Geopolitical Challenges Ahead For Trump

My wife and I both had appointments today, so I’ve been trying to catch up on things. I listened to three video interviews with three regulars, and the common concern was whether Trump will be able to navigate the treacherous international waters. There was no consensus, but plenty of interesting discussion.

I started with Alastair Crooke and Judge Nap. Their first topic was the prospect for Trump reaching a deal with Russia. Crooke, following the Judge’s lead, was highly pessimistic. Their shared concern is that Russophobia has become an ingrained, almost genetic, element in the American consciousness. Add to that the Anglo-Zionist efforts to escalate the war on Russia to sabotage any settlement by Trump and the elements for an explosion are present. Crooke also stressed that Russia is simply not willing to allow the potential for future similar conflicts to remain in place—the Russians are determined to quash the Anglo-Zionist threat for good. This is a theme that Doug Macgregor (later) stressed in his discussion with Danny Davis. From Russia, Crooke moved on to the Middle East, and I’m pasting in a portion of a recent article by him in Energy Intelligence:

The End of Syria: The Unfolding Geopolitical Map

As powerful states in the region, Israel and Turkey will wish to exercise control, not just over resources, but over the vital regional crossroads that was Syria.

Inevitably, however, “Greater Israel” is likely to butt heads with Erdogan’s Ottoman revanchism. Equally, the Saudi-Egyptian-Emirati front will not welcome the resurgence of either Islamist rebrands or the Turkish-inspired Muslim Brotherhood. The latter poses an immediate threat to Jordan, now bordering the new revolutionary entity.

Such concerns may align the interests of these Mideast Gulf states with Iran. Qatar, as purveyor of arms and funding to the HTS cartel, is charting its own course again.

The new geopolitical map poses many direct questions about Iran, Russia, China and the Brics. Russia has played a complex hand in the Middle East. On the one hand, it was prosecuting an escalating war versus Nato powers in Ukraine and elsewhere managing its energy interests while, at the same time, trying to moderate resistance operations toward Israel in order to keep relations with the US from utterly deteriorating. Moscow hopes — without great conviction — that a dialogue with the incoming US President Donald Trump might emerge.

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Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei quashed speculations about any weakening of the will to resist, following the removal of Syria, a lynchpin of its “Axis of Resistance." “There should be no doubt that what happened in Syria was plotted in the command rooms of the United States and Israel. We have evidence for this. One of the neighboring countries of Syria also played a role, but the primary planners are the US and the Zionist regime,” he said on Dec. 11.

Iran will likely revert to its earlier stance of gathering disparate threads of regional resistance. It will not abandon China or the Brics project. Iraq — recalling the Islamic State atrocities of its civil war — will likely join with Iran, as will Yemen. Iran will be aware that the remaining nodes of the former Syrian Army, some of which have reportedly fled to Iraq, might enter into the fight against HTS.

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"Is he, or isn't he, pro-war?" people ask about Trump, since he has already signaled that energy dominance will be a key strategy for his administration.

Western countries are deep in debt, and their fiscal room for maneuver is shrinking fast. Bondholders are beginning to mutiny. There is a race to find a new collateral for fiat currencies. It used to be gold; since the 1970s, it was oil.

Now, with regard to Turkey, there were two news items of interest over the last few days. First, Turkey has stated that it intends to set up military bases in Syria. Second, Erdogan reiterated his commitment to an “intact” (albeit Turkish dominated) Syria, with significant words that could only be aimed at the US and Israel:

Türkiye will intervene at ‘slightest risk’ of Syria splintering – Erdogan

Ankara has the means and the will to prevent Syria from being divided, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that his country will intervene if necessary to avoid any division of Syria and will be “uncompromising” in its determination.

The comments from Erdogan are seen as a veiled warning to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as well as to the US, which backs the group against Islamic State forces.

“We cannot accept under any pretext that Syria be divided and if we notice the slightest risk we will take the necessary measures,” the Turkish leader said in remarks following the first cabinet meeting of 2025.

