Trumpian spectacle in the imperial capitol has forever changed America and the world - winter, 2025

Donald Trump's second presidential term in the White House began in earnest on January 20, 2025, and it's been shock-and-awe ever since. Inauguration day ceremonies that took place on that day felt as if we were witnessing something profoundly historic in the making. There was an unusual feel to the day's event; I would characterize it as having an unsettling aura. Even the First Lady looked ominous. President Trump gave two speeches on the day, one at the inauguration ceremony itself, and another one later in the day at the indoor inaugural parade. Both were very indicative, to say the least. In his speeches, he basically outlined his administration's "America First" vision and, at one point, proclaimed: "I was saved by God to make America great again". This statement was more than just hyperbolic rhetoric by an arrogant individual in my opinion. President Trump sincerely believes he is on a divine mission. Given that there have been many strange anomalies, predictions, and prophesies about his sudden and unexpected rise to political power in the imperial capitol, and likes to think of himself as a king, his claim of having a divine mandate is somewhat unsettling, even for a Trump supporter as myself. As such, President Trump hit the ground running, as they say, and he has been in hyperdrive ever since. His second presidential term had not even completed it's first day, and he had already set the stage for a historic struggle in the coming years against foes both foreign and domestic. The weeks following President Trump's inauguration saw a whirlwind of activity that has left both Americans and the global community stunned. The post-war political order in the world is in a flux. The United States has never had a mercurial leader like Donald Trump. Society in the United States has never been this divided. The state of affairs in the United States has never been this unpredictable and volatile. It's an unprecedented time in the history of the United States. It all could be seen and felt in President Trump's Address to the Congress on March 03, 2025.
 
Next four years will forever change America, and the world
 
Barely a month had passed, and President Trump had already managed to turn the world on its head. Two hundred executive actions were signed during his first week in office. Project 2025 has commenced. Just days into his second term, President Trump threatened to invade Mexico, annex Greenland, turn Canada into an American state, reoccupy the Panama Canal, and colonize the Gaza Strip. Withdrawal from NATO and the UN was publicly discussed, and practically the entire world was threatened with tariffs. The Gulf of Mexico was renamed Gulf of America. Anthony Fauci's security detail was canceled. John Bolton's security detail was cancelled. Anthony Blinken's security clearance was revoked. Controversial DEI programs were cancelled. Elon Musk's "Doge" has been diligently unmasking the ugly face of the empire, to the delight of the American public. Elon Musk's investigations proved that many of the empire's institutions were in-essence money laundering operations. Trillions of dollars are said to be unaccounted for, and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted outright. To put this staggering amount in perspective, the Russian Federation's entire defense budget in 2022 was approximately $80 billion. Washington spent approximately $75 billion in 2022 on "foreign aid" alone. USAID, USIP and NED were spending tens-of-billions of US dollars on "soft power" projects (i.e. political meddling, espionage, regime change, minority rights, social engineering, ppsy-ops, propaganda, etc) around the world. Their operations, as well as that of George Soros' Open Society, organizations that ruined Armenia by financing the effort to bring Nikol Pashinyan to power in Yerevan, are now being restricted by Washington. Many within Armenia's Western-financed community, which make-up a significant portion of society in the tiny and impoverished nation today, are now worried. They are therefore searching for new sugar daddies. To hell with them. President Trump's proposed to give back to the American citizenry some of the recovered money, even if only populistic rhetoric, it was spectacular. Some of us always knew or suspected that the institutionalized corruption taking place throughout the American empire had been on levels unimaginable. However, seeing it all now come out in public, and from the highest levels of American government nonetheless, is, simply put, breathtaking. All this has set-off an unprecedented constitutional crisis in the United States. Even some of the so-called third-rails of the American empire, like its intelligence apparatus, IRS, Fort Knox, CIA, FBI and Federal Reserve have not come out unscathed. Even the activities of CDC and WHO have come under scrutiny. Propaganda outlets "Voice of America" and "Radio Liberty" were shutdown. To hell with them as well. Vice President Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference shocked the world. This has now joined President Putin's speech at the same venue in 2007 as a milestone in modern history. 
 
Another important political third-rail in Washington that was upended by the Trump administration was its venerable foreign policy apparatus, also known as the Blob. Primarily a post-war, Neoconservative construct, the foreign policy apparatus of the United States had been a very formidable monolith in Washingtonian politics for many decades. It used organizations such as Open Society, NED, USIP and USAID, as well as clandestine groups, to carry-out regime change operations and foment revolutions around the world. It's ideological pillars were Globalism and Liberal Democracy. It upheld the Transatlantic Alliance. It saw China as an opportunity. It saw Russia as an enemy. It used Islamist groups as a strategic tool to achieve its geopolitical goals. It's policies relating to Israel was moderate. Both faces of the empire, Democrats and Republicans, payed homage to it, and did so unconditionally; that is, until Donald Trump came to town in 2016 and disrupted the status quo:
After a four year hiatus, which my conspiratorial mind suggests may have been due to the impending Russo-Ukrainian war, which the imperial old guard was given the opportunity to oversee to try to bring a belligerent Russia to its knees before the coming changes, President Trump is back to continue the political alteration process in the imperial capitol. The old paradigm that defined the United States as the so-called policeman of the world and the beacon of democracy is now dead. Russia managed to survive the four year ordeal. Moscow now stands on the verge of making a deal. More on this later in the commentary. The highlight of President Trump's early actions was his administration's sudden and drastic policy reversal on Ukraine. Kiev was ceremoniously back-stabbed on the world stage, leaving Washington's allies and foes around the world stunned:
In an instant, Kiev was betrayed by the very entity that pushed it into a devastating war with its neighbor. The Western alliance is stunned, Kiev is shocked, the global community is amazed. Just days into its second term, the Trump administration had already shaken the very foundations of the entrenched political system in the United States, and upended the Liberal International Order (also know as the so-called Rules Based Order) that had been jealously guarded by the Western elite since the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. We have thus officially entered a new period in American history. We have entered the period of post-Pax Americana. This is truly a historic moment not only for the United States but also for the world. And it has been astounding to watch, to say the least. There have already been ripple-effects in Europe. Even in Armenia, there finally seems to be some glimmer of hope. For the first time in four years, President Kocharyan appeared before the news press in Yerevan to answer questions. It was a very Putinesque press conference. I am glad to see that the man is being kept in the country's political limelight. I can only guess and hope that this is being done in preparation for a post-Nikol Armenia. With the end of the Russo-Ukrainian war now finally in sight, the Russian embassy in Armenia may finally be awakening from its self-imposed hibernation:
Going forward, things will never be the same, not in the United States, not in Europe, not in Ukraine, and hopefully not in Armenia. I don't believe people fully understand the historic significance of what is happening in Washington today. The Trump administration's actions have been unexpected and unprecedented. The abrupt and aggressive manner in which President Trump and Elon Musk have been reforming and reconfiguring the Washingtonian "swamp" has forever shattered the meticulously crafted image and hype of the United States as the world's policeman and beacon of democracy. Institutions, many decades in the making, are being dismantled. Imperial statecraft is compromised. The finely-tuned aura of the empire is forever tarnished. Suddenly, the United States no longer looks "exceptional", nor does it look like a "shining city on a hill". The United States was never really any of that, but hundreds of millions of sheeple around the world were made to believe it was, through meticulously crafted and highly sophisticated social engineering programs relentlessly propagated around the world by none-other-than the very targets of the Trump administration today.
 
Patriots of the so-called MAGA and America First movement have essentially unmasked the ugly face of the United States. That is the irony of it. Perhaps "irony" is not the right word to use. More on that later in the commentary.

Despite the Trump administration's enthusiastic outlook, the start of the  "Golden Age" in the United States as they see it, the coming years promises to be very difficult for the United States for a number of reasons. Foremost, the empire's old guard, its post-war Liberal elite, and roughly half the country's population that did not vote for the current ruling administration, is not happy with the sudden turn of events in the imperial capitol. The United States today is a nation divided against itself. Many of Washington's European allies are disillusioned, bewildered and feeling betrayed. Concurrently, major geopolitical shifts are taking place all across the world. New powers are emerging. Old powers are declining. New threats are rising. Another major war is brewing. The next major war we see may directly involve the United States. Moreover, the economic forecast looks grim. The next few years may therefore prove tumultuous. We stand on the cusp of a new world order. Some Americans are calling it the "death of the world America made". Some Americans are claiming this is "the end of Pax-Americana". A new world order is being born. It's not going to come about quietly or bloodlessly. All in all, some in Washington today are hopeful about the historic turn of event, many are lamenting it, but none are indifferent to it. Behold the never-before seen political spectacle taking place in the imperial capitol:
Trump signals he will start pushing for a new world order in first 100 days
Trump moves with light speed and brute force in shaking the core of what America has been

Trump Government Shutdown Just Shifted Massive Power to China

Former MI6 boss on Trump, Putin and a 'new era' for international relations
Trump and the Fractured States of America

Is the North American Union Back on the Agenda?

Although there were signs that President Trump's second term would be different from his first, where he failed to "drain the swamp" so to speak, no one expected it to be this different. This time around, he certainly seems to be draining the swamp, although not fully. That's expected, some sectors in the empire simply cannot be tampered with. The national security apparatus (e.g. CIA) is one, organized Jewry is another. Therefore, the Zionist aspect of the Washingtonian "blob" remains fully intact, at least for now. But why is the dismantling of various government agencies, which essentially are imperial institutions decades in the making, being done seemingly so abruptly and so recklessly? I ask this because what President Trump and Elon Musk are doing today does not make much sense when looked at from a so-called MAGA or an America First perspective. The political and financial system in the United States certainly needs reform. However, the question is, why is President Trump and Elon Musk going about it in this manner? Surely there are better ways of carrying-out change or reform. Unsurprisingly, there are signs that this is already causing problems within the administration. The following is an interesting conversation on the subject matter. Michael Benz and Tucker Carlson are conflicted about what Elon Musk's Doge is doing to USAID in particular:
The reason for internal strife in this regard is obvious. The beneficial role USAID played around the world for the American empire cannot be overstated. USAID engaged in political meddling (i.e. funded political opposition groups in targeted countries and encouraged regime change efforts), coercion, drug trafficking, blackmail, espionage, recruiting spies, etc. Organizations like USAID acted as indispensable tools for imperial purposes. As Mike Benz claims in the Tucker Carlson interview, if a task was too dirty for the CIA, they would give it to USAID. I know someone who was employed by USAID in Armenia during the early 1990s. Many years ago, may before USAID made it to the general public's attention, he told me that not only was USAID carrying out espionage work in Armenia (he was being asked to divulge certain information on Armenian society), it was also using the newly independent country as a way-point in their international narcotics trafficking. The question therefore is, why voluntarily dispose such an essentially tool that engages in strategic statecraft?

Fixing the border, fixing the economy and doing away with DEI/Woke nonsense were really the ONLY things that President Trump's voter base wanted. What is all this spectacle we are seeing in the imperial capitol all about?
 
This therefore leaves me with a number of questions. Is the Trump administration trying to abandon imperial ambitions around the world in favor of reviving Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine? Is the Trump administration trying to upend the Western-led world order? Is the Trump administration trying to abandon NATO and the European Union? Is the Trump administration trying to fix relations with Moscow in order to focus on China? Is the Trump administration trying to end the war in Ukraine to focus on a war with Iran? Is President Trump and Elon Musk sowing the seeds of a civil war within the American homeland? Is ground being prepared for an eventual  secessionist movement in the United States? Is the Trump administration trying to dethrone the US dollar as the world's reserve currency? Is President Trump trying to undermine American power and influence around the world under the guise of American patriotism? Did the imperial capitol just go through a palace coup? And who, exactly, is Elon Musk? Some thoughts on these questions later in the commentary.
 
There are many questions about President Trump's second term in the White House, and no clear answers as of yet.
 
I myself was not expecting President Trump's administration to go this fast and this hard. I thought the downsizing, altering or the restructuring of the American empire would be a far more gradual or subtle process. I also did not expect that the Trump administration would abandon Kiev this quickly. Simply said, I didn't expect Trump 2.0 to be this different. But, I should have known better. In hindsight, there were an unusual number of strange occurrences, incidents, anomalies and omens that took place prior to and soon after President Trump's election victory. These were: widespread talk about Project 2025, an initiative to reshape government; the historic solar eclipse in the spring of 2024; the assassination attempt on President Trump during the summer of 2024; the UFO/UAP invasion of New Jersey during late 2024; the quick collapse of the Assad regime in Syria; the terrorist attacks on January 01, 2o025; parading in public their favorite new Ukrainian leader; and the apocalyptic fires in southern California during the first few weeks of the new year. There had also been an unusual uptick in chatter in recent times about an impending American civil war, authoritarianism, terrorist attacks, a new pandemic, UFO/UAP phenomenon, a major cyber attack on the electric grid, and a major financial/economic collapse. In hindsight, these signs, both man-made, natural, or paranormal, which continue today, were clearly foretelling that President Trump's second-term in Washington will usher in a new period in world affairs.
 
It feels as if heaven and earth are in travail. It feels as if a new era is being heralded. If feels as if a new world is being born. It feels as if something momentous is coming down the road.
 
In hindsight, President Putin's unexpected withdrawal from Syria in December, 2024 may have somehow been connected to the emergence of this new phase in global politics as a result of President Trump's return to power. If so, Ukraine's untimely fate may have been decided late last year. The following is pure speculation on my part, but it does make sense. Similar to how the Kremlin decided in 2018 to cut its losses and downgrade its relations with a belligerent Yerevan in the aftermath of Nikol's rise to power, essentially because Armenia brought nothing to the table and as the war in Ukraine was approaching Russians needed Turkish and Azeri compliance, faced with surmounting pressure in a deeply dysfunctional Syria, the Kremlin may have similarly abandoned Damascus to focus on a win in Ukraine. Turkish and Israeli factors naturally figured greatly in both cases as Ankara and Tel Aviv have national interests in both, the south Caucasus and the Levant. Simply put, with Western, Israeli, Turkish, Qatari, Saudi Arabian and Iranian interests clashing relentlessly, Syria ultimately proved to be an insurmountable challenge for Russia, and Iran. Itself stuck in a major war against the collective West in Ukraine, Moscow could no-longer afford propping-up Bashar Assad's government. The same applied to Tehran, which faces a major war. Syria was therefore relinquished to Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. From a Russian perspective, let Turks, radical Islamists and Jews now deal with each-other and see how it turns out. By helping Turkish, Wahhabist and Gulf Arab interests to rise to power in Damascus, I believe Israel will have bigger problems in the future than it had previously when the country was being ruled by the Assad family. In any case, this has been a horrible nightmare for Syria's Alawite and Christian minorities. 
 
We certainly live in a Machiavellian world. As such, Armenia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and now Ukraine, became the expendable pawns on the grand chessboard that major powers played to their benefit. All in all, 2025 is, unfortunately, living-up to it's expectation. The question now is, what else to expect in the coming years now that President Trump was brought back to power?
 
I am claiming that President Trump was "brought" back to power because I believe that it was the deep state, or at the very least elements within it, that made his second presidential term possible. Yes, that shadowy entity, the government within the government, that supposedly tried to kill President Trump last summer brought him back to power. Anyone that thinks "the deep state tried to kill Trump but failed" is, simply put, a hopeless simpleton. The deep state (i.e. those behind the assassinations of JFK and RFK; UFO/UAP phenomenon; September 11, 2001 terror attacks; MK-Ultra experimentations, global drug trade; Covid-19 pandemic; etc) has a million-and-one ways of getting rid of someone (e.g. professional assassinations, heart-attacks, cancers, suicides, automobile accidents, poisoning, etc) if it really wanted to. President Trump is no exception. And, no, he is not protected by God; well, at least not the deity we mortals are generally familiar with. The main point being, if the deep state really wanted President Trump dead, he would be dead. Period. I believe that the assassination attempt on his life last summer was staged. I believe President Trump was in on its planning. I spoke about this at the time. In my opinion, the incident was orchestrated to boost President Trump's popularity ratings and bestow upon him the aura of a heroic martyr. Moreover, having President Trump face an utterly incompetent political candidate (i.e. by not allowing a competent individual to win the DNC primary) and charging him with a number of bogus criminal cases also served the same purpose. President Trump's path to the presidency was carefully prepared. President Trump was reelected on July 13, 2024.
 
In my humble opinion, President Trump and his team were selected by the unelected to lead the country at this transformational time in world history.
 
There is clearly an overarching, supranational agenda at play, a convergence of interests, and perhaps even a paranormal aspect behind President Trump's rise to power. The same can be said about the enigma that is Elon Musk. It is very strange how a young, pot smoking, weird guy like Elon Musk rose out of nowhere to become world's richest man, the world's smartest man, the man that wants to put chips in our brains, and President Trump's closest advisor. The precise intention or agenda behind Donald Trump's and Elon Musk's rise to power is still open to interpretation and speculation. I do, however, have some ideas about this subject matter, which I will briefly touch upon later in this commentary.
 
Ukrainians are discovering firsthand what Henry Kissinger meant
 
The reader knows what side of the conflict in Ukraine I am on. I am and will always be unabashedly pro-Russia. I actually see myself as a Russian imperialist. However, in the name of honesty and objectivity, what Washington is doing to Kiev today is atrocious. And the saddest part in all this, the United States, the country that diligently led Ukraine to a very destructive war against its Russian neighbor, is now not only blaming Ukraine for the war it provoked, it is also demanding back the money it gave Kiev for the war effort. If Kiev is unable to pay  back the money it was given, Uncle Sam wants Ukraine's mineral wealth. This is the textbook definition of deceit, backstabbing and extortion by Washington, and it could not have happened to a better regime. Kiev fully deserves this treatment, but it is still stunning to watch nonetheless. I can't recall a betrayal of this magnitude in modern history. Even the betrayal of Poland by Britain and France during the Second World War does not come close to this. The United States spared no effort in driving a wedge between Russia and Ukraine throughout the post-Soviet period. Billions of dollars were spent. An anti-Russian coup was carried-out. They turned Ukraine into a Neo-Nazi haven. Western military presence was setup in Ukraine. US biolabs were opened. They finally created a situation in Ukraine so dangerous for Russia that the Kremlin had no choice but to militarily intervene. They then financed Kiev to the tune of hundreds-of-billions of dollars, and tens-of-thousands of mercenaries and military specialists to prolong the war as much as they could. They undermined all  peace efforts. They lied to the world merely to keep Ukrainians fighting. They turned Ukraine into one big, bloody battlefield. They wanted to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. It was the best money they had ever spent. Ukraine now has suffered more than one million casualties. Many millions more have fled the country. The following do an excellent job of explaining what led to the historic tragedy in Ukraine:

Aaron Mate on how NATO provoked Russia in Ukraine and undermined peace

Max Blumenthal: US is Arming Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

I knew that the United States was in the eastern reaches of Europe only to cause trouble for Russia, and keep Europeans dependent on Washington. I knew that sooner or later, the United States would wash its hands from Ukraine and move on to bigger and better things. I knew that the Trump administration would seek ways to fix relations with Russia if only to pivot to China and Iran. That being said, and despite everything I thought I knew about the political establishment in the imperial capitol, I didn't expect Washington's betrayal of Kiev to come this quickly, and be this duplicitous, this ruthless and this epic. Practically overnight, the United States abandoned Ukraine, and did so in the ugliest of ways. Not only has Washington washed its hands of Ukraine's war effort against Russia, it even wants its money back! Not only has Washington betrayed Ukraine and is trying to extort money from Ukraine, it has also publicly ridiculed, insulted and embarrassed, in the White House of all places, Ukraine's hitherto beloved leader, the man who not long ago was being given standing ovations in Congress. As I said previously, it could not have happened to a better regime. After suffering losses estimated to be upwards of one million souls, and ruining relations with its superpower neighbor for generations to come in the process - all because of Kiev's shortsighted desire to collaborate with the empire of lies - this is what Ukraine has to show for it:
It's been a stunning turn of events. The Trump-Zelensky meeting in the White House was one of those moments in political history that will be talked about for generations to come. If one contracted a bunch of screenwriters to write a script to a movie about political drama and betrayal, it would pale in comparison to what we just saw in the White House. If this scenario was written in a book previously, it would have gone straight to the fantasy section of the bookstore. Ukraine's Zelensky, the heroic darling of the political establishment in Washington for the past three years, was ridiculed and lambasted in the White House, in front of an army of reporters from around the world. Political altercations such as this normally takes place behind closed doors, not in front of cameras, and not in the Oval Office. It was most likely a deliberate ambush meant to make Zelensky look bad so that the Trump administration could finally distance itself from Kiev. In other words, Zelensky got fired that day. It was most likely his last White House visit. What was really astounding was seeing the extent of Lindsey Graham's reptilian nature. I am unabashedly pro-Russian, but what Americans are now doing to Ukraine is shocking and disgraceful. I always knew that there would come a time when Washington would downgrade its ties to Ukraine and sue for peace with Russia, but I would never have imagined that it to be this quick, this duplicitous, this callous and this egregious. Ukrainians are shocked. Europeans are stunned. The rest of the world stands in awe.
 
Kiev is finding-out firsthand what Henry Kissinger meant when he famously said: It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal. America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
 
Related to this subject matter is the "former" Kiev official Oleksii Arestovich. Arestovich was one of Ukraine's Western-backed officials that led the country's war effort against Russia. In 2019, he publicly announced that Ukraine is going to war with Russia. This is proof that all the sides knew that a war between Russia and Ukraine was coming. Moscow's actions after 2014 need to be looked at from under this light. Arestovich was Zelensky's advisor during the first two years of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In early 2024, he supposedly had a fallout with Vladimir Zelensky and fled into exile. In my humble opinion, Arestovich was simply being prepped by the CIA for a future role in Kiev. Not long ago, Arestovich suddenly appeared on social media to badmouth Zelensky and praise President Putin. More recently, he said he would jail Zelensky if he was in power. The CIA clearly wants men like Arestovich to replace Zelensky when the bloody tragedy in Ukraine comes to an unceremonious end, most likely this year.
 
If you can't beat them, join them... Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer...
 
Now that the terrible war in Ukraine is for the most part behind us, it looks and feels as if this American-sponsored tragedy was basically a long-term strategy by Western policymakers to draw Russia into a deep crisis in order to defeat it and make it subservient to the Western world. This is why I suggested earlier that President Trump was kept out of the White House in 2020. The war was on the horizon and the empire old guard had to oversee it. In other words, they had four years to break Russia. Which, incidentally, brings up the million dollar question: why are Westerners and Europeans constantly looking to defeat Russia? This is not a new phenomenon. For centuries Russia's neighbors have looked at it with fear and envy. If in the past the fear and envy they felt  towards Russia was mostly due to its size, seclusion, Orthodox Christian culture and strategic location, it is that and more today. Russia today is the largest nation-state on earth, practically stretching from one end of the Eurasian super-continent to the other, bordering Europe, China and the United States. Moreover, Russia today has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and one of the most powerful conventional militaries in the world. And, estimated at $75 trillion, Russia today has by-far the world's largest reserves of natural resources. Russia's already large military and economic potential continues to rise today. Russia and China are developing a $300 billion Silk Road in the Arctic. This is why in my opinion Greenland has been in the news in the United States recently. If left unchecked, that is if Russia is allowed an extended period of time to develop peacefully, Russia has the potential to grow to be one of the most powerful and influential nations on earth. Finally, what also sets the Russian nation apart from the rest is its strong Orthodox Christian heritage. Russia is a bastion of apostolic Christianity, conservatism and traditionalism. Simply put, for Westerners, Russia is too menacing, too warlike, too large, too wealthy in natural resources, too different culturally and too mysterious for Western tastes. In the eyes of the Western/European political and financial elite, Russia poses a major challenge to their Liberal World Order, as well as to their hegemonic role in global affairs. What I just described is more-or-less why Russia is constantly under attack and has been subjected to many invasions; the three year bloody ordeal in Ukraine being just the latest.
 
 
Their primary goal was to use hybrid war to defeat Russia militarily and/or economically or, at the very least, foment a mass uprising against President Putin's government. Belarus was also targeted. But Ukraine was the main theater of operation. Had their efforts succeeded, Moscow, and Minsk, would have become subordinate to Washington, London and Brussels, similar to the situation Russia was in during the early 1990s. Such a situation would have once again allowed Westerners to exploit Russia's natural reserves. But, what if their plan to bring Russia to its knees did not work? Well, there is always a plan-B, as they say. If they proved unable to defeat Russia, they could offer Moscow some incentives to help it come out of the crisis that was created for it. They were after all the ones that created the crisis, they can therefore offer Moscow a way out. More on that later. Nevertheless, they were seriously hoping that through a well-planned hybrid war they could either defeat Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine, collapse its economy through major sanctions, or spark a palace coup or a popular uprising in Moscow and/or Minsk. I personally think that Navalny may have also been murdered by Western intelligence services for this very purpose. All in all, Russia was expected to collapse, one way or another. The New Atlas has a number of good reports on this subject matter:
I remember as far back as 2019, voices from Armenia's Western-financed political opposition were confidently predicting that President Putin's government would soon collapse and that Russians would as a result be forced to retreat from the south Caucasus. Some among them would claim that Russia would turn Armenia over to Turks for safe-keeping, implying that Russians preferred Armenia to be under Turkish rule over Western. The remedy for Armenia's survival, as they saw it, was to abandon Russia completely before it fell and fully embrace the West. This was a common claim by a number of Western-financed "political analysts" in Armenia for several years leading-up to the war in Ukraine. In hindsight, it's obvious to me now that Armenia's professional Russophobes got the "memo" from their Western handlers as early as 2018-2019 that a major war was being planned against Russia and that Russia was to be defeated. Not surprisingly, this kind of talk coincided with Nikol's rise to power in Armenia. The planners of the said war were seemingly very confident with their multi-pronged plan to defeat Russia. Judging from the Russophobic rhetoric being heard in places like Armenia, Poland, Moldova and Ukraine at the time, they seemed convinced that Moscow would, at the very least, not be able to withstand the economic war that would be waged against it, and would therefore collapse at some point.  
 
The Armenian branch of the hybrid war being waged against Russia was basically preparing for a complete Russian withdrawal from the south Caucasus. This is why, in my opinion, Nikol was brought to power in 2018. It was done at a time when Moscow was preoccupied with its plans to withstand the war being waged against it by the collective West, and was therefore unable to impose its political will in Armenia. It was an opportunity Western and Turkish interests took full advantage of. From the Kremlin's perspective, Armenia had decided to remain outside the Russian world, and had therefore become of secondary importance to it. It made more sense for the Kremlin to deal with Turks and Azeris, if only to keep Ankara and Beijing out of the fight being waged against Russia. The Kremlin consequently downgraded its ties to the newly installed authorities in Yerevan, but, despite what Armenia's professional Russophobes were predicting, did not fully abandon Armenia or Artsakh. Nikol's rise to power in 2018, as well his actions vis-à-vis Russia and Artsakh afterwards, should could be assessed under this light.
 
After a number of major provocations, Moscow's hand was finally forced in 2022. The long-planned hybrid war to defeat Russia had commenced in earnest. Ukrainians were merely the meat and the blood in the said process.
 
A relatively small special military operation was designed to force Kiev to the negotiations table. Not ready for a major conflict against the collective West, and not wanting to get drawn into a devastating war in an ethnically/culturally related neighboring country, the Kremlin quickly found itself outmaneuvered and outwitted by its antagonists during the early phases of the war. Russia suffered a number of military setbacks and humiliation as a result. This in-turn led to the Armenian disaster in Artsakh. Despite its miscalculations and setbacks, the Kremlin did its best not take any further baits, nor did it react to every provocation that came its way. The Kremlin looked dangerously indecisive for a while. Many around the world at the time, including Russians, including myself, perceived all this as Russian weakness. In reality, however, it proved to be Russian wisdom and strength. Finding themselves in a historic face-off with the collective West in a neighboring state, the political, financial, economic and military hierarchy in Moscow were stubbornly and diligently focusing on not only Russia's survival in the historic battle but also the Kremlin's long-term strategic purpose in Ukraine. In other words, Russians were regrouping, re-calibrating and tweaking-out flaws in their military and economy; all the while remaining cognizant of the notion that sooner or later Russian and Ukrainian societies will have to live together once again. That is the hope in Moscow. For Russians, their war in Ukraine is essentially seen as a civil war. Even if this terrible war ended today, its repercussions will be felt for generations to come. All in all, it's been a tragedy for both, Russians and Ukrainians, a tragedy that could have easily been avoided had it not been for Western machinations.

One redline after another was crossed by it's antagonists, but Russians proved time and again that they were the only adults in the room. This is why the Russo-Ukrainian war, as destructive as it has been, has resulted in relatively few civilian deaths.
 
If Kiev decided to fight Russia's Special Military Operation, which, tragically for Ukrainians, it did, Ukraine was never expected by Russians to be an easy foe to defeat. Ukraine had one of the largest and best armed militaries in the world. Ukraine had eight years to prepare for a Russians invasion. Ukrainian troops also had gained combat experience in Donbas. Moreover, Kiev's armed forces had, in my opinion, the most motivated military in the world at the start of the war. It's Neo-Nazi battalions were a source of fanatical zeal on the battlefield. Recognizing their value in combat was the primary reason why "Nazis" were not only tolerated by the Anglo-American-Jewish West but also encouraged. In other words, let Slavs and Nazis once again kill each-other. However, in the end, President Putin, the man that was supposedly dying from all sorts of diseases, prevailed. Immense sums of Western money, Western military experts, modern weapons systems, tens-of-thousands of mercenaries, unprecedented sanctions, anti-Russian propaganda, assassinations, sabotage, terrorism, and millions of Ukrainian bodies failed to defeat Russia. While Americans excelled in showmanship, duplicity, bravado, deception and propaganda, Russians once again proved to be the masters of resilience, patience, ingenuity, adaptability, self-reliance and political prudence. As a result, Russians managed to defeat not only Ukraine, which was not an easy task to begin with, but also NATO, and it did so with a number of self-imposed limitations.
 
