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An empire of appearances 
Trump’s policy on Ukraine has shifted the transatlantic order and the illusion of European power has been dispelled – leaving behind the harsh reality of the continent’s irrelevance and its inability to shift the geopolitical dial, writes PAWEL WARGAN
BEHEMOTH: Dmitrii Moor’s poster ‘Death to World Imperialism’

IN A 1920 poster by the Soviet artist Dmitrii Moor, a snake-like behemoth is prodded and repelled by a colourful army waving bayonets and red flags — the world’s colonised and oppressed. 

The snake is coiled around a giant factory, representing not only the precious spoils of imperial plunder but also, as hawk-eyed students of Marx might recognise, the fetters that monopolisation imposes on development. “Death to imperialism!” the poster reads. 

The image comes across as a curious relic today, if we take the snake to be those European leaders who, with notable snubs and omissions, met in London on Sunday to discuss Ukraine’s humiliation by Washington. Like a century ago, the snake is all grimace and panic. But where is the factory? And where, really, is the threat? 

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