He added that Ankara has “more than enough power, capacity, and talent to do this.”

Erdogan said Türkiye could “come suddenly one night” without warning to prevent a splintering of its neighbor. …

Next up with the Judge was Ray McGovern. Unlike the others I listened to, McGovern once again sounded an optimistic note with regard to Trump’s ability to strike a deal with Putin. His reasoning is based on considerations that we have discussed in the past—Trump’s need to get this war behind him if he is to move ahead with his MAGA agenda. As matters stand, war on Russia is an anchor around Trump’s neck. And so McGovern argued that much of what Putin has said in the past are just talking points. I acknowledge that there may be an element of that, but I’m not nearly as sanguine as McGovern. Nor do I believe that the Russians will disregard the crazy talk from Trump’s appointees, saying, ‘Oh, they’re just functionaries; they don’t really reflect Trump’s views.’ One of the key Russian demands is that they be treated with the respect they think they deserve. I think Trump is making a mistake if he thinks the Russians will take no offense to his collection of buffoons (Macgregor’s word choice).

The Russians said in their treaty proposal [December, 2021] that all those nations that joined NATO after 1990 should get out of NATO. Now, do they expect that to happen? Of course not, so what we're seeing here from Kellogg--who's a functionary, he's going to take his orders from Trump, not Jake Sullivan, not Tony Blinken. So it all depends on Trump, and the real factor here is, you have to realize that Trump is unpredictable, but he's smart enough to know that he's got a very weak hand on Ukraine. He's got other fish to fry. He's a dealer, and I think he has the room to deal with it [the Ukraine/Russia situation].

I can accept that bottom line, that ultimately it’s all up to Trump. But I think he’s making matters more difficult than necessary.

Finally—and I’ve done a fairly lengthy but still partial transcript—we have Doug Macgregor with Danny Davis. Mac was pulling no punches today, and was definitely tending toward the pessimistic end of the spectrum. The discussion starts with Russia, and Mac wants Trump to simply pull the plug without waiting for negotiations. Instead, he’d turn negotiations over to the Euros. An interesting plan that actually has merit:

Again, if President Trump just says, 'Look, I've had it. I didn't start this war, this was never my idea. I oppose it. I am ending all military aid to Ukraine immediately. I am withdrawing all US citizens--in and out of uniform--from Ukraine immediately.' Then it would probably make sense for him to start with drawing forces from Poland and Romania, because they're just wasting time, money, and resources over there. They're not going to go to war, we don't want to go to war with anybody, so let's get them out and bring them home. I think eventually these things will sink in, but right now Mr Trump is bowing to pressure from people who are in government, from people that he's surrounding himself with, who want this to continue. Many of them are the same people who want to continuously sponsor what I call unrestricted arson in the Middle East--burn down everything, destroy everything, destabilize everything--all in the name of making Israel bigger, greater, stronger. It's not going to turn out well for anybody in the region--certainly not for Israel--but it's the same group of people. They're all part of the same formula. I don't know what President Trump's going to do. It's a bad situation because it [continuing support for Ukraine] is not going to help him. It's not going to satisfy his base, it's not going to make his supporters happy. It's going to put the United States at great risk.

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President Trump has to look beyond the the buffoonish characters that he's got around him. He's got to look into the future and understand that this is not 1965, 1975, 1985 or 1995. This is a new world. Forget all of this unipolar moment nonsense--which was never real anyway--and stop worrying about whether the Americans as a people going to be upset if he acknowledges that we are not a supreme power everywhere on the planet. The American people don't give a damn! Get back to basics! Americans care about what's happening here at home. Ukraine? Pack your stuff and get out. Get everybody out of Poland and the Baltic states and come home. Let the Germans and others negotiate an end to this with Putin because, listen, they're the ones that have to live with this. How many times do we have to tell people, 'Americans don't live in Europe--we live in the Western hemisphere!'