Much to their chagrin, Russia's military today is actually larger and stronger than when the war first started. Much to their chagrin, Russia today is economically/financially more self-reliant than when the war first started. Today, Kiev stands on the very verge of a military collapse. Kiev's Kursk gambit ended up being a Kursk debacle, similar to the initial one back in 1943. Everyone is now finally admitting that Ukraine could not win this war. This realization, in my opinion, is one of the reasons why the Trump administration wants to end the war now. This is an important point to consider. I have no doubt that if Russia was losing this war there, would have been no calls from the Trump administration to end it now. From this standpoint, it could be argued that any sort of peace deal with Moscow today will in-reality favor Ukraine and Europe. This is because prolonging the war risks not only irreversibly ruining Ukraine, it also risks pushing Moscow further towards Beijing and Tehran, which is not good for the United States. Such a scenario would also increase the risk for a nuclear catastrophe, which is not good for anyone. Therefore, even from a Western or Washingtonian perspective, it no longer makes sense to prolong the war in Ukraine. The war needs to stop before Ukraine collapses. What to do?
 
As the famous American proverb suggests: "If you can't beat them, join them". And as Sun-Tzu advised some 2500 years ago: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer".
 
The aforementioned wisdom is in my opinion the motivation behind the Trump administration's Russia-friendly overtures today. Much to their chagrin, Russia survived the historic ordeal put before it. As so often in its long and turbulent history, not only did Russia survive the combined onslaught against it, it actually began to thrive as the war progressed. Russia in 2025 is stronger militarily and economically than Russia was in 2022. Should this war go on much longer, all of Ukraine will inevitably collapse. More and more people are beginning to understand this. Consequently, elements in Washington that want to turn the page on the Ukraine chapter in order to start a new chapter elsewhere, have now come to power and are extending a hand of friendship to Moscow. I reiterate: it's because President Trump's advisors know that otherwise it will be worst not only for the United States but also for Ukraine and Europe in general. Simply put, what President Trump's administration is trying today is political wisdom and a prudent geopolitical calculus. Therefore, Ukrainians, who bore the horrible brunt of this devastating war on behalf of the collective West, should not take their sudden betrayal too personally. This is the very nature of geopolitics. Ukrainians should have actually known better. Students of history and political observers alike knew that sooner or later and one way or another Kiev's star would dim in Washington. One day you may serve a superpower's interest, the next day you may not. One day you may be a friend, next day an enemy. More importantly, Ukrainians should have known better than trusting a far-away empire that wants you to ruin your relations with your close neighbor, who just also happens to be an ethnically related superpower.
 
Let us one more time recall Kissinger's famous quotes: It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal. America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
 
I should also add here that Washington's plan in Ukraine may have also been designed to weaken the European Union by shrinking the its economy and making it more dependent on the United States. This was what the destruction of the North Stream pipeline was all about. Indeed, poisoning relations between an industry-rich Europe and a resource-rich Russia through a major war would go a long way towards keeping Europeans and Russians apart, perhaps for generations to come. It would also ensure Europe's energy dependency on the United States. If that was the plan, it worked brilliantly. Not only is Europe's economy in decline today, as a result of losing access to affordable Russian energy, it is also being forced to increase its military spending. Worst yet, they may be preparing ground for a war between Russia and the European Union? If such a war comes, I believe it will most likely center around the strategically important Arctic region. The resource-rich Arctic has in recent years become one of the most strategically important regions on earth. This is why the Trump administration is interested in acquiring Greenland. Everything is about strategic maneuvering.
 
Speaking of Western strategy, let's recall the geopolitical calculus that lay behind NATO's formation: "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down".
 
Western policymakers not only fear an alliance between Russia and China, they also fear an alliance between Russia and Germany; and do so for the same reason: Russia's natural resources coupled with Germany's or China's giant economic and industrial capacity would make an alliance between Russia and Germany and/or China a formidable threat to the Washington-led world order. This is exactly why Washington wastes no effort to keep Germany under its military boot. This is exactly why the CIA controls Germany's news media. This is exactly why the North Stream pipeline was destroyed. Imagine if Germans ever recovered from their post-war post-traumatic stress disorder and finally understood any of this. After falling lock-step behind the United States to its very detriment, Europeans have ended up getting screwed by none-other-than Uncle Sam himself. In a sense, President Trump finally did what Victoria Nuland had only suggested. In any case, with Russia now having survived the historic onslaught, President Trump's administration is currently looking to give Moscow a way out of the crisis that Washington had created for it. And that way out may just be related to Beijing and Tehran. Going forward, Uncle Sam will simply let Europeans grapple with a now very angry Russian Bear, and simply shift its imperial attention to China and Iran.

Is the Trumpian spectacle in the imperial capitol all about China and Iran?
 
Well, it may not be solely about China and Iran, it is, however, at least in significant part about China and Iran. While Iran may be the more urgent issue, China is, in my opinion, the main strategic issue. Allow me to explain why this is with some essential context. Since the end of the Second World War, all economic/financial roads have led to Washington. The Second World War broke many powerful nations. After six years of war, Britain and France were wounded and bankrupted. Germany, Japan, China and the Soviet Union were utterly devastated. Having come out of the war unscathed and more powerful than ever before, the United States placed itself on top of the global food-chain. The Bretton Woods conference was held to guarantee Western hegemony in the post-war period. This is how the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund came into existence. Washington had suddenly become the world's bank. However, for this new system to work as intended, Washington could not blatantly abuse its newly acquired privileges. The system would therefore be effective only as long as Washington more or less played by the rules it had set for itself in 1945. The status of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency helped give the United States it's overwhelming military power, economic weight, political reach and, ultimately, its civilizational lure. In the stark absence of a viable alternative after the Second World War, the economies of most nations on earth, including that of developed nations, had no choice but to be pegged to the US dollar. The Bretton Woods system tethered much of the world to the United States, creating a dangerous codependency. This greatly benefited Washington's imperial agendas. This is also how the "American dream" became a thing. On the down side, however, Washington also became dangerously dependent on the imperial reach that the US dollar provided it. In other words, for Americans to continue enjoying their American Dream, Washington's imperial tentacles had to reach every corner of the world. Even the USSR had to recognize the US dollar's global hegemony. The system worked relatively well during much of the Cold War period, when sober minds were at the helm in Washington. This, however, quickly began to unravel in the post-Soviet period when a new breed of leadership in Washington began using the Western financial system as a magic wand.
 
With the USSR no longer in existence, Western officials soon discovered that they could use the US dollar as a tool of coercion, subjugation, exploitation and blackmail. This was a foolish departure from the very spirit of the Bretton Woods conference. The United States was expected to be on top, but it was not expected to flagrantly abuse its position. To the dismay of the nations around the world that had no choice but to be tethered to the Western financial system, the US dollar had thus become one of the empire's most devastating weapons in its arsenal. When a government would not do the bidding of the United States, Americans officials would unilaterally place financial sanctions and economic restrictions on it. Russia famously became the main target of the said process beginning in 2022. However, using the Bretton Woods financial system in a self-serving, unilateral manner such as this was inherently unwise, counterproductive and ultimately unsustainable. It would most certainly backfire one day. And that one day has come. Today, after seeing Washington brazenly abuse its post-war financial privileges on the world stage for many years, many nations around the world are actively seeking an alternative financial system that would be safer and more reliable to deal with. The said process is not expected to be quick simply because, as noted previously, most nations are earth are tethered to the Western system. Breaking from it therefore has to be a gradual and carefully planned process. China and Russia are leading the way. For the first time since its inception as the world's reserve currency some eighty years ago, the reign of the US dollar today is under threat. The following is a pretty good presentation on the subject matter:
Abusing the powerful leverage that the US dollar gave to the empire has finally backfired. What was done with the US dollar will be looked at by future generations as one of Washington's greatest sins, and perhaps its most foolish blunder. With enough nations losing confidence in the Western financial system, a new global reserve currency will eventually rise to challenge it. Without a dominant US dollar imposing its will on the world stage, the United States, as we know it, could simply collapse. The United States was basically built upon the notion that the US dollar is king, and will remain so. Dethroning the US dollar as the global reserve currency, will dethrone the American empire and its satellites. Destroying the financial and economic roads that lead to Washington, will lead to the collapse of the empire and its satellites. The United States, as we know it, will certainly collapse when the US dollar loses its throne as the global reserve currency, and the empire's powerful civilizational lure, something Washington used to its benefit for well over a century, will certainly dissipates as a result.
 
As the reader can see, there is a much at stake for Western powers, to say the least. And this subject matter, in a nutshell, is the historic threat posed by China.
 
At the current pace, China is forecasted to surpass the economy of the United States within the next few years. China and Russia have also gotten too close in recent years. The strategically important and resource-rich Arctic region is increasingly coming under Russian and Chinese control. The Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to turn China, and Russia, into an economic powerhouse the likes of which the world has never seen. Needless to say, such a thing would be a direct threat to the global primacy of the US dollar and therefore the American empire. China is also modernizing its armed forces at a very fast pace. Therefore, due to its immense size, rapidly growing military industrial complex and economic potential, China now poses a direct threat to the Anglo-American-Jewish financial system. From a Western perspective, something needs to be done to somehow preserve the long-term health and well-being of the Bretton Woods financial system, and Western hegemony. Needless to say, Taiwan will figure greatly in this equation. Interestingly, Greenland has now come into the picture as well. Taiwan and Greenland will therefore be the American empire's steppingstones to containing China:

US Turning Attention to Taiwan After Ukraine War, Envoy Says

Perfect Storm: The Rising Risk of China-US Conflict Over Taiwan

What China fears most about Trump’s turn toward Russia

No Limits? The China-Russia Relationship and U.S. Foreign Policy

Petrodollar Dusk, Petroyuan Dawn: What Investors Need To Know

Unraveling China’s Doctrine of Peaceful Rise, its Changing Global Strategy, and Foreign Responses

To recap, China is a political, military, economical, financial, technological and industrial giant. Beijing today is Washington's nearest peer on the world stage and stands poised to surpass it in all the aforementioned sectors in the coming years, that is, of course, if Washington and its allies do nothing about it. If imperial cowboys in Washington want to maintain the empire's hegemony within this century, which they have to because the very survival of the greater Western financial system is dependent on the empire's vitality, the Chinese problem has to be somehow solved. I believe that the history of the twenty-first century will be largely defined by the nature of relations between China and the United States; that is, between the rising Dragon and the imperial Cowboy. It will  be one of histories great rivalries. We saw the symbolic birth of this historic rivalry at dawn of the century in the Hainan Island incident. The rivalry is currently developing. The ensuing years will most likely morph it into a full-fledged confrontation.

As for Iran, unlike the long-term threat Beijing poses for Washington, Tehran is a much more urgent matter for the United States and its allies.
 
To preface what I am saying, I would like to briefly outline the role of Jewry in the United States. Organized Jewry, as represented by the political behemoth know today as American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), formerly known as the American Zionist Council (AZC), has fully penetrated all levels of government, as well as society, in the American empire. Organized Jewry today is part-and-parcel of the imperial elite, and its main purpose is to promote Israel's interests in the imperial capitol. And it does not end with Israel. Organized Jewry has come to control both political parties in the United States. Right-wing Zionist Jews control conservatives and Left-wing Jewish socialists control liberals. Neoconservatism and by-extension the foreign policy apparatus in Washington is also their progeny. It's as if the former masters of the empire, it's odious WASP contingent, have in recent decades outsourced policy-making to organized Jewry. The political landscape in the United States today is basically a platform where Right-wing Jews compete with Left-wing Jews. It's the same situation within the country's mainstream news media where both, Liberal and Conservative news media is run by organized Jewry. All in all, the Washington apparatus today is basically the stand-in or rather the surrogate for Zionist and Neo-Marxist interests on the world stage. Washington's unconditional support for Israel is therefore not just about Western or American geopolitical interests. This atmosphere in the imperial capitol is the reason why American policymakers see Israel has Washington's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East:
As noted previously, Israel has fostered outsized influence in Washington. Zionist Jews have cleverly and expertly used the friendly atmosphere in United States to penetrate deeper not only into Washington but also power centers around the world. Organized Jewry has managed to make Israel much more important to the Western world than it actually is. Zionist Jews have cleverly and expertly manipulated and are currently exploiting the Christian goy. Zionist Jews have cleverly and expertly blackmailed the Western elite. Zionist Jews may have assassinated President John Kennedy and hijacked the foreign policy apparatus of the United States. Zionist Jews have cleverly and expertly used the September 11, 2001 attacks to further their agendas. Zionist Jews may have actually been involved in the planning  of the September 11, 2001 attacks, but that is altogether a different discussion. In a nutshell, Zionist Jews are fully embedded in the empire today. Israel therefore remains an indispensable Western fortress in the geographically strategic and oil-rich Middle East.
 
This is why Israel and the United States today are inseparable and the survival of the Zionist state is of paramount importance to Washington. This is why Western officials continue seeing Israel as their impregnable military fortress in the Middle East.
 
During the Cold War, Israel acted as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union's growing foothold in the region. Moreover, since its very founding, Israel has also been acting as a bulwark against the rise of regional nations under one ideological and/or political banner. Pan-Arabism, the political unity of Arab nations under one secular leadership, is particularly seen as a serious, long-term threat not only by Israel but also by the United States, Europe and Sunni Islamist monarchies on the arabian peninsula. Pan-Arabism has traditionally been dictatorial, socialistic and militaristic in nature. In my opinion, Westerners, as well as Israelis, preferred instead to deal with fundamentalist Sunni societies in the region. I believe this is because such societies are inherently archaic, tribal, rigid and self-limiting. Such societies can therefore be easily manipulated and exploited by Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, and ultimately used against their enemies:
Radical Wahhabist groups such as Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas were covertly created by Western and Israeli intelligence, of course with the direct help from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey. This was done not only to counterbalance Soviet, Russian and Chinese interests but also to prevent Pan-Arabism and, after 1979, to also combat the growth of Iranian influence in the region, which I will get to in a moment. This in a nutshell is why ISIS is not seen as a threat by Washingtonians. This is also why Western countries give shelter to Muslim radicals. Muslim ghettos in Western countries are places where Western intelligence services recruit their terrorists. Supporting the rise of radical Islamist governments in the Middle East has another advantage. In addition to them being easier to manipulate and exploit, Islamic societies are also more convenient bomb into oblivion when need be (i.e. relatively little public outcry, as we have seen in the Gaza Strip). It therefore stands to reason that secular Arab leaders with Pan-Arabist leanings such as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi and Syria's Assad, were seen as long-term threats and were therefore murdered and, in the case of Bashar Assad, chased out as soon as there was an opportunity to do so. Secular nations in the Middle East, along with their ancient Christian populations, are being systematically destroyed. Concurrently, Sunni Arab "monarchies" like Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are acting as proxies for Western and Israeli interests. Egypt is somewhat of an exception. Despite its good relations with the United States, Cairo today remains a long-term concern to both, Washington and Tel Aviv. They tried to turn Egypt into a Islamist country during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. It didn't work. Today, they keep pumping billions of dollars into Egypt essentially as bribe to keep Cairo neutral. But, as I said, due to its political independence and secular government, Cairo remains a long-term concern.
 
Western intelligence services supported the "Arab Spring" in 2011. American government agencies were also involved. And it had nothing to do with freedom, democracy and the American way. Supporting "democracy" in authoritarian countries in the Middle East is the same as supporting the rise of Islamist societies in such countries. This has always been their modus operandi. The following blog commentaries are related materials for added context:
All in all, it's a policy of divide and conquer. Ultimately, the plan is to stop the emergence of a Salahaddin. And this is the geostrategic backdrop to Israel's importance to Western policymakers. Simply put, the Western policy towards the Middle East is designed to keep Russians and Chinese out of the region; keep Arabs divided and dependent on the West; and, more recently, restrict Iran's growth as a regional power. Israel's role as Washington's strategic fortress in the Middle East has gained even more importance due to the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a regional power.
 
After the Islamic revolutionary government in Tehran expelled Anglo-American-Jewish interests from Iran in 1979, and withstood the American-backed Iraqi invasion of Iran that came soon thereafter, it gradually began creating an arc of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to southern Lebanon. Iran has since risen to become a major, independent power in the Middle East. It therefore stands to reason that the ruling Shiite government in Tehran, a government that has been actively supporting anti-Western and anti-Israeli resistance in places like Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, is seen as a serious geostrategic threat to the both, Western powers and Zionist state. What is also concerning for Tehran's opponents today is the sudden growth of Iran's popularity on the Arab street. Tehran therefore also presents a direct threat to Saudi Arabia's longstanding monopoly over the Arabic-speaking Islamic world. Iran has grown to became a serious opponent. Iran's threat to Western powers and Israel today is on-par with the dangers posed by Pan-Arabism; perhaps even more.

Iran today has reached a milestone Pan-Arabism was not able to. Tehran is said to be on the brink of developing nuclear weapons. Tehran is actually thought to have nuclear weapons capability, but is not believed to have given the order to move forward with production. If Tehran procures nuclear weapons, it will have outsized influence, and therefore a much freer-hand in pursuing its geopolitical interests throughout the region. Iran therefore has the potential to become the new Salahaddin that Western powers and Israel fears. A nuclear armed Iran is a direct threat to Israel's long-term survival in the Middle East. Moreover, such a development could also spark a very dangerous nuclear arms race in an already unstable and volatile region of the world. This is something nobody in the region would want, regardless of their political sentiments vis-à-vis Iran. A nuclear armed Iran is therefore seen as serious danger for the entire region; not only by Israel and the United States but also by Europe, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and, I presume, Russia. In this regard, Tehran today has more opponents than friends. To be clear, Moscow has no problems with Tehran developing peaceful nuclear energy capability. In fact, Moscow has been helping Tehran develop nuclear technology. The issue at hand is stopping Tehran from developing a nuclear weapons program. Tehran says it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv is saying it is. I personally think Tel Aviv simply does not want Tehran to even have the ability. From a Israeli perspective, time is therefore running out. Something needs to be done urgently. That something has actually been worked on for many years:
The danger that Tehran poses to Zionist state has recently taken on an air urgency as a result of Iran's unprecedented missile attacks on Israel last year. And this is where the Trump administration comes into the picture. Although Israel already has a very firm foothold in American politics, Israel's relationship with the Trump administration, in particular, is profound. President Trump did after all surrender his beloved daughter over to Judaism to ensure their political and financial support. Jared Kushner is after all an Israeli asset in the Trump family. President Trump is surrounded by Jews. President Trump has often acted more Jewish than Jews. In fact, Jews consider Donald Trump to be the first Jewish POTUS. At this point, it could be said that the American empire and the Zionist state are conjoined twins. One can't live without the other. Therefore, Israel's enemies today are America's enemies, regardless of Washington's actual geopolitical calculations. In any case, Israel is not capable of fighting Iran without direct support from the United States. Tel Aviv is therefore doing its best to recruit Americans. Since Tehran does not seem to be backing down from developing nuclear weapons potential, President Trump's administration and Tel Aviv believe they have to do something about the matter. Serious efforts are currently underway to de-escalate the situation.
 
If back-channel negotiations that are currently taking place between Washington and Tehran fail to achieve good results as far as Washington and Tel Aviv are concerned, or if they are unable to spark an internal political revolt or a popular uprising in Iran, which is what they are also working on, there will most likely be a joint American-Israeli strike on the country. A USS Liberty-style false flag operation may ignite it. The objective of the war will be to degrade Iran's war fighting ability, setback its nuclear program and/or topple the government in Tehran. If last year could be seen as an indicator of Tehran's motivation, Iran will most likely respond militarily by striking targets Israel as well as American assets in the region. And that in-turn may spark a much wider war in the region involving American, Israeli and, most likely, Saudi Arabian forces. For the first time since its  invasion of Iraq in 2003, Washington is once again mulling over plans to send ground forces to the Middle East. With obstacles such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip now effectively out of the way, Yemen may just be the last steppingstone towards that goal:
Zionists are not the only special interest group in Washington encouraging the Trump administration to attack Iran. The recent trillion dollar pledge by UAE is an indicator that a war is indeed near. However, some within the military establishment in the United States remain against a war, be it with Iran, be it with China. While it's pure speculation on my part, the recent embarrassing information-leak associated with Pete Hegseth suggests there may have been some push-back from within the administration. The warmongers in the imperial capitol however outnumber them. In any case, if Tehran decides to fight, Iran will not be an easy foe to subdue. Foremost, Iranians are not Arabs.
 
Iran's landmass is quite large and rugged. Iran has a very large population. Iran has a very young population. Iran's diplomatic corps is very capable. Iran has friends in Moscow and Beijing. Iran's military, particularly its rocket and missile forces, is formidable. Many of Iran's military and nuclear installations are buried deep underground. Moreover, if needed, Iran can easily shut-down the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. However, Iran also has many powerful enemies, not the least of which are fellow Muslim countries on the arabian penninsula. War against Iran will be very painful for the entire region. It will also be Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's greatest challenge to date. As for China, when the time comes and Beijing decides to fight, China will most likely be an impossible foe to defeat. China is not Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or even Iran. With its immense landmass, population and industrial capacity, and rapidly modernizing conventional and nuclear forces, Beijing has the potential to actually defeat the American, Taiwanese and Japanese military presence in the Pacific theater. American war planners understand this. Moreover, China has many reliable collaborators around the world, not the least of which is Russia. American cowboys and Israeli Zionists therefore have a major problem on their hands. If the American empire and its Zionist fortress in the Middle East are looking to survive this century, China and Iran need to be subdued in some manner. If negotiations, diplomacy or political subversion does not work, there will most likely be military action. The urgent matter for Washington and Tel Aviv today is Iran. We may in fact be very near a new war in the Middle East. This time it will involve Americans directly. Real American patriots understand the danger facing the United States today. This is why Colonel Douglas Macgregor came out with the following statement recently:
Americans Have Had Enough Of Wars
China and Iran will not be easy adversaries, to say the least. Moreover, the United States cannot wait another ten-to-twenty years to tackle the serious strategic threat posed by the rise of the Chinese Dragon. And waiting a few more years with regards to Tehran, may help turn Iran into a nuclear power. The American empire is therefore in a race against time. The Chinese and Iranian problems need to be solved sooner than later. From the perspective of MAGA "patriots" that have recently taken over the imperial control-board, Washington needs to quickly abandon the Liberal World Order nonsense (which, in their opinion, is needlessly depleting American wealth, dumbing-down American society and feminizing American men), consolidate its resources, put-out unnecessary fires elsewhere that can pose problems for their greater agendas (i.e. Russo-Ukrainian war), and start bringing back to American society a sense of mindless patriotism and a "warrior ethos". The current group of people in Washington want to abandon the old hype, America the beautiful, for a new hype, America the powerful. In other words, they want to stop worrying about gay parades in Serbia and start preparing for war. Putting it another way, if you are going to start imperial wars and annex lands around the world, stop wasting time and money on exporting "democracy" and "gay rights". Simply put, they want to reviving militarism, under the guise of MAGA patriotism, to prepare American society for a number of historic conflicts. Inoculating modern American society with a warrior spirit and patriotism is an absolute must and a prerequisite if they expect to boost military spending, increase enlistment in the armed forces and psychologically prepare Americans for wars. These have to be done if the empire is to have any chance foes like against China and Iran.
 
Therefore, the good things that the Trump administration is ostensibly doing in Washington today (e.g. deporting undocumented immigrants, closing the southern border, annulling USAID and DEI, and cutting federal regulation) may simply be window-dressing to disguise a more sinister agenda.
 
In any case, the American empire, if it is to survive the twenty-first century, does not have a choice. Washington faces major challenges in the coming years. President Trump and company are treading very carefully. They have basically turned European matters over to Europeans. China and Iran are now what President Trump and company will seek to grapple with in the coming years. While some form of direct conflict between China and the United States lies further down the road, Iran, by all accounts, is a much more urgent matter for the President Trump. This lies behind the Trump administration's frantic efforts today to fix relations with Moscow. In other words, to move forward with their plans regarding China and Iran, Washington needs to figure out a way to drive a wedge between Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. For the Trump administration, this first and foremost means developing better relations with Russia.
 
The political tumor that has kept Russia and the United States apart

Before I continue, I would like to give some context to this subject matter. The current state of affairs between Russia and the United States is truly a tragedy, and a completely unnecessary one. There were no good reasons for hostile relations between the top two superpowers in the world, especially after the dissolution of the USSR. Russia never posed a threat to the United States. Russians were never an enemy of Americans. In fact, Russians and Americans are quite similar in many respects. Russia and the United States can have a mutually beneficial relationship. There are many areas in geopolitics where Russian and American interests converge. This is by no means a novice idea. The Russian Empire had very close relations with the United States in the nineteenth century. The Russian Empire provided military aid the Union forces during the civil war. That relationship gave birth in fact to American Alaska. Washington even allied with Stalin's USSR during the Second World War. There are patriotic Americans, even today, that see Russia as a natural ally. Steve Bannon, Douglas Macgregor and Thomas Massie are such figures. Even regular civilians are beginning to wake up. From such an American perspective, Russia is a powerful nation, Russia is a Christian nation, Russia is a conservative nation, Russia is a nation with European heritage. Russia can counterbalance China. Russia can help stop the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Russia is therefore a natural ally. Also, Russia is a world away. So, why antagonize Russia? Why turn Russia away from the United States?
 
The answer to the question is what's known in some circles as the blob. I prefer to call it the Anglo-Jewish tumor in the American body. The disease within Washington that for ages would not under any circumstances allow the deepening of Russo-American relations is the very powerful and influential British and Jewish factors in American society; particularly in the military, intelligence, entertainment, academic and financial sectors of the empire.

Diabolical hatred the British elite have had towards Russia goes back centuries. During the Crimea War, the British, and the French for that matter, sided with Ottoman Turks to stop the Russian Empire from coming to the aid Christians in the Holy Land. Take a moment and think about that. Marxism was a Jewish-led movement that was adopted by the European elite (primarily Germans, British and the French) and used as a sociopolitical tool to destroy the Russian Empire. Stalin's and Hitler's purges in the 1930s and 1940s drove Bolsheviks and Marxists from the USSR and Germany respectively. They of course fled to the Western world. The center of operation thereafter became the United State. In the United States, they found a very fertile landscape to sow their toxic seeds. This gave birth to a number of sociopolitical revolutions in the United States in the 1960s. Unbeknownst to most Americans even today, all this was the by-product of Marxists fleeing Germany and the Soviet Union. Moreover, American foreign policy formulations came increasingly under Jewish influence in the United States after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. This is the time period that also saw the rise of Neoconservatism in the United States. Neoconservatism is also a Jewish-led sociopolitical movement.
Neconservatives, who essentially are neo-Trotskyists in disguise, have always harbored deep hatred towards the Russian Empire and the USSR. This is because Russian Czars persecuted their Marxist ancestors and predecessors in the Russian Empire during the 18th century and Joseph Stalin finally managed to brutally drive them out of the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Today, the same hate the Russian Federation because President Putin drove the Jewish oligarchs out of the country in the early 2000s. In my opinion, President Putin's Russia is also hated because the country's current Slavic and Christian character reminds them of the previously mentioned Czarist-era, and the persecutions that the Russian Czars carried-out to quell the Jewish-led Marxist and Socialist movements brewing within the empire. All in all, because of its Christian culture, natural wealth and political status as a Eurasian superpower, Russia is seen as a major obstacle for their effort to spread One World Government (i.e. neo-Trotskyism and neo-Marxism operating under the guise of Liberal Democracy). Consequently, Russia is feared, hated and coveted.
 
Simply put, British and Jewish interests have long hijacked the foreign policy apparatus in Washington. So much so, that for well over one hundred years now, the American empire has essentially been an Anglo-American-Jewish alliance. This, in a nutshell, is the source of Washington's imperial hubris and Russophobia.
 
It's this atmosphere or rather political culture in the United States that has traditionally kept Americans from developing close relations with Moscow. It's this factor in Washington that has caused all of the unnecessary tensions between Russia and the United States during the post-Soviet era. It's therefore this factor that has cause much of the misery in the world in recent decades. In any case, due to the overarching influence that the British and Jewish elite have had in the United States, the number of pro-Russian voices in Washington remains small. That being said, after all the blatant disinformation and propaganda that the American public was subjected to regarding Russia/Russians in recent years, I expect the number of pro-Russian voices in the United States to grow incrementally in the coming years. For the time being, however, the most prevalent mindset found in Washington vis-à-vis Russia is to simply stop Moscow from uniting with China and, more recently, Iran. Perhaps temporarily, perhaps superficially, the faction in the American deep state that brought President Trump back to power this year has nevertheless been able to muzzle the aforementioned Russophobic faction in the empire.
 
Can the Trump administration drive a wedge between Russia, China and Iran?

