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Gideon Rachman

Sunday 29th of March 2026

Conspiracy theorists I used to think conspiracy theories were the refuge of the powerless and the uneducated. … But conspiracy theorists have moved from the streets to the suites. They have become presidents of countries, including Turkey and Brazil. In the US, Donald Trump  — who sees plots against him everywhere — is planning his political comeback. The most dangerous conspiracy theorist of them all is Vladimir Putin, who is currently threatening the world with nuclear war. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, October 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations Assassination is not a foreign policy headline, Gideon Rachman column, Financial Times print edition, January 7, 2020 [online headline: “America should drop the ‘Dr Evil fallacy’ on assassination”] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Lies The man from the BBC was laughing as he reported the White House's false claims about the size of the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration. He should have been crying. What we are witnessing is the destruction of the credibility of the American government. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, January 24, 2015 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Mr Trump … is in a different category of dishonesty from the villains of yesteryear, such as Dick Cheney, George W Bush's vice-president. With Mr Trump, the lies are so frequent and so flagrant that they are undeniable. Donald Trump portrayed by Gideon Rachman © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Mr. Trump sprays out lies like a skunk trying to repel its enemies. Donald Trump portrayed by Gideon Rachman © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot When Donald Trump described himself as a “very stable genius”, even some of his supporters sniggered. … Mr Trump has a legitimate claim to three other kinds of “genius”: political genius, instinctive genius and evil genius. Moral disgust with Mr Trump means that his opponents are reluctant to credit him with any kind of intelligence or success. But that kind of thinking, while under- standable, is also dangerous. It is one reason why the president frequently wrongfoots his opponents. Donald Trump portrayed by Gideon Rachman © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Under Donald Trump, America looks like a dangerous nation. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, August 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Ukraine All of these discordant notes [China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Marie LePen and far right in France, etc.] underline that any initial impression that the whole world had united in outrage against Russia was clearly misleading. Instead there is an “axis of outrage” centred on the western alliance and an “axis of indifference” centred on the Global South. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, April 15, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
War In modern times, when major powers invade smaller countries, they usually end up losing.  America failed in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — and also beat humiliating retreats after smaller military interventions in Somalia and Lebanon. The Soviet Union failed in Afghanistan; and Russia is now failing in Ukraine. … The few exceptions to the rule that great powers lose small wars seem to occur when the fighting and objective are clearly limited. If the conflict is genuinely a “special military operation” (to use Putin’s disingenuous term for  the invasion of Ukraine), then success is possible. In the 1991 Gulf war, the US-led coalition restricted its goals to expelling Saddam Hussein's Iraq from Kuwait.  Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, May 16, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
the West The west is an “empire of hypocrisy”. It is Russia that is the real “empire of lies”. And when it comes to a trial of strength between systems, hypocrisy works better than outright lies. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, May 23, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com