Michael McDowell: We must accept severe sanctions if we are to stand for anything

There is a remarkable symmetry between Putin and Trump. Each is a psychological misfit with strong sociopathic tendencies. Each is part of a kleptocratic campaign to subvert democracy. Each admires the statecraft of the other. Each, I dare say, merits the adjective “evil”.

Trump is as dangerous as Putin in that he has almost seized virtual control of the American Republican Party which is likely to control Congress later this year and stands an excellent chance of recapturing the White House in two years' time. The events of January 6th, 2021, were intended by Trump to violently seize another four-year term as president from his defeat at the hands of American voters in the popular vote and in the electoral college.

Addressing the conservative Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Florida last week, Trump posed as the would-be saviour of western civilisation. And the crazies who attended that convention gave Trump a decisive lead in a straw poll over Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Away from Cpac, DeSantis is making progress in his campaign to oust Trump as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.

If the Democrats don’t find their own viable candidate with the capacity to defeat Trump, it may well be that the survival of western liberal democracy will rest on the prospects of DeSantis winning over grassroot Republicans in the coming 18 months – a dubious choice between the hard right and extreme right. That choice is the legacy of Rupert Murdoch’s polarisation politics as embodied in Fox News – the progenitor of the Tea Party and Trumpism.

Putin must be prosecuted before International Criminal Court

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Man in the Middle – Frank McNally on John Francis Condon, self-appointed star of the Lindbergh kidnap investigation

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Martyn Turner

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Has Putin stopped the rot in the West by his barbaric, criminal and evil onslaught on Ukraine? Have we collectively copped on to what is in store if we don’t stand up to the Sino-Russian axis?

Do the kleptocrats who have stood by Putin stand to regain full control of their plunder in a few years' time?

Maybe, just maybe, the heroism of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a turning point for world democracy. We must accept willingly the cost of severe sanctions if we are to stand for anything. That means sanctioning Russian money sloshing around the International Financial Services Centre. It means sanctioning Russian assets and money in London and the financial centres in Europe.

Has the time come for western states to establish a Ukrainian democracy trust, and to vest Russian off-shore assets and bank balances in it, giving the oligarchs legal recourse to Putin’s Russia from which they extracted the loot in the first place? Or do the kleptocrats who have stood by Putin stand to regain full control of their plunder in a few years’ time?

I am glad that the EU is ending access for Russian airlines. But cutting off Russian credit cards might better bring the message home to Russians that they must pay a heavier price than a temporarily devalued rouble for their government’s war crimes. If they think that Russia can do in 2022 what their post-Stalin governments did in 1956 to Hungary and in 1968 to Czechoslovakia, maybe they should be reminded of what economic life was like in cold war Russia.

What of Sinn Féin?

And a word or two for Sinn Féin’s strangely mute cadre of online trolls. Since we know that Sinn Féin is controlled on the principle of democratic centralism, it follows that the line being followed by their MEPs on Russia is decided back in Ireland by their northern dominated politburo. It has been consistent.

For a vocal party, they are remarkably silent on the Putin-Xi alliance to confront the world's liberal democracies

Sinn Féin MEP Chris MacManus recently voted against a European Parliament resolution supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence and condemning Russia’s intervention in Donbas. But now the party claims to support sanctions on Russia.

Sinn Féin MEPs had voted against boycotting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as “overly confrontational”. They also abstained on resolutions condemning civil rights abuses in Putin’s Russia.

For a vocal party, they are remarkably silent on the Putin-Xi alliance to confront the world’s liberal democracies. On civil liberties under threat in Hong Kong and Taiwan, they play the role of dumbstruck useful idiots.

Of course, they became partners in the GUE-NGL EU parliament grouping with a ragbag of member-state communist parties and former communist parties flying under false colours.

So why should we be all that surprised? Not me. I was present in Weston Park in 2001, when the US representatives warned them in the strongest terms against the multimillion dollar sale of Provo weapons know-how to the communist Farc guerrillas in Colombia. That little affair post-dated the Belfast Agreement.

Can they now demonstrate that they do not still regard western liberal democracy with revolutionary contempt?