Having sidelined the opposition at least for the time being, the Trump administration is trying to make peace with Moscow. President Trump's team understands that Russia is not really an enemy of the United States. They realize that they have serious domestic problems that urgently need to be addressed. They also realize that they have to focus their attention on China and Iran because, as explained above, time is running out in both cases. This, in a nutshell, is what the Trump administration's current Russian-American love-fest is all about in my opinion. To reiterate, Russia has a very powerful military, the world's largest nuclear arsenal, a very capable heavy industry, immense landmass and virtually limitless amounts of natural resources. China has leading-edge technological capabilities, an immense population size, and a gargantuan industrial capacity. A comprehensive alliance between Russia and China would make the two Eurasian giants invincible on the world stage, especially if the famed Belt and Road Initiative reaches its potential, especially if the strategically vital Arctic region comes under Moscow's and Beijing's influence. The immense ramifications of a Sino-Russian alliance has been widely acknowledged, and feared, within professional circles in Washington for many decades. I remember reading the following words by a well known Polak more than twenty years ago:
"Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an “antihegemonic” coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower" - Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard
Driving a wedge between Russia and China has been a serious agenda for the American empire going back fifty-plus years. That was what President Nixon's China visit in 1972 was all about. It's the same agenda today, albeit in reverse, because Beijing is now the dominant power. If in the past American officials engaged with Beijing to keep China away from the Soviet Union, today they want to keep Russia away from China. If in the past it was the Soviet Union that they feared, today it's China. Times have changed. Calculations have Roles have reversed. This, in a nutshell, is why we have been seeing an increasing number of Russia-friendly voices in the United States in recent times. Even during the height of the Russo-Ukrainian war there were visitations to Russia by "former" CIA operatives. Simply put, the Russia-friendly faction within the American deep state did its best to maintain unofficial lines of communication between Moscow and Washington:
I would characterize what Tucker Carlson, Oliver Stone, Larry Johnson, Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter, Steve Bannon, Clayton Morris, Andrew Napolitano and many others are doing in social media today as "infomercials" by the "good cops" in the American empire. This is first and foremost designed to send Russians the message that there are elements within Washington, who have recently come to power, that sincerely want to extend a hand in friendship. This is, in my opinion, a genuine effort by the "Russia-friendly faction" within the American deep state to fix relations with Moscow, which, according to them, were unfortunately ruined by the Neoconservative faction in Washington, so that the Trump administration can safely turn its attention to Uncle Sam's real foe and competitor on the world stage, Beijing. In recent years, and despite some opposition from the same pro-Russian faction in Washington, Tehran has also been brought into the equation. The main concern that the Trump administration has is the troubling fact that Russia today has very close relations with both, China and Iran:
Moscow's ties with Beijing and Tehran have gotten deeper in recent years in-part because of Western aggression towards Russia. It can be said that Moscow has gotten closer to Beijing and Tehran somewhat reluctantly. This is because Russians see Russia as a European and Christian nation, and Russia's political and financial elite have long had a European fetish. Moreover, for Russians, China's size and Iran's Islam are intimidating. Although the Russo-Ukrainian war significantly hardened Russian sentiments towards the Western world and Europe in general, the pro-European sentiments in Russia continue to linger beneath the surface. In my opinion, the nature of the relationship that currently exists between Moscow, Beijing and Tehran is no way near the level of what Washington has with its allies. In other words, although they cooperate closely, the friendship between Moscow, Beijing and Tehran is still at an arms-length and therefore vulnerable, theoretically at least. This is giving President Trump and his team some hope. They are sensing or rather hoping for an opportunity to lure Moscow away from Beijing and Iran. This is not new agenda in the Trump administration. Some of my readers may recall that I wrote about this very topic almost exactly eight years ago, during President Trump's first-term in office:
Here is the main problem from a Washingtonian perspective: As mentioned previously, Russia is a major military and diplomatic power and Moscow controls vast amounts of natural resources. In a time of war, China and Iran can and most likely will seek military and diplomatic assistance from Russia; just as Russia was able to acquire Chinese and Iranian assistance during its war in Ukraine. Americans understand that they will not be successful in any sort of direct confrontation with China, if Moscow decided to actively assist Beijing. Americans and Jews understand that a war against Iran could at the very least be very costly for the United States and Israel, if, again, Moscow decided to actively assist Tehran. In light of all this, Moscow has become the kingpin and the wildcard that President Trump and company want to embrace. President Trump's administration understands that Moscow today holds the key to the American empire's success vis-à-vis China and Iran. As a result, I believe that the Trump administration will now go to great lengths to fix relations with Russia. In any case, Moscow all of the sudden finds itself at the center of attention:
As if overnight, the geopolitical calculus around the world has changed. It looks as if the United States needs to streamline its overstretched empire, consolidate its resources and make new alliances, if it is to have a chance against a global behemoth like China and a regional power like Iran. There is also the added factor of political instability and unpredictability in the United States. What if the other "faction" in the American empire returns to power in four years for some reason? What then? The Trump administration may be pressed for time. Four years sis not a very long period in politics. President Trump and company may want to quickly make fundamental changes on the ground before they relinquish power again. It therefore stands to reason that Washington has the urgent need today to make peace with a pivotal superpower like Russia, a country that, in reality, does not pose a direct threat to the United States. The Trump administration will therefore try its best to lure Moscow Westward, using mostly carrots since the sticks did not work. But, will it work? Some don't think it will:
Regardless, for the first time in many years, the pieces on the geopolitical chessboard are situated just right for the Kremlin. In American parlance, Russians officials now hold very favorable cards in their hands. It remains to be seen how Russian officials will now move their pieces or play their hand. In all likelihood, despite the bad-blood that currently exists between Moscow and Washington, Russian officials will quietly want to see exactly what the Trump administration is offering. This should not come as a shock to anyone, for this is the very nature of politics that Niccolò Machiavelli wrote about centuries ago.
 
What will the Kremlin decide?
 
I would like to remind my readers again, especially the foolhardy Armenians here, that geopolitics is not a street fight or a family dispute, nor is it a who's got the biggest penis contest. Nations wage war not to kill per se. Success or defeat in a war is not measured by how many die on one side or the other. Blood is spilled and lives are destroyed for clearly defined political and/or financial reasons. Pyrrhic victory is still a victory. There is nothing personal in warfare. War is the extension of politics. The end always justifies the means. Ultimately, might indeed makes right. It has always been this way. At its core, it's an evil game with roots that go back to the creation of mankind. Learn to play the game, and you live. Don't learn, and you die. In my humble opinion, Russians, being realists and pragmatic by nature, which is why Russia has been a major geopolitical player in the world for hundreds of years, will want to at the very least see what the Trump administration is offering. 
 
Let's take into consideration the fact that, from the Kremlin's perspective, China is yet another behemoth on Russia's borders, and Iran is just another Islamic power in the region maneuvering for advantage.
 
That being said, I don't see how any Russian official today would be willing to turn their backs on a country like China. Russia's Foreign Minister, the legendary Sergei Lavrov, made this clear recently. Simply put, Moscow and Beijing are deeply connected. Be that as it may, being that this is politics, and friendships can change overnight, anything is still possible. Beijing therefore must be wondering. As for Iran, despite expressed statements of solidarity with Tehran, Moscow's political commitment to Iran, is, unfortunately, less solid. Tehran understands this. I am not implying that Moscow will join Washington's and Tel Aviv's anti-Iranian hysteria. What I am suggesting instead is that under right conditions, such as confirmation that Tehran is indeed developing a nuclear weapons program, Moscow may give Washington and Tel Aviv tacit approval for setting the program back, and hope that in the process the United States and Israel suffer military setbacks as a result. Again, nothing personal. This is simply the nature of politics.
 
Nevertheless, with or without Russia in the mix, China and Iran will not be easy adversaries.
 
With all that being said, ambitious imperial projects don't take place in a vacuum. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Wars acquire a life of their own. And with war comes unintended and unforeseen consequences. Imperial hubris has always led empires down the path of decline. Imperial hubris is actually how empire's often fall. Chances are we will see the Anglo-American-Jewish alliance and its supporters wage war on Iran, if secret negotiations which are currently taking place fail. Chances are we will also see the American empire confront China in the coming years, if China's economic growth is not stunted and Beijing's petite for Taiwan is not curbed. Chances therefore are, the American empire will sooner or later suffer a major defeat, be it military, be it economic. All in all, President Trump's second term in the imperial capitol has upended the world, and in doing so has made the United States unpredictable, unreliable and dangerously volatile. The next few years may make or break the empire. Which raises the question, what spirit guides this man.
 
Is President Trump America's Gorbachev and Musk's Doge America's Perestroika and Glasnost?
 
The USSR, as we knew it throughout the Cold War period, was for the most part an off-spring of Joseph Stalin. Unbeknownst to a vast majority of people today, Stalin was the man that saved Russia, and by-extension other republics, such as Armenia, by breaking away from the Old Guard Bolsheviks in 1922 and begin ruthlessly persecuting them, as well as all those suspected of being Western agents and Trotskyites. Stalin's USSR went on to defeat Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Stalin's USSR had evolved to become a conservative society that promoted family values, sports, education, science, ethnic cultures and classical European art and literature. Moreover, the momentum of its monumental victory over Berlin in 1945 helped turn the USSR into a massive bulwark against the Anglo-American-Jewish led "Liberal World Order" during the Cold War. Stalin was murdered in 1953 by Old Guard Bolsheviks that had survived his purges. But the momentum he had helped start kept propelling the USSR forward for several more decades. By the 1980s, however, the Soviet system had grown dangerously archaic, rigid and therefore vulnerable. Immense sums of money were being spent annually on propping-up client-states around the world. The economy was stagnant. The industry was extremely inefficient. Government waste and corruption had reached unsustainable levels. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was very costly and unpopular throughout Soviet society. All in all, Soviet society was poor, disgruntled, and comprised of large numbers of native peoples that held ancient animosities and resentments.
 
More importantly, as alluded to above, there continued to exist clandestine elements within the USSR that were anti-Stalinist. These were the Old Guard Bolsheviks, Marxists and Trotskyites that quietly proliferated behind-the-scenes, especially after Joseph Stalin's murder. These well-placed individuals had covert ties with Western intelligence. This needless to say was a major vulnerability within the Soviet system.
 
In the mid-1980s Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Mikhail Gorbachev implemented a number of drastic reforms famously known as Perestroik (reform) and Glasnost (openness). The stated intent was to reform and modernize the USSR. With the resulting loosening of centralized power and the opening of borders, foreign intelligence services didn't waste any time in gaining a firm foothold inside the USSR. The large pool of well placed collaborators and sympathizers naturally helped the effort. Foreign incursions were quickly made into Soviet governmental structures, academia, industry, finance, news media, and economy. The vast and diverse country governed by the Moscow based Politburo proved more vulnerable than thought. It's foes felt it could be toppled. Operations were setup in places like the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Chechnya and Armenia. Foreign intelligence agencies actively stoked the flames of ethnic conflict throughout the Soviet Union to bring about its collapse. This was certainly one of the factors that helped ignite the first war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh). Jews and Armenians were some of the main targets of Western intelligence services. Former world chess champion turned clown, Garry Kasparov, is the embodiment of what I am referring to. In my opinion, Jews and Armenians were most effectively exploited by enemies of USSR and Russia because compared to all other native peoples of the region, Jews and Armenians were, per capita, most likely to gravitate towards the Western world. For example, by the late 1980s, the largest percentage of Soviet citizens wanting to emigrate were none-other-than Jews and Armenians. By 1991 the USSR had been dissolved. All of the Soviet Republics became independent states. The Russian Federation fared the worst.
 
Was the collapse of the Soviet Union deliberately engineered by Western-backed Globalists in the USSR, as many today believe, or was it a result of unintended consequences brought about by Gorbachev's genuine efforts to reform the Soviet Union?
 
It's been forty years and this question is still open for debate. Personally, I believe that it was a mix between the two. I personally think Gorbachev's Politburo meant well, but they were ultimately manipulated, exploited and led astray by higher powers. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What Gorbachev's government did in the Soviet Union back in the 1980s was done under the banner of modernization and reform. I personally don't believe the intent was to destroy the Soviet empire but to downsize it and make it more efficient, in order to modernize it and make it more competitive on the world stage. The economy of the Soviet Union had become dangerously stagnant and inefficient. It's client-states around the world had become a serious burden. The system was archaic and rigid, and it needed to be reformed. Soviet officials at the time may have wanted to mimic Beijing's trajectory. They were expecting, or rather hoping, that the West would extend a helping hand as it had done with China just ten years prior. However, the law of unintended consequences, Western cunning and duplicity, and Globalist interests already embedded in Moscow, took the Soviet Politburo's modernizing agenda into a fast, downward direction. Hence the broken Russian Federation of the 1990s. For a number of reasons both, intentional and unintentional, as well as foreign and domestic subterfuge, Gorbachev's Perestroika and Glasnost led to the demise of the Soviet Union and the subsequent Western ransacking of Russia, as well as other former Soviet republics, throughout the 1990s. Many in Russia and around the world firmly believe Gorbachev was an agent of destruction and that what happened to the USSR was a carefully planned demolition.

If Mikhail Gorbachev was handpicked by a hidden hand to downsize the Soviet Union, was Donald Trump and Elon Musk similarly handpicked by the same to downsize American government? It certainly feels that way, at least from my perspective.
 
What is happening in Washington today in some respects looks similar to what was happening in Moscow in the mid-1980s when Gorbachev came to power. President Trump is under the control of higher powers, and I am not only referring to organized Jewry here. There seems to be an overarching effort by powerful forces to downsize or reform the United States. This effort seems to be supported by both sides of the political divide, the Left and the Right. This, in my opinion, is the reason why we have seen massive proliferation of discussion and information in recent years that can only be characterized as highly critical of the United States, if not outright anti-American. A large and diverse array of voices throughout the United States, Left, Right and unaligned, are putting out large numbers of books, documentaries, articles, movies and interviews that cast a very negative light on the United States. In television and in cinema, American officials are often portrayed as evil criminals and the United States is portrayed as a rogue state. There is a proliferation of apocalyptic movies. There is a proliferation of movies that depict sexual degeneracy, violence and societal decay in general. There clearly is an agenda to breakdown the fabric of society, sow fear and suspicion, destroy the family, erode ethics and desensitize people to violence. Again, this is being promoted by conservatives and liberals alike. There are American politicians participating in it. There are American oligarchs participating in it. There are international entities participating in it. Some are revising history. Some are calling for secession. Some are revealing government corruption. Some are calling for a revolution. Some are calling for a military coup. Some are calling for a civil war. Talk about a second American civil war has in fact spiked significantly in recent decades. And then there is all the predictive programming taking place concurrently. The following is a very tiny sampling of what's being discussed throughout the United States today:

CIA Spy Explains How the United States Betrayed Him | John Kiriakou

Darryl Cooper: The True History of the Jonestown Cult, WWII, and How Winston Churchill Ruined Europe

 

Tucker Carlson: "I Feel Like We're Being Pushed Into Civil War" | Official Preview

Ex-CIA hucksters spin pro-war lies on 'America's #1 podcast'

We're About To Be Tested

I am not ridiculing or criticizing the content. Generally speaking I agree with the spirit of what is being presented. That being said, looking at it purely from an analytical standpoint, what is being done can be characterized as anti-American propaganda, predictive programming, mental conditioning and social engineering. This is happening on a wide-scale manner, and the situation has been reaching critical mass in recent years. The anti-American propaganda has been so ubiquitous and encompassing that it has begun to change the people's perception of the country. Consequently, the public's trust in government today is the lowest ever recorded, Americans are more fearful than ever, Americans are poorer than ever, Americans are more medicated than ever, Americans are more divided than ever, and, for the first time since the Second World War, Americans are pessimistic about the future of the country. This in my opinion is a perfect storm. All it will take is a small spark to ignite something very big. We saw a prelude of what I am talking about in the summer of 2020. At this pace, the house will break apart at some point. Every nation's vitality is judged by its societal health and well being. If the last few years is an indicator, the long-term prognosis for the United States looks very grim, and nothing is being done by those in charge to reverse it. Actually, a lot is being done by them to actually exasperate the situation. These are not random occurrences. There is an agenda behind what's going on.
 
Let's recall that the United States is a surveillance state and a police state. This kind of widespread toxicity cannot take place without the permission from higher authority. The question therefore is, why are they allowing it?
 
What's being done can't be explained away simply by saying it's due to the "freedom of expression" Americans have, simply because we don't see freedom of expression being allowed when it comes to attacking or criticizing homosexuality, minorities, Jews or Israel, nor do we see the same freedom of expression to predict wonderful occurrences in the future. This freedom of expression we are constantly exposed to today is primarily being used to predict terrorism, natural disasters and economic collapse. It is also being used to attack Christianity, White people and the very image of the United State. This is what someone would do if they wanted to destroy the country from the inside out. National mythos, positive image, high morale and "hype" are vital for keeping a society united, healthy and strong, especially in large countries with diverse populations like the United States. This is known very well in the highest levels of government. In fact, government officials in the United States jealously guarded America's image and hype in previous decades. So, why is this negativity and destructive criticism being allowed today? If influential Americans were using their freedom of expression to undermine American society, which is clearly being done today, would the nation's deep state or its intelligence services allow it? Of course not. In fact, it would be their job to stop it. The relentless unmasking of the American empire by many prominent Americans today (i.e. all the political commentators, analysts, journalists, historians, authors, politicians, servicemen, activists, celebrities and agents of various intelligence services that are publicly airing the empire's dirty laundry today) can only lead to societal ailments and eventually, what's come to be known as a national divorce.

As President Putin pointed out in 2022, the West is truly an empire of lies, and prominent Americans today are proving it to the world. This does not bode well for the empire.

As previously mentioned, this simply cannot happen without permission from the American deep state or its intelligence community. The deep state can stop all this in a blink of an eye. Not only is it not resisting the effort to sow fear, hate and division in America society, it actually seems to be encouraging it. A lot of the highly critical and/or divisive rhetoric we are seeing in the United States today is actually being put out by individuals connected to the intelligence services of the country. "Former" CIA agents and special forces types revealing "secret" information that shocks and angers the public has become quite common in recent years. And  my favorite, God giving "pastors" MAGA visions of the future. There is flood of this kind of messaging throughout in social media and the entertainment industry, and virtually all of them predict doom, cast a negative light on the United States. News flash: there are no such thing as a "former" CIA agent or a special forces operative. And, no, God does not talk to rednecks. These people however are not crazy. So, why is this being done? This goes way beyond intelligence gathering (i.e. setting up anti-government operations to track potential troublemakers). In my humble opinion, they are shaping minds (i.e. social engineering) towards a goal. I don't pretend to disagree with varied criticisms directed towards United States. Yes, the country has been acting like a ravenous monster on the world stage. Yes, Washington is utterly corrupt and needs deep reforms. Yes, Americans are for the most part under-educated and over-medicated. What I am instead pointing out is that what is happening in the United States today is not a disjointed effort by random people who just happen to be disgruntled or disillusioned. There are real forces at play here, and they have an agenda.
 
Simply put, the toxic atmosphere in the United States today is a direct by-product of a deliberate and concerted effort to undermine the country. It looks and feels as if a powerful entity beyond our purview or comprehension has decided to take a sledgehammer to the United States as we knew it.

They are creating a certain mood. They are preparing ground for something big. There is an end game here. From my perspective, they are seeding society for a civil war. It certainly feels as if they are looking to gradually break-apart the country. Every aspect of American civilization today is being assaulted and trashed by some group, be it domestic, be it foreign. The very essence of what it means to be an American is being turned on its head today. The meticulously crafted facade of the empire is gradually unraveling. The hype has certainly faded. The image has been forever tarnished. The mask is finally coming down. Washington's dirty laundry is being aired for all  to see. All this is happen at a time when American power and influence is waning and new powers are emerging. The political atmosphere in the United States has changed quite drastically during the past 20-25 years. The deep fissures we see in American society and the political instability we see in Washington today have been a relatively recent phenomenon. Although the empire's ailments have their roots in the 1960s, its severity began getting noticed with the proliferation of the internet in the early 2000s. In hindsight, social media was clearly being used to shape minds. Prior to the 2000s, one could see it only on the very fringes of American society, and that mostly within America's militia groups and self-styled socialists.
 
Today, voices calling for civil war, revolution and the downfall of the American empire have gone mainstream. And that is the worrying part.
 
The unpopular Covid-19 lockdowns, forced vaccinations and racial tensions that plagued the country concurrently didn't help the situation. The 2020 election dispute then exasperated the situation. In my opinion, 2020 can be seen as a turning-point in American society. There is a national divorce process currently taking place. Is this what President Trump had in mind when he recently said, the American Civil War didn't need to take place because it could have been negotiated? In other words, the Union could have let the Confederation break way? Sound dubious indeed. Nevertheless, the very face of the country is changing. The old America, on the very verge of death, is trying to fend-off the new America that is in the process of forming. Roughly half of the country hates the other half today. Those who experienced the United States prior to the 1990s would not recognize the United States of today. What is happening in the country is unprecedented in its history. Never before has the American empire been placed under such scrutiny. Never before has the United States looked this bad. Never before has the United States been this divide. American society today is more divided, in real terms (i.e. demographically, culturally and politically), than it was during the Civil War. This begs the question: why are they (whoever the "they" may be) doing this? Is it because the United States gotten too large, too powerful, too wealthy, too arrogant, too complacent, too wasteful, too well-fed and therefore too dangerous? In other words, has the United States, as it currently  operates, become too unsustainable? Perhaps. Does the United States therefore need to be shrunk, streamlined, reconfigured or simply dismantled? Time will tell. Are there paranormal or rather spiritual forces at play? Most definitely. I firmly believe that there is a spiritual/supernatural aspect to what is currently taking place not only in the United States but in the rest of the world as well.

All this, in my opinion, should be seen as the backdrop to President Trump's rise to power. This is the grand yet ominous picture we need to fit President Trump into to better understand what is taking place today.
 
Even if we take out the deep state or globalist factor from the above equation, the verdict would still look very bad for the United States. In other words, even if there was no hidden, conspiratorial hand guiding President Trump and Elon Musk today, the prognosis for the United States would still look bad, especially for the long-term. And the following is why: The public's trust in government today is the lowest ever recorded. Mental health problems in the country has reached record levels. Drug abuse has reached record levels. America's economic backbone, its middle class continues to shrink. American society is more divided along racial lines than ever before. White Americans today are dying faster than they are being born. The empire's debt is at record levels. The future of the country, those born around the turn of the millennium, is perhaps the dumbest generation ever born. More importantly, as previously mentioned, the US dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, Washington's main tool of imperial control around the world, is looking increasingly vulnerable with the emergence of a multipolar world. In the past, money could wantonly be printed and Americans could go about their daily business, only as long as the US dollar remained the world's reserve currency. Washington could only finance its wars around the world, only if the US dollar remained the world's reserve currency. The American empire, as we know it, will collapse if the US dollar is dethroned. In the past, Uncle Sam was able to murder any leader that threatened the US dollar (e.g. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi). Today, that is no longer the case. Even bribery is not as effective as it has been the past because the Chinese are also using money to gain influence, and unlike American money, Chinese money often does not come with strings attached. The American empire is no longer the world's top economy. Barring any major disasters in China, Beijing will far-surpass the United States economically in the near future. Washington is no longer as powerful or as influential as it had been during much of the post-Soviet period. The Russo-Ukrainian war proved this. American propaganda no longer works, not even in Third World countries.
 
Moreover, the demographic that for better or for worst placed the United States on the world map, its Christian-European population, is dying off and being replaced by Hispanics. In other words, the "barbarians" are encroaching on the empire, and will soon outnumber its natives.
 
Bloated, overextended and under threat by rising powers, the empire today stands at a crossroads. And now, there is a firebrand at the helm in Washington, and he has an overarching agenda to reform the empire and wage imperial wars. There will be repercussions. There will be blow-back. There will be unintended consequences. The country is ailing from within and it cannot afford or withstand imperial wars, nor can it afford domestic shock-therapy by dubious personalities. In any case, what was known as "Pax Americana" is now over, and many in the United States today fear that what will follow may be worst. Whatever the case may be, the United States will never be the same after recent events. A number of tremors, both political and economic, can be expected going forward. The economy is already teetering on the brink of a serious downturn. President Trump's domestic foes are preparing for unrest in the American homeland. Iran is preparing for a war. China is preparing for a war. Europe is doubling-down on Ukraine after getting abandoned by President Trump. After what I have been seeing transpire in the imperial capitol in recent times, I am more convinced than ever before that President Trump is indeed America's Gorbachev, and Musk's Doge may very well be its Perestroika and Glasnost.

President Trump is ushering in the era of post-Pax Americana
 
Whether it's building or demolishing, political policy needs to be carried-out carefully, gradually and judiciously. Why is the Trump administration attempting drastic reforms in practically all sectors of government? And why is it being done so aggressively and so recklessly? Musk's Doge is taking the sledgehammer, or rather the chainsaw, to storied institutions that project American power around the world. The United States is a global power. The American empire lives-off of the global financial/economic system that it meticulously crafted for itself throughout the 2oth century. The empire's tentacles reach every corner of the globe. The empire, as it currently exists, is intrinsically connected to the global system. If all roads led to Rome in the ancient world, all roads have led to Washington in modern times, primarily as a result of the work performed by the institutions, organizations and agencies that are being purged by the Trump administration today. Destroy those roads, or simply make it unsafe for nations to travel on, the empire will fall. Regardless of the criminality, degeneracy and corruption that plagues them all, the agencies being exposed and silenced today have been the tools of America statecraft that imperial officials used to manipulate and exploit nations around the world. They are powerful tools of political subversion, financial coercion, espionage, blackmail and regime change, and they benefited the empire greatly for many decades. They in-fact gave the empire its global reach and distinct and unparalleled edge over its adversaries.
 
Why purge them now, and why do so in the ugliest manner?
 
Using displeasure with Woke or DEI as justification for shutting down entire organizations is, frankly speaking, insincere.  Operational changes could have been made within the said organizations, and done so quietly. Fixing the border, fixing the economy and doing away with DEI/Woke nonsense are the ONLY things that President Trump's voter base wanted. Why are they going after institutions and organizations, USAID and NED for instance, that make imperial statecraft possible? This is NOT something one would do if the intent was to preserve or increase the empire's power and influence. In other words, purging such organizations will NOT make America great again. What is being done does not make sense, from an American perspective. Undermining such organizations undermines Washington's power projection. This is why some are conflicted about what President Trump Elon Musk are doing. Perhaps this is also why some infighting has begun within the Trump administration.
 
Moreover, President Trump and company are publicly ridiculing traditional allies, with the exception of Israel of course. And Ukraine was ceremoniously betrayed on the world stage. How does this serve the interests of the United States? Deals could have been made with Moscow behind the scenes. Why was there the need for a spectacle in the White House? What's more, what signal is the Trump White House sending to the world by threatening to annex Greenland, Canada, Panama and the Gaza Strip? What signal is the Trump White House sending to the world by threatening to invade Mexico? What signal is the Trump administration trying to send by threatening to invade Iran and China? What's more, global competitors around the world are being threatened with tariffs and sanctions. Imperial wars and sanctions will eventually backfire. Even if all this is rhetorical hyperbole or some form of pressure tactic, what President Trump and team are doing is thoroughly shattering the masterfully crafted image of the United States on the world stage. More importantly, does any of this help the US dollar's global reserve status? The venerable but recently increasingly vulnerable financial system of the empire, already severely undermined by previous ruling administrations, is being further tampered with and eroded by the Trump administration. The political and financial system in the United States certainly needs reform, but like this?Antagonizing traditional allies does not work. If this is a form of shock-therapy intended help the United States recover from its ailments, which is what President Trump's supporters imply at times, it won't work. I am sure they know this. These people may be arrogant but they are not stupid. What is happening today is well planned.
 
From my standpoint, what's being done in Washington today cannot be explained away through a MAGA or America First perspective, nor can it be explained by the Trump's administration desire to fix relations with Russia in order to raise tensions with Iran and/or China. What's being done can only hurt Washington's war efforts. In my opinion, what's being done in Washington today can only be described as a controlled demolition of some of the most important institutions of the United States. Again, this make no sense from a MAGA or America First perspective. This, again, begs the question: why is this being done?
I sense the presence of a hidden hand guiding events behind the scenes. I sense dubious intentions.

All in all, what is happening in Washington today is very strange, unprecedented and, from an American standpoint, concerning. President Trump's actions will inevitably lead to a number of very negative consequences, not only for the United States but also for nations around the world, because of the global reach the empire has had and the codependency it had developed with many nations around the world. Smashing to pieces strategic components of the imperial machine can only usher in better times for competitors and enemies of the United States, not for the United States itself. The vacuum left by USAID and NED will only be filled by Russia and China. By destroying of undermining the roads that lead to the imperial capitol, the Trump administration may be diverting traffic to Beijing and Moscow. What's being done by the Trump administration and Elon Musk today does not make much sense from a MAGA or America First perspective. Again, what they are doing today cannot be explained away by saying: this is all a plan to fix relations with Russia in order to confront China and/or Iran. That makes no sense. Not a single thing that President Trump and Elon Musk have been doing in Washington today needed to be done if the plan was to simply drive a wedge between Moscow, Beijing and Tehran, nor is it beneficial for the empire in general. Something else must therefore be happening behind the scenes. This is why I sense a hidden hand behind recent events. There must be another agenda. To have an idea of what the agenda is generally about, I think we need to look at Project 2025; but I think even this is only the tip of the iceberg. From the way things are beginning to look, the agenda at hand is to fundamentally change or transform the United States; in my opinion, in ways that will eventually make the country unrecognizable.

I have no way of knowing what the actual end-product will be, although I have a theory, as the reader will see later in the commentary, the process has nevertheless started in earnest.

I repeat, fixing the border, fixing the economy and doing away with DEI/Woke nonsense are the only things that President Trump's voter base wanted. What's being done in Washington today can only be described as controlled demolition of some of the most important institutions of the United States. This is why since 2016 I have been suggesting that President Trump may be the American empire's Gorbachev and that he is, at least in-effect, serving a Globalist agenda under the guise of patriotism. In my opinion, President Trump is a much greater enigma than Gorbachev. There is in-fact a distinct paranormal or metaphysical feel about Donald Trump. The same can be said about Elon Musk. Which naturally brings up yet another question. Ds President Trump and Elon Musk actually understand what they are doing? It can certainly be argued that the Trump administration's policies in Washington is undermining the United States. It can be argued that their actions in the imperial capitol is strengthening the empire's foes on the world stage. Is President Trump and Elon Musk doing all this intentionally, or are they being manipulated by powers we do not see or understand? In President Trump's case,  being that he is a very self-absorbed and egotistical individual by nature (arrogant and egotistical people are easily manipulated and led astray), he may actually feel like he has a rendezvous with destiny or greatness. He may therefore mean well, but he needs to be reminded that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. That being said, what is going on in Elon Musk's case?
 
