Stopping Trump

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Trump won a strong mandate in the US election

But the power transfer won’t be smooth

The Neocons will not go quietly into the night.

Nor will the military-industrial complex that has benefited so much from the global conflicts under Biden

They are baiting Putin to escalate the war with Ukraine so that Trump won’t be able to end it easily  

Will Putin fall for the trap?

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Geography is destiny.

The United States is a great example.

Sandwiched between two oceans in the east and the west, protected by the great lakes in the north and endless deserts in the south, no country is more out of reach for foreign armies.  

If geography is a blessing for the US, it has been less kind to many of America’s neighbors.

As they say in Mexico, “Poor Mexico, so far from god and so close to the United States”.

The US invaded Mexico in 1846 and took half of its land that include the present-day California, Utah, Nevada and most of Arizona.

During the Cold War, the US sponsored coup-d’etats against left wing governments across Latin America and replaced them with military dictators and authoritarian regimes that protected and promoted US business interests.  

Geography is destiny.

Being a neighbor to a great power means you have no real independence.

As a Mexican congressman recently said, the US would never allow Mexico to join the BRICS.

Great powers set the rules for their neighbors. Because they can.

But here is a question to consider.

If the US thinks it is ok to pressure Mexico not to join BRICS, why does it think it is not ok for Russia, another great power, to pressure Ukraine not to join NATO?

US would never tolerate Russian military bases in Mexico but why does Biden think Russia should accept American military bases in Ukraine?

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Great powers have no problem using force to get their way.

Biden thought he could make Russia accept American military bases in Ukraine.

Otherwise he would not have kept the war going for as long as it has.

Biden and the Neocons behind him thought that Ukraine with massive US and NATO backing would prevail over Russia.

History is written by the victors.

If Biden’s proxy war had defeated Russia, he would have gone into the history book as a great American president who removed a major US rival.

But nearly three years into the war, it is Russia that has the upper hand.

More and more advanced US weapons sent to Ukraine have failed to turn the tide of the war.

Russian forces are accelerating their advance across the entire contact line in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.

Sanctions didn’t hurt the Russian economy that grew 3.6% last year and is on track to grow 4% this year

Nor has Biden’s international isolation of Russia succeeded. The annual BRICS conference hosted by Putin in September was attended by 40 countries.

I hate to say this but the failure of the Biden administration’s Russia policy is so great, so total, that it makes the failed US policy towards Iraq under George W Bush look like a small misstep.

And this is even before we consider the costs

The human costs. The costs to the US tax payers. The costs to American allies. The costs to American deterrence.

Biden knows he will be remembered for the disaster that is the Ukraine war.

Maybe this is why he has not given up on the war, even though he has only two months left in his presidency.

Maybe this is why he authorized last week the use of long-range NATO missiles by Ukraine against targets inside Russia.

He knew very well that Putin would view this as a declaration of war

Perhaps Biden wants the war to escalate

An escalation so great that even Trump cannot stop

If an escalation is such that Trump cannot end the war, then the war becomes Trump’s problem.

Biden might think that if the war becomes Trump’s problem, future historians might be kinder to him.  

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Biden is not the only American who doesn’t want the war to end.

The US military-industrial complex doesn’t want the war to end either.

US defense spending increased at an annualized rate of 15% in the third quarter, the fastest since the Iraq war.

Annual defense spending is closing in on 1 trillion dollars and yet the Pentagon has just failed its seventh consecutive audit

Pentagon is the only major federal agency that has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.

According to the Costs of War Project, half of the Pentagon’s annual budget “is now spent on military contractors”.

The Ukraine war has been a gravy train for defense contractors.

Elon Musk recently said that it was possible to cut $2 trillion from the US budget deficit

Mandatory spending like social security and Medicare is out of his reach. He won’t be able to cut interest payments either.

With defense accounting for 50% of discretionary spending, it is a given that Musk will have to go after defense spending.

This alone means that the defense establishment has a strong incentive to keep the Ukraine war going for as long as possible, even if it means risking a serious escalation with Russia.

After Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles inside Russia, Donald Trump Junior sent out a tweet accusing the Military Industrial Complex of trying to start WW3 before the inauguration.  

Trump gets the joke.

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Zelensky knows there is only way he can still win the war.

In his Victory Plan unveiled just before the US elections he called on NATO to immediately extend a formal invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance.

In other words, the only way Ukraine can still win is if NATO joins the war directly.

This is why Zelensky ordered the strike on the Russian early warning radars designed to detect nuclear attacks,

This is why he decided to invade the Russian Kursk region and has been pushing Washington hard for greenlighting the use of long-range NATO missiles against targets inside Russia.

He wants to get under Putin’s skin.

He needs to get under Putin’s skin

To get NATO to join the war, Putin has to over-react to his provocations.

Will Zelensky succeed, now that he has the go-ahead from NATO to hit Russia with long-range missiles?

That is the million-dollar question.

If Zelensky succeeds, WW3 will break out. Stocks will fall and gold will shine.

If Zelensky fails, the war will end soon and European markets can breathe a sigh of relief

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After an initial setback in the war, Putin has been playing the long game.

He knows the worst thing for Russia is if NATO were to enter the war directly so he did everything possible to prevent it.

This means holding back his full force. This means minimizing civilian casualties.

According to the UN, 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war so far.

The implied low civilian casualty ratio is likely a strategic decision to minimize the risk of direct NATO interventions.

Putin has been so careful that he banned the use of the word “war” to describe the fighting in Ukraine and brutally suppressed hardliners who advocated a sledgehammer approach.

Yes Putin has been playing the long game.

He knew time was on his side. He knew that patience in the west would not last.

Even though Putin couldn’t have known this two year ago, but war fatigue was one of the reasons behind Trump’s victory over Harris.

If Putin has done everything to avoid a direct confrontation with NATO, will he fall for Zelensky’s trap now?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

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Predictions:

Desperate men do desperate things.

For Zelensky and the nationalists behind him, any peace deal that allows Russia to keep any part of the Ukraine that it now controls would mean a total defeat.

It would mean that Ukraine would have been better off never pursuing its NATO membership dream and never trusting Biden when he said that he had their back.

It would mean that the deaths, destruction, and sacrifice would have meant nothing.

For the Neocons in Washington, letting Russia win the war is just as unthinkable.

It would greatly reduce American prestige and seriously weaken US influence in Europe and Taiwan.

Taiwan because Ukraine would be a example of why never to allow the US to fight a proxy war using your country as the battlefield.

Zelensky, Biden, the Neocons, and the military-industrial complex each have their own reason for preventing Trump from walking away from the war.

Given what’s at stake, they will likely try everything.

Everything and anything that might provoke the Russians and force NATO to join the war directly.

My prediction is that geopolitical risk and geopolitical risk premium in the market will go up significantly over the next 2 months.

No war is more pointless than the Ukraine war.

And Trump is right that the war does not serve US interest.

He said that he would end the war in 24 hours.

I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve but my prediction is that it won’t be easy.

People who want the war to go on will try to sabotage his peace proposal. They will accuse him of selling out to the Russians.

Opening the pandora box is easy but closing it is hard.

Trump will have his work cut out for him.