Troubling: Trump 2.0 Claims Ownership Of War On Russia
I know that Trump has said these things in the past, but it seems different now that some progress is being made in normalizing relations with Russia as a basis for establishing a new and peaceful relationship. As we speak, Russians and Americans are supposed to be meeting in Istanbul to discuss diplomatic normalization. There are a lot of issues involved there that have built up over years of US provocations, but this is progress that could lead to actual peace talks. That’s why the Trumpian braggadocio on display on Tuesday is a bit troubling.
I’m not talking specifically about the deal with Ukraine’s non-president to supposedly claw back America’s money. What I’m referring to is Trump’s bragging—bad cop style—about how he armed up Ukraine before the war began. This is exactly why I’ve maintained that Putin owes Trump nothing and may actually have a strong motive to get even with Trump. Trump is bragging (below), but he’s telling the truth: Trump 1.0 massively built up the Ukraine proxy threat to Russia, bringing about the war in a very real sense. To now brag about that—now that the war has clearly been lost—seems like a bad idea, one of those ‘less said the better’ things. It also completely levels the fiction that this was a war between Russia and Ukraine.
Trump Owns the Ukraine War By claiming to be the first POTUS to send serious US weaponry to Ukraine, and boasting that "lots" of Russian tanks were thereby destroyed, and then saying arms shipments will continue until Putin "makes a deal", Trump has now assumed ownership of the Ukraine War. (Partial transcript below)
The bottom line of what Trump is saying in this video—and, yes, I’m aware that he has said different things at different times on this topic—is this:
Hey, Russia, we Americans need a deal, and if you don’t give us a deal the war on Russia will continue. We’re getting our money back from Ukraine now, so we can keep the war on Russia going for a while. I made this war possible during my first administration, I can keep it going.
Here’s the key to Trump’s words. What he’s talking about is not the war that began in February, 2022—the war Trump claims never would have happened if he had been president at that time. Instead he’s talking about the policies of Trump 1.0 that armed our proxy in Ukraine to the teeth, and he’s bragging about how his policies are responsible for three years of war, rather than a short war and done.
Forget what the MSM propaganda says about Putin being a dictator. That’s nonsense. In fact Putin does answer to the Russian public. The Russian public supports the war effort, but there is an immense amount of anger among Russians against the West for what has been inflicted on both Russia and their fellow Slavs in Ukraine. Gilbert Doctorow remarked earlier this wee that he doubts whether Americans—and Trump in particular—really understand this anger. Putin, ultimately, has to be able to sell a deal with Trump to the parents and relatives of Russian KIAs and WIAs. Trump’s words make this harder and, in view of the increasing disorder in the West, gives Putin a motive to do peace on a very different timeline than Trump thinks he’s pressuring Putin into. Putin has an image to maintain with the Russian public, and he won’t allow Trump to jeopardize that.
There’s another aspect to this dynamic. Russians are fully aware that Trump now owns Gaza and could also pull the plug on Israel’s war on Arabs—the only thing holding Trump back from that is Zionist influence in domestic US politics, a thing that Russians are also fully aware of. And they see the US and Israel and NATO enabling the destruction of yet another country—Syria. While threatening a key Russian partner in the region, Iran. Doesn’t Trump need, at some point, to let the Russians know that America is not an essentially predator nation without a conscience? But that’s the image that’s still being presented. Thus, Trump’s rhetoric about continuing a brutal proxy war in Ukraine if he doesn’t get a deal fast does present a fairly stark contrast with Putin’s always measured statements of principle. We all know Clausewitz’s maxim about war being a continuation of politics by other means, but coming from the side that really needs the deal and has behaved as a global predator, that comes across badly.
Larry Johnson has a brief article today about Trump’s Jumbled Messaging on Ukraine and Russia. He makes this initial point:
There is a wide gap between what Donald Trump says in public and what he actually decides to do.
I’ve also been saying that, despite Trumpian rhetoric and the (understandable, even legitimate) need to appear strong and in control of events, Trump has been making verbal—not written—concessions to the Russian side all up and down the line. Trump clearly appears he can keep this rhetoric going—that he’s doing Putin a favor, and so on—perhaps because he believes the Russians will allow him some rhetorical license to get a deal. The question is, could there be a point at which the Russians get tired of this and call Trump’s bluff? Trump can ill afford that. This is what I mean about Trump being engaged in a high wire act. I don’t question the need for Americans to believe that they’re getting into this peace thing of our own free will. I do question whether Trump may be pushing this a bit too far.
The Russians have already pointedly contradicted Trump on the “peacekeepers” issue. Are they in a position that they could take some de facto concessions and tell Trump to shove the rest—they’ll finish the job on their own terms. I don’t doubt that Russia would very much like a global deal with the Anglo-Zionist empire—Trump will only be around for four years so Russia needs to look at the longer term. But I don’t believe that Russia will tolerate demeaning and even threatening rhetoric indefinitely—respect for Russia has always been a bottom line demand. In the end, they will refuse to allow the perception that they were bullied into a deal.
We shall see.
Doug Macgregor puts it very succinctly. I am particularly put off by Trump's chatter about "beautiful" or "handsome" soldiers being killed--as if the blame for that has nothing to do with his own awful policies that he brags about:
Judge: We both respect [Trump] and we both applaud his willingness to communicate with the Russians meaningfully, but statements like that [about "peacekeepers"] betray either gross ignorance or very very bad Intel. Your thoughts, Colonel?
Macgregor: I think that's a polite way to put it. To be frank, president Trump needs to get out of this notion of putting anybody in Ukraine who's not Ukrainian and stay away from it. I heard this and I was genuinely disappointed because I think there's been a gross misinterpretation. We've had somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million Ukrainian dead in this war, along with 100,000 dead Russian troops. ...This is a catastrophe and president Trump should recognize that.
**Talking about deals regarding rare earth minerals to somehow or other pay us back for a war that we did everything in our power to cultivate and launch, for a war that we subsidized, for a war that persisted far longer than it ever should have because of our influence is a disaster. I think he should be much more mindful of the human losses, recognize this country is now wrecked, recognize that Russia has also paid a price for its victory, and back away from this. Stop talking about deals that are going to compensate us for something good we didn't do. We didn't do any good. We did the opposite.**
Macgregor again very eloquent. This is the point I keep repeating. This is a global war, and Ukraine cannot be treated as if there is no relationship to the Middle East. It's all part of the Anglo-Zionist war on Russia.
Macgregor: Do we understand the relationship between Iran and Russia and what Russia is likely to do [if Iran is attacked]? The answer is: No. I think that we tend to compartmentalize. We view what happens in Ukraine as separate and distinct from what happens in the Middle East. I don't think the Russians see it that way. For them an attack on Iran is going to be treated as an attack on their strategic interests, their national security concerns, just as our intervention in Ukraine to push the war against Russia was viewed as an attack on Russian national security interests. So I think initially the Russians will assist in any way they can to support and defend Iran. Then as it becomes clear that we are involved with the assaults on the country, I think we will see their intervention to help protect Iran, and that would include potentially attacks on us in the region.