One of the keys to begin understanding what's going on in Washington today is understanding Elon Musk.
 
The media hype around Elon Musk in the past was specifically designed to impress the public and set the general mood. So was his supposed championing of free speech. They were clearly paving his way forward into the political landscape in the United States. Simply put, it was psy-ops in preparation for today's events. In any case, it is very strange how a strange young man like Elon Musk rose essentially out of nowhere to become the world's richest man, the world's smartest man, the man that wants to put chips in our brains, and the man that is one of President Trump's closest advisors. How did that happen? Nor is Elon Musk particularly a "patriotic American". People don't get to where Elon Musk is simply by being intelligent or entrepreneurial. There is much more to Elon Musk than meets the eye. In my humble opinion, Elon Musk was deliberately placed into his current role in the imperial capitol by higher powers I often talk about. It's pure speculation on my part, but Elon Musk's arrival in Washington was most likely to make sure that President Trump carries-out the drastic reforming, or downsizing of the American empire as I see it, according to plan.
 
If I had to guess, I would say Elon Musk is President Trump's handler; perhaps even his Globalist handler.
 
President Trump is staying true to his assigned role as a Gorbachevian figure tasked with pulling back the empire's long and costly tentacles, restructuring Washington's utterly corrupt and inefficient political system, and, in the process, forever transforming American society. What we are seeing in Washington may therefore be subterfuge, or rather a smoke-and-mirrors by higher powers to undermine the United States under the guise of patriotism. In any case, as a result of the changes we are currently seeing take place, both in the imperial homeland and around the world, the United States is heading into uncharted territories. In fact, what is happening in the imperial capitol today looks and feels like a palace coup, a civil war or a revolution. Some liken it to spiritual warfare. There is a sudden and drastic change of atmosphere in the imperial homeland. Battle-lines are being drawn, both domestically and abroad. The incumbent administration is preparing. The domestic opposition is preparing. The empire's foes around the world are preparing. This may be the calm before the storm. There will be a historic clash. Signs are everywhere:

Chris Hedges: The Purge of the Deep State and the Road to Dictatorship

Bernie Sanders: A Sad Moment in American History

Unmasking the Anti-Democracy Agenda of Project 2025

Chris Hedges: The Mafia State

US Law Professor Calls for Military Coup to Remove Trump

Is This the End of American Democracy?

Since politics does not take place in a vacuum, and because there is always an equal and opposite reaction for every action, there will most likely be severe push-back against the Trump administration at some point in the very foreseeable future, both from within and from without. President Trump's domestic opposition is preparing itself for battle. Iran is preparing for war. China is preparing for war. Europe is preparing for war. The United States is preparing for war. If the Trump administration goes to war against Iran and/or China, or any major power, it will regret it. Imperial wars, coupled with the Trump administration's domestic goals, as outlined in Project 2025, will most likely result in the worsening of living standards in the United States and the further shrinking of the middle class. It can therefore be argued that President Trump's MAGA pursuits may only result in MAPA or MAWA; make America poor again, make America weak again. We may also witness an increase in sociopolitical and/or racial tensions; civil unrest; severe political infighting in the imperial capitol; revival of the controversial Monroe Doctrine; tensions with Canada, European Union, Greenland, Panama, Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela; and worsening of relations with the European Union.

Could this all be smoke-and-mirrors, something that looks a certain way but it's not in reality? Or, could this be a genuine effort to embark on a much-overdue imperial renovation project? Regardless of intention, it does not bode well for the United States. Where will all this lead? What is the end-game? What are they preparing ground for? What are they seeding? There are a lot of questions. There are a lot of theories. There is a lot of speculation. What is certain however is that there is much more brewing behind the scenes. What we see is only the tip of the iceberg. They certainly are preparing for something much bigger. The following is my working hypothesis:
The idea of a North American Union was first floated in the early 2000s. Similar in concept to the multinational body known today as the European Union, the North American Union envisions a political, economic, and most likely military, merger between United States, Canada and Mexico. Similar to how Brussels acts as the administrative capitol of the European Union, Washington would similarly act as the administrative epicenter of the North American Union. Public discussion about this historic project dissipated after the 2008 stock market crash. I presume the timing was not right. The matter was therefore shelved. The supranational agenda may be making a comeback. Why now? I have long speculated that the United States, as it currently exists, is no longer sustainable. The empire can't pay its debt. The empire is overextended. The empire's population will be majority multicultural within a generation. The global south is on the rise. BRICS is on the rise.  Russia and China are on the rise. A multipolar world is on the rise. Nations around the world are moving away from the US dollar. As a result of all this, the US dollar is expected to lose its title as the sole global reserve currency within the foreseeable future. These are all serious, long-term problems for the empire. And the Trump administration may be making matters worst for the United States. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 may also make matters worst. Project 2025 will only result in deepening the country's divide by radicalizing both, Left and Right wings of American society. To survive this century, fundamental changes, or rather adjustments, are needed for Washington. Otherwise, the United States, as we know it, will eventually fall apart. In my opinion, this is where the North American Union comes into the picture. However, selling such a concept to the general public, especially to Americans, won't be an easy task to say the least. The question therefore is, how would the project's backers make the affected populations (i.e. Americans, Canadians and Mexicans) supportive or, at the very least, passive to the idea? That is the concerning part for me. The implementation of such an ambitious and audacious project will no doubt require a number of political and/or economic shocks, especially within the United States, as its population would be the most opposed to such a supranational project.
 
I therefore ask, will the shocks that the United States may be put through in the coming years as a result of the Trump administration's controversial actions eventually lead to such an outcome later within this century? Does the agenda pertaining to the North American Union lie behind President Trump's bellicose rhetoric concerning Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama? Does the Trump administration's desire to devaluate the US dollar have anything to do with setting the ground for its collapse? In other words, are they gradually preparing the ground for the Amero, the a new North American currency? Needless to say, all this is pure speculation on my part. That being said, as I have shown the reader, the said agenda certainly exists. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Time will tell.
 
All in all, the American empire is transforming, and it is not by happenstance. Just as the American civil war in the mid-19th century and the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century became major milestones for the United States, so will President Trump's two terms in office. However, unlike the first two milestones that propelled the United States upward, President Trump's political era will most likely have the opposite effect. For better or for worst, a new America is coming. For better or for worst, a new world order is coming. From the looks of it, Washington will henceforth worry less about the rights of transvestites in Bangladesh and Kosovo and start worrying more about its survival in a rapidly changing world. At the very least, Uncle Sam needs to tighten its belt, lose some weight, and begin worrying more about its business. It's high time that the ugly face of the American empire - ignoring the nation's venerable constitution, committing crimes around the world, engaging in global drug trade, arbitrarily and unilaterally toppling governments, fomenting wars, supporting terrorism, pursuing Neo-Marxist agendas both in the United States and abroad, the institutionalized corruption that is wasting trillions of dollars - is finally being exposed. Washington needs to at the very least abandon its pursuit of global empire, a supranational agenda rooted in neo-Trotskyism, and revert back to being the republic is was meant to be by its founding fathers. The trillions of US dollars being wasted on imperial wars, regime change and social engineering projects around the world can be put to much better use within the American homeland. At the very least, American officials should primarily concern themselves with the western hemisphere. We are once again living in times of great power politics. We are entering a multipolar world order. Buckle up, as it will most likely be a very bumpy ride. The strong and the cunning will survive, and the weak and the naive will be culled or simply absorbed by bigger powers. At the end of the process, and only God knows when that will be, the American empire will most likely morph into a different creature altogether.
 
If America is the reincarnation of Rome, is President Trump the reincarnation of Julius Caesar?

If you want to see what will happen in the future, look to the past. Time is not linear, it's circular. Similar to the cycles in nature, history is also cyclical. This is why history is known to repeat. The Trumpian spectacle we are  witnessing in the imperial capitol today feels very Romanesque, or rather Caesarian. I have written previously about my belief that the United States is quite literally the reincarnation of the Roman Empire. This is not merely a gut feeling or intuition of mine. The signs are actually in plain sight. To highlight a few of the fundamentals: Rome was initially a kingdom, it then transformed into a republic, it then morphed into an empire. Overgrown, overstretched and thus unsustainable, Rome gradually fell to former slaves and "barbarians". The much revered and feared empire eventually fragmented into several pieces. The trajectory of the history of the United States is eerily similar to that of Rome's, albeit without it's final phases, as of yet. Moreover, political and societal culture in the United States is very similar to that of Rome's. To make this point clearer, consider America's civilizational lure for the "barbarians" of the world. Consider the lure of American citizenship, American money, American products, American music and American clothing. Washington's imperial wars, the imperial hubris of American officials, the large, non-native populations of the imperial homeland and the exploitation of peoples around the world. Washington's institutionalized corruption and high profile political assassinations. Washington's Romanesque governing institutions like the Senate, architecture, urban planning and state monuments. Consider the similarities between American and Roman "bread and circus" (entertainment and government handouts), the sports spectacles and the pornography that both the United States and Rome are known for. Consider the prominent place the Latin language held in American learning insinuations, the fascination English speaking peoples have with Rome, and last but not least, the prominent role Jews played in both, the American and Roman empires.
 
I always felt that modern American society was a very close reflection of imperial Roman society. I always felt that the American empire was the actual resurrection of the Roman Empire. Therefore, imagine my astonishment when I more recently discovered that Washington DC was initially called Rome. All in all, there is a very tangible and, in my opinion, a paranormal connection between American and Roman civilizations. If the United States is the Roman Empire's reincarnation, which it certainly is, then it stands to reason that famous Roman personalities must be walking among us again. President Trump may very well be the reincarnation of a famous Roman official. I recently found a number of people throughout Cyberia and beyond making similar claims. I will not venture to guess who President Trump is the reincarnation of, but some are likening him to Julius Caesar. Apperently, many around the world today see/feel the connection between the United States and Rome. The following is just a small sampling of what a simple search on YouTube turned up:
Washington Was Originally Named Rome, Maryland

'President Trump' Gets Stabbed To Death In Modern Day Version Of 'Julius Caesar'

The similarities between the two most powerful and most influential empires in recorded history are in my opinion much more than circumstantial or incidental. There is clearly a paranormal aspect to the similarities between American and Roman civilizations. And if the United States is quite literally the Roman Empire's reincarnation, then it stands to reason that Donald Trump may be a reincarnation of a political figure in Roman history. And here's where it gets problematic for the reincarnated Rome. Certain periods in Rome were particularly bloody and tumultuous. And there are political observers and historians today that see parallels between President Trump and Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was also a firebrand and a mercurial leader who through his charisma and cunning, transformed Rome much to the chagrin of the Roman elite. He was famously assassinated as a result by Roman senators. His assassination was historically significant for the empire because it marked the beginning of the end of old Rome and the start of a politically violent and unstable new Roman. In short, I fear for President Trump's life. He should therefore fear his Praetorian Guard. The first couple of assassination attempts on President Trump were orchestrated or rather faked by the deep state to boost his ratings and turn him into a modern day hero. It worked. They got him back into the White House. Next assassination attempt may however not be fake. It's more than just a gut feeling. Such an event may ignite serious unrest in the country. I think serious sociopolitical unrest and political violence awaits the United States in the coming years.
 
What will the next few years look like?
I am not a prophet or a psychic, nor do I have a hotline to Vladimir Vladimirovic. I do however have good insight and intuition when it comes to geopolitics. Moreover, I am a student of history. Said otherwise, I have a good sense of where things are going, generally speaking. And I do my best to remain intellectually honest. That the United States, as we knew it, is in a historic decline and the country has changed drastically in recent years is a foregone conclusion. We are most certainly entering a post-American period in world history. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, including MAGA Americans, but all empires eventually fall after reaching their peak. In my opinion, the American empire's peak were the seventy five years between 1945 and 2020. Today, the American empire is clearly passed it prime. The United States is no longer the world's policeman, the beacon of democracy or the shining city on the hill. Today, the United States is just another greedy superpower hellbent on power. And here is the problem, as I see it. When large empires go into decline, they always leave a lot of misery and bloodshed in their wake. Wars are a natural by-product of imperial decline simply because nations around the world begin maneuvering and readjusting to the new political order that begins to take shape. The wars and shifts in political and economic alliances we are seeing today are ultimately the consequences of Washington's decline as the world's sole superpower power in the post-Soviet period. Collapse, in some form, naturally follows decline. That being said, I don't think that the collapse or transformation of the American empire will come in a single, big event. Instead, it will most likely be a long and arduous process.
 
That being said, a major war that does not go as planned and/or the dethronement of the US dollar, which will happen at some point during this century, will drastically speed-up the empire's decline and eventual fall. The United States, as we know it, will certainly collapse if the US dollar loses its position as the global reserve currency. Once that happens, the empire's powerful civilizational lure will dissipate as well. It's only a matter of time. While no mortal knows when any of this will happen, we nevertheless are in the midst of the said process. In fact, the process started back in 2016. Donald Trump's first presidential term in the White House sent shock-waves throughout American society and kick-started the fundamental changes we are continuing to see in the imperial homeland to this day. I wrote three blog commentaries on the subject matter at the time:
The process that was started by President Trump in 2016 was interrupted for a single presidential term, perhaps due to the impending Russo-Ukrainian war, which imperial officials may have wanted to keep President Trump out of as they tried to bring Russia to its knees. In any case, the American society will most likely experience political, economic and ethnic/racial instability in the coming years. The country may also experience major cyber attacks, problems with the national power-grid, a new pandemics, a major stock market crash, devaluation of the US dollar, increasing inflation, economic recession, dollar devaluation, terrorism (of the false flag kind) and natural disasters. The middle class will continue shrinking. The rich will continue getting richer. The poor will continue getting poorer. Some states may at some point attempt to leave the Union. Socialistic sentiments in the country will grow rapidly during the entire process. We may even see another pandemic, most likely related to the Bird Flu. And on the world stage, China, and to a lesser extent Russia, hold the potential of becoming this century's most powerful and influential countries. The next few may therefore be a very bumpy ride for humanity. I am not imply that the United States will disappear from the world map by the end of this century. Despite its ailments, the country remains vibrant and energetic and Americans still have a sense of destiny. The United States will certainly survive, in some form, perhaps, as previously mentioned, rebranded as the North American Union. Nevertheless, the country will no longer have the political, economical, financial or military weight it once had.
 
The transformation, and perhaps the downsizing of the American empire, has already been initiated by President Trump and company, interestingly enough, under the guise of MAGA patriotism.

None of this is by chance. These are not random occurrences. Donald Trump was not merely in the right place at the right time and just happened to become emperor. This is not about one special interest or another. President Trump was predestined and preordained for this historic task. He was born under this star. He has a sense of his destiny. He has a task to perform. A brief word about historic figures. Politically significant figures in history are more often than not given to us by the lords of this world (this includes treasonous degenerates like Armenia's Pashinyan and Ukraine's Zelensky). Regarding the question who or what these lords are is still open to debate. In any case, pivotal figures in history are tailor-made for their respective societies by such forces. As such, Armenians and Ukrainians got treasonous and destructive degenerates, essentially because that is what their societies wanted or deserved. And Americans got a divisive reformer and a firebrand, essentially because that is what the overconfident, overgrown and seriously unsustainable empire needed at this stage in its history. President Trump's rise to power in the imperial capitol has ushered in a new period in the empire.
Simply put, men like Pashinyan, Zelensky and Trump were custom-made for their roles in their respective societies. And if Pashinyan and Zelensky succeeded in carrying-out their given tasks, I have no reason to believe President Trump won't. Even if what we are seeing transpire in Washington today is a carefull planned deception or smoke-and-mirrors for reasons we do not yet know, as the more skeptical among us believe, President Trump's second term in the White House it is still a stunning milestone in the history of the United States, and no less a dangerous one. In other words, even if President Trump was not brought to power by unseen hands for the purpose of gradually dismantling or transforming the American empire, the political processes that are currently in-play today, both in the imperial homeland and abroad, are real and will inevitably lead to the decline of the American empire.

In hindsight, February 24, 2022 and January 20, 2025 were dawns of a new era. Both dates will be seen as turning-points in world history.

In closing, I intentionally presented a number of open-ended questions in this commentary because I myself have not yet been able to fully wrap my mind around what is currently taking place not only in Washington but also around the world. Many questions will therefore remain unanswered, until time itself answers some of them. That said, what I do know beyond any doubt is that humanity is living in historic times. We are living in times of major changes. We are living in times of civilizational clashes. It all feels orchestrated by forces we do not see or understand.  All in all, 2025 is living up to its expectations. I firmly believe that worldly processes are a reflection of spiritual processes taking place in the supernatural realm. This applies to the individual level as well. As above, so below. Donald Trump is an enigma indeed. He is indeed a mercurial character preordained to carry-out a historic task. He is not random person who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was brought to the imperial capitol by forces we do not comprehend. He also has a sense of destiny. In other words, he knows he is ushering in a new era in American politics. Donald Trump's sudden appearance in the imperial capitol will be looked at by future generations as a Black Swan event in political history. The United States will be forever changed by the time he departs this world. Unbeknownst to the empire's MAGA patriots and Liberal degenerates alike, a historic process has started. It's going to be a long road before things settle once again. While we can speculate, only time will reveal where it's going and what the final product will exactly look like. Humanity is nevertheless teetering on the brink of something big. We stand on the cusp of a new world order.
 
Arevordi,
Winter, 2025

***
 
Alexander Dugin: Trump Has a Plan
 

What Trump is doing after coming to power in the U.S. is astonishing. He is rapidly and irreversibly changing the structure of the entire world order. During his first term, Trump hinted at necessary reforms, but four years in office and another four years in radical opposition have turned him into a convinced bearer of a very specific ideology. As evidenced by the first two weeks of his presidency, Trump intends to implement this ideology at all costs.

What is this ideology?

First and foremost, we must establish its main and defining characteristic: Trump is a convinced and consistent opponent of globalism and liberalism at all levels, in all spheres, and in every sense.

Trump opposes globalism because he rejects any supranational institutions (the UN, WHO, EU, and so on) and, like classical realists, believes that the supreme authority is the sovereign nation-state, above which there is nothing and no one. This is precisely the meaning of his slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). According to this idea, the U.S. is primarily a great power that must act on the global stage as a full-fledged subject, concerned only with achieving its own goals and defending its values and interests. Trump’s ideology rejects any hint of internationalism or rhetoric about “universal human values,” “world democracy,” “human rights,” and the like. The absolute imperative is America and its prosperity. Those who agree with this project are friends or allies; those who oppose it are enemies. The U.S. has no goals other than its own prosperity, and no authority has the right to dictate to Americans what to do, how to act, what to believe in, or what to worship.

Globalism is based on the opposite logic: it posits that the role of the U.S. is to be a bastion, defender, and sponsor of liberal democracy, serving supranational interests and an ultra-liberal ideology, even at the expense of its own interests or through self-repudiation. Globalists think in terms of humanity, while Trump thinks in terms of America. This reflects fundamental contradictions in international relations theory between realists (like Trump) and liberals (like Biden, Obama, Clinton, and even Republican George W. Bush).

Trump’s ideology fundamentally contradicts the geopolitical and ideological direction that has dominated the U.S. since the 1980s. This direction, rooted in liberal progressivism, promotes the idea that the individual should be continuously liberated from social ties and obligations, even severing ties with biological sex and human nature itself (hence the themes of cyborgs and posthumanism). In global politics, this meant a gradual transition from nation-states to a unified world under a global government, with parallel erosion of sovereignties (similar to the modern EU model).

Trump rejected both liberal ideology and the geopolitics of globalism — firmly and decisively. He began reshaping global reality with tremendous energy, drastically altering almost everything within his first two weeks in office. It is clear what kind of world Trump rejected and is currently dismantling — the world envisioned and built by globalists. Its parameters and methods are well understood, as is the logical outcome it sought to achieve. But Trump interrupted this trajectory, making his actions largely irreversible. Now, let us try to understand the world Trump is attempting to build in its place.

One tempting way to describe it would be as a multipolar world — a world of civilizations without a single dominant ideological or geopolitical force. This vision aligns with the ambitions of other major civilizations, such as China, India, the Islamic world, Africa, and Latin America, which have united in the BRICS coalition. Although Trump’s reforms could objectively lead to this outcome, he does not seem to see things from this perspective. He is unlikely to consciously embrace multipolarity, though some of his supporters, like Marco Rubio, have openly acknowledged it as an emerging reality.

Trump views the new world order as a final break with both the Yalta system and the unipolar moment of globalism. This explains his efforts to dismantle international institutions associated with the past eighty years, including the UN, WHO, USAID, and even NATO. Trump envisions the U.S. as a new empire, likening himself to Augustus, who abolished the decaying republic. His ambitions for Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and even Mexico reflect this imperial vision.

For Trump, the U.S. is a great power, the embodiment of humanity’s dreams, but one focused inward — shining on a hill as an attractive ideal. All nations admire and fear it. No one dares challenge it, and it owes nothing to anyone. It is not a universal donor but a global subject. The U.S. does not replace humanity but represents its best and chosen part — the most efficient, successful, wealthy, free, and prosperous society on the planet. To become part of it requires effort. This is why Trump despises illegal immigrants. The U.S. is not a revolving door for lazy and unskilled masses seeking welfare while despising traditional values. Being an American is a privilege and a mark of distinction. Others may admire or curse the U.S. from afar, but it does not matter. Those who challenge it will face the full might of its military.

Trump is not advocating Western hegemony but direct American national hegemony. His vision does not accept multipolarity — it proposes a new unipolar world built on radically different premises than those of liberals and globalists. In the U.S., this means dismantling the globalist liberal elites, likely through a harsh purge. Having faced persecution, harassment, and even assassination attempts, Trump knows that the scope of his reforms leaves no room for error. He strikes first and, when necessary, systematically eliminates his domestic enemies — a process he has already begun and will not stop.

Regarding Europe, Trump likely harbors extremely negative feelings. Elon Musk, his close ally, recently coined the slogan “Make Europe Great Again” (MEGA), implying the overthrow of Euro-globalist elites and the rise of right-wing populists, or Euro-Trumpists. However, Trump himself likely does not believe in a “great Europe,” which would compete with the U.S. Moreover, as long as the EU remains under the control of globalist liberal networks that Trump is uprooting domestically, it is an ideological enemy and geopolitical competitor.

Trump prefers a fragmented Europe of nation-states over a united EU. This creates a dilemma for Euro-Trumpists: they oppose Euro-globalist elites but are also European patriots who want a sovereign and great Europe. To achieve this, they need more than blind loyalty to Trump — they must rely on their own strength or forge complex alliances. This natural progression could lead them towards multipolarity, where there is room for other sovereign powers alongside an American hegemon. Trump’s message is clear: reject the globalist yoke and be like us. Hence, the transition from MAGA to MEGA.

Regarding Russia, Trump recognizes the legitimacy of its opposition to globalism — Russia’s main enemy. However, there will be no concessions of sovereignty. Both Russia and the U.S. assert their empires within a world of great powers beyond globalism. China faces the greatest challenge under Trump. China has skillfully navigated between globalism and sovereignty, benefiting from both strategies. But Trump intends to cut off China’s ability to continue along this path, viewing it as the primary competitor to American hegemony.

The Middle East presents a second challenge for Trump. Unlike most American realists (John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs), Trump adopts a pro-Israel stance, seeing Israel as a miniature version of the U.S. and Netanyahu as his alter ego. Trump’s enemies include Iran, the Shiite world, and Palestinian resistance. India, on the other hand, is seen as a potential ally due to its rivalry with China and its shared values of right-wing politics and sovereignty under Modi. The slogan “Make India Great Again” (MIGA) suits Trump’s vision perfectly. Latin America irritates Trump due to issues like illegal migration, drug cartels, and crime, which threaten the WASP identity of America. But with globalists weakened, Latin America may also strive for greatness despite Trump’s resistance.

Finally, Africa. Trump opposes land seizures from White farmers in South Africa, but African nations may still pursue their vision of greatness. In the end, Trump’s post-liberal world order objectively aligns with multipolarity. By proclaiming the course for a great U.S., he inadvertently opens the door for other great powers — Russia, China, India, Europe, and even the Islamic world, Latin America, and Africa. While Trump may aim for a renewed American hegemony, his actions accelerate the establishment of a multipolar world. BRICS irritates him, but his push for cryptocurrency detaches global finance from dollar dominance. His model directly opposes liberal globalism, symbolizing the dawn of an era of great powers. New horizons are emerging after the decline of globalist hegemony.
 
Alexander Dugin emphasizes that Trump’s rejection of liberal globalism and pursuit of American hegemony inadvertently paves the way for a multipolar world of sovereign great powers.

The End of Pax Americana


In the end, it wasn’t even close. Donald Trump became the first U.S. president since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to be reelected after losing a previous reelection. And he’s only the second Republican to win the popular vote in 36 years. Trump won in a landslide. He helped Republicans take control of the Senate and may well help them keep the House — ensuring single-party control across all three branches of government. He can rightly claim a mandate to implement all the policies he touted.

“I will govern by a simple motto,” he declared in his victory speech. “Promises made, promises kept.”

And he made many promises. Trump will be “dictator” on Day 1. He’ll deport 15 million or more illegal immigrants. He’ll deploy the military against his critics. He’ll go after the media and the Justice Department, impose a loyalty test on civil servants and end federal prosecutions of his past conduct. All the while, he’ll be shielded by a Supreme Court that’s already decided a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for his “official acts.”

It’s doubtful that most Americans actually voted for these promises. Rather, what drove a majority to vote for a man who has lied about losing an election, encouraged sedition and been convicted on 34 felony counts was the same anti-incumbent mood that felled many governments across the world this year. From Britain to South Africa, India to France, voters have punished their leaders at the polls.

And now, this anti-incumbent wave has crested in the U.S., fed — above all — by inflation and uncontrolled immigration. More than half of today’s U.S. population was born after the last major bout of inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Until now, they’d never experienced spikes in prices for housing, groceries and more. Add to that a general sense that immigration has grown out of control, and many of them just voted to throw the bums out. They don’t necessarily like Trump or even agree with his policies, but they want change.

However, elections have consequences. And Trump’s return to power will have major repercussions for the U.S. and the world at large. I’ve long worried about the impact his reelection would have on American democracy, and nothing about this result gives me any comfort. I, for one, believe Trump intends to keep his promises — all of them. I also worry about what this means for the rest of the world. In his first term, Trump made clear he doesn’t buy into Washington’s global leadership role as his predecessors have done. He doesn’t believe in leading — he believes in winning.

Yet, since 1945, the world as we know it has largely been built on the idea of America leading — a Pax Americana that sought to deter enemies and reassure friends; build prosperity by opening markets and encouraging the free movement of goods, capital, people and ideas; and uphold the defense of liberty, democracy and rule of law. It was this global leadership that produced NATO and other alliances, helped rebuild post-war Europe and Asia, and opened trade with the General Agreements of Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization.

America’s enemies long resisted this singular global role — but the Soviet Union succumbed to its internal contradictions, and China eventually realized it had to integrate into the global economy in order to lift its citizens out of poverty. Even so, Moscow and Beijing have long chafed at Washington’s leadership, and for the past decade, they’ve sought to counter and undermine it.

They may now get their wish.

Trump isn’t interested in sustaining the Pax Americana in the ways his 14 predecessors were. He has long seen alliances as protection rackets, where a partnership’s value to the U.S. is how much it gets paid rather than the peace and security it provides. He doesn’t believe in trade or open markets, instead he favors imposing crushing tariffs on U.S. imports — up to levels last seen in the 1930s — even if all economists believe it will bring economic disaster. And far from showing an interest in defending democracy and rule of law, he deeply admires and looks for common cause with the strongmen who oppose both.

The end of the Pax Americana will have profound consequences: For one, the transformation of Europe’s security environment will now be complete. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine already demonstrated the folly of relying on cheap Russian gas to power economies. China’s turn to increased economic self-sufficiency raised serious questions about relying on exports to its growing market for growth. And now, as the U.S. turns away from alliances, the Continent will be forced to become serious about its own defense.

Whether they do so will be up to them, of course, but Washington is unlikely to be of much help.

Meanwhile, in Asia, countries living in the shadow of a more assertive and ambitious China will have to decide whether they’ll find new ways to balance Beijing’s growing power or align more closely with it. And many nations in the global south will enjoy more freedom of maneuver in the short term — though they may also come to find a sudden increase in China’s and Russia’s demands on them. The Pax America will officially end on Jan. 20, 2025, when the U.S. inaugurates Donald J. Trump as its 47th president. The country and world will be very different because of it.
 

Trump is surrendering a century’s worth of U.S. global power in a matter of weeks

Donald Trump didn’t invent the American tradition of ditching our friends like a bad prom date (ask the Kurds, Afghan interpreters or anyone who sat through “Rambo: First Blood Part II”). But since returning to office, he’s taken this all-too-frequent bad habit and made it official U.S. policy.

The latest example? Trump’s conclusion that Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine — you know, the country currently being turned into rubble by Russian missiles — is “not ready for peace” and that he “disrespected the United States of America.” This latter statement (made live on TV during a heated Oval Office meeting), came on the heels of Trump taking to social media to call him a “dictator.”

If irony were a renewable energy source, Trump’s rhetoric could power the United States for a century. Because while Trump throws Zelensky under the bus, his real crush, Vladimir Putin — the guy serially accused of poisoning journalists, the guy whose critics tend to end up dead, jailed or exiled, the guy who wins “elections” by suspicious, predictable landslides — is out here running an actual dictatorship. His troops are raping Ukrainian women, according to investigators; his forces are kidnapping children and flattening cities. But yeah, the real problem is the elected leader trying to stop them.

