Who Is Russia’s Best Friend In Donald Trump’s Administration
© AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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Are we, Russians, really different from Indians? At least in one significant matter we react in exactly the same manner. That matter is the future administration of Donald Trump.
All the media in both India and Russia cannot stop guessing – who loves Russia (India, etc.) among Trump’s appointees? And who will bring us unwanted problems?
But then, there are Europeans who are playing the same game, trying to see who is Europe’s best friend and ugliest foe in that future United States ruling team. South East Asia cares about those in that team who care about South East Asia, and so on.
Let’s see which names crop up in all these discussions. Given India’s own troubles with the shadowy, all-pervading Deep State that dictates the major tenets of America’s foreign policy, India can only hope that Trump succeeds, says my colleague, an opinion writer from the Firstpost.com.
“New Delhi also perhaps believes that if Trump can be dealt with there will be significantly less friction or irritants in bilateral ties because unlike the Biden administration where invisible strings were being pulled from different directions, it’ll be different and more direct with Trump. He is his own NSA and secretary of state. Whether it’s national security adviser Mike Waltz or the likely secretary of state Marco Rubio – they are expected to play only a supporting role,” he adds.
So, Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio may look and sound harsh, but all in all things should be OK with them. Other writers express their worries or hopes about all kind of other personalities and agendas.
How about climate: “With promises to overhaul bureaucracy, impose steep tariffs and retreat from climate commitments, Trump’s policies are set to reshape the US and the world”, worries yet another columnist, writer from The Pioneer. And then there are other worries and hopes, like about the future of women’s rights, reproductive autonomy and gender equality in the US and elsewhere.
And only one name in the future US administration tends to be overlooked outside America. And here, my friends, I daresay you are seriously wrong, thinking that this name, Linda McMahon, is of no interest to us all, since she’ll be running the Education Department. Surely it’s an absolutely domestic matter, of no concern to the rest of the world, right?
Wrong, my friends. America’s and Europe’s educational standards have long been creeping all over the world, creating everywhere same problems as are obvious in the US. And I was truly happy to read that Linda’s task was to completely destroy the federal Education Department.
“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead the effort,” Trump said on her appointment.
That’s what have already been happening in the US for several years. The “red”, Republican states strived to isolate themselves from Democrat’s woke agenda in schools and universities, and to reintroduce traditional and conservative values to education. They want it all back in schools – religion, love and respect to their own country, and the rest of values that form the ideological base of the nation.
Later on one may expect some federal norms in education to be reestablished, but it will take a lot of time. Let me repeat: is that of any concern to India, Russia and the rest of the world? Oh, yes. It’s of more concern that the trade tariffs and even wars. Thing is, we are talking about not just American, but a global phenomenon, when mad ideas have been creeping into schools and universities literally everywhere. You may call these ideas liberal, woke, progressive and anything you like, but their impact is the same everywhere.
Volumes and volumes have been written about that impact. So let’s be selective and look at the fruits of that rotten education not only in the US, but much wider. We are talking about the recent research of an agency, helping young people to find employment at home or in any country willing to accept foreigners. That’s the report of Seattle-based intelligent.com, stating that nearly 4 in 10 employers surveyed around the world avoid hiring recent college graduates in favour of older workers.
Here we are talking about a tragedy of a whole so-called Generation Z, born around the year 2000, the generation that have received the whole impact of that ugly educational revolution that McMahon is supposed to stop.
The college graduates, says the report, have no proper motivation to do anything, they cannot communicate with people senior to them, they hate being criticised and do not want to go on learning. They are also ready to break, any moment, the existing order of things, instead of studying that order.
Is there the same problem in Russia? Of course there is, but so far it’s been visible only in some big cities’ universities. The intelligent.com report have been commented upon almost in all the Russian media. The result is notable, the employment agencies are saying that the real demand in workforce is for the young blue-collar workers, whose attitudes to their tasks are OK. It’s only the service sector that’s been hit by the Generation Z plague. All that means that only the Russian higher education has been somewhat tainted by the American disease, while the secondary school is relatively immune. While in the US the rot runs deeper.
Students all over the world have always been highly susceptible to radical ideas. Look at the Red Wave in universities of the 1960-s and 1970-s, or at a different set of radical ideas at play in, say, Bangladesh quite recently. But, with these ideas or that, higher education is about giving a young person a chance to get a good job. If that education produces a very different effect, then it’s a small surprise when the next President of the US starts doing something about that situation.
One may predict a beautiful turmoil, worldwide, when this process really heats up. After all, we are talking about a huge global educational lobby, not only American or Western, a system with lots of money circulating around. That lobby spreads its ideas through all kind of NGOs, books, scholarships. And, as we see it now, it has been in deep crisis for quite a while, exporting just that, the crisis.
If anybody noticed, that generational breakdown has long been obvious, if you look at an average age of really powerful and successful politicians of the world. Restoration of normalcy, whatever it is, today falls in the hands of people over seventy, while a middle-aged generation of leaders seems to be in a kind of paralysis. Lynda McMahon is 76, if you didn’t know.
So what result may we want to see from the process she is supposed to start? You may call it a multipolar world or whatever you like, but the most obvious trend to expect will be a revival of various national educational systems, in Russia or India, in China or Latin America. These systems will compete and clash with each other, but then a beautiful chaos and debate has always been giving birth to real human (and humane) progress.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