Mac definitely doesn’t agree with McGovern’s view that the Trump appointments are of no real consequence. Regarding the “buffoonish characters” Trump has around him, commenter Nutmeg offered this must read by a former Trump NSC staffer, who explains why this all matters greatly, because Trump can’t simply govern all by himself. The author, Joshua Steinman, served four years with Trump 1.0 and is disturbed that Trump is not cleaning house.

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The people that want us in Ukraine are also the people that control the mainstream media and as a result we're fed this steady diet of lies and misinformation. Zelensky belongs in jail, at least until we can put together a plan. He's a criminal of the worst kind and he has consigned Ukraine to destruction. He's done more to kill Ukraine as a state than anyone else on the planet.

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Zelensky should be considered a criminal. He's causing unnecessary carnage and death. He's not interested in Ukraine. He wasn't appointed to his position or elected to his position to do anything for Ukraine. He was there and was promised that he would end up as a billionaire--or at least a 100 millionaire--if he waged war on Russia to the bitter end, and that's what he's doing. He has nowhere else to go. There's nowhere else he can hide and live other than under the protection of the United States and the West.

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Do you want this [wars in Ukraine or Eastern Europe] to reoccur? Sadly, we seem to have people in charge in Washington who are perfectly delighted to see this reoccur again and again and again. I don't think the Europeans fall into that category at all, and that's why the split between the United States and Europe is coming. It's going to be profound, and the most important state in Europe, Germany, will have new leadership and they will turn back to Russia--which, historically, was really their ally. Not only their business partner but their ally. World War I, World War II--they were anomalies in history. In the 300 years of Russo-German relations the Russians and the Germans got along famously.

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I think the key to it [peace] is Europe and the European attitude towards what's happening, because in the United States the average American doesn't understand this, is not really interested in it. It's really a small group of people inside the Beltway that have hijacked our government, hijacked our foreign and defense policy, hijacked everything. How else would you explain open borders to the South? Would that have ever happened if it had been put to a vote by the American people?

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It is our unnatural influence as a result of our willingness to spend money on things of no value, or on things of no importance to us, that has kept governments friendly to Israel. It's not working anymore and it's going to vanish.

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I call Israel essentially now an Arsonist State--it's burning down everything in sight, burning down Gaza, burning down the West Bank, burning down Lebanon. They're going to burn down as much of Syria as possible. They've just launched the largest air campaign in years against Syria, destroying targets all over the place. They think that they're accomplishing something. What they're accomplishing is the destruction of a status quo that they may not have liked, but they're setting the stage for the emergence of something much, much worse.

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My limited exposure to President Trump--and I like him, as you know, I feel great affection for him--is this is not a man of war. Trump is not someone who wants war. I think Mr Netanyahu knows that, so if you're Netanyahu what do you do? I think you pull the trigger and get into it now. The same thing applies in Iran. I think he's worried that the Iranians will have nuclear warheads that can be mated with missiles very shortly, in which case Israel's monopoly on nuclear power ends very quickly. I don't think Mr Netanyahu wants that to happen, so those two considerations drive me to the conclusion that Mr Netanyahu has got to get the war started with Iran as soon as possible.

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There's no understanding [among Americans] of the consequences of our actions--what we've done in Syria, what is likely to happen in Egypt, and what will precipitate the war with Iran. [No understanding] that, whatever the Israelis come up with, ultimately we're going to end up in a situation where millions of people are going to be harmed. There's going to be enormous damage done to us as well as to Israel. Israel may not even survive this because the hatred is just overwhelming at this point, and we are then isolated from the rest of the world because the Russians and the Iranians now allegedly have a mutual defense pact in place. Russia is not going to stand by and watch us destroy Iran.

My understanding is that the pact will be signed in Moscow on January 17th.

DD:

It is so ironic, if not outright perverse, that so many in the United States, especially, who are supporters of Israel think that by cheering them on in these military conquests that they think this is going to accomplish something. That it will bring peace and security to Israel. But, as you point out, it's almost certainly planting seeds of disunity and also of insecurity that [Israel] may not be able to handle later on.