It would be hard to overstate how rapidly this relationship has fallen apart. In case you missed it, Trump took it upon himself to negotiate Ukraine’s fate without having Ukraine in the room. His team also floated an “offer” to Ukraine straight out of “The Godfather”: Hand over some mineral rights as “payback” for our past help, and maybe we’ll think about letting you keep defending your country. Maybe. And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, during that aforementioned Oval Office meeting, Trump and Vice President JD Vance escalated things to a new low, staging a televised Oval Office attack on Zelensky in a spectacle more suited to the WWE than international diplomacy.

During the exchange, Vance called Zelensky “disrespectful” and said he should be more thankful to Trump. The clash, broadcast for the world to see, wasn’t just a political power move — it was a calculated act of degradation, reinforcing the message that under Trump, Ukraine is expected to grovel for every bullet. It was a diplomatic disaster and a propaganda gift to Moscow, all rolled into one. Never mind the fact that we assured Ukraine (before and after Russia’s invasion) that we’d have their back. If we break that promise now — as it appears we are poised to do — the consequences won’t stop at Kyiv. The message will travel far beyond Ukraine to our allies (who are watching nervously) and our enemies (who are taking notes).

For the better part of a century, America’s foreign policy has boiled down to this: We foot most of the bills and prevent bullies from rolling over weaker sovereign states. In return, we get a world that (mostly) behaves itself. Trump, however, looks at this mutually beneficial deal and assumes he’s getting “scammed.” He views NATO like a group dinner where everyone else orders lobster, and he thinks he’s stuck with the bill.

Why should we pay for security? Why should we defend our allies?

Uh, because it keeps the world from becoming a flaming dumpster fire. The alternative is far worse: Allies either rearm (including nukes) or they start making new, less-savory friends. Neither scenario ends well for the U.S. Let’s talk about our allies. Germany is rearming, which — if you’ve read even a single history book published after 1945 — might make you a bit uneasy. hat said, the free world may need Germany to step up if the U.S. retreats from the global stage like Homer Simpson disappearing into the bushes.

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that … we can really achieve independence from the U.S.A.,” Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz said before the final results of his election were even announced. “After Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans … are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

Among the most recent statements, Trump claimed: “The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. … And they’ve done a good job of it.” In reality, as a bloc, the EU represents our largest trading partner. It’s not just Europe. Longtime friends Australia, Taiwan and Canada (or as Trump calls our neighbor, America’s 51st state) are starting to look around and get nervous. Even Japan — yes, that erstwhile empire we politely asked not to conquer the Pacific ever again — has begun since the first Trump administration to stock up on weapons like there is an apocalypse fire sale.

All of this marks a rather stark departure from the nuclear umbrella and post-war liberal order that — barring a few notable exceptions — has let Americans enjoy a blissful, air-conditioned peace, complete with two-car garages, well-manicured lawns and shopping malls since 1945. But hey, who needs stability when you can have excitement? After all, maintaining these alliances took effort. For one thing, you have to keep sucking up to people who aren’t as strong as you, and probably aren’t chipping in as much cash as they might.

Take, for example, President Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. I remember hearing it as a boy and thinking, “Why all the talk about the Allies?” I mean, Reagan raves about the “impossible valor of the Poles,” “the forces of Free France” and the “unsurpassed courage of the Canadians.” And he throws in seemingly extraneous references to British troops hearing bagpipes and to Lord Lovat of Scotland. Why? Because back then, we knew the world worked better when our friends believed we were in this existential struggle together. Trump seems to be going out of his way to send the opposite message: You’re on your own!

But the biggest reason that abandoning our allies is dumb can be summed up in one word: China. You remember China, right? The country that sends us fentanyl and TikTok propaganda and outnumbers us four-to-one? Well, guess what — if the free world sticks together, we pretty much match them in population, land and strength. But only if we stick together.

Trump, the so-called greatest dealmaker, is out here making the worst deal in American history by giving away U.S. influence, alienating allies, gutting American soft power by dismantling foreign aid and handing power to the people who really want to screw us. Nothing says “America First” like leaving your friends dead last. And here’s the thing: It’s easy to fritter away our power, but it would be a decades-long struggle to regain influence once it’s gone. How does a super power lose its moral authority, allies and standing in the world? Slowly ... and then all at once.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-03-03/trump-ukraine-russia-global-power

The New American Order. Trump Has Defined The Main Vectors Of His Policy
 

The first day of Donald Trump’s presidency was marked by a series of important decrees. On the basis of the decisions taken, it is already possible to make certain predictions for the Republican’s five-year term. The contours of domestic and foreign policy are generally defined. Trump will undoubtedly stick to them. And unlike in 2017, the master of the White House has a team. It should be understood that the change from Democrats to Republicans in the current conditions means a change in the whole paradigm of the United States of America.

The Democrats represent the interests of transnational capital and corporations. First and foremost, the banking sector, the media, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals. They have a globalist foreign policy agenda. They strengthen military-political alliances, support international organisations. They’re moderate in regulating foreign trade, have an ideologically coloured approach to assessing certain political regimes. Democrats rely on so-called ‘rules’ (instead of international law) and seek to eliminate strong nation-states. Republicans (or rather Trumpists) rely on the real economy. The car industry and industry in general, high technology, the space industry – these are the interests of Donald Trump’s cohort.

Capital, which is the basis of the new president’s power, is linked to ‘soil’, not the absence of borders. To protect it, there is no need to carry out punitive operations around the world and spend billions of dollars supporting ‘kamikaze countries’ like Ukraine. It is in the interests of national capital to impose high tariffs on imported goods, to restrict innovative sectors of the economy in competing countries. It’s important to disengage from restrictive norms and rules of international organisations and to protect the state borders. Literally every one of these tasks is reflected in Donald Trump’s 20 January executive orders.

The US is pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and leaving the World Health Organisation. America is suspending aid to foreign countries (including Ukraine) for 90 days to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken. The current aid from the budget ‘serves to destabilise world peace by promoting in foreign countries ideas contrary to the development of harmonious and stable relations within and between countries’.

The president announced the introduction of high tariffs on imported products. In relation to the BRICS countries, they could reach 100%. From 1 February 2025, tariffs of 25% will be imposed on Canadian and Mexican goods. The European Union has even been given an ultimatum. Either EU countries buy more oil and natural gas from the US, or they will face high tariffs. According to Trump, the situation in which the trade deficit between the US and Europe is $300 billion is not normal. The president also reiterated his demand that Europe dramatically increase military spending to 5 per cent of GDP. The United States has spent $200 billion more than its allies on aid to the Kiev regime. ‘ They have to balance things out,’ Trump declared.

‘The United States is demanding reciprocity from our partners. We will no longer bear the financial burden for countries that are unwilling to pay for their own progress. The days of blank cheques are over,’ said Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East Steven Whitkoff.

It is clear that the new administration wants to subjugate the Western Hemisphere and return to the Monroe Doctrine. The president once again said that the US would take back the Panama Canal. In 1999 it was given to Panama and not to China. Now the artery is being used by Beijing. The Americans need Greenland ‘for security’. Denmark will ‘make concessions’, the new master of the Oval Office is sure. A sharp increase in pressure on Liberty Island and Nicolas Maduro is announced. Cuba is back on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Joseph Biden had previously removed Havana from the list, but the decision only lasted a week. Oil purchases from Venezuela are stopped, causing serious economic problems for Caracas.

The main victim of Washington’s new policy is likely to be Mexico. In addition to the tariffs, a US military operation against drug cartels in the north of the Latin American country cannot be ruled out. ‘Mexico probably didn’t want it, but we have to do it. They’re killing our people,’ Trump threatened. Drug cartels would be recognised as terrorist organisations. The experience of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya shows that ‘fighting terrorism’ usually leads to armed intervention. A state of emergency has been declared at the US-Mexico border to ‘repel a catastrophic invasion’ of migrants. An executive order is signed to restrict the right to US citizenship by birth.

One of the key areas of American foreign policy under Trump will be a peaceful settlement in Ukraine. The war must end, the president reiterated. It remains unclear what instruments the White House intends to use to force Moscow into an unfavourable compromise. So far, Russian forces are continuing their offensive in all directions. It is proceeding slowly, but progressively and steadily. It is possible to provide the AFU with more weapons, but Ukraine is running out of mobilisation resources. As the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio rightly pointed out, Kiev’s problem is not that it is running out of money, but that it is running out of people.

It is very likely that Washington will reduce the financial tranches to Kiev and try to shift the main burden of financing to the European Union. At the same time, Russia will be put under economic pressure. ‘Putin has to make a deal. I think he will destroy Russia if he does not make a deal. I think Russia will be in big trouble. Look at their economy, look at the inflation in Russia. So I would hope that Putin and I would have a good relationship and we would find common ground,’ Trump says. There are reasonable doubts about the success of such a plan. The Russian Federation has adapted to the sanctions regime. Washington has run out of restrictive instruments. It is impossible to impose more sanctions.

There are about 19,000 sanctions against Moscow. This compares with around 5,000 against Iran, over 2,000 against North Korea and 747 against Venezuela. Few would argue that the Kremlin is in a worse position than the Iranian or Venezuelan leaders. The Russian economy grew by almost 4% in 2024. Germany’s GDP shrank by 0.2 per cent over the same period. Eurozone GDP grew by just 0.8 per cent. A paradoxical situation is emerging in which those who impose sanctions suffer more than those who are subject to the pressure of sanctions. Restrictions have only unbalanced international trade and led to a surge in inflation.

Trump’s protectionist measures could revive the US real economy and correct foreign trade imbalances. US allies will become more like satellites than partners. However, the downside of Trump’s hardline policy will be the strengthening of the Russia-China alliance and the consolidation of anti-American countries around the Moscow-Beijing axis. As for Ukraine, the president’s excessive pressure on the Kremlin could have disastrous consequences for the Republican administration. Trump’s former strategist during his first term, Steve Bannon, recently warned the new administration against escalation in Ukraine.

‘If we’re not careful, this will turn into Trump’s Vietnam. That’s what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up being the master of the war and it went down in history as his war, not Lyndon Johnson’s,’ Bannon argued.

According to the thinker, the alliance of the defence industry, the Eurobureaucracy and Cold War hawks is preparing a trap for the president. The head of state wants to be dragged into a hopeless war from which he must get out as quickly as possible. Whether Trump will be able to avoid this trap, we will see in the next six months.

Source: https://southfront.press/the-new-american-order-trump-has-defined-the-main-vectors-of-his-policy/

Trump 2.0 will usher in a post-American world order

In a remarkable political comeback, Donald Trump was re-elected president of the United States with help from, among others, tech tycoon Elon Musk. The victory of Trump, a convicted felon, symbolises America’s repudiation of its exceptionalism as a “shining city upon a hill” distinct from the Old World – the dashing of the nation’s long-held moral conceit amid voters’ willingness to succumb to self-interest, even though Trump was described as a “fascist” during his campaign by his own former chief of staff John Kelly.

In this view, Trump’s second term will mark another turn in US foreign policy towards an interest-based transactional approach. How will it impact the geopolitical issues of the day? The most immediate issue is the de facto US and Nato-vs-Russia war in Ukraine. Even though no one believed Trump when he promised to end the war in one day, few doubt that his inclination would be to press for a ceasefire, with the likely result that Russia will keep the Ukrainian territory it has gained through its “special military operation”, regardless of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest “victory plan”.
As for Moscow, it is fresh from the success of the Brics summit it hosted in Kazan last month, a prestigious affair attended by dozens of world leaders and high-ranking officials, including China’s President Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres. With Trump, the self-styled master of the art of the deal, now back in the picture, Russian President Vladimir Putin can be expected to bargain hard over Ukraine and even woo Europe.

If peace in Ukraine could be achieved before or not long after Trump’s inauguration next January, it would kick-start his attempt to break up the American “empire lite”, thus bringing forward the start of a multipolar world order that could see a European identity inclusive of Russia, while the Global South continues to emerge, with China still playing a dominant role in Brics.

Source: https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3285575/trump-20-will-usher-post-american-world-order

The Death of the World America Made

 
On February 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order with the potential to upend decades of American global engagement. The directive mandates a comprehensive review within 180 days of all current multilateral organizations of which the United States is a member and all international treaties to which it is party. The explicit purpose of this exercise is to determine whether such support should be withdrawn. The clock is thus ticking on a distinctive and momentous aspect of post-1945 American internationalism: the strategic decision by successive Republican and Democratic administrations to embed U.S. power in multilateral institutions designed to support a peaceful, prosperous, and just world and to facilitate cooperation on shared global problems.

The immediate targets are narrow and unsurprising. The order declares that the United States will withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council, as it did during Trump’s first term; reconsider membership in UNESCO, a long-standing target of Republicans; and cease all funding for the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees.

Of far greater import is the order’s decree that the secretary of state shall review “all international organizations” of which the United States is a member and “all conventions and treaties” to which it is party, to determine whether these “are contrary to the interests of the United States and whether [they] can be reformed.” The secretary will then recommend to the president “whether the United States should withdraw” from those commitments. In principle, the directive could lead to a U.S. abrogation of thousands of treaties and a departure from hundreds of multilateral organizations.

The Trump administration has of course already pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, announced its intent to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO), and effectively renounced U.S. legal commitments under the 1951 Refugee Convention. The president also plans to dismantle international trade rules in favor of reciprocal bilateral tariffs, signaling the death knell of the ailing World Trade Organization.

This is only the beginning. Countless other international treaties and organizations could be on the chopping block—or in the wood chipper, if you will. It is even plausible that the Trump administration will conclude that an “America First” foreign policy requires pulling the United States out of the UN—and kicking the UN out of the United States. Both are long-standing objectives of conservative nationalists who contend, speciously, that the UN threatens American sovereignty. Such a momentous step would echo America’s 1919 repudiation of the Covenant of the League of Nations, but it would reverberate even more powerfully, given the UN’s centrality as the world’s foundational institution—by virtue of its universal membership, legally binding charter, unique responsibility (via the Security Council) to authorize armed force, and dozens of standing operational agencies. The White House could take similar steps to withdraw from international financial institutions—particularly the World Bank, as explicitly recommended by Project 2025—and eject them from Washington.

Among legal scholars, there is considerable debate and ambiguity over whether the president actually possesses the constitutional authority to leave the UN (which has no formal withdrawal provisions), much less to unilaterally abrogate thousands of treaties (particularly in the absence of a specific termination clause in the relevant instruments of ratification). That is cold comfort. As Trump’s first weeks in office have shown, this White House doesn’t do ambiguity—and there are many ways to wreck institutions without formally leaving them.

The World America Made

It is easy to take for granted America’s long-standing participation in multilateral organizations, alliances, and treaties—or to assume the nation has had no alternative. In fact, there was nothing inevitable about this particular U.S. approach to world order. Viewed in the light of history, the post-1945 decision by the world’s most powerful nation to champion and defend an open, rule-bound international order grounded in multilateral institutions was both anomalous and a choice of monumental importance.

Traditionally, globally dominant powers have been reluctant to accept significant constraints on their freedom of action, since they have so many unilateral and bilateral options available. Moreover, little in America’s experience between 1776 and 1945 suggested it would become the guarantor of an open world order. Through the nineteenth century, the United States pursued an insular, nationalist foreign policy, focusing on continental expansion, hemispheric dominance, and advancing its commercial interests.

That seemed poised to change under president Woodrow Wilson, who championed the League of Nations as a basis for international order after World War I. This episode proved a false dawn. The U.S. Senate ultimately rejected league membership and America retreated to a policy of detachment, failing to help stabilize a deteriorating global security and economic order in the 1920s and 1930s.

It was left to Franklin D. Roosevelt to complete the deal. On the heels of the Great Depression and in the midst of history’s most destructive war, his administration drafted blueprints for an open postwar world order based on Atlantic Charter principles, one realized during negotiations at Dumbarton Oaks and Bretton Woods. The U.S. scheme had three pillars. The United Nations, a new organization for peace and security grounded in international law, would replace traditional balances of power, spheres of influence, and secret alliances. A multilateral system of trade and payments, governed by international financial institutions and new trade rules, would replace patterns of autarky, imperial preference, economic nationalism, and beggar-thy-neighbor monetary policies. Finally, political self-determination would replace the era of empires with independent, self-governing, and ideally democratic nations.

To be sure, the post–World War II order that emerged diverged significantly from this blueprint. The Cold War’s rapid, unanticipated onset dashed America’s “One World” dreams, forcing the United States to adapt liberal internationalism to the perceived imperatives of containment and the defense of a narrower “Free World,” including through the NATO alliance. Likewise, abrupt decolonization transformed the UN’s composition and provided a platform for developing countries to reshape international rules, including for the world economy. Despite these adjustments, the contours of the U.S. multilateral world order vision persisted, and, with the end of the bipolar conflict, provided an institutional framework for deepening global cooperation.

The world America made was unlike anything that had come before. It was based not simply on U.S. hegemony but on America’s strategic decision to embed its might in an expanding framework of institutions and law open in principle to all countries. This order-building project was an act not of charity but of enlightened self-interest. American officials believed that institutional arrangements that cushioned U.S. dominance, gave lesser players some voice, and permitted all nations to advance common purposes would be regarded as more legitimate and thus less vulnerable to challenge. To understand the significance of this U.S. approach, one need only imagine how different the post-1945 world would have been had a different great power—say, Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, or even the British empire—emerged from World War II as the most powerful nation and set about on its own world-building project.

To be sure, the U.S. commitment to multilateralism has always been ambivalent and selective. The United States has often chafed at restraints on its freedom of action, particularly when these are said to collide with America’s unique responsibilities as the ultimate guarantor of world order. Moreover, the tradition of American exceptionalism underpins the widespread but mistaken belief that U.S. entry into international organizations and treaties invariably threatens its national sovereignty. Finally, the U.S. Constitution erects significant legislative hurdles to U.S. multilateral obligations, most notably in the two-thirds supermajority needed to approve treaties. The cumulative result is a pattern of American “exemptionalism,” whereby the United States sometimes holds itself apart from international treaties—such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or the Convention on Biological Diversity—even when it spearheaded their negotiation and painstakingly obtained caveats limiting or tempering its obligations.

Notwithstanding these qualifications, the United States has been the most important champion, sustainer, and defender of an open, rule-bound international system grounded in multilateral institutions and international law. Thanks in large part to U.S. efforts, the eight decades since World War II have witnessed the emergence and accretion of a thickening latticework of multilateral institutions, including international treaties, formal organizations, and informal frameworks, to manage global interdependence and provide governance over a mind-boggling array of spheres, including the control of weapons of mass destruction, the allocation of orbital slots in space, the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and global responses to pandemic disease.

Present at the Destruction

This is the world that Donald Trump seeks to destroy. His ambition is to replace the international rule of law with the law of the jungle. Rather than a global order that constrains great power privilege, he envisions a regionalized one in which powerful nations pursue spheres of influence and throw their weight around, browbeating lesser actors (like Denmark and Panama, say). In this purely transactional vision, substantive multilateralism yields to bullying bilateralism. There is no ambition to invest in world order or standing international institutions, or any desire to nurture “diffuse reciprocity”—or expectations that the benefits of cooperation will balance out in the long run. Instead, every interaction is an opportunity for one-sided bargaining to improve America’s relative position against all others.

This is a dark vision of the future. Trump’s America First policies will accelerate the fragmentation of a tottering world order already beset by centrifugal forces—rising geopolitical competition, surging populist nationalism, stalled development, destabilizing technologies, and a deepening climate emergency. Well before Trump’s election, UN Secretary-General António Guterres lamented a multilateral system “gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction.”

This moment of peril cries out for far-sighted leadership to update multilateral institutions to address new threats and accommodate rising powers. Instead, the Trump administration seems intent on delivering a coup de grâce to existing bodies, without any positive vision of what comes next. This “stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off” mindset is based on the fantastical assumption that the United States can replicate the capacities of multilateral organizations and the global public goods they provide through its own efforts or new, ad hoc arrangements. Trump’s WHO executive order, for instance, instructs his administration to “identify credible and transparent United States and international partners to assume necessary activities previously undertaken by the WHO.” This ignores the practical impossibility of recreating the WHO’s global capabilities—including surveillance functions and genomic data on which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention depend–and overlooks the broader risks of a fragmented system of global health security.

In the end, the Trump administration’s critique of multilateralism boils down to three main complaints: international organizations and treaties infringe on American sovereignty, unduly restrict U.S. freedom of action, and simply cost too much. None are persuasive. First, the voluntary decision to join an international organization or become party to a treaty, undertaken consistently with the Constitution, is not a violation but in fact an exercise of U.S. sovereignty. Second, all parties that join treaties and international organizations accept reciprocal obligations, forswearing some options to obtain the benefits of predictability and collective effort. That is in fact the entire purpose of multilateralism. This does not mean all multilateral treaties and bodies merit U.S. support, but some reduced freedom of action is inevitable.

Third, the costs of international organizations and treaties are hardly onerous. In 2022, total U.S. support for the UN amounted to $18 billion. This is equivalent to 2 percent of the $820 billion the United States spends annually on its military—and about half of what Americans spend each year on ice cream. Beyond supporting the UN’s regular and peacekeeping budgets, U.S. funding goes to dozens of agencies and programs, ranging from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Food and Agriculture Organization to the UN Children’s Fund.

“A cynic,” one of playwright Oscar Wilde’s characters observes, is “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” In his accelerating efforts to dismantle the multilateral system, Donald Trump certainly fits that description. To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with periodically reviewing U.S. global commitments. But any such process should be done thoughtfully and judiciously, and in close consultation with Congress. Little in the Trump administration’s early flurry of norm- and institution-busting suggests this will be its modus operandi.
 

The Costs of Trump’s Foreign Policy Disruption


Donald Trump ran for the White House pledging to disrupt U.S. foreign policy. He has been true to his word during his first eleven days in office. Among other things, he has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, imposed a ninety-day pause on most U.S. foreign aid programs, called for relocating Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan, and suggested he would use force to claim Greenland and retake the Panama Canal.

Trump says this disruption will provide big benefits for the United States. But will it? Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, and I have a new piece in Foreign Affairs addressing that question. Color us skeptical that Trump’s moves will produce the bonanza he predicts. For decades, Trump has argued that the foreign policy the United States has pursued since the end of World War II has saddled it with policing the globe, allowing its friends, partners, and allies to free ride on its security guarantees while stealing American jobs. He sees world politics as a dog-eat-dog place where your friends can be as big a threat as your enemies. As we write:

Trump’s skepticism about U.S. support for Ukraine and Taiwan, his eagerness to impose tariffs, and his threats to retake the Panama Canal, absorb Canada, and acquire Greenland make it clear that he envisions a return to nineteenth-century power politics and spheres of interest, even if he does not frame his foreign policy in those terms. In that era, the great powers of the day sought to divide the world into regions that each would dominate, regardless of the desires of those who lived there—a vision of the world that Trump explicitly echoes. Trump sees few significant U.S. interests outside the Western Hemisphere, considers alliances to be a drain on the U.S. Treasury, and believes the United States should dominate its neighborhood. His is a Thucydidean worldview—one in which “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

As the world’s leading economic and military power, the United States can certainly coerce other countries, especially much weaker ones, to get what it wants. The flap with Colombia last weekend over Bogota’s refusal to allow U.S. military planes carrying Colombians deported from the United States is a case in point. But Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan provide powerful reminders that hard power does not always carry the day. On the whole, playing the bully provides diminishing returns and will likely do more to harm U.S. interests than advance them.

Until now, Washington’s network of alliances has granted the United States extraordinary influence in Europe and Asia, imposing constraints on Moscow and Beijing at a scale that neither power can replicate. Ceding that advantage will come at great cost to the United States: not only will erstwhile U.S. allies no longer follow Washington’s lead, but many could also seek safety by aligning themselves more closely with Russia and China instead.

Beijing and Moscow certainly have been working for years, and increasingly together, to peel support away from Washington.

Those efforts will likely ramp up as Trump turns to threats to pressure friends and neighbors; as a result, Washington will almost surely lose some ability to attract support. China is especially well positioned to contest U.S. influence across the globe, including in the United States’ own backyard. Trump does not offer other countries new opportunities; he demands concessions. Beijing, by contrast, is eager to do business around the world with its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative; it invests with few immediate conditions, and it speaks the language of win-win outcomes. Chinese firms also often offer competitive products at better prices than U.S. companies do. Unsurprisingly, China has already become the number one trading partner for many countries in the global South. And as Washington withdraws from international institutions such as the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement, Beijing is swiftly moving to fill the vacuum.

Perhaps none of this will come to pass. China and Russia may pursue short-sighted, ham-handed policies that lead other countries to forgive Trump’s bullying. Joe Biden’s efforts to reinvigorate U.S. global leadership benefitted greatly from China’s wolf warrior diplomacy and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a general rule, however, it is unwise to base your strategy on the hope your competitors will misstep.

Or perhaps Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz can succeed where the national security team in the first Trump administration failed. Like H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, and Rex Tillerson, Rubio and Waltz have conventional conservative internationalist views that would have fit with Republican presidential administrations before Trump. They might persuade Trump to see the value of courting friends while focusing his disruption on America’s rivals rather than on its allies. But Trump’s record offers little reason for optimism on that score. He eventually bristled at the advice that McMaster, Mattis, and Tillerson offered because it ran contrary to how he sees the world. Not surprisingly, none of the three made it to the third year of the first Trump presidency.

In any event, please do give the piece a read. And if you are interested, I also joined Ivo’s podcast, World Review, to discuss our article with Politico’s Matthew Kaminski, who has a recent essay that provides a nice bookend to what Ivo and I wrote.

The Transatlantic Alliance in the Age of Trump: The Coming Collisions

This report is Part 1 in a two-part series titled “The Transatlantic Alliance in the Age of Trump.” Part 1 previews the coming collisions in transatlantic relations and whether a “grand bargain” between the United States and Europe to avoid conflict is plausible. It will examine the various policy areas where clashes are likely, examining NATO, Ukraine, technology, trade, climate, international organizations, and China policy. It will look at why collisions in each policy area are possible, how a dispute could escalate, and potential risks facing both sides. Part 2 will explore how the European political project may evolve as a result of the collisions discussed in Part 1.

Introduction

The United States and Europe are on a collision course that will fundamentally alter and transform transatlantic relations. It is not just one issue that will trigger a clash but seemingly every issue. From NATO to Ukraine, climate to trade, tech regulations to China, the United States and Europe will likely clash, repeatedly and continuously. The impact of these collisions will be transformative for transatlantic relations and will reshape the transatlantic alliance. Europe is now staring at the beginning of a new post-American age. Since the end of World War II, Europe has been inextricably tied to the United States. While there have occasionally been rifts in the transatlantic fabric, these were always mendable. But the clashes that are coming may not be, and they may forever change the nature of transatlantic relations. Europe is now reckoning with a potential future where it may have to chart its own course.

At the core of the tension is that Europe and the United States under Donald Trump now have very different views of the transatlantic alliance and of the world. For Europe, relations with the United States have served as Europe’s North Star and the foundation of Europe’s foreign policy, and were treated with the utmost importance. Europe, today, desperately wants to preserve the alliance as it currently exists and ensure the United States’ continued place as the guarantor of European security. For the United States, Europe is seen as being of lesser importance. Even before President Trump’s return to office, Europe had become an afterthought to Washington. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022—refocused U.S. attention on Europe, but only temporarily. NATO may have returned to its Cold War focus on deterring Russian power, but the United States has not. Nevertheless, there had still been a clear bipartisan consensus across administrations on the importance of the United States’ continued leadership in Europe as being core to U.S. global strategy.

The clashes that are coming may not be [mendable], and they may forever change the nature of transatlantic relations. Europe is now reckoning with a potential future where it may have to chart its own course.

That bipartisan consensus had been weakening and now appears fully broken. President Donald Trump has a very different perspective toward Europe and NATO—one that sees less value in alliances. There appears to be very little interest in preserving the transatlantic status quo. Instead, the Trump administration has made clear that it wants to fundamentally change the present alliance dynamics. There is a sense in Trump’s Washington that Europe matters less in the world, and yet Europe is taking advantage of the U.S. security guarantee to ignore its defense responsibilities, all the while targeting U.S. companies with burdensome regulations. In the same week, JD Vance took the stage in Paris to denounce European technology regulations, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth clearly outlined that the United States would prioritize Asia and create a “division of labor” where Europe takes “responsibility for its own security.”

The president and his administration also appear to have little interest in Europe. In Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s initial call list, only Poland and NATO made the first fifteen calls (and neither were among the first ten). The United Kingdom was not included, despite the special relationship, and neither were France, Germany, or the European Union. Furthermore, there are few, if any, traditional transatlanticists in the second Trump administration to speak in favor of the alliance, as there were in the first Trump administration. There is also a reaction to Europe’s both real and perceived condescension toward Trump’s MAGA-inspired nationalism. Statements from European leaders and governments that criticized Trump or praised President Biden have accelerated an underlying angst toward Europe. This has led to a mood in Washington that resembles 2002 and 2003, around the Iraq War, which led to an explosion of anti-(Western) European sentiment, especially toward France and Germany for objecting to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

This mix of apathy and angst toward Europe means it is likely that the Trump administration is willing to be extremely assertive and confrontational, including taking steps that may significantly weaken or undermine the transatlantic alliance. Trump’s remarks at Davos on January 23, 2025, and in other brief comments to the press made clear that a confrontation is coming, especially with the European Union. European appeals to being loyal NATO allies will likely have little resonance. Instead, the Trump administration is likely to demand concessions from Europe on all sorts of policy areas, all the while also seeking to fundamentally transform NATO by reducing its security presence and commitment to European security.

More broadly, though, the United States and Europe now have fundamentally different outlooks toward the world. Not since the U.S. invasion of Iraq have the United States and Europe been so far apart in outlook. In Of Paradise and Power from 2003, Robert Kagan described the United States and Europe as being from different planets; the martial Americans were from Mars, while the pacifist Europeans were from Venus. Now both sides appear to be from different centuries, with the Trump administration adopting an outlook of the predatory and imperialist 1890s, with the Europeans still rooted in the liberal triumphalism of the 1990s.

