The only thing more dangerous than being America’s enemy is to be its friend.

That is a statement often attributed to Henry Kissinger – the multiple, unrepentant as well as un-prosecuted war criminal, butcher of the Global South, and revelation-resistant icon of US foreign policy. And even if the sources are a little murky – involving the slightly deranged and badly overestimated arch-conservative grandstander William F. Buckley – it would have been just like bad old Henry: sort of witty, deeply malevolent, and yet realistic in its own, venomous way.

Never mind that the idea is not that original: Aleksey Vandam, an unjustly forgotten geopolitical theorist and general of the late Russian empire, knew that much already. Watching the British and Americans abuse China, Vandam felt the Chinese had every reason for concluding that “it’s a bad thing to have an Anglo-Saxon for an enemy, but God forbid having him as a friend.”

And yet some lessons are never learned. This time it is the turn of both Ukraine and America’s EU-NATO vassals to pay the price of trying to be friends with what, in a global perspective, has been – quite objectively, quantifiably – the most overbearing, violent, and disruptive empire of firstly, the post-World War II and, recently, the post-Cold War periods.

Because that is one of the key messages of the increasingly intense – and now, finally, open – top level contacts between Moscow and Washington, that is, between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Let’s be clear: This is, in and of itself, a positive and badly overdue development. The recent, officially confirmed “lengthy and highly productive phone call” (Trump’s words) between the two leaders may not yet amount to a breakthrough. Even if Trump’s rhetoric – about a “successful conclusion, hopefully soon!” – already makes it look like one; Trump, it’s true, can be grandiloquent.

Yet the conversation does already serve as a big, heavy slab of a tombstone on America’s absurd and very dangerous policy of decrepitly stubborn non-communication. Moreover, Moscow has now confirmed that a full summit is in the making.

Even better, we also know already that neither Kiev nor the EU-NATO vassals were in the loop: There goes the daft, devious, and very deadly (for Ukrainians, too) mantra of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” And as a bonus: Soon there will be a lot about EU-NATO Europe without Europe. The fact that its leaders are, in the Financial Times’s words, “reel[ing]” and already clamoring for being heard merely confirms that they have been shunted aside.

Rest assured: whatever cosmetic role the Europeans may be allowed to play (or not), they are delusional if they think they’ll matter. In reality, the Trumpists are brutally frank about what they have in mind for their underlings: Washington and Moscow make the decisions, the NATO-EU vassals fall in line and, also, pay for the outcome: Reconstructing Ukraine, Trump’s people........

© RT.com