Scott Bessent is often held up as one of the saner and more sober members of the Trump administration. His appointment in November 2024 piqued more than a few eyebrows, given he is openly gay, co-hosted a fundraiser for Al Gore in 2000, and even worked for many years at Soros Fund Management, an investment firm owned by Democratic mega-donor and MAGA bete noire George Soros.The general received wisdom in Washington circles – a circle where both receiving and wisdom are becoming increasingly rare – was that Bessent would be a sobering influence on Trump, a view that turned out to be optimism bordering on foolishness.Bessent’s time as Trump’s Treasury Secretary has been action-packed – literally and figuratively – which involved ostensibly rugby-tackling Elon Musk.Also, Trump appears to have rubbed off more on Bessent than vice versa, as evidenced by his bizarre repartee while speaking to ABC News. When asked about European allies being insulted by Trump’s criticism of NATO, Bessent argued that while America had put 25% tariffs on India for buying Russian oil, Europe was set to sign a trade deal with India, arguing that Europe was essentially financing the war against themselves since “Russian oil goes into India, gets refined, and is then bought by Europeans.”It was the sort of flawed logic that would have gladdened Sir Arnold Robinson’s heart, the former head of the British Civil Service in the Yes Minister universe before Sir Humphrey Appleby inherited that mantle. Trump, after all, is a television creature himself, but from a very different genre altogether — not the dry, procedural satire of Yes Minister, but the brash, elimination-based reality show. Even after he retired, Sir Arnold would be sought by Sir Humphrey for sagacious advice, like the time he was worried that Jim Hacker (now Prime Minister) was set to reform local government, which they feared would lead to a butterfly-effect-like tornado that would result in the civil service being reformed.
In Season 2, Episode 5, titled Power to the People, Sir Arnold expounds upon a logical fallacy called political syllogism that ought to be taught in every political office, tech company, and newsroom, if only to prevent the powers that be from panicking and substituting it for activity. Sir Arnold explains it using the cat-dog analogy:
- All cats have four legs.
- My dog has four legs.
- Therefore, my dog is a cat.
He goes on to explain: “He’s suffering from politician’s logic. Something must be done, therefore we must do it. But doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing.” Of course, as Sir Humphrey quips: “Doing anything is worse than doing nothing.”It’s a lesson we have learned from most regime-change revolutions across the world.Either way, getting back to Bessent’s political syllogism, it commits the sin of the undistributed middle by claiming Europe was financing Russia’s war on itself by buying Indian oil through Russia and castigating it for signing what has been dubbed the ‘Mother of Trade Deals’.Of course, both logic and maths are taking a serious hit in this line of argument. Trump’s 25% tariff threat to India for buying and refining Russian oil is meaningless reality-TV political syllogism.Bessent’s argument collapses the moment it is viewed through the prism of logic, because it mistakes activity for responsibility and motion for meaning. When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, India was importing barely 1–2% of its crude oil from Russia. It was not a factor in the global energy equation at all.It was only after Western sanctions disrupted global supply and sent oil prices spiralling that India began increasing its purchases – a move that senior US officials quietly welcomed at the time.Then-US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, State Department energy envoy Geoffrey Pyatt, and later US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti all acknowledged, in different ways, that India buying discounted Russian crude helped keep global petroleum prices from exploding. The logic was simple: Russian oil would stay on the market, prices would stay down, and inflation in the West would remain manageable.Europe just happens to be one of the buyers, and claiming that this means Europe is funding Russia’s war machine is like claiming that British aid is funding India’s space mission.If we make it even simpler, Russia’s revenue is realised at the point of sale to India. By the time the refined product hits Europe, it’s not a second donation to the Kremlin.Even today, China buys significantly more Russian crude than India. Yet India is singled out, because of TACO. Extrapolating Bessent’s logic, this would mean that any country buying any product from any state is participating in that state’s tyrannies. Anyone buying oil from Iran is participating in the regime’s excesses. Any nation who has any trade relations with Pakistan supports guiding a plane towards a large tower. And anyone dealing with the UK is in favour of getting rid of one’s tastebuds. And finally, that would also insinuate that anyone participating in any trade with America actively supports a militia supporting innocent protesters in cold blood. No country is perfect, and it’s very rare that the world gets together to condemn injustice unless it’s beneficial for everyone involved. Most often, it’s when white people are involved. As Aimé Césaire, a Martinique poet and politician, noted about the European bourgeois: “What he cannot forgive Hitler for is not the crime in itself, the crime against man; it is not the humiliation of man as such; it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the Coolies of India, and the Blacks of Africa.”The line Hitler crossed was a racial one.Ergo, the nations of the world seldom find their voice unless white people are actively involved, which is why Scott Bessent is so much more vocal about the Russia-Ukraine war.
Or, to borrow from the slightly pithier and funnier explanation from Indian comedian Azeem Bantwala who explained how it’s only considered a war when white people are fighting. Brown people, no respect. Israel-Palestine conflict. India-Pakistan World Cup. Afghanistan-Taliban mild disagreement. There was an entire civil war in the Middle East and they called it Arab Spring.” World grammar and politics aside, the EU-India trade deal has been in the offing since 2007. That was seven years before PM Modi’s first term. It’s a time so far in the past that Manchester United used to be the best team in Europe. Today’s United is not even the best team in Manchester.It moved at a leisurely pace epitomised by French President’s Emmanuel Macron’s refrain at the World Economic Forum which sometimes is “too slow, for sure, and needs to be reformed, for sure, but which is predictable, loyal, and where…” Time will tell how good the deal will be, whether we will be drinking cheaper beer and wine or driving BMWs, but it certainly opens up a humongous marketplace to a total of 2 billion people, about 25% of the world’s population. Did the deal take a long time? For sure. Did Trump hasten it with his trigger-happy tariffs and warmongering hasten it? For sure, though no one will say it out loud. And finally, should Scott Bessent watch Yes Minister?
For sure. Because that way he could at least firm up his logic and learn a thing from the British. Bessent, never having been burdened by British bureaucracy – real or fictional – would be better served taking a few lessons from Yes Minister, which always taught its viewers to keep calm and carry on, and to laugh at the absurdity of it all.After all, the country that produced that masterpiece avoided the various upheavals – monachal beheadings and red revolutions – that tore through Europe and are now affecting America, perhaps because its motto was to keep calm and carry on. The same logic that was always used by British bureaucracy, and one that America has completely eschewed in the Trump years. Go to Source