This report looks ahead at the coming collisions in transatlantic relations. It first examines whether a “grand bargain” between the United States and Europe to avoid conflict is plausible. Unfortunately, both due to political, policy, and structural reasons, reaching a grand deal across policy areas looks highly implausible. Next, the report analyzes and breaks down the various policy areas where clashes are likely, examining NATO, Ukraine, technology, trade, climate, international organizations, and China policy. It will look at why a collision is possible, how that could escalate, and potential risks to both sides.

What will make the coming collisions incredibly dynamic from a policy perspective is that they will interact with each other, facilitating either an escalatory or de-escalatory dynamic. This means that an escalating fight in one policy area could cause an even more bitter and aggressive fight in another policy area. Alternatively, should agreement or détente be achieved, such as in a tit-for-tat tariff war, that could create momentum for de-escalation in other areas. In short, the policy dynamic in the transatlantic relationship will be characterized by brinksmanship and tension. This will put the alliance on edge and could create an atmosphere of profound distrust.

How Europe navigates the coming collisions will have significant repercussions for its future and the future of the transatlantic alliance and the global order. Despite U.S. conceptions that Europe is stagnant and in decline, Europe is in fact constantly evolving. The European Union looks very different today than it did 5,10, and 20 years ago, and it will likely look very different at the end of the Trump administration. How Europe and its project may evolve will be the focus of the second report in this series.

The Coming Transatlantic Collisions

 A Grand Bargain Is Unlikely

To stave off a transatlantic rupture, it has been asserted that perhaps the United States and Europe could cut a deal or strike some sort of grand bargain. Europe, for instance, could make some concessions, perhaps agree to purchase more liquified natural gas from the United States, spend more on defense, buy more U.S. weapons, or make some trade concessions, in exchange for a relatively placid relationship and the continuation of the U.S. security commitment. But a transatlantic grand bargain is highly unlikely for the simple reason that the Trump administration looks determined to remake the partnership in a way that Europe will find unacceptable. 

Reaching a grand bargain will require compromises on both sides, including the Trump administration. The crux of the issue is that any bargain will be rooted in a continued U.S. security presence in Europe. Thus, the question is whether the Trump administration will be willing to leave the U.S. security presence in Europe, and therefore, NATO, untouched as part of any deal.

Many incoming Trump administration officials, as well as U.S. companies squeezed by EU regulations, want to use the U.S. security guarantee as a tool to extract concessions from Europe on economic, trade, and tech policy. During the presidential campaign, Vice President JD Vance linked U.S. security commitments through NATO to looser European tech regulation of Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. Yet the Trump administration has made clear that it is determined to fundamentally shift the burden of European security from the United States to Europe. This will likely mean a significant reduction in U.S. forces in Europe. The U.S. security guarantee will only serve as bargaining leverage over Europe if it is not materially weakened. Instead of making compromises, the Trump administration will likely, and in many ways understandably, not want to choose or prioritize. Instead, it will insist on Europe making major policy concessions, all the while also shifting the defense burden to Europe.

Moreover, once the United States treats Europe’s security as a hostage to be negotiated over, there is no reason why the United States cannot keep taking it hostage. For instance, should the European Union alter its technology regulations, effectively passing a new law to appease the Trump administration and to keep U.S. forces in place, what is there to prevent the United States from seeking ever more concessions on other issues, such as trade or carbon tariffs? The hostage—Europe’s security, in this case—is never actually released, as the United States can always threaten European security by pulling back in every follow-on policy clash.

What may also trigger tension is that there is lack of trust. The Trump administration sees Europeans as feckless and willing to say the right things, such as about defense spending, but then failing to follow through. Europeans, meanwhile, are unlikely to trust the president to stick to any deal. The mere fact that President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs against Canada and Mexico, despite having negotiated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) a few years ago, will likely raise concerns about entering any deal with the United States.

Yet, even if both sides wanted a grand bargain, there are major structural obstacles. For the United States, making difficult policy trade-offs across sectors, especially between defense and economic areas, would be difficult for any administration. For Europe, the structural problems are even more profound, as economic and regulatory issues are completely disconnected from defense policy. The power to negotiate and retaliate on economic, regulatory, climate, and trade issues resides with the European Union, and more specifically with the European Commission, not with European member states. Yet when it comes to defense and security issues, the power lies not with the European Union but with member states and NATO. Member states can push the European Commission and pressure its president, Ursula von der Leyen, which could shape how the European Union responds or retaliates. But they cannot force the European Commission to not implement EU law or to change EU laws and policy. Moreover, member states are a diverse group and are unlikely to universally agree to cave to U.S. pressure. Thus, changing EU law and policy to satisfy Trump and to ensure continued U.S. security commitment would be structurally very difficult for the European Union to pull off, even if many, if not most member states, wanted to strike such a deal. France in particular will seize on efforts to hold European security hostage for policy concessions as unacceptable, and it will likely push back against the efforts of other member states to pressure the European Commission to soften its approach or change policy.

Lastly, Europe’s perceived weakness will likely lead the Trump administration to underestimate Europe. On the one hand, the clash with the United States comes at a terrible time for Europe. There is political disarray in France and Germany. European unity is plagued by internal Trojan horse states, like Hungary and Slovakia, that block European unity. Europe is plagued by economic frailty and stagnation. The continent is at its most insecure since the Cold War, and it is as dependent as ever on the United States both for its security and its energy supply. And yet, Europe’s weakness is also vastly overstated, especially by Europeans. Europe has shown again and again its strength in unity when facing direct challenges to its union, exemplified by its response to Brexit. Brussels is largely empowered to act, and Europeans have shown a willingness to do whatever it takes to protect themselves in crises.

Thus, it is hard to see a grand bargain happening in the immediate term. Instead, it looks likely that there will be major policy collisions in many different sectors. These collisions may be bruising. Some may become all-encompassing fights, while others may simmer but never fully come to a boil. Instead of a grand bargain, a more hopeful path may be that a détente is eventually reached in which both sides essentially agree to tolerate each other. The challenge for transatlantic relations is to navigate these coming collisions without truly upending the alliance.

Clashes Everywhere, All at Once

NATO and European Defense: Burden-Shifting, For Real This Time

Europe will try desperately to maintain the status quo on defense with the United States, ensuring European security and staying engaged in NATO. The problem for Europe is that the Trump administration appears intent on shifting responsibility for European security to Europeans.

President Trump’s talk of annexing Greenland from Denmark also raised fundamental concerns about the U.S. commitment to NATO. If the United States is seeking to take an ally’s territory, it is hard to see it coming to defend an ally’s territory. At his first NATO Defense Ministerial, Secretary of Defense Hegseth said, “the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency. Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.”

This represents a radical shift in the United States’ foreign policy toward Europe. Since the 1950s, the United States has sought to play an indispensable role in European security. As much as U.S. administrations have complained about the lack of European defense spending and Europe’s limited defense capabilities, the United States has not supported Europe working to organize itself militarily without the United States (this has particularly been the case since the end of the Cold War, when the United States aggressively opposed such self-organization). The United States, across administrations, has been strongly opposed to the European Union’s involvement in defense. European dependence on the United States has been seen as a feature, not a bug, of the current structure of NATO, giving the United States a set of ready-made partners and unparalleled influence in a large, wealthy, and technologically advanced region. Yet President Trump has shown little affinity toward NATO and has repeatedly questioned its value. A new generation of defense and foreign policy thinkers in Republican foreign policy see the United States as overstretched and emphasize the need to ruthlessly prioritize Asia over Europe.

Trump has recently demanded that European countries spend 5 percent of GDP on defense, which is much more than what the United States spends and a significant increase from what anyone has been calling for; it is also almost certainly unachievable for almost all NATO countries. Trump, in short, is laying out a demand that he knows will not be met and that lays the groundwork for the United States to pull back.

Should the United States pull back, Europe will have to take urgent and ambitious steps. It will require not just significant fiscal outlays but massive internal reforms to ensure that Europeans can fight together.

The question now is whether and in which form that transition comes about. It is highly likely that the Trump administration will reduce U.S. force presence in Europe, with some reports of 20,000 forces being withdrawn. In a report titled the The Prioritization Imperative, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow Robert Peters and former Heritage Foundation scholar and current Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Alex Velez-Green wrote that the items to be transferred “will likely include submarines and surface combatants; heavy bombers; fighter, electronic attack, maritime patrol, and airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft; air and missile defenses; certain ground-based long-range fires; critical munitions for air, naval, and ground platforms; and critical enablers, such as airlift, sealift, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets.” Such a shift will create enormous gaps in European defense. A U.S. pullback and a move toward making the U.S. position in NATO essentially “dormant,” as conservative scholar Sumantra Maitra notably called for, looks quite possible.

Should the United States pull back, Europe will have to take urgent and ambitious steps. It will require not just significant fiscal outlays but massive internal reforms to ensure that Europeans can fight together. However, should Europe take these steps and effectively “get their act together,” the result will not be a more supplicant European Commission looking to make concessions but exactly the opposite. A U.S. pullback from European security will make clashes in other policy areas more intense.

Ukraine as Europe’s Problem?

President Trump has called for a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. Yet there is significant uncertainty not only about whether such a deal can be reached, but also about the U.S. commitment to Ukraine.

What makes a comprehensive peace settlement somewhat unlikely is that Russia presently has the military advantage, as the future of U.S. military support is now uncertain and as the Biden administration allocated almost all of the funding from the April 2024 supplemental appropriation. While the Trump administration has the leverage to push Ukraine to the negotiating table, it is not clear by any means that it can bring Russia to the table without making concessions that either Ukraine finds unacceptable or that fundamentally alter European security. It seems likely that whether talks succeed or fail, the financial costs of both rebuilding and, vitally, rearming Ukraine are likely to be seen as a European responsibility by the Trump administration. The problem for Ukraine is that Europe simply lacks the military materiel and the defense industrial capacity to match U.S. aid.

This may force Europe to effectively procure U.S. military equipment, such as 155 mm ammunition from the United States, for Ukraine. Europe may do whatever it takes to ensure Ukraine doesn’t lose. Yet it will certainly resent having to buy U.S. aid, adding to the sense of abandonment and angst toward the United States. Thus, there is a distinct prospect for Europe that it will not only have to scramble to support Ukraine, but that it will also need to scramble to deal with a potential withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Even more problematic for Europe (and Ukraine) is the potential for the United States to enter direct negotiations with Russia about the future of European security over their heads. There are fears in Europe of a “Yalta II” scenario, echoing the 1945 conference in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union carved up the future of post–World War II Eastern Europe. This will add to a deep sense of distrust toward Washington, all of which will likely lead to more tension in other policy areas.

U.S.-EU Trade War 2.0: Pain Both Ways

The U.S.-EU trade relationship is one of the most important in the history of the world. The European economy is massive—with 450 million mostly wealthy consumers, its economy is roughly equivalent in size to the economies of the United States and China. Trump’s proposed trade agenda, with upward of 20 percent tariffs, will hurt the European economy, which is even more dependent on the U.S. market for exports as China is squeezing out European products. Almost 20 percent of EU exports went to the United States in 2023. Thus, the European Union fears getting squeezed by both of its export markets.

On February 7, President Trump announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on U.S. imports equal to the rates that trading partners impose on U.S. exports. While details of the proposal remain unclear, the announcement will surely raise concerns in Europe about an imminent trade war with the United States. The February 7 announcement follows late January comments in which Trump said that he would “absolutely” levy tariffs on the European Union, citing Brussels’ action against U.S. tech companies and its large trade deficit in goods. On February 9, President Trump announced that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum on February 10, with reciprocal tariffs on all products to follow on February 11. While European steel and aluminum exports to the United States are relatively limited, the tariffs will likely trigger a forceful response from Brussels, with the European Commission already labeling them as them as “unlawful” and “counterproductive.”

The European Union would prefer to avoid a trade war, and it has offered certain concessions. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has suggested that the European Union could buy more U.S. LNG as part of a broader trade deal with Washington. The head of the European Parliament’s trade committee suggested that the European Union could reduce its 10 percent import tax on cars, aligning it more closely with the 2.5 percent charged by the United States. Yet it is unclear what to offer, since it is unclear what President Trump is after besides a general rebalancing of trade. In addition, the euro has depreciated roughly 5 percent since November 5, which makes EU exports to the United States 5 percent more competitive and may soften the short-term blow of any aggressive U.S. measures. 

Importantly, trade is a policy area where the European Union has the power and the ability to act. The European Union does not need unanimous support from member states to act, and the European Commission is largely empowered to retaliate. A dedicated task force within the European Commission has spent the past year preparing for potential trade spats with the United States. Brussels will already have a list of U.S. products that could be targeted for retaliation, likely predominantly goods produced in Republican states, as well as symbolic goods like bourbon and Harley Davidson motorcycles. The European Union could thus reimpose tariffs on U.S. imports that were suspended under the deal that ended the 2018 dispute with the first Trump administration. Without action, these suspended tariffs are already scheduled to enter into force in March 2025, and they will target products such as orange juice, peanut butter, Harley Davidsons, and bourbon.

Importantly, trade is a policy area where the European Union has the power and the ability to act. The European Union does not need unanimous support from member states to act, and the European Commission is largely empowered to retaliate.

The European Union can also survive a bruising trade war with the United States, as it is much less exposed to the U.S. market than Canada or Mexico. Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times assessed that for Germany and Italy, “if all their exports to the US were halted in a trade war, about 3 per cent of GDP would disappear directly . . . comparable to a bad recession and milder than the Covid-19 shock. And that is a worst-case scenario.” In short, a trade war to the death with the United States would be more costly for the European Union than the United States, but both would experience negative economic effects. Meanwhile, Europe’s politicians would be bolstered politically because it was the United States that started the fight.

The European Union also has a new tool, the Anti-Coercion-Instrument (ACI), described as the union’s retaliatory “bazooka.” This is a new tool that the European Union has never used. The idea for the instrument emerged during the Trump administration but was only fully developed in response to China’s targeting of the Lithuanian economy following its increased diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. The tool is intended to enable the European Union to respond to a country that is targeting a member state and therefore seeking to undermine the single market. The instrument enables the European Union to apply a wide range of retaliatory measures, including revoking intellectual property rights that could be particularly harmful to U.S. tech companies in Europe. It also enables the European Union to block foreign direct investment and restrict access to banking, insurance, and other financial services. With regard to timing, the instrument was partly designed to allow for a swift response to economic coercion and will likely be applied expeditiously. However, it may take many months for an investigation to be concluded and for the European Council to determine the existence of economic coercion.

In an escalating trade war, the European Union will also try to counter the United States by forging a common front with other U.S. allies and G-7 members. On February 12, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Brussels to meet with the European Union, where trade tensions with the United States were no doubt discussed. The European Union will also seek to coordinate with other U.S. allies, such as Australia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

The potential for a transatlantic trade war to cause major economic fallout, as well as the European Union’s reasonably strong ability to fight such a war and link it to other policy areas, such as technology companies through the ACI, will likely create incentives on both sides not to let a trade war spiral out of hand.

Technology Regulations: The Coming U.S.-EU Techpocalypse?

Technology regulations may well be the policy area where collision becomes most politically intense. U.S. technology companies have long opposed European technology regulations. Yet the depth of hostility and concern on both sides of the Atlantic since Trump’s election has been revealing.

With the election of Donald Trump, U.S. tech companies see a huge opportunity for the United States to assert maximum pressure on the European Union to drop its approach toward tech regulation. They, much like U.S. companies in other sectors, see Europe’s military dependence as potential leverage vis-à-vis the European Union. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg asserted that EU competition rules were “almost like a tariff” and that "If some other country was screwing with another industry that we cared about, the U.S. government would probably find some way to put pressure on them.” Marc Andreessen, cofounder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and an influential Trump donor, told Ross Douthat in a New York Times podcast that “we face enormous challenges in Europe. Enormous challenges even in the U.K. There’s just these extremely draconian anti-tech, anti-business, anti-American policies . . . what they’re also doing is damaging our companies. And so we would like to work with the administration to help global markets open up and for American companies to win.”

In many respects, U.S. tech companies are fighting so hard not because they can walk away from their second-largest market—a market roughly the size of the United States—but because they can’t. What they are extremely nervous about is the so-called Brussels effect—whereby EU regulations in fact set global market standards due to the European Union’s market size and pave the way for others around the world (Brazil, India, etc.) to emulate the EU rules. 

Yet U.S. pressure may backfire and in fact put U.S. tech companies more in the firing line. A Financial Times report, for instance, highlighted the ability of the European Union to suspend intellectual property rights in the European Union for U.S. tech companies as part of the ACI to respond to U.S. tariffs or threats against Greenland. The maximum pressure campaign on tech regulations, coupled with ignoring EU laws (essentially daring the European Union to respond, as X seems to be doing), is unlikely to work.

The European Union has initially responded gingerly to statements from the Trump administration. The union, for instance, dropped it AI liability proposal, following Vice President Vance’s speech in Paris, which attacked EU technology regulation. Yet the clashes in the above areas will likely stiffen the commission’s spine. There are also several reasons why the European Union will find it incredibly difficult to compromise.

First, by elevating the publicity around the clash, U.S. tech companies are threatening the very credibility of the European Union, which the union will likely doggedly defend. The European Union is almost certainly not going to back down and may accelerate its enforcement of its tech laws. Furthermore, should the European Union fail to implement its laws, EU citizens can take the union to the European Court of Justice, the EU supreme court, potentially forcing greater enforcement.

Second, Europe may have little to lose economically (and perhaps more to gain) by vigorous enforcement of its regulations vis-à-vis U.S. companies, particularly relating to social media. There are many reasons why U.S. technology companies have been successful in Europe and have gained dominant market positions. But the European Union may also see economic advantages in disrupting those positions and creating space for EU, or at least EU-compliant, companies to gain market share. It is not as if entrepreneurs in the European Union are technologically incapable of building rival platforms, but they struggle to dislodge the existing companies and gain scale. When China and Russia banned U.S. platforms, they created their own equivalent technology companies. While there are many things the European Union needs to do facilitate innovation, such as improving access to capital, pushing U.S. companies out of the European market could create a vacuum for European tech companies to gain European scale.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Europeans believe that the health of their democracy is at stake. The critical question for the European Union is whether it wants its tech, and particularly its social media sector, to look like that of the United States. A clash over Elon Musk’s X seems imminent. Since the election, Musk has bluntly inserted himself into European politics. He is publicly backing the far-right AfD in the German elections and gave the AfD’s lead candidate a high-profile interview. He has also gone after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and promised to invest significantly to support the far-right reform party. Mark Zuckerberg has also changed Meta’s and Facebook’s content moderation policies in the United States, which may impact the European Union as well. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Digital Services Act is law and all but requires the union to act against X, given the utter lack of content moderation and other failings by X to meet the regulatory standards. Now former EU Commissioner Thierry Bretton has published a letter warning of X’s “due diligence obligations set out in the Digital Services Act.” The transition to a new EU Commission has temporarily put the issue on ice, but once the new EU Commission is in place, the European Union will have to respond to X’s flagrant disregard for EU law.

Ironically, the U.S. banning of TikTok, as well as the emergence of rivals to X following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, may reduce the fears of EU decisionmakers about disrupting the social media marketplace. Furthermore, while U.S. officials and executives decry Europe’s lack of innovation, Europeans may similarly see the United States’ virtually unregulated online media environment as politically and socially corrosive. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, for instance, said that social media companies “were poisoning society.” He continued: “Let’s take back control. Let’s make social media great again.”

Europe is thus unlikely to back down to U.S. pressure on tech regulations and it may very well take stronger action as a result, as this is an area where it has considerable leverage.

Energy and Climate: On Different Planets

Transatlantic clashes over climate policy and regulations will also be tumultuous. The European Union, having passed the Green Deal under the previous European Commission, is now set to implement various regulations and provisions that will likely provoke strong reactions from the Trump administration and U.S. companies.

The European Union will begin implementing a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which is essentially a carbon tariff, in 2026. Navigating this would have been challenging under a Harris administration, since the United States lacks any carbon pricing mechanism. But because the United States was taking climate action through the Inflation Reduction Act and other regulatory means, the prevailing mood was that the United States and the European Union could come to an understanding. However, the Trump administration’s rollback of renewable energy incentives and environmental regulations means that carbon-intensive industries that export to the European Union will likely be affected by the tariff. Thus, even if there is a tariff détente reached in 2025 on other issues, CBAM implementation could trigger another conflict.

Meanwhile, other provisions of the Green Deal, such as REPowerEU, the Green Deal Industrial Plan, the Regulation on Deforestation-free Products, and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which targets oil and gas companies and essentially enables EU citizens to engage in lawfare against fossil fuel companies, will spur clashes. Green policies have spurred backlash within Europe, and perhaps there would be openness to compromise or watering down some of these regulations.

More broadly, the United States turning away from climate action, such as by pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords, will stoke intense anti-Americanism within Europe, especially among younger post–Cold War Europeans. European attitudes toward China may also soften given the bold steps China is taking on climate, creating a major opportunity for China to wedge European public opinion in its favor. 

The Familiar Fight: The “Rules-Based Liberal International Order”

Europe and the United States under Trump have different outlooks toward the world and different approaches to international affairs, which will serve to exacerbate tensions. For instance, the concept of a rules-based liberal international order is largely dismissed by many in the Trump administration yet remains foundational to Europe’s geopolitical outlook.

President Trump’s rhetoric about annexing Gaza for the United States and preventing Palestinians from returning was met with condemnation in Europe. Moreover, the president’s efforts to bring Greenland and the Panama Canal under U.S. control have similarly led to concerns in Europe about the United States undermining the post–World War II international consensus against the forceful or coercive changing of borders. Should the Trump administration pursue these efforts, it will inevitably lead to a diplomatic clash with Europe.

The Trump administration’s decision to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) has also been condemned by many EU countries. The European Union and European states are seeking to protect the ICC and maintain its international standing. European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection Michael McGrath pledged that the European Union will continue “to use the tools at . . . [its] disposal to protect the ICC.” This will likely be an area where there is a continuously simmering opposition to the Trump administration. The United States may make Europe a potential target of future secondary sanctions, similar to during Trump’s first term, when the United States pulled out of a nuclear agreement with Iran while Europe remained a party to it and became the target of secondary sanctions from the United States.

Furthermore, the administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords marks a stark contrast with Europe. These withdrawals sets up a familiar clash between Europe and U.S. Republican administrations, where the United States slams UN and other multilateral structures, while the European Union seeks to uphold and protect them.

Additionally, the abrupt shutdown of USAID, as well as the pullback of the United States from climate financing agreements with countries like South Africa and Indonesia, will put more of an onus on Europe. The European Union and its member states are already the largest foreign aid donors in the world. Yet there are fears that the ending of U.S. aid to places like the Horn of Africa could create instability and refugee flows. Thus, with the United States’ retreat there is more financial burden placed on Europe to support development, civil society, and democracy initiatives.

China: Renewed Transatlantic Divergence?

At the end of the first Trump administration, there was a growing schism between the United States and Europe over China. The Trump administration, understandably concerned about the increasing presence of the Chinese company Huawei in the digital infrastructure of its European allies, insisted that Europe stop incorporating Huawei into Europe’s networks. In December 2020, the European Union, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, negotiated a trade and investment agreement with China that was designed to bring Europe and China closer together economically. Yet the Biden administration made a concerted effort to increasingly align transatlantic approaches toward China. This led to a significant narrowing of the differences between the United States and Europe regarding China, with Europe largely adopting a much more hawkish tone.

Much of this was due to China’s actions, such as its support of Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, and there are clear economic reasons for the Europeans to adopt a firm approach toward China. Yet the tensions that emerge in transatlantic relations in the aforementioned policy areas may also weaken transatlantic unity with regard to China policy. Europe has often seen the United States as unnecessarily hawkish on China, provoking tensions, such as with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan. Thus, Europe may resist hawkish approaches toward China from the Trump administration. They may also see opportunities to cooperate with Beijing on global climate action.

Economically, Europe and China, both export-focused economies, are in firm competition with each other. Both China and Europe strive to be global leaders in the clean technology sector, for instance, and Chinese overproduction is threatening European industrial champions, particularly in the auto sector. Nevertheless, China may offer market access opportunities that may entice Europe to soften its approach toward Beijing. Europe’s instinct may become more skeptical of alignment with the United States on China policy, which in turn may lead to more tension.

Conclusion

Each of the policy areas examined in this report could become a major source of tension. They each could spiral out of control and cause deep, perhaps irrevocable risks to the future of the transatlantic alliance. Policymakers on both sides will need to be cognizant of the risks and the potential harm that such clashes can cause. As such, the United States should not assume European weakness, and Brussels should not assume the worst from Washington.

The Trump administration’s efforts to fundamentally alter the transatlantic relationship and shift the burden of European security to Europe should not have to mean the end of the alliance. Europe will need to act. But the Trump administration should also realize that upending the alliance while also escalating fights in other policy areas such as trade, tech, and climate, or imposing secondary sanctions on Europeans, may cause major blowback in each of those policy areas and, most importantly, irrevocably rupture the alliance. Collisions are inevitably coming, but both sides should proceed with care.

Source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/transatlantic-alliance-age-trump-coming-collisions

Chris Hedges: The Mafia State

Kiss the ring. Grovel before the Godfather. Give him tribute, a cut of the spoils. If he and his family get rich you get rich. Enter his inner circle, his “made” men and women, and you do not have to follow rules or obey the law. You can disembowel the machinery of government. You can turn us and the natural world into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. You can commit crimes with impunity. You can make a mockery of democratic norms and social responsibility. Perfidy is very profitable at first. In the long term it is collective suicide.

America is a full blown kleptocracy. The demolition of the social and political structure, begun long before Trump, makes a few very, very rich and immiserates everyone else. Mafia capitalism always leads to a mafia state. The two ruling parties gave us the first. Now we get the second. It is not only our wealth that is being taken from us, but our liberty. Since the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, currently worth $394 billion, saw his wealth increase by $170 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, worth $254 billion, saw his net worth increase by nearly $41 billion.

Tidy sums for kneeling before Moloch.

At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by the slash and burn campaign of the Trump administration have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions, into Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.

The mafia state ignores legal constraints and regulations. It lacks external and internal control. It cannibalizes everything, including the ecosystem, until there is nothing left but a wasteland. It cannot distinguish between reality and illusion, which obscures and exacerbates gross incompetence. And then the hollowed-out edifice will collapse leaving in its wake a shell of a country with nukes. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. So did the Mayans and the sclerotic reign of the French monarch Louis XVI.

In the final stages of decay for all empires, the rulers, focused exclusively on personal enrichment, ensconced in their versions of Versailles or The Forbidden City, squeeze the last drops of profit from an increasingly oppressed and impoverished population and ravaged environment. Unprecedented wealth is inseparable from unprecedented poverty.

The more extreme life becomes, the more extreme ideologies become. Huge segments of the population, unable to absorb the despair and bleakness, severs itself from a reality-based universe. It takes comfort in magical thinking, a bizarre millennialism — one embodied for us in a Christianized fascism — which turns con artists, morons, criminals, charlatans, gangsters and grifters into prophets while branding those who decry the pillage and corruption into traitors. The rush towards self-immolation accelerates intellectual and moral paralysis.

The mafia state makes no pretense of defending the common good. Trump, Musk and their minions are swiftly repealing executive orders regarding health, environmental and safety regulations, food assistance, as well as child care programs such as Head Start. They are fighting a court order to halt their dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has ensured that Americans have been reimbursed with more than $21 billion due to cancelled debts, financial compensation and other forms of consumer relief. They are abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development. They are closing federal defenders’ offices, which provide legal representation to the poor. They have cut billions of dollars from the budget of the National Institutes of Health jeopardizing biomedical research and clinical trials. They have frozen permits for solar and wind projects, including sign-offs needed for projects on private land. They fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that manages our nuclear stockpile. They are gutting the workforce of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey.

The mafia state, its blueprint contained in Project 2025, ignores the dire lessons from history of extreme social inequality, political disintegration, wanton ecological plunder and the evisceration of the rule of law.

We are, of course, not naturally destined for freedom. It was two millennia before democracy reappeared in Europe after its collapse — largely because Athens became an empire — in ancient Greece. The mafia state, not democracies, may be the wave of the future, one where the wealthiest one percent of the globe owns some 43 percent of all global financial assets – more than 95 percent of the human race — while 44 percent of the planet’s population lives below the World Bank’s poverty line of less than $6.85 per day. These calcified regimes endure solely because of draconian systems of internal control, wholesale surveillance and the evisceration of civil liberties.

We have at the same time wiped out 90 percent of the large fish such as cod, sharks, halibut, grouper, tuna, swordfish, and marlin and degraded or destroyed two thirds of the mature tropical forests, the lungs of the planet. Lack of access to safe drinking water, and the resultant spread of infectious diseases, kills at least 1.4 million people annually — 3,836 per day — and also contributes to 50 percent of global malnutrition, according to the World Bank. Between 150 and 200 million children are impaired by malnourishment. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is well above the 350 parts per million that most climate scientists warn is the maximum level for sustaining life as we know it. By May of this year, atmospheric CO2 levels are forecast to reach 429.6 ppm, the highest concentration in over two million years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the measurement could reach 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100. At that point huge parts of the planet, beset with high population density, droughts, soil erosion, freak storms, massive crop failures and rising sea levels, will be unfit for human existence.

Clans, in the later period of the Easter Island civilization, competed to honor their ancestors by constructing larger and larger hewn stoner images, which demanded the last remnants of the timber, rope and manpower on the island. By the year 1400 the woods were gone. The soil had eroded and washed into the sea. The islanders began to fight over old timbers and were reduced to eating their dogs and soon all the nesting birds. The desperate islanders developed a magical belief system that the erected stone gods, the moai, would come to life and save them from disaster.

