Lessons Trump must learn
Last Sunday, 100 years ago, the most brilliant stratagem of World War I was implemented by German Imperialists. Their tool was a Russian, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin.
In that catastrophic struggle, Germany found itself in its eternal nightmare, war on two fronts: in the west against France and Britain; in the east against Russia. Then the Germans came up with their only really clever scheme, which removed Russia from the war. On April 16, 1917, they injected Lenin and his fellow revolutionaries into Petrograd – now St Petersburg – the capital of Russia, via a sealed train from Switzerland across Germany.
In February 1917, because of the hardships of the war, there had been a genuine popular revolution in Russia, which overthrew the Tsar. It was followed by a feeble, ineffective provisional government under Alexander Kerensky, who was good at talking and nothing else.
Lenin, a professional revolutionary, pretended to adore Karl Marx but knew Marx was talking rubbish when he said communist revolution would be inevitable and popular. Lenin knew it would be unpopular: it could only be implemented by force, by a small group of violent, disciplined fanatics and it could only maintained by terror.
Once in Russia, Lenin made his plan real. On November 7, 1917, his small Bolshevik group, led by Trotsky, seized power in a coup. Lenin then established himself as the first modern tyrant, the model for Stalin and Hitler.
He did what the German imperialists wanted: he made peace with Germany, at terms greatly advantageous to it.
So German cleverness removed the Russian enemy. But German foolishness replaced it with a far more dangerous enemy, the US. Germany lost the war a year later
The most terrifying thing about WW I was its stupidity. Not one of the contenders wanted war, nobody cared much about the issue that started it. The nations of Europe stumbled accidentally into a gigantic slaughterhouse.
One hundred years ago, blunder had far more terrifying results than conspiracy. And today?
When I see President Trump blundering around Syria and Afghanistan with his bombs and missiles, violating his election promises not to get the US bogged down in hopeless foreign military aggression, I am filled with dread.