Is Trump Sleepwalking Into Global War?

Today featured a rather remarkable video discussion between Danny Davis and Doug Macgregor. I characterize it as remarkable because Mac, who has more or less supported much of Trump’s 2.0 agenda rejects key parts of it and, in effect, also calls into question Trump’s basic competency. The key part of Trump’s agenda that Mac now rejects is the tariff plan—until very recently Mac’s twitter account featured a pinned tweet lauding the whole tariff concept. We’ll get to that because, as I keep repeating, the global war is as much economic as strictly military. However, of major interest are Mac’s current views on the war in Ukraine and the likelihood of a Russian pivot to the Caucasus—another topic that we’ve referred to repeatedly over the past several years.

Now, since we’ll be talking about a Russian pivot to the Caucasus—a pivot that is dictated by the the existential importance of Iran for BRICS—I’ll begin with a brief quote from Judge Nap’s usual Monday chat with Alastair Crooke. The reason is because this quote illustrates a disturbing trend in Trump’s behavior—is tendency to be led rather than to lead in foreign affairs, a very unrealistic idea of America’s military capabilities, and a repeated failure to understand the consequences of actions he allows himself to be talked into:

Alastair: The Iranians are very clear, the Supreme Leader is clear--we are going to pursue enrichment. Full stop. And we're not having the IAEA come back. If you push us to it, we'll leave the NPT. Now, where that takes us, we will see, but my guess--and this was what was sort of indicated from those discussions that Trump was having with his interlocutors on the telephone. The whole idea of the attack on those three nuclear programs that Trump was planning and thinking about—Trump was very clear. ‘I want this to be a perfect war. I want this to be in, boom, out.’ He kept saying this to people on the phone. ‘It's going to be in, boom, out, finish, finish. All done.' It will be the perfect war. It will be beautiful and it will be a showstopper. Headline.’ He wanted that to be the headline. We won. We finished off the nuclear program. It doesn't sound as if he wants a long war.

Judge: Yeah, it sounds to me like he's not very settled in his own views and he's looking for reinforcement from these dozens of people to whom he speaks and presents the rhetorical questions. The people whom Michael Wolf and I know and whom I've interviewed many times. It also sounds as though Trump's not prepared for what could very well come next.

Alastair: Which is, pressure from Israel and internally for Trump to finish off the job in Iran. But what does 'finish off' mean? And this is the key point, because people use that term rather loosely, but in the Israeli understanding of it the only way to definitively finish off the nuclear program or the threat from Iran is to change the regime and to install a western puppet government in Tehran.

That is most likely the plan going forward that Netanyahu is currently working to sell to Trump. It’s a recipe for a major regional war in West Asia that could expand to a global war—given the economic importance of the region for world energy supplies.

Let’s get into the main topic, now.

Mac is of the view that Round Two of the war on Iran will begin in September. For this reason, he will not be surprised if there’s some sort of 60 day pause in Gaza as Israel prepares for renewed war—it will take that long to overcome the damage Iran caused and for the US to rearm Israel. I’m not committed on this. I don’t doubt for a moment that this is what the Jewish Nationalists want. At the same time—and this is the point of this post—”finishing the job” can only be attempted with any degree of plausibility if it’s done by the US. As I’ve argued over the past week, Round Two, if it happens, will likely be much tougher and will likely require new tactics. Mac sees that angle, too:

Israel needed the break in the war with Iran. and they still need time. Right now, Iran is pretty much recovered from what it went through during the 12-day war and is going to be much stronger, much more resilient, much more robust in the future.

One area that will likely change is the role of Russia in any Round Two. A key issue in that regard is the role that Azerbaijan played in facilitating Israeli attacks on Tehran via the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijani air space. Mac maintains that Russia viewed Azerbaijan as a more or less secure friend on its southern border area during the war in Ukraine. I’m not so sure about that, given the major CIA/MI6/Mossad presence in Azerbaijan that has for many years sought to undermine both Russia’s role in the Caucasus as well as the Iranian regime. Be that as it may, it probably did come as a rude awakening to Putin that Azerbaijan (with Turkish collusion) cooperated so closely with the Anglo-Zionist sneak attack against Iran. The result has been a sharp response from Russia, including attacks on Azerbaijani and Turkish interests in Ukraine.