The belief by Christian nationalists in the rapture, which does not exist in the Bible, is no less fantastic. These Christian fascists — embodied in Trump appointees such as Russell Vought, head of Trump’s Office of Budget and Management, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, nominated to be the ambassador to Israel — intend to use schools and universities, the media, the judiciary and the federal government as platforms to carry out indoctrination and enforce conformity.

The followers of this movement defer to a leader they believe has been anointed by God. They embrace the illusion that the righteous will be saved, floating naked upwards into heaven, at the end of time and the secularists they despise will perish. This retreat into magical thinking, which is the foundation of all totalitarian movements, explains their suffering. It helps them cope with despair and anxiety. It gives them the illusion of security. It also ensures retribution against a long list of enemies — liberals, intellectuals, gays, immigrants, the deep state — blamed for their economic and social misery.

Our millennialism is an updated version of the faith in the moai, the doomed Taki Onqoy revolt against the Spanish invaders in Peru, the Aztec prophecies of the 1530s and the Ghost Dance, which Native Americans believed would see the return of the buffalo herds and slain warriors rise alive from the earth to vanquish the white colonizers. This retreat into fantasy is what happens when reality becomes too bleak to be absorbed. It is the appeal of Trump. Of course, this time it will be different. When we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will be no new lands to pillage, no new peoples to exploit. We will be exterminated in a global death trap.

Karl Polanyi in “The Great Transformation” writes that once a society surrenders to the dictates of the market, once its mafia economy becomes a mafia state, once it succumbs to what he calls “the ravages of this satanic mill,” it inevitably leads to “the demolition of society.”

The mafia state cannot be reformed. We must organize to break our chains, one-by-one, to use the power of the strike to cripple the state machinery. We must embrace a radical militancy, one that offers a new vision and a new social structure. We must hold fast to moral imperatives. We must forgive mortgage and student debt, institute universal health care and break up monopolies. We must raise the minimum wage and end the squandering of resources and funds to sustain the empire and the war industry. We must establish a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s collapsing infrastructure. We must nationalize the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, military contractors and transportation and embrace environmentally sustainable energy sources.

None of this will happen until we resist.

The mafia state will be brutal with any who revolt. Capitalists, as Eduardo Galeano writes, view communal cultures as “enemy cultures.” The billionaire class will do to us what it did to the radicals who rose up to form militant unions in the past. We had the bloodiest labor wars in the industrialized world. Hundreds of American workers were killed, tens of thousands were beaten, wounded, jailed and blacklisted. Unions were infiltrated, shut down and outlawed. We cannot be naïve. It will be difficult, costly and painful. But this confrontation is our only hope. Otherwise, we, and the planet that sustains us, are doomed.

Source: https://www.unz.com/article/the-mafia-state/

What resisting authoritarianism in America will look like in Trump’s second term


Far more dispiriting than what the election says about Trump is what his win says about the American body politic. We are a house divided on a fault line of decency. Trump’s venality, his bigotry and racism, his fondness for dictators, and his disregard for the truth were on flamboyant display for American voters — with his former top general even decrying Trump as “fascist to the core.”

Campaigning for the White House, Trump was a peacock with fetid feathers. And others flocked with him: Ostentatious oligarch Elon Musk made a mockery of our democratic system by seeking to buy off voters with small checks and million-dollar prizes. “Comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe was there — making 1950s jokes about Blacks eating watermelons, Jews being tight with money, and Latinos making too many babies, while casually blasting Puerto Rico as a swirling island of garbage.

Trump openly touted his dictatorial aims and his plans for a “bloody” mass deportation — even as he courted white supremacists with a blood libel against Haitians and spouted eliminationist language about Congolese refugees being a pestilence. And more than half of American voters didn’t recoil. Whether they relished in Trump’s vicious spectacle or simply abided it, they did not turn away. They used their ballots to punch a ticket for Trump — with his dozens of felonies and a sexual abuse adjudication — to return to power, and to absolve him of the consequences of his Jan. 6 coup attempt.

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, standing before a wall of red-white-and-blue banners, Trump cast his win as divine will: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he said. “Now we’re going to fulfill that mission.” Never has the old saw “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” seemed more prescient.

Deflating Their Confidence

In advance of the 2024 election, Rolling Stone interviewed experts in authoritarianism, fascism, and presidential power. They offered advice for resisting what is coming, but offered few assurances that the damage created by installing an American authoritarian — who is now effectively unchecked by criminal law — will be quickly or easily reversed. Timothy Snyder is a Yale professor of totalitarian European history and author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Published in 2017, it gave shape to popular resistance of the first Trump term. “You can’t despair,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Because that’s what they want. They want you to think that it’s hopeless. It’s never hopeless.”

Snyder’s first rule in On Tyranny is “don’t obey in advance.” He emphasizes that Americans opposed to Trump’s designs should take stock, and action, now. “The period of November, December, January, becomes very important,” he says, and “not just for ordinary citizens,” but for people entrusted with providing checks on executive power. Snyder issues a clarion call to members of the judiciary: “There’s going to be a lot of cases really quickly, in which the only thing that’s going to stop some kind of dreadful federal act of violence is going to be a judge.”

For normal people, Snyder insists the key is “to get out in protest” — now and through the inauguration. The understandable impulse of “keeping your head in,” Snyder says will only embolden Trump’s reactionary team. “You’re giving them even more confidence that they’re gonna be able to do what they want in January.” What’s demanded of activists in this moment is to “deflate that confidence,” Snyder says, and you do that by “showing that you’re not afraid, by cooperating with your neighbors, and by organizing.”

Snyder emphasizes a lesson of the “Wall of Moms” in Portland, Oregon, in late summer 2020, who helped drive up the political cost and terrible optics for Trump’s most heavy-handed crackdown on public dissent. Launching tear gas at Black Lives Matter protesters looked different on TV when the feds were brutalizing a wall of white mothers in gold shirts, locking arms at the front of the crowd. “It’s about corporeal politics,” Snyder says. “Getting your body out where there are other bodies — with people who are maybe not like you or maybe less privileged than you.”

Seeing the Threat Clearly

Experts in authoritarianism insist that Trump’s dictatorial threats need to be taken with gravity because he’s already done “things that autocrats do,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who is an expert in Italian fascism and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. “He has been able to domesticate a very old, storied party, and truly make it his personal tool,” she tells Rolling Stone. “He instigated a violent coup attempt,” and — instead of “having to go into exile or going to prison, like in Peru” — he “managed to paint it as a positive thing” or to make “a lot of Americans shrug their shoulders at it.” These are “preconditions for autocracy,” she insists.

Trump may have a “highly problematic, decompensating personality,” Ben-Ghiat adds, “but the guy is a master propagandist,” who has used those skills in a campaign against the American system of checks and balances. “He’s taken people step by step … for almost a decade now to view democracy as an inferior system — a system of crime and anarchy, weak government … and to see versions of authoritarian rule, with him at the head, as preferable.”

Ben-Ghiat warns that Project 2025, the conservative policy and personnel program, is the road map “to finish the job” Trump started in his first term. The intent is to “destroy the governing structures and norms of liberal democracy through mass purges of civil servants who are not loyalists — and create something else. And that something else is autocracy.”

Jason Stanley is Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works. He says Trump is pursuing a well-worn playbook. “He’s going to replace the civil service with Trump loyalists.” The next thing “autocrats do is go after the courts, the press, and the universities.” Many of our compatriots have grown up with a false confidence that the United States is immune from this kind of democratic corrosion. “Americans have to grow up,” Stanley says. “A lot of people live under these situations.”

Project 2025 will take time to implement. Sen. Bernie Sanders warns Rolling Stone to watch out for Trump’s use of national “emergencies” to produce a power grab, emboldened by allied partisans in the judiciary: “He will create emergencies, state of emergencies. You know, ‘The world is falling apart. I have got to do A, B, and C.’ And the courts will say, ‘Yeah, of course you have the right to do it. You’ve defined an emergency.’” Sanders says. “There’s a real danger of us losing the rule of law.”

Mixing Orbán With Pinochet

 What will Trump’s model of authoritarianism look like? Experts point to Hungary as a prime example, where Viktor Orbán, the long-serving strongman, has undermined the country’s courts, press freedoms, and minority rights to create what he touts as an “illiberal democracy.”

“I don’t think we’ll be as bad as Russia,” Stanley says. “It’s Orbán, who’s visiting and giving advice.” Stanley notes that Orbán’s mechanisms for controlling dissent are milder than Vladimir Putin’s. “They’ll probably do the Orbán thing where they go after your taxes. They go after your livelihood, your job,” he says of Trump. “They’re not going to start assassinating people.”

Ben-Ghiat agrees that Orbán is a model for MAGA governance, but cautions that what Trump has in store “will be far more violent.” The Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection is part of her calculus: “Orbán didn’t stage a violent attack, sending lawmakers running for their lives."

Trump’s openly stated aims, she warns, bring a South American strongman to mind: “He’s already talked about using the military against protesters, and in that sense, it would be more like Pinochet,” she says. “I’m not saying it’s going to be a military dictatorship, but there are elements of what he would like to do in terms of domestic repression that hark back to” the Chilean dictator.

Enabling Enemies Abroad, Targeting the Enemy Within

Perhaps Trump’s darkest ambition is to shift part of America’s prodigious military might from geopolitical adversaries abroad to political targets at home. Trump has indicated he’ll let Putin lay claim to parts of occupied Ukraine in the name of “peace,” and has treated Taiwan as far less than an ally, suggesting it needs to pay for America protecting it from China.

“Trump’s whole thing is that he would stand back,” says Ben-Ghiat, from America’s traditional role of providing a bulwark against expansionist autocrats like Putin and Xi. “What he would like to do is partly reorient military power to be used for domestic repression.” She points to Trump’s mass deportation plan for the undocumented, involving rounding up and removing the equivalent population of Sweden or Belgium from the United States, calling it a “vast repression” on “a historic dictator scale.”

Trump has preemptively offered police officers immunity from prosecution (in what Ben-Ghiat calls an “authoritarian bargain”), and he’s repeatedly expressed his desire to use the National Guard and even the Army to enact his deportation scheme — as well as to suppress the “enemy within” that opposes his designs. Here, Snyder insists, is where the American public has its most important, and perhaps most challenging role to play. “The Trump-Vance initiatives can only work by getting the population involved — and basically corrupting us,” he says. Snyder argues that even Americans who might share anger with Trump about immigration may yet be recruited to block the border camps promised by Stephen Miller.

“That’s the kind of active thinking that folks have to do — am I going to become the kind of person who takes part in this sort of thing? Am I going to become the kind of person who denounces my neighbors because they are not documented?”

“If Their Rights Are on the Line, My Rights Are on the Line”

A key to resisting authoritarianism, Snyder says, is standing up for the rights of the least powerful first. “If protest comes down to the people who are protesting only because they have to, then you always lose,” he says. “It has to be people who are one, two, three, four, even five steps away from being directly affected who show solidarity — and who also show pragmatism and wisdom by getting out early.

“If you’re more privileged, you should be thinking, ‘What can I do for the least privileged people?’” he says. “If their rights are on the line, my rights are on the line. That’s not just a moral position. It’s actually, politically, 100 percent correct.”

Even as he insists that “the more privileged people have to lean out,” Snyder recognizes that early returns on such bravery are bleak. He points to the “disturbing” choices of the owners of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to block their newspapers from endorsing Kamala Harris in an apparent attempt to curry favor with Trump. “That’s an example of the most privileged people saying, ‘I’m going to act like the least privileged people. I’m going to pretend that I’m the one who’s going to be hurt here, and I’m going to run away.’”

Clawing Democracy Back

The most predictable part of Trump’s effort to rule as an authoritarian is a supercharging of corruption and cronyism. The blowback to that will help build and strengthen opposition.

“The economy is going to be based on, are you friends with Trump? Are you connected to him in some way,” says Stanley, who predicts federal contracts will be “tilted” toward FOTs, or “friends of Trump.” One measure of how bad it gets, Stanley says, half in jest, is what happens to Mark Cuban — the billionaire who campaigned most vigorously for Harris. (After Harris’ loss, Cuban tweeted his congratulations to Trump and Elon Musk.)

Snyder, whose latest volume is called On Freedom, insists that brazen corruption can erode support for a cult of personality like Trump’s. “Folks have this fantasy that if you have a dictator, then the dictator is going to solve problems.” But under Trump, he says, “you’re going to have oligarchy, and a handful people are going to do much better — and everybody else is going to do worse, because the whole system is going to be corrupt and sticky” and run by “incompetent cronies.”

“That’s going to be bad for almost everybody,” Snyder says. “And you can get a lot of support by pointing out how corruption is economically stupid, how corruption hurts everyday people in their everyday lives.”

Both Snyder and Ben-Ghiat point to the recent example of Poland, which has slowly beaten back an Orbán-style far-right takeover, as a model that can give Americans hope. “In Poland, the other side didn’t give up,” says Snyder. “They kept running, even when the elections [appeared] unfair. And they kept coalitions going, and people took risks.”

Dictator for Life?

Stanley and Ben-Ghiat expect Trump will seek to stay in office for as long as he lives, despite the constitutional prohibition against him serving a third term. “He’ll stay in office till he dies,” Stanley predicts, “whether that’s two years, four years, eight years, 12 years, like any other autocrat."

In the meantime, Snyder advises, America’s system of federalism offers hope for democracy at the state and local level. “Many things are going to be terrible. But controlling the federal government doesn’t mean you’re controlling everything,” he says. He exhorts Americans to support the institutions closest to them that uphold democratic norms — “whether that means some civil society organization, or state government, or a local mayor” — and collectively try to strengthen those bodies.

Defending those institutions will give proponents of America’s democratic experiment their best shot at recovery, when the MAGA movement stumbles. Here, Trump’s age and lack of a clear successor offers some hope. “He’s old, so at some point, age is going to make a difference,” Stanley says. “There will be a power struggle. The next opportunity will be when he dies in office.”

Trump’s Greenland and Panama Canal Threats Are a Throwback to an Old, Misguided Foreign Policy


At a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump once again vowed to push U.S. foreign policy back to the future. Trump reiterated his desire to reassert U.S. control over the Panama Canal, by military means if necessary; make Canada the fifty-first U.S. state; and annex Greenland for “national security purposes.” Such approaches would be startling departures from the Biden administration’s liberal internationalism—but with deep roots in U.S. foreign policy.

Trump’s determination to treat the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence signals a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the strategy first introduced by President James Monroe in 1823 that shaped U.S. foreign policy decisively through the early twentieth century and subsequently during the Cold War. Trump’s remarks suggest that unchallenged hemispheric dominance will be at the core of his “America First” approach for the same two motives driving the Monroe Doctrine: to prevent outside powers from meddling and mitigate perceived chaos in the region. Resurrecting this tradition, however, would be both risky and counterproductive to U.S. foreign policy and the global order.

Both Shield and Sword

Two hundred years ago, as rebellions against Spanish colonial rule rocked Latin America, U.S. leaders worried that other European powers might fill the vacuum. To preempt this outcome, Monroe conjured an “American system” in which European powers were forbidden to meddle. He declared that the Western hemisphere would be off limits and put the imperial powers on notice: “We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and security.”

As U.S. power grew, successive administrations invoked the doctrine not just as a shield, but as a sword. In 1845, President James K. Polk annexed Texas, lest it become “an ally or dependency of some foreign nation more powerful than [the United States].” The next year Polk cited the doctrine to defend a war with Mexico that brought California and the American southwest under U.S. sovereignty. In 1867, Andrew Johnson summoned it in purchasing Alaska.

By the 1890s, the Monroe Doctrine was understood to imply that the entire Western Hemisphere was an American preserve. Grover Cleveland’s administration made this explicit in 1895, intervening in a dispute over the boundaries between Venezuela and British Guiana. U.S. Secretary of State Richard Olney expressed what became known as the doctrine’s Olney Corollary: “Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.” Lest that pedantic formulation left any doubt, he warned Britain that America’s “infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.”

Three years later, war with Spain handed the United States the island of Puerto Rico and a new protectorate in Cuba. In the Caribbean basin, it now intervened at will. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt interceded to guarantee Panama’s secession from Colombia, securing sole rights for the U.S. to build an isthmian canal. The next year he issued his own corollary that the United States, “however reluctantly,” may act as a policing power “in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence.” Even Woodrow Wilson, who hoped to put inter-American relations on a more progressive footing, fell prey to unilateralist temptations. In 1915, he sent Marines to Haiti to restore political and economic stability. The next year he ordered the U.S. Army into Mexico in a fruitless “punitive expedition” to capture the revolutionary Pancho Villa.

A Shifting Basis for World Order

Even Wilson’s most famous foreign policy initiative—the League of Nations, which he hoped would preserve international peace after World War I—was contorted to fit under the Monroe Doctrine for his domestic audience. Despite the league’s global rather than continental approach, Wilson framed its promise of universal collective security as the logical extension of this regional arrangement: “[N]ations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the Doctrine of the World: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people.”

Wilson’s realist critics were unmoved. “If we have the Monroe Doctrine everywhere,” retorted Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, “we may be perfectly certain that it will not exist anywhere.” Lodge had a point. A universal collective security system was fundamentally at odds with one of great powers’ spheres of influence. In the end, nationalist anxieties about preserving U.S. hemispheric domination helped doom Senate approval for the League Covenant.

The Monroe Doctrine’s longstanding grip on U.S. foreign policy finally began to loosen in the 1930s, with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and America’s subsequent turn to globalism. In his first inaugural address in March 1933, FDR advocated a noninterventionist course in the Western Hemisphere: the “policy of the good neighbor.” Following U.S. entry into World War II, his administration drafted blueprints for an open, rule-bound world order based on collective security and a multilateral commerce. Significantly, FDR rebuffed efforts from Britain and the USSR to negotiate spheres of influence delimiting their postwar regional prerogatives.

The Charter of the United Nations reflected these universalist instincts, and FDR was jubilant. On his return from the Yalta Conference in March 1945, he declared the summit a “turning point” in world history. He predicted the UN would reverse policies of unilateral action, “the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power” that had been “tried for centuries—and have always failed.”

Yet Yalta quickly became a symbol for what FDR reviled: acknowledgment of a closed Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, reinforced by the descent of an iron curtain. As for the United States, its own ostensible rejection of spheres proved selective and evanescent. National security officials insisted on retaining U.S. hegemony in Central America and the Caribbean—“Our little region over here which has never bothered anybody,” Secretary of War Henry Stimson quipped. To try to reduce any cognitive dissonance, U.S. officials insisted that these were “open” rather than “closed” spheres, allowing countries freedom in their political and economic choices and international relations.

Once the Cold War began, any U.S. circumspection about the Monroe Doctrine vanished. Washington moved to secure Latin America from communist subversion and Soviet influence, making it “a closed hemisphere in an open world.” It intervened repeatedly against left-wing governments and movements, as in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Granada.

Trump’s Gambits Reconsidered

Viewed through this historical prism, Trump’s pugnacious threats to seize the Panama Canal or use troops to counter disorder in Mexico are less a departure from tradition than a reversion to the norm. Trump’s blunt insistence that Denmark relinquish Greenland can be seen in the same light. Trump’s ambitions to acquire the strategically located, resource-rich island three times the size of Texas echoes U.S. territorial purchases from previous centuries that were roundly criticized at the time but later regarded as tremendous deals. Most obvious among them were the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for $15 million and of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. Trump, too, isn’t the first president to set his sights on Greenland: Andrew Johnson considered acquiring it 1867, and Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold for it in 1946. But for now, the island isn’t biting.

Given Trump’s impulsive temperament and capricious style, it is perilous to attribute his utterances to any underlying grand strategy. Still, one thing seems likely: The logic of spheres will be at the core of his approach to world order. This is partly a function of his longstanding aversion toward globalism, multilateralism, entangling alliances, and forever wars in distant countries. Indeed, he would presumably agree with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams’ 1821 adage: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

Although often interpreted as an expression of isolationism, that line is more accurately read as a warning against imperial overreach. Like Monroe—the president to whom Quincy Adams reported—Trump is no isolationist. He seeks U.S. retrenchment from globalism but insists the United States dominate its immediate neighborhood, to fend off both hemispheric instability and geopolitical adversaries—not least China. Since 2010, China has made major inroads in Latin America, bolstering its diplomatic and commercial presence and investing in massive infrastructure projects. The United States, meanwhile, has long treated the region as a peripheral concern, pursuing a policy of (not so) “benign neglect.”

With Trump’s election, that seems poised to change. Writing back in May 2024, the historian Hal Brands speculated that a second helping of Trumpism “would feature an energized Monroe Doctrine,” with Washington retreating from its longtime alliances in Europe and Asia and instead focusing on “intensified and perhaps heavier-handed efforts to safeguard American influence in the New World, and to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold there.” Although Trump has not yet taken office, this reorientation appears well under way.

But if there is a strong case for Trump to ramp up U.S. focus on the Americas, explicitly reviving the interventionist Monroe Doctrine would be deeply counterproductive. Beyond stimulating anti-American nationalism in the hemisphere, such a throwback policy would legitimate efforts by China, Russia, and potentially other regional powers to pursue spheres of influence in their own neighborhoods, further undermining the UN Charter and the already fraying legal foundations of international order.

Already, Chinese officials and experts liken China’s ambitions and claims in the South China Sea to historical U.S. efforts to turn the Caribbean into “an American lake.” Trump’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine would also bode ill for China’s neighbors, including U.S. allies such as the Philippines and friendly powers such as Vietnam, which are seeking to resist Beijing’s expansionist aspirations. Russia, meanwhile, has long sought to reclaim influence over its so-called Near Abroad, including Ukraine and other states of the former Soviet Union.

A more farsighted, and promising, U.S. strategy would be for the Trump administration to redouble U.S. diplomatic and economic attention to the Western Hemisphere while formally renouncing the hegemonic presumption inherent in the Monroe Doctrine. As part of this process, the United States should commit itself to bolstering hemispheric institutions that are consistent with the UN Charter, based on mutual respect for sovereignty and collective action. Finally, Trump should take a page from FDR and renounce exclusive zones of great power privilege as contrary to the objective of a stable and just world order. As Roosevelt declared on his return from Yalta—and as subsequent history would bear out—the very notion of “spheres of influence” is “incompatible with the basic principles of international collaboration.”
 

Minsk 3.0: Return To The Age Of Empires?
 
 
Russia continues to demilitarize the Kiev Regime along the entire contact line. Kiev has responded with terrorist attacks on civilian sites and infrastructure in Russian Ukraine and Russia itself, as well as is usual atrocities – murdering civilians. But the war that the US started so many years ago is clearly lost and now the US needs to withdraw— and pretend they had nothing to do with the fiasco. What it wants is Minsk 3.0, which leves most geographic ‘Ukraine” intact— along with the investments of American companies like Blackrock.

It is therefore trying to shift responsibility to Europe, as if this was always Europe’s war instead of theirs. If Trump had wanted, he could have kept the peace by supporting Minsk 2.0 back when . Instead he undermined that agreement, piling on sanctions on Russia and facilitating arms transfers that allowed Ukraine to build Europe’s strongest, best equipped and trained army to carry out a “final solution”, scheduled for 2022,

Let us keep in mind that the peoples of Donbas and Lugansk were resisting the denial or their language and culture by a regime they had seized power illegitimately, and which was trying to enforce its will by shelling civilian centers killing women and children. While the peoples of the DPR and LPR had voted overwhelming for independence, MInsk 2.0 was a compromise — guaranteeing their ethnic rights and local autonomy in a federal system controlled from Kiev.

Kiev was and occupying power – two-thirds of their land—and there wasn’t much they could do, until the Russians recognized their independence and came to their aid in 2022. Trump didn’t care about any of this during his first term. But now he doesn’t have any choice to accept whatever the Russians offer him.
 
Trump’s support for democracy

When the US starts talking about “democracy”, you know they are really talking about something else. They don’t care about human rights in Europe – or at home even — and certainly not in Palestine. The US support for “democracy” in Europe—means support for rightwing populist movements, similar in spirit to Trump’s. They also are as tired of fighting a losing war as he is. That doesn’t mean anything will improve under their rule any more than anything will improve under Trumps. Birds of a feather? Not exactly. Not all birds are equal. The European elites had thought they belonged to the American flock. Now they realized they were being raised for slaughter. The US is doing to Europe what it had hoped to do to Russia in the 20th Century – balkanization and control. Transnational rape. Europe was once a collection of small ethnically defined kingdoms which became nation states only in the 19th Century. Now it is returning to that state. Europe doesn’t have natural resources like Russia – but it does have a skilled workforce, technology and capital—which the US wants to exploit. 
 
JD Vance and the Trumpian Mindset

One Russian site analyzed JD Vance’s recent speech this way. It is still too early to say which part of Ukrainian territory will remain under Russian control; It is also too soon to determine what security guarantees Washington and its Western allies might offer Kyiv; The Trump administration aims to convince Putin that Russia can achieve more at the negotiating table than on the battlefield. Moscow’s current isolation from Western markets has made it a junior partner to Beijing. It is not in Putin’s interest to be the junior partner in an alliance with China.

#1. As far Russia, is concerned, they will decide what parts of Ukraine they control. A lot of Russians want to incorporate almost all of “Little Russia’ leaving Galicia to the Poles, a neutral, landlocked buffer state. The New Ukraine? The four oblasts and Crimea now part of the Russian Federation are not up for discussion –but there is the entire area east of the Dnieper and the Black Sea oblasts, not to mention Kiev and other Russian language areas which will be offered referenda to choose as part of a surrender agreement and re-constitution of Ukraine. As I write, the Russians have advanced from the Kursk region across the border into Ukraine. You can expect them to ‘liberate” all of Kharkov and Sumy.

#2 Is moot if the Kiev regime falls and Russia controls Ukraine directly— or through a proxy Ukrainian government put together by someone like Medvedchuk –who is one of the few Ukrainian politicians to oppose the NeoNazis. “Little Russia” can only have a future with Russian help and the Russian federal system allows its republics considerable autonomy — more than they would under Western control.

#3. What could Putin gain at the negotiating table? Nothing much. Lifting sanctions would benefit American business more than Russia, which has used them to incentivize reindustrialization and economic and social growth. On the battlefield, Russia gains new citizens, skilled workers, and access to more than a trillion dollars’ worth untapped mineral wealth, hitherto not easily exploited but now more accessible with modern technologies, such as Russia’s new lithium processing tech – and the help of allies like China. Turkey is already signalling it wants to a piece of the action,

#4. The US economic war on China and its attempts to restrict its access to resources makes Moscow an equal—not junior— partner to China. In addition, Russia’s innovative progress has made huge progress in certain technologies, including quantum computing, the aforementioned lithium processing technology, metallurgical advances with aerospace applications, semiconductor fabrication and defense. These are things that China needs – and China has much to offer in return. as it faces Western threats in the Pacific.
 
#5 It is not in Russia’s interest to be any kind of partner with the US, which cannot be relied on, having already cost Russian billions and hundreds of lives. Partners need to responsible and trustworthy. China keeps its word. The US just changes its mind. Russia and China are civilizations. The US is a corporation.
 
Trust not!

Trump does not exactly inspire trust. He is the Contradiction in Chief. He does not have dementia but he is quite as demented as Joe. Russia is aware that while the US may withdraw from Ukraine, it is not talking— so far at least — about withdrawing troops or weapons from Europe or embargoing weapons to Europe. In fact, it is still encouraging Europe to fight on. And Russia is still the Enemy to the East. Russia is also aware of the US’s hostility for Russian allies like China and Iran, so important to the development of BRICS, Unlike the US, Russia is loyal to its agreements and faithful to its friends. It’s contributions to BRICS are based on its reputation for evenhandedness, transcultural respect and honest. But the US is the world’s greatest terrorist state, which has managed to kill 20 to 30 million people since WWII. It has a long history of terrorism and subversion.
 
Sovereignty vs Suzerainty

The US concept of “sphere of influence’ is a notion of suzerainty. The US wants to become suzerain to all countries in the American continent— and Europe as well—not to mention the Middle East using Israel as a proxy. Russia will be offered bits of central Asia and parts of Ukraine. China gets walled off. Africa is up for grabs. The problem is that the majority of the world don’t want to return to the 19th Century.
 
Riyadh

The Americans have nothing to offer Russia— but, as a legacy empire, it is still powerful. Therefore, the Russians agreed to meet the Americans in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which is committed to BRICS in the long term, but balancing business needs with the West in the short term. The Russian brand is peace. But they will fight for what they believe in. The American brand is war—as long as someone else is doing the dying. They don’t really believe in anything. What did the Saudi’s think? In Riyadh, the Middle East had a good look the respective styles of Russia and the US. The Russian sent a team of their best diplomats including Lavrov – skilled and experienced negotiators. The Americans sent a ragtag bunch of beltway politicos with little to no experience in international negotiations. Trump’s pro-Zionist policies have alienated the Arab Street and have not gone over well with the Saudis. The Russians are sober, rational, pragmatic and knowledgeable— all the things that the Americans are not. The result—the Russians agree to talk more — later. The next BRICS summit is in July in Brasilia. One reason that Russia is persisting with these negotiations with the US is to demonstrate it commitment to rational diplomacy and international equality of nations —the kind of Wang Yi of China talks about.
Rivalry between big powers had brought disaster to humanity, as evidenced by the lessons of the two world wars in the not-so-distant past. Whether it is the colonial system or the core-periphery structure, unequal orders are bound to meet their demise. Independence and autonomy is sought across the world, and greater democracy in international relations is unstoppable. Equal rights, equal opportunities and equal rules should become the basic principles of a multipolar world. It is in this principle that China advocates equality among all countries regardless of size, and calls for increasing the representation and say of developing countries in the international system. This will not lead to “Westlessness,” but will deliver more positive-sum results to the world. … Every country should have their voice heard. Every country should be able to find their place and play their role in a multipolar paradigm - Wang Yi, foreign minister of China
Source: https://southfront.press/minsk-3-0-return-to-the-age-of-empires/

How Putin, Xi and now Trump are ushering in a new imperial age


Over the past few weeks the new US president, Donald Trump, has repeatedly claimed that the United States should “take back” the Panama Canal and that it should assume control of Greenland – one way or another. He has talked of Canada becoming America’s 51st state and now he even wants to “take over” the Gaza Strip to convert it into a “Riviera” on the eastern Mediterranean. It’s as if the US president believes that his country should be an empire. In this Trump seems to be emulating China’s Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin of Russia, leaders he has said he admires and who have themselves shown some clear imperial tendencies in recent years.

