topics
The tug-of-war between the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the “Deep State,” will be resumed with new strength after the tycoon takes office in the White House next Jan. 20. During the four-year interval that followed his defeat in 2020, Trump learned many things, while the “Deep State” relaxed, resting on its laurels, not believing in the possibility of Trump's new victory and his return to the Olympus of American power. This fact will give Trump some advantage, but only at the beginning, as his opponents try to catch up.
For Trump’s opponents, “the security and prosperity of the United States is based on military superiority.”
When the world lives in anticipation of whether Trump’s second term brings promised peace and reduces the risk of nuclear WWIII, the war party is pushing its agenda. The magazine Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the influential Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), warns about the heavy price of American retreat from the world stage and explains why “Washington must reject isolationism and embrace primacy.” In the article, signed by the outgoing Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, there is plenty of criticism of his congressional opponents who insist that there be parity between increases in defense spending and those in nondefense discretionary ones.
McConnell or whoever wrote this article for him calls them isolationists who “unwittingly peddle the fiction that military superiority is cost-prohibitive or even provocative.” In the author’s inflated brain, “the United States’ security and prosperity are rooted in military primacy. Preserving that decisive superiority is costly, but neglecting it comes with far steeper costs.”
Other Foreign Affairs authors go even deeper to support the same “guns vs. butter” cause, saying that although the Ukrainian conflict “is Putin’s first and foremost and imperial pursuit to end Ukraine’s independence, his ultimate objectives are to revise the post–Cold War order in Europe, weaken the United States, and usher in a new international system that affords Russia the status and influence Putin believes it deserves.”
For entire decades Russia has extended the hand of friendship to the West, which has been consistently rejected in a humiliating way for the Kremlin leaders and the Russian people.
I am sure that the majority of CFR members are smart enough to know that almost every word in these articles is a lie, but they need to justify the increase in military spending required by their sponsors. In reality, it is all the way around. Starting with Gorbachev and continuing with all Russian leaders after him, including Putin, the country was in favor of integration with the West, only to be turned down by those whose goal was to keep Russia weak and not even think of challenging the unipolar world order led by the “supreme leaders” sitting in Washington.
In their eyes, Putin is the ultimate villain who violated the unipolar rules by claiming Russia’s equal place at the world roundtable. From their point of view, this is unacceptable and must be prevented at all costs, ideally with some proxies to avoid the risk of direct conflict with the nuclear superpower. A most convenient proxy candidate was found in Ukraine who agreed to sacrifice his country and its people for money and, what is no less critical for comedian actors, the unthinkable glory on the world stage.
The majority of these leaders from the 50+ countries who cynically applaud him for these sacrifices and keep throwing their taxpayers’ money and weapons to reject diplomatic efforts to end this conflict have embarrassing ratings at home and will find their disgraceful places in the historical annals.
All eyes are now on Trump, and many are anxiously waiting for January 20 next year, when he might attempt to end this horror. However, his opponents are not waiting and demanding that Trump not make any concessions to Moscow, including sanctions relief, saying that this will strengthen Putin’s hand for the subsequent aggression.
“The United States and Europe must invest in resisting Russia now or pay a far greater cost later,” scream Foreign Affairs’ authors, and continue that “Russia hosted the annual summit of BRICS with dozens of world leaders in attendance, demonstrating a growing interest in the group’s role as a platform for challenging Western power and influence.”
One of the indicators of Trump’s possible success in pursuing peace in Ukraine is whether he manages to overcome the resistance of Republicans, who want to prevent some of his picks for future cabinet who share his agenda from passing successfully through the Senate torture chambers. One of them is a former Congresswoman, US Army veteran, and Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump nominated for Director of National Intelligence, overseeing all 18 intelligence agencies with the $106 billion budget and playing an essential role in formulating foreign policy.
Immediately, nearly 100 former national security officials signed a letter criticizing this choice and calling for closed-door Senate hearings to review any government information about her. “Several of Ms. Gabbard’s past actions call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus,” the letter said.
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Gabbard on the Trump transition team slammed the letter, as well as the signers’ credentials, saying, “These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty ‘intelligence,’ including the non-existent weapons of mass destruction,” said spokesperson Alexa Henning, referring to a purported justification for the start of the Iraq War that turned out to be wrong. “These intel officials continue to use classification as a partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy without putting the facts out,” Henning continued.
Gabbard has long criticized foreign policy as imperial and said the war could have been prevented had the US and the West recognized Moscow’s concerns about Ukraine possibly joining the NATO alliance. This has earned her from some lawmakers the usual accusations of echoing Russian propaganda.
In a Democratic presidential primary debate in 2020, Gabbard called for “an end to this ongoing Bush-Clinton foreign policy doctrine of regime change wars, overthrowing dictators in other countries, needlessly sending my brothers and sisters in uniform into harm’s way to fight in wars that actually undermine our national security and have cost us thousands of American lives.”
Considering the slim Senate Republican majority, if some vote ‘no,’ there are doubts about whether her nomination will secure confirmation. Democrats also have accused Gabbard without evidence of being a “Russian asset.” Without offering details, Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed that Gabbard was in Russian President Vladimir’s “Putin’s pocket.” However, senators closely aligned with Trump have endorsed her and said they expect her confirmation.