Now, Mac reports that his Russian contacts state that the public mood in Russia, while very supportive of Putin in general, is one of puzzlement that Putin has not put an end to the war in Ukraine and has allowed it to drag on. My contention has been that there are two reasons for this. The first is simply to keep Russian casualties as low as possible, but the second may actually be more fundamental. A continued war of attrition in Ukraine is highly beneficial to Russia because it severely degrades/demilitarizes NATO’s capabilities against Russia for the future while, at the same time, allowing for a massive buildup and preparation of the Russian military for possible future wars—with an eye on relentless Anglo-Zionist hostility.

This situation, Mac contends, is about to come to an end. Mac believes that the serious security situation on Russia’s southern front in the Caucasus will require Russia to end the war in Ukraine quickly to prepare for a powerful response to the Anglo-Zionist threat in the Caucasus. And the threat Mac believes he sees is that of an Azerbaijani invasion of Iran in Round Two. In one sense I’m more optimistic than Mac, to the extent that I believe Russia has considerable leverage over both Turkey and Azerbaijan, and that Azerbaijan won’t dare initiate a war with Iran. Mac himself states flatly that the US, itself, is not at all prepared for the type of conflict that could break out in the Caucasus, or to counter Russian pressure when Russia does pivot to the Caucasus. On the other hand, like Mac, I can’t see Russia taking any of what’s going on in the Caucasus for granted. And so he concludes his argument:

So, the Russians are going, I think, to accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine. That may mean more devastation and death inside Ukraine simply because no one will step forward in Europe or Ukraine to negotiate an end. But this incentivizes the Russians to move quickly. And when I say quickly, within weeks to terminate what's happening in Ukraine, they need now to focus on the Caucasus. They don't want to become embroiled in a war in the Caucasus, but they can't stand by and watch this destabilizing influence that the Israeli Azerbaijani and American access is creating because they can't allow Iran to simply be broken up.

And, in fact, we seem to be seeing Russian preparations to do exactly that. Putin’s words over the weekend appear to be a message to Trump. That message amounts to this:

But I think the message is being sent to us. You need to understand something, Washington. We know what you're doing. We understand the relationship between you, the Israelis, Erdogan and Aliyev, in other words, Turkey and Azerbaijan. We understand that you want to destroy the unity the integral state of Iran because you also want to destroy the One Belt, One Road. You want to destroy the commercial and economic infrastructure that Russia and China are trying to build in Central Asia. You are trying to isolate us. I mean, that's really his message. And he's saying it's not going to work because we will fight.

Putin knows the US isn’t ready for that challenge, but if Trump allows Netanyahu to lead him into a renewal of war, he may find himself in a direct confrontation with a very determined Russia.

The above is a very brief summary. Mac also attempts to tie all this miilitary stuff in to the broader geopolitical scheme of things, and that means the world order. He maintains that the post WW2 order is coming to an end. After WW2, with much of the world either in ruins or economically under developed, the US was the economic giant. In this context, it made sense for most of the world to more or less follow American economic direction—it was in US interests, but it also worked for the rest of the world. Later, the US started using its military power to start bullying people around the world.

I would frame it rather differently. Of course it’s true that, as Mac argues, after WW2 the US basically assumed the role of the British Empire. However, I would argue that the order that is coming to an end is actually the post Vietnam War order. The Vietnam war taught the ruling class two things: first, that the American people would not tolerate the drafting of their young men into the military to pursue foreign adventures in distant lands for reasons that lacked a clear connection to our national interest; second, America would need to make a choice between guns and butter—the economy as it was would not sustain both. The first problem was solved by instituting a professional military. The second, which has led us to where we are now, was addressed in the manner described by Michael Hudson (Big Picture Per Michael Hudson). We got off the gold standard and set up a sort of protection racket with the Arab oil states which established the USD as the world’s reserve currency, thus allowing us to run up vast debts to finance a guns and butter imperial state while exporting the debt to the rest of the world. That’s the order that’s coming to an end. BRICS is a reaction to that order.