Under Putin, Russia has supported secessionist regions, such as Transnistria and Abkhazia, fought wars in Georgia and Ukraine and actively interfered in the affairs of Syria and assorted African countries. In 2022 Russia even launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, claiming that Ukraine was historically inseparable from Russia, but that hostile western influences were trying to destroy that unity.

China, meanwhile, has militarised a number of small uninhabited islands in the South China Sea. It has built 27 installations on disputed islands in the Spratly and Paracel island group that are also claimed by other countries including Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Malaysia. This has prompted a flurry of development, as other countries in the region have raced to establish their own footholds in the disputed, but very resource-rich, region. Beijing also maintains its claim over Taiwan, which it says is an inalienable part of China which it wants to “come home”.

Empires and nation states

Most people assumed that the age of empires had been relegated to the dustbin of history. But this is by no means a straightforward proposition. Until relatively recently, the rise and fall of empires had dominated much of recorded history. Nation-states only appeared at the end of the 18th century. And as those states rose to prominence many too displayed imperial inclinations.

Text with us for something interesting every day

So the US, fresh from throwing off the yoke of the British empire, wasted little time in expanding its borders westward, acquiring – whether by conquest or purchase – large swaths of new territory in what effectively turned a small group of east coast states into a continental empire. Meanwhile other newly minted nation-states such as Italy and Germany also aspired to acquire overseas empires and involved themselves, with varying success, building what turned out to be relatively shortlived colonial empires in Africa and elsewhere.

Most traditional dynastic empires, meanwhile, began to adopt various aspects of the nation-state model, such as conscription, legal equality and political participation. The decades following the second world war are often seen by historians as a period of decolonisation by traditional imperial powers such as Britain and France. But the transition from empire to nation-states was far from smooth. Most imperial governments hoped to transform their empires into more egalitarian commonwealths, while retaining a degree of influence. This they did with varying degrees of success and often under extreme duress, as with France in Algeria and Vietnam, or under great economic pressure, such as with Britain and India. The real age of the nation-state didn’t begin until the 1960s.

The return of empire?

Today, the world consists of about 200 independent countries, the overwhelming majority nation-states. Nonetheless, one could argue that empires – or at least imperial tendencies – have never totally disappeared. France, for instance, frequently interfered in many of its former colonies in Africa. However, these military interventions were not meant to permanently occupy new territories.

Today, imperial tendencies seem to resurface around the world. The past, however, tends not to repeat itself. Massive wars of conquest or attempts to create new overseas empires are unlikely in the immediate future. Most imperial expansions are currently sought close to home. What is striking is that Putin, Xi and Trump all use fierce nationalist rhetoric to justify their imperialist designs. Putin, as we have seen, claims the indivisibility of Ukraine and Russia and blames “Nazis” for trying to turn Russia’s sister state towards the west. He used it as a justification for invading Ukraine in February 2022.

Xi, in turn, often maintains that Communist China has finally overcome the century of humiliation, in which the country was the plaything of foreign powers. They both seem to yearn for past imperial greatness. The Russian Federation aims to undo the dissolution of the Soviet Union, communist China looks back to the Qing empire. Interestingly, under its increasingly authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey – another regional power with imperial inclinations – similarly finds inspiration in the Ottoman Empire.

The US case seems to be more complex, but in fact is very similar. Thus, Trump argues that the Panama Canal, which has long been administered by the US, was foolishly returned to Panama by Jimmy Carter and claims that it is now controlled by China. He will, he says, return it to the US.

Trump also refers to America’s “Manifest Destiny”, the 19th-century belief that American settlers were destined to expand to the Pacific coast. These days his aspirations are northwards rather than to the west. The president also wants to plant the US flag on Mars, taking his imperial dreams into outer space. If the US joins China and Russia in violating recognised borders, the international, rights-based order could be in danger. The signs are not very positive. Taking steps to illegally annex territories could blow up the entire international edifice.

 
 Trump said he will divide Russia from China. It's a tough bromance to break

Russia and China's anti-US alliance has been growing more powerful. President-elect Donald Trump says he can break the partnership.

President-elect Donald Trump claims he can split the alliance between Russia and China. The authoritarian states formed a "no limits" partnership after Russia's Ukraine invasion. But analysts say the alliance, formed to challenge US power, is here to stay. At an event just days before his election triumph, Donald Trump gave a clue as to how he plans to tackle two of the US' most powerful adversaries, Russia and China. Speaking to right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, Trump accused the Biden administration of allowing the authoritarian powers to draw closer together.

"The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting," Trump said. "I'm going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them."

Trump has long boasted of his deal-making prowess and, during his term of office, claimed to have struck a rapport with strongmen leaders President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. But analysts say that prising Russia and China's bromance could prove to be an insurmountable challenge.

An anti-US alliance

Xi and Putin are determined to topple US global power and they see Trump's election as a chance to further that agenda. "While there are differences between Moscow and Beijing, they both share a world view of America in terminal decline, now further accelerated by the upheaval expected from a second Trump term," Stefan Wolff, a professor on international security at the University of Birmingham in the UK, told BI. It's a relationship of increasing concern to leaders in the Pentagon, as both nations possess formidable nuclear arsenals and sophisticated military technology. China has given Russia vital economic and diplomatic support to fuel its invasion of Ukraine, a US ally. Trade between China and Russia surged to a record high of $240 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, Russia and China's militaries have taken part in joint military exercises as China menaces Taiwan with invasion. 

Tensions remain

Despite the declarations of unity, there are serious underlying tensions in the alliance Trump could seek to exploit. The president-elect pointed to these in his remarks to Carlson, claiming that Russia and China are "natural enemies" because China covets Russian land in the Far East for its growing population. "There is a lot of resentment of China in Russia in both the public and policy circles," said Wolff. China has made audacious inroads in the Central Asian republics that have long been seen as part of Moscow's sphere of influence. And Russia is wary that China could seek to revive old border disputes to expand its territory, said Wolff. Russia, he continued, is "ultimately resentful of the fact that Moscow is now a junior partner to Beijing. These are potentially all things that Trump could use to drive a wedge between Russia and China."
Exploiting chaos

But achieving the goal will be incredibly difficult, say observers. To entice Putin away from his alliance with Xi, Trump would likely have to present him with a US-brokered Ukraine peace deal that meets most of the demands the Russian president has set out, said Wolff. These include the annexation of swaths of Ukrainian territory and guarantees that sanctions would be lifted — terms Ukraine has flatly rejected, and that would enrage the US' European allies. But even if Putin were tempted by such a deal, China's current economic leverage over Russia as its biggest trading partner provides it with an effective veto to any prospective deal with Trump.

"Russia is going to be dependent on China no matter what in coming years as it seeks to rebuild its armed force and economy after Ukraine, and it's a weakness that Beijing will certainly exploit even if it costs it more to do so," Paul Cormarie, a political analyst a the RAND Corporation told BI.

"Unless it's [the US] replacing China as Russia's main partner (which would be frankly absurd) there's nothing much that could realistically split the two at the moment," he said. Jonathan Ward, an analyst at the Hudson Institute, told BI that Trump could instead seek to exert pressure on China, imposing the same punishing sanctions on the Chinese economy as it applied to Russia to tear the allies apart. He said this would "set a long-term framework for the breaking of the Russia-China axis and eventual strategic victory over this group of adversary states."

However, some analysts have questioned the power of US sanctions to change China's decision-making and said they'd be tough to enforce given the size of China's economy. Another possibility is that Trump could seek to form smaller deals to create divisions between Russia and China, for instance, on security or sanctions. But they'd be unlikely to last. "These deals would likely not impress serious thinkers in strategy and policy, but will be sellable as foreign policy wins," Robert Dover, a professor of International Security at Hull University in the UK, told BI.
The Trump effect

Another factor likely to draw Russia and China closer together is Trump himself. Putin and Xi likely see the chance to exploit divisions caused by Trump's willingness to insult allies and foment domestic turmoil. Trump has long questioned the US commitment to the NATO alliance, and Russia will likely be keen to probe weaknesses caused by the possible withdrawal of its most powerful member. In East Asia, Trump has accused allies of freeloading off the US, a source of tension Beijing will likely seek to exploit.

"China can take a 'divide-and-conquer' strategy to dilute the effectiveness of Trump's foreign policy," Zhiqun Zhu, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at Bucknell University, told VOA this week. For many observers, the economic and strategic ties that have formed between Russia and China in recent years are already so strong that breaking them apart is likely impossible. As Cormarie put it: "The Russia-China axis against the US is here to stay."

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-plan-divide-china-russia-axis-is-likely-fail-2024-11?op=1

Kissinger Revisited. Can the United States Drive a Wedge Between Russia and China?


Elections have consequences, former U.S. president Barack Obama once said. Administrations change, but bad ideas live to fight another day. One example is the notion, popular during the Trump presidency, that the United States should revive the old Nixon-era strategy of geopolitical balancing, and get Russia to change sides and align with the United States against China.

The latest incarnation of this idea appears in a recent paper that has attracted some attention in Washington. Written by an anonymous author, described only as a “former senior government official,” it is an attempt to replicate George Kennan’s famous article—also published anonymously—from 1947. Kennan’s article became the intellectual foundation for the strategy of containing the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The aspiring twenty-first-century Kennan writes that “Dividing Russia from China in the future is [critical]. Allowing Russia to drift fully into China’s strategic embrace over the last decade will go down as the single greatest geostrategic error of successive U.S. administrations.” So far, the Biden administration has shown little inclination to embrace such thinking. Hopefully, it will refrain from doing so in the future.

The Trump administration’s heralded reinvention of great power competition was, among other things, a reflection of its strategic myopia: “a rising China and a vindictive Russia,” as some fans of Trump’s foreign policy describe the other great powers, had never abandoned their great power ambitions or resolve to compete with the United States. They have always resented and resisted America’s “unipolar moment.”

The fallacy of the Trump administration’s approach to Russia and China was further demonstrated by its supposedly clever “divide and conquer” tactic. Senior Trump officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, argued that instead of competing with Russia and China simultaneously, the United States should exploit Russia’s concerns about China to undermine their partnership and get it to side with the United States against China.

Clever as it may seem, the “divide and conquer” approach to Russia and China is based on a fundamental misreading of the past and misunderstanding of the present; it belongs in a wastebasket. Biden and his foreign policy advisers have pledged to be tough on Russia and make it pay a stiff price for its malign activities.

The Trump administration’s attempt to replicate Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic maneuvering between the Soviet Union and China in the early 1970s is a good example of the misuse of history. Kissinger’s triangular diplomacy succeeded for two reasons.

First, even though some still doubted it, he recognized and took advantage of the rift between the two Communist powers after their 1969 border clash. But he did not create the split between Moscow and Beijing, which was rooted in their ideological differences and geopolitical ambitions. By the time of Kissinger’s 1971 secret trip to China, the two had been bitter enemies for years. Beijing wanted better relations with Washington as a counterweight to Soviet power.

Second, Moscow wanted an opening with Washington to ease the twin burdens of the arms race with the United States and the standoff with China. Neither of those conditions exists today.

The notion that the United States can successfully entice Moscow to align with Washington instead of Beijing overlooks the motivations that cement the Sino-Russian partnership: they share a deeply adversarial relationship with the United States and want to thwart what they perceive as its hegemonic ambitions aided by democracy promotion and the unilateral use of military power.

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion has been a staple of U.S. foreign policy in rhetoric and in practice, supplemented by frequent public criticism of Russia and China for their lack of democracy at home and support for authoritarian regimes abroad. The two countries resent this as a violation of their sovereignty and an existential threat.

They also consider the U.S. web of alliances and military presence at their doorstep a threat to their security. The Trump administration neglected America’s alliances, and called out authoritarian regimes only when it was convenient. The new administration has pledged to reinvigorate both democracy promotion and alliances. This will only add to Putin’s discomfort and reinforce his quest for closer ties to Beijing.

In trade and economics, Russia and China are a perfect match. The former is fabulously rich in natural resources, while the latter is a manufacturing giant. Putin and Xi Jinping extoll the prospects for their economic cooperation.

What has the United States got to offer Russia? U.S. officials used to say that trade and investment would improve bilateral relations. But as ideological and geopolitical differences between them spiked, the United States hit Russia repeatedly with economic sanctions.

The United States now produces more gas than Russia. The Trump administration relied on economic muscle and the threat of sanctions to try to get Europe—a critical market for Russia—to buy more gas from America and less from Russia. The use of U.S. vastly superior economic power to bend Russia to its will is hardly a comforting situation for Putin.

The partnership with China is critical for Russia, because an adversarial relationship would be fraught with dire consequences. Since the early 1990s, the normalization of relations with Beijing has relieved Moscow of the incalculable burden of maintaining a vast conventional presence—as many as fifty divisions at the height of the Sino-Soviet rift—along its 4,000-kilometer border with China, and remains critical today, when Russia is locked in a tense standoff with NATO. Knowing that Russia’s border with China is secure must help alleviate the discomfort caused to Putin by the breakdown in his relations with Europe and the United States.

Needless to say, it makes sense for U.S. policy to avoid actions—wherever possible—that drive Moscow closer to Beijing. But the idea of driving a wedge between them to weaken their alignment is wishful thinking. Their partnership is anchored in a convergence of economic, geopolitical, and domestic political interests.

Partnership with China is a strategic imperative for Russia, and its modern-day leaders see no alternative to it. Such a hopeless U.S. pursuit as trying to divide the two powers should be replaced with sharply focused strategies based on realistic assessments of the motivations and capabilities of each country, as each will remain a unique source of challenges to the United States.

This article was published as part of the “Relaunching U.S.-Russia Dialogue on Global Challenges: The Role of the Next Generation” project, implemented in cooperation with the U.S. Embassy to Russia. The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Embassy to Russia.


Reversing Kissinger


The former secretary of state’s 1972 opening to China badly weakened the U.S. By dispensing with that conceit, Trump shows he intends for America to win the great-power competition

The undiplomatic words that Donald Trump had for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week left some Washington, D.C., observers wondering how the Europeans saw the situation. After all, they wondered, if that’s how Trump treats a war-torn country fighting for its independence against Russian despot Vladimir Putin, what do Paris, London, and Rome, etc. think about U.S. security commitments? Other foreign policy analysts recognize that Trump has many audiences outside the United States, including those in Moscow and Beijing. Many of these Trump watchers conjectured that the spectacle at the White House was meant to illustrate that Trump was willing to tilt against Ukraine in order to accommodate Putin. And the reason for that, they say, is to drive a wedge between Russia and China, what Trump sees as America’s No. 1 threat.

The Washington foreign policy establishment is calling what it presumes to be Trump’s Russia policy “reverse Kissinger.” That is, Trump is using the same tactic employed by Richard Nixon’s chief foreign policy aide Henry Kissinger when he encouraged his boss to open relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and thereby “play the China card” against the more powerful Soviet Union. And in February 1972, Nixon went to Beijing, forging the opening with China. Trump, some are arguing, is doing the same, except going the other way.

Indeed, Kissinger himself had prophesied the coming of the “reverse Kissinger,” for as he told Nixon only days before their fateful 1972 trip, a future American president “if he’s as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese.” Kissinger reportedly suggested the idea to Trump in 2017 and the president told me for my forthcoming book on China that lots of people agreed it was a bad idea to let Russia and China get close. There were many in the administration who wanted to see if there was a way to work with Moscow to hobble Beijing, but there was no way to get around Russiagate. 
Kissinger’s idea of an international order based on cooperation and comity was an early advertisement for what we now call globalism—the very order that the ‘America First’ president opposes and seeks to undo.
The surveillance and propaganda operation managed by Barack Obama’s spy chiefs who alleged that the Trump circle had illicit ties to Russia consumed most of Trump’s first term, and made it impossible for him to engage with Putin on most meaningful issues. Thus, Russiagate was more than a Beltway scandal featuring U.S. spy services that tried to topple the government; it’s a still-unfolding national security disaster of the first order that limited the president’s ability to secure American peace and advance our prosperity.

Insofar as it kept Trump from testing the waters to see if he might split Russia from China, Russiagate was effectively a pro-CCP information operation benefiting a U.S. ruling class—including media, Big Tech, and corporate elites alongside the security services—whose wealth, power, and prestige are fruits of the opening with China. Many of those now disdainful of Trump’s initiative are deeply invested in his failure since weakening China weakens them. Naturally they’re going to say that Trump can’t pull it off—because, for among other reasons, Trump isn’t as smart as America’s most famous statesman. However, a more critical look at the opening shows that Kissinger and his boss bungled it badly.

Trump’s critics are right that there’s nothing now analogous to the fault line underlying the 1972 opening—there’s no obvious breathing space between Moscow and Beijing like the Sino-Soviet split that drove the two communist juggernauts apart starting with the 1953 death of Josef Stalin. But Kissinger fans give him far too much credit for seizing that opportunity, when the plain fact is that he misplayed the gift that fell into his lap.

Early in Nixon’s term, Soviet diplomats asked their American counterparts how Washington would react to a Soviet nuclear attack on China—in fact, would the U.S. care to join them? The White House was horrified and leaked Moscow’s plans to deter the attack. Mao later told Kissinger he thought it was strange the Americans saw no advantage in letting their two communist rivals tear each other to pieces. Clearly that’s how Mao would have played it, because that’s how the PRC saw the opening: They were playing the American card against the Russians.

When the Chinese came running to the Americans for help, Washington by definition held the stronger position. But it was the White House that played the supplicant. For instance, during his secret July 1971 trip to Beijing to prepare for Nixon’s visit, Kissinger gifted Beijing with precious intelligence on Soviet troop movements in exchange for … agreeing to host the leader of the free world in the run-down capital of a dirt-poor third-world hellhole peopled by, at the time, nearly 900 million peasants. It would only get worse for the U.S. side, despite the great photo ops Nixon earned with his historic trip.

As the late Angelo Codevilla explained in a 2015 essay, “The Courage of His Contradictions,” Kissinger’s chief concern throughout his career as a diplomat, and then high-level consultant, was to promote an international order—in Kissinger’s view, a harmonized convergence of competing world powers designed to foster stability. His model was the Concert of Europe, the early-19th-century arrangement between various powers that kept the peace on the continent after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. But Kissinger misrepresented the nature of Europe’s concert system—the purpose was not to build an international order where every state agreed to pursue their interests in moderation; rather it was to ratify, as Codevilla wrote, “what the governments that defeated Napoleon had secured militarily.” No one wanted to fight again, at that particular moment, so they made peace, which lasted only briefly.

Accordingly, Kissinger wasn’t leveraging China against the USSR, he was trying to draw Beijing into an international order along the lines of his quasi-mystical conception of the concert system. And crucially, Kissinger’s idea of an international order based on cooperation and comity was an early advertisement for what we now call globalism. Kissinger is its intellectual father, the theorist and apologist for the very order that the “America First” president opposes and seeks to undo. Accordingly, it’s more accurate to think of Trump’s overall strategy not as Reverse Kissinger but rather as reversing Kissinger.

The typical understanding of the opening is that the move was a geopolitical masterstroke, but the U.S.-China relationship later went sour as the PRC began to cheat and failed to meet its obligations in international fora, like the World Trade Organization. Yes, obviously Beijing can’t be trusted—it’s a totalitarian police state that’s been governed by a communist party since 1949. Why Kissinger and Nixon sought friendship with a regime then engaged in another of its serial purges that cost millions of lives, the Cultural Revolution, is more evidence the opening was a mistake from the outset. For Americans then, the blame must rest entirely with the side elected to represent our interests—the U.S. political class, starting with Nixon and Kissinger.

With the end of WWII, the U.S. was primus inter pares in the Atlantic and Pacific because it won the war. But by trying to induce deadly rivals to join it in a multilateral system, the United States was offering to neuter itself. And that’s exactly what happened when Nixon met Mao. For instance, the president hoped to get Mao’s help withdrawing from Vietnam and was prepared to be flexible on Taiwan in the exchange. The Chinese countered by informing the Americans that they’d continue to help killing their children and constituents in Southeast Asia if they didn’t withdraw immediately, and then they pocketed Nixon’s virtual abandonment of Taiwan. The opening was structured to weaken the U.S. position in favor of China, and everything pursuant to it followed that logic.

With his reputation as the Marco Polo of globalism firmly established through his public sector work, Kissinger’s job in the private sector was to help get U.S. companies into the enormous Chinese market with nearly a billion potential consumers. According to Kissinger—and the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Kissinger clones that came after—it was to be the heyday of U.S.-China trade. Except the Americans knew that dating back 200 years there had never really been a Chinese market for U.S. goods, except for opium. In fact, what the big U.S. corporate bosses really wanted was to replace American workers with China’s huge pool of cheap labor by offshoring manufacturing. And thus began the purposeful impoverishment of the U.S. middle class, what Trump calls American carnage.

This is what Trump is trying to undo with his protectionist policies, like his now 20% tariff on Chinese goods. Making America great again requires protecting American workers and our industrial base—our national security and national character depend on it. Thus, his strategic goal is to reverse the devastation of the heartland that began with Kissinger. And it seems he believes that trying to pull Putin away from Xi Jinping is a useful tactic in that larger effort. Who knows if he’ll succeed, but the fact is that unlike Kissinger, Trump isn’t playing for a tie. He intends to win
 
 

Will Trump stand up to Russia and China, or appease their lust for power?

When Donald Trump said during the campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, it was widely understood as a menacing message to Volodymyr Zelensky that Trump would cut off all aid to Ukraine and force it to capitulate, granting territorial and sovereignty concessions to Russia. A conceivable but far less likely scenario was that Trump would threaten dire consequences to Moscow if it did not stop the war and withdraw from Ukraine. 

Trump also said repeatedly that if he had been president in 2022, Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine, as he did during both the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations. That claim, too, was subject to contrasting interpretations — either Putin would be deterred by Trump’s claimed warnings of an overwhelming U.S. response, or he would assure Putin there was no need to invade since he would get what he wanted without war.  

The world will soon see either a resolute or an appeasing Trump.  

Now, even though he is not yet president, Trump has been engaged in direct or virtual negotiations between Zelensky and Putin, with both leaders initially rejecting the concessions he is demanding. As he well knows from his business dealings, agreement is not achievable until one side or the other, or both, decides that it has more to gain or less to lose by compromise than by continued fighting and struggle. 

Ongoing war will cost the lives of both Ukrainians and Russians, and now also of North Koreans who have joined the war on Russia’s side, as well as the destruction of assets on both sides. But even though Russian and North Korean losses continue to be substantially higher than Ukraine’s, the dictators’ disregard for human life is infinitely higher than the democracy’s. Moscow and Pyongyang will spend as many of their people’s lives as they deem necessary to satisfy their aggressive intentions.  

As for property and weapons losses, even though Ukraine’s Western allies are wealthier than Russia’s, their will to continue funding the war is waning faster than the tolerance of the Axis of Evil regimes to divert resources from domestic needs to expansionist ambitions.  The element that incentivizes Ukraine to persevere and accept further sacrifices is the ultimate value of any nation: its sovereignty, 80 percent of which Ukraine still possesses and which Russia lusts to take for itself. 

The parallel situation that America’s adversaries and allies are watching with extreme interest is that of democratic Taiwan’s vulnerability to similar aggression from Communist China. The calculus of human and material loss will be even more imbalanced in China’s favor, with its utter disregard for people and the West’s unwillingness to risk major conflict for the sake of a small island democracy less than 100 miles from a covetous giant autocracy.  

But Taiwan’s status as part of the Free World, never having been ruled by the People’s Republic of China, with the Taiwan Strait at the geostrategic connection between the East and South China Seas, make it of vital importance to the West. One-fifth of global shipping trade passes through the Strait making it an indispensable part of the global economy.  The international norms of freedom of the seas and the inviolability of national borders are increasingly threatened by China’s aggressive actions. U.S. Freedom of Navigation Operations uphold the principle, but Washington’s reluctance to send a carrier battle group through the Strait while China regularly exercises its carriers there reinforce Beijing’s claim that it is a Chinese, rather than an international, waterway 

If China attacks and occupies part of the main island of Taiwan or seizes Kinmen (also known as Quemoy) or another Taiwanese island, the temptation for Trump and others willing to sacrifice Ukrainian sovereignty for a transitory peace will be to let China keep and enjoy the fruit of its aggression, limited so far, and hope that will satisfy its appetite for the entire prize. 

History does not offer much comfort for that approach. 

Trump has a unique opportunity to use his special relationship with Putin to influence him toward a path closer to Mikhael Gorbachev’s reform agenda than Josef Stalin’s repression. He can also call on his rapport with Xi Jinping to nudge him to emulate Taiwan’s democratic evolution rather than to try to crush it, as Mao Zedong planned to do. All will depend on Trump and his national security team. 

Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5069210-trump-foreign-policy-negotiations/

No Limits? The China-Russia Relationship and U.S. Foreign Policy


 
China and Russia’s quasi-alliance endangers U.S. national interests. Its management will prove a generational task for American policymakers—but there are grounds for optimism, argue CFR Senior Fellow Robert Blackwill and Center for a New American Security CEO Richard Fontaine. 
 
Introduction

The growing quasi-alliance between China and Russia poses the greatest threat to vital U.S. national interests in sixty years. As this Council Special Report demonstrates, their joint efforts to undermine U.S. policies and international order have made marked progress in the past decade and will continue for the foreseeable future. Although the United States and its partners have not yet mounted an adequate response to this historic challenge, there are grounds for optimism about the West’s capacity to deal with strengthening China-Russia alignment. Thus, this report concludes with fourteen policy prescriptions that highlight the United States’ top priorities in managing Chinese and Russian influence.

Nearly thirty years ago, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski issued a prophetic warning. “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario,” he said, “would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower.”[1]

Today, this coalition has emerged, bound by shared opposition to a Western-dominated international order and determined to be active in its revision. Visiting Moscow in March 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping said, “Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.”[2] In a lengthy May 2024 joint statement, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin made their long-term goals clear. “Russian-Chinese relations,” they wrote, “stand the test of rapid changes in the world, demonstrating strength and stability, and are experiencing the best period in their history. . . . [We] intend to increase interaction and tighten coordination in order to counter Washington’s destructive and hostile course towards the so-called ‘dual containment’ of our countries.”[3]

Together, China and Russia pursue the following strategic objectives: replace the United States as the primary global actor; erode U.S. power and influence in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Global South; weaken the U.S. alliance system and compromise U.S. extended nuclear deterrence; shift regional military balances in their favor; undermine international confidence in U.S. credibility, reliability, and staying power; and ensure U.S. democratic values do not diminish China’s or Russia’s hold on domestic power.

Skeptics argue that the China-Russia relationship is more fragile than it appears and highlight differences that could weaken the partnership. Beijing, for instance, values a degree of stability in the international system, while Moscow has grown highly risk tolerant, seeking upheaval.[4] Lingering territorial disputes along their shared border represent a potential point of contestation; in August 2023, for instance, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) published an official map claiming full sovereignty over Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island, which the two agreed in 2005 to split equally.[5] Beijing still smarts from the fact that Russia now occupies 350,000 square miles of formerly Chinese territory.[6] Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling during the war in Ukraine has sparked concern in China, and Xi has stressed Beijing’s opposition to “the use or threats to use nuclear weapons.”[7] The widening power disparity between a stagnating Russia and an ascendant China threatens to transform their partnership into an increasingly lopsided affair.[8] The two nations compete for influence in Central Asia, for two centuries in Russia’s sphere of influence, and Russia’s recent defense treaty with North Korea sparked concern in China.[9] In the Arctic, too, Moscow and Beijing have competed for influence and resources.[10]

Such critiques neglect the reality that the China-Russia relationship continues to deepen and widen, and occasional disagreements are dwarfed by the scale and momentum of their strategic cooperation. Theirs is a formidable partnership bordering on alliance, bound together by resistance to what they view as a U.S.-led, anachronistic international order, one that does not permit either country its rightful place despite their power, history, domestic legitimacy, civilizational triumphs, and vital regional interests.

China Strategy Initiative

An ambitious new cross-cutting initiative focused on U.S. strategy toward the People’s Republic of China. Their tactical differences pale in comparison to a shared strategic theme: resistance to the United States. Their territorial disputes are also exaggerated. In response to the August 2023 Chinese map, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson stressed that this did not indicate a territorial dispute.[11] While Xi has been indirectly critical of the Kremlin’s nuclear threats, Beijing’s nuclear energy cooperation has increased since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and China and Russia continue to trade enriched uranium.[12] According to reliable news sources, Xi did warn Putin in November 2022 and July 2023 against using nuclear weapons, but he has not diminished China’s multifaceted assistance to Russia’s war in Ukraine.[13]

Their economic partnership is highly asymmetric but a source of significant mutual benefit: Russia has embraced China as its primary supplier of goods once sourced from Europe, while China has secured a reliable flow of Siberian hydrocarbons—an essential pillar of its energy security strategy. Even tensions in the Arctic have seemingly melted away; a July 2024 Pentagon report indicates that “increasingly, [China] and Russia are collaborating in the Arctic across multiple instruments of national power.”[14]

The United States is likely to face these two powerful and determined adversaries, working together more closely and attempting to enlist other revