100% TARIFFS ON CHINA, to be fully withdrawn after the WAR with Russia and Ukraine is ended, will also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR. China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia, and these powerful Tariffs will break that grip.
[Okay, wait. Why not all the world’s biggest trading partners just all try disrupting the whole world’s established trading regime with “50% to 100% TARIFFS ON CHINA”? That’s not serious. And added to a list of silly demands on American allies, it illustrates nicely the fundamentally unserious nature of this administration. But wait. There’s more.]
This is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was President!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR.
[Just a note here, as others have noted, that the president neglects to name Vladimir Putin, or assign to him any responsibility whatever for this war, prior to which Mr. Putin spent months assembling a 200,000-odd fighting force on Ukraine’s border. It’s true enough that those were not Trump’s military moves. Neither were they Biden’s or Zelenskyy’s. But in Donald Trump’s telling, the man who is responsible is camouflaged, much like his little green men who took Crimea in 2014.]
I am only here to help stop it, and save thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives (7,118 lives lost last week, alone. CRAZY!). If NATO does as I say, the WAR will end quickly, and all of those lives will be saved!
[Note the American president’s negotiating technique, advising its allies to “do as I say”]
If not, you are just wasting my time, and the time, energy, and money of the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
•
This is profoundly unserious. A serious negotiator, someone, say, who wrote a book on the art of negotiating, would have staff working the phones, formulating positions, preparing briefing papers, gaming contingencies, stress-testing possible outcomes.
How much of that process do you imagine is carried out in an administration in which the Secretary of State moonlights as Acting Archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States?
The Smoking Tweet shows:
Trump’s unwillingness to support the NATO effort.
His bald preference for Putin over Poland (even at the expense of his alliance with the new Polish president)
His tendency to blackmail and strong arm, in less than good faith
His plain lack of seriousness
One last thing:
The German broadsheet Die Welt (the World) had a story this week that five of the nineteen or so drones that crossed into Poland “were on a direct flight path toward a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.” Die Welt quoted “a NATO Official” as saying “Russia wanted to test the Alliance’s response, i.e. how quickly it would react and what means it would use to combat the drones.”
Should that be even approximately true, contrast the Russians trying “to test the Alliance’s response” with the American president’s deeply unserious Smoking Tweet.
•
Of course that’s not all. Now note how the administration’s knuckle dragging has begun to dig up resistance among allies that will eventually play out in jobs back here at home:
—Portugal either has or has not switched its multi-billion dollar fighter jet deal to French Rafales over America’s F-35s. Odd that this is undoubtedly the biggest, most important political matter between the two countries and nobody is saying anything very definitive. A plan to replace older F-16s with F-35s was in place. Portugal’s Air Force had announced this publicly. The order was to be for something like 28 aircraft.
In March, Portuguese Defense Minister Nuno Melo cited the “geopolitical environment,” the U.S.’s newfound policy unpredictability and concerns about restrictions on maintenance and components, when he suggested that acquiring F-35s may be a lock.
His concerns over components, specifically, probably reflect the so-called “kill-switch” that the US would retain by, for example, withholding software updates. This may or may not be a legitimate concern in fact, but along with ‘policy unpredictability’ it contributes to widespread European uncertainty over America’s reliability as an ally.
Apparently the Foreign Minister said Portugal “would not proceed” with the purchase and some sites, like Defense Mirror, concluded the deal was off. Maybe he said Portugal would not proceed right now, or at the moment, or some such. In any case, no contract has been let and various European countries have lined up to pitch their Rafales, Gripens and Typhoons as replacements.
—After statements earlier this year that the US wanted sovereignty over Greenland, where Denmark is the suzerain, this week the Danes announced they would buy $9.11 billion worth of European‐made air defense systems, which will explicitly not include U.S. made Patriots. Denmark will buy medium-range systems manufactured by Norway, Germany or France, and longer range SAMP/T units from a French/Italian joint venture.
(There have also been reports suggesting Saudi Arabia is considering a deal worth around $8 billion with Italy for the SAMP/T air defense system instead of Patriots.)
The final notable deal under review is with Canada, which announced two and a half years ago that it would buy eighty-eight F-35s over the following decade or so, and has fully funded the first sixteen.
But allies act funny when you start to talk about invading them, and the new Canadian Prime Minister Carney did what politicians do: he ‘ordered a review,’ to evaluate whether the F-35 was the best investment for Canada.
That review is due to be wrapped up by “the end of summer” and winter’s coming. Yesterday afternoon it was -10.3 degrees celsius at Eureka Airport, Nunavut.
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LAST MINUTE VISIT TO POLAND BY CHINA’S FOREIGN MINISTER: It seems Poland was hastily added to a European visit (to Austria and Slovenia) by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week. What business might have suddenly come up between them?
On September 11th, the day after Russian drones invaded Polish airspace, Poland closed its border with Belarus, the direction from which the drones came. This brought to an abrupt halt to one of China’s most direct rail corridors to the EU, reported to affect an annual €25 billion in goods.
After the meeting between Wang and his Polish counterpart, Radosław Sikorski, the Chinese readout said talks were about “the current state of bilateral relations” and “developing effective and economically competitive Eurasian transport corridors….”
Mr. Wang was apparently unable to persuade the Poles to reopen the border, which remains closed.
Credit here to Shankar Narayan, whose interesting Substack tipped me to the late addition of Poland to the Chinese FM’s itinerary, and from which the rail line graphic is a screen shot.
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PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN MOLDOVA: Probably no European politician has the right to feel more forlorn, and more forgotten, than Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and, if her party loses parliamentary elections next weekend, no European country is more doomed than hers.
We’ve talked about Moldova before but it’s a very small and not very well known former Soviet republic, so just to quickly review why the upcoming election is important: Moldova is bordered only by Romania and Ukraine. Effectively, if Ukraine were to lose its war to Russia, Moldova would lose, too.
Moldova is poor and, with no natural barriers on its borders, largely undefended. Naturally, since it was part of the Soviet Union, Moldova has a large, vestigial Russian-speaking population which consumes Russian language media, where can be found plenty of Russian supplied anti-government propaganda.
If you’re interested in a little more detail, here is a good summary of the state of Moldovan politics at the moment.
One poll this week showed President Sandu’s bloc Action and Solidarity (PAS) with a comfortable lead. But we’ve seen time after time how in other elections certain parties are underrepresented in polling. People don’t want to admit they’re going to vote for certain candidates. You know who they are in your country.
The director of the organization that conducted this particular poll herself said as much:
“Director of the WatchDog Association Valeriu Pasha noted that “a large number of those who have not decided (or did not answer the question), based on the answers to other questions, are more likely to have a negative attitude towards the current government.”
“This group of voters exceeds the support of any single party and will be decisive in the future elections," the expert noted.
In addition, Infotag.md reported, “33.5% of respondents found it difficult to answer or did not answer the question, and 5.5% said they would not vote for any of the candidates.”
Be that as it may, other polls (and I can’t find a lot) suggest a hopelessly tight race. A poll aggregator shows the Russia-friendly coalition up by 1.8 percent.
Sandu needed Moldova’s diaspora, voting from abroad, to secure her reelection last year, and she says that got Russia’s attention. The FT reports she is
“accusing Moscow of using Russian Orthodox priests to spread propaganda, and deploying the ‘Matryoshka’ bot network to generate fake content while posing as legitimate foreign media.”
It reports that “Russian agents allegedly made fake bomb threats at Moldovan polling stations abroad, including in Germany,” and Sandu fears similar threats next weekend. The countries with the largest Moldovan communities are Italy and Romania (with whom Moldova shares its language).
Meanwhile the Moldovan National Anticorruption Center seized 20 million lei (the local money) in a story reported this week. It suspects “a group of individuals, among which are decision-makers affiliated with political formations, members and sympathizers. These individuals are alleged to have contributed to the illegal redirection of funds towards electoral competitors.”
It’s never a good look to see undercover cops displaying stacks of confiscated cash at election time. And speaking of good looks:
ARGENTINA: He was the golden boy, the darling of every trickle-down economist still standing. He was a would be pit bull of a politician who once cloned his English Mastiff. He was going to apply Elon Musk’s chain saw to politics and he meant to create a miracle down there, just you watch him!
Well yes, there were some scandals but come now, there’s always scandals, they can’t be helped, come on, they were trying to save the country here. Sometimes that’s just the price of progress.
Oops though, here was one involving corruption and, um, the president’s sister Karina, who is also his de facto chief of staff. Works right there in the president’s office. And Diego Spagnuolo, the president’s lawyer.
Kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies. Karina was alleged to be in for three or four percent of the contracts. Amounts mentioned in media reports pretty big. Some reports put the value of payments at half a million to even 800,000 dollars per month. Whoopsie.
The lawyer was fired, Karina Milei denies everything and the investigation is ongoing. Meanwhile, and sadly, President Milei has been unable to pass a budget. Suddenly this visionary, this tribune of soon-to-arrive prosperity, is no longer striding purposefully toward a great, shared future:
“Argentina’s President Javier Milei has pledged to increase some social spending after nearly two years of austerity, in a rare appeal for voter patience as his administration reels from a corruption scandal and poor local election results.”
So begins the FT article above, outlining hard times ahead for the pit bull.
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That’s all I got this week. Thanks for your time. Please pass this article around and invite your friends to subscribe. And do let me hear from you.
See you next week.
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Cheers,
Bill
One thing I couldn't help but notice about Trump's tweet is it doesn't sound like him. It sounds like his handlers wrote it for him or AI cleaned it up considerably.
Good synopsis, and your view of Europe is always invaluable to those of us who don't dig down.