Danny and Mac get into this part of the discussion via Trump’s latest tariff threats to the entire world. Mac previously thought the tariff schtick was really about rebuilding out industrial base. Now he correctly sees this as symptomatic of America’s refusal to accept any fiscal constraints whatsoever—as exemplified by the BBB. The tariff shock and awe is intended to keep King Dollar hegemony going, allowing the US to continue to bully the rest of the world. But the rest of the world is tired of this. BRICS and its cooperating countries make up for very nearly half of the world economy, and that means that many countries increasingly are able to find alternatives to doing trade on terms dictated by the US. Any rebuilding of our industrial base will be a long hard slog accomplished in spite of government policy:

If you had told people 10 years ago that within 10 years an alternative to the dollar denominated financial system run by the United States and the Anglo American financial empire would come along that quickly, everybody would say, "Well, that's impossible. These things take decades to build." Well, it's turned out that it's there. It's very real. So dedollarization now is ongoing.

But what we’re learning about Trump 2.0 is that any restraint on increasing debt is not in the cards—Trump is on board with the Anglo-Zionist agenda. It’s just that the military card isn’t the trump that it used to be, so he has to resort to bluster to try to keep the world paying for the supposed military buildup that Trump is planning. That military buildup is intended as a threat to the rest of the world:

… the city of London banks and the New York City banks that are at the center of the Anglo-American financial empire are becoming more and more desperate with each passing day. Now, you got to understand who was behind the war in Ukraine. That was no accident. We were trying to destroy Russia. Remember, we wanted to remove Putin, weaken the Russian state, ultimately divide it, then steal its resources, and rape its population. Okay? Now, we're looking at Iran, a nation of 92 million that sits on enormous oil and gas resources. If you can't get to Russia and you're going broke, where do you go? You go to the Middle East. And that also converges with another long-term goal in the city of London and New York City and Washington. And that is to isolate China from the resources in the Middle East.

The tariff shock and awe is simply a desperate attempt to keep the rest of the world subject to King Dollar and buy time. But it won’t work:

The answer that Donald Trump gives is, well, we're going to bully you even more now. We're going to punish you for doing what you're already doing. He's a little late to the party. the opportunity to punish people for doing what he says is over. It's done. That alternative to the dollar network exists. It's over.

…

And then finally, he has this obsession with American military power. We're the greatest in the world. No one can stand against us. We're invincible. We're the best. Well, uh, how much longer are you going to be able to say that? especially if it turns out it's not really true, right? This takes us back to what we just did in Iran. Was that a demonstration of our power or was it something else?

Mac sees the Euro countries trying to do the same thing, running up debts wildly, with the excuse of a non-existent Russian threat. When resistance arises, they try to suppress speech and even entire political parties, nullify elections. It’s about hanging on to power. We see similar things going on in America. But the Asian countries understand what’s going on. Trump’s doublecross of Iran has put paid to any credibility he might have had:

So, who is going to deal with us? Who's going to help us? Who's going to willingly restructure things? Nobody. Plus the fact if you look at President Trump and what he's just done in Iran and you're a Korean or a Japanese or Chinese and remember that part of the world, Vietnamese, all of these people share one thing in common. Well, more than one thing, but one thing in particular, the desire for stability and order. They want predictability because they see stability and order as a precondition for prosperity. And that's their focus. Their focus, contrary to popular belief, is not on building as many nuclear warheads as they can to destroy us. That's crap. Okay? It's just nonsense. So that's where they're interested in. Why did the Koreans and the Japanese refuse to attend the NATO summit? They just said, "We're not coming. We're not coming for reasons to do with what has just happened in Iran." And there was some other jargon in there, but the bottom line is they think we're crazy. They see Donald Trump as this dangerous, unbalanced individual who is governing our country. Now, in MAGA world, he's wonderful. Oh, everybody loves him. He's great. They think these expressions of extreme hubris are funny or entertaining or amusing. That's not the way the rest of the world looks at it.

The rest of the world sees Trump and America in thrall to crazed Jewish Nationalists—81% of whom in Israel, according to a Haaretz poll, are in favor of genocide. While Netanyahu badgers Trump, 17 members of the Israeli members of their Knesset will fan out across The Hill to buttonhole “our” representatives and demand support for the Final Solution to the Palestinian problem and the Iran problem. Mac thinks they’ll get it. The rest of the world watches in dismay. Having been on the slippery slope ever since his inauguration (and, of course, before), can Trump arrest his slide? Has he thought this through? You can be sure that Putin and Xi and others have been doing plenty of hard thinking for their part.