According to the apocryphal story, the aloof French Queen Marie Antoinette dismissed revolutionary disquiet among starving peasants during a bread shortage with a notorious (and probably mythical) line: “Let them eat cake.” This weekend, two men offered Europe their own dish to eat, a hearty Russian solution to chaos and conflict. On Sunday, as France counted the cost of its worst riots in years, disorder now spreading to Italy, the Russian ultranationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin declared on X that Russians were ready to “reinstall the order in France or Germany.” Generously, Dugin also offered for the “Russian army” to “save” Europe from a “globalist elite that is killing it,” adding: “Invite us instead of fight with us and provoke us to come (and save you anyway).” The same day, President Donald Trump had defended waiving new sanctions on Moscow and his diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump told Kyiv its bargaining position only gets worse: Ukraine’s “male population is low, wounded, and/or dead.” Their prescription for Europe’s two great disorders, unrest in its streets and war on its eastern flank, is the same: let them eat borscht.
Blood-red in color, and sour to the tongue. Accept Russian order; swallow Russian terms. The culinary metaphor is more fitting than you may realize.
In 2022, UNESCO fast-tracked Ukrainian borscht cooking onto its list of heritage in urgent need of safeguarding because of Russia’s invasion. But the Kremlin’s offer has always been Ukraine’s own dish, served back under Russian ownership. The trouble for both chefs is nobody wants to eat the Russian slop on offer.
Not even with a gun to their heads. Dugin, the chief theorist of “neo-Eurasianism,” is a strange character. Deemed an influential thinker, Dugin is often called “Putin’s brain” in media reports, despite holding no office.
It’s not easy to feel sorry for Putin—but that is a cruel jibe. Still, his unlikely pairing with an American president is less odd than it first looks, because the two share a diagnosis as well as a cure. Dugin, who is ultraconservative on social issues, has long cheered on Europe’s rising populists against what he calls liberal globalist elites, and yearns for a multipolar global reordering along ethnic and religious lines.
Trump’s National Security Strategy, published last December, warned that Europe faces “civilizational erasure.” It blamed migration and EU institutions, which it said undermine sovereignty, and promised to cultivate opposition to the continent’s course from within. The Kremlin’s spokesman called the document “largely consistent" with Moscow's vision. The menus read as if they came from the same kitchen, but the appetites differ.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
