Many people seem to keep making the mistake of taking Trump’s words at face value. This is partly the fault of the media, which hangs onto everything he says because he is their golden goose. Furthermore, there is the desire to keep finding some kind of logic in Trump’s actions.
The problem is, we keep projecting our own logic onto the Trump admin. We think, “what would we do if we were American imperialists?” Which leads us, and many analysts (like yanis) to think about the Trump admin as if they were cavalry reinforcements arriving unexpectedly in the darkest hour of western imperialism to save it.
In reality, the Trump admin simply wants to impose unequal trade treaties on his allies and get them to spend more on weapons. His fearmongering and negging is his style of salesmanship.
The fact that the Trump admin keeps flip flopping on tariffs, resumed military aid to Ukraine, tried to pull that stunt with the “30 day ceasefire” (in ukraine) and the ceasefire in Palestine has broken down all show that the Trump administration has as much of a master plan as a shitty SV startup trying to attract VC funding.
What worries me is that the Europeans are falling for this con a second time! Trump literally did the same shit in his first term and got the euros to up their NATO spending! The fact that the Europeans can’t even act in self interest or see through the tactics of a used car salesman is horrifying to see in first person. These people have nukes.
I agree that the end of the war will be negotiated by the Trump admin, and likely this year, since the AFU can’thold out much longer. Certainly, his relationship with Russia is much better than Biden’s, but tbh that’s a very low bar to clear.
When I say that Trump’s plans are lacking, I am referring to his overall geopolitical strategy. I might have missed out on some development that happened recently since I haven’t kept up with the news this week, or maybe I just don’t see the big picture yet.
This is a possibility, I’ll keep an eye on it.
They will need some level of hard power maintained in europe to pressure any European government or left-wing movement against doing things that will harm American investments. They will need hard power to defend against the ruse of such movements to begin with. I don’t think it’s far fetched to assume that the Trump admin is aware of the possibility of large scale populist upheavals in Europe bringing harm to American assets. Especially with climate change and nationalist sentiments intensifying.
That’s in the optimistic scenario that relations with Russia are fully normalised. Although I suppose in a full divestment scenario none of this is necessary.
Oh yeah, I very much agree there. I expect that the end result will be that the west is in a complete disarray, while BRICS is going to be significantly strengthened. The US will almost certainly find itself in a much weaker position than it is today.
It seems like the plan there is to just fund domestic fascists and outsource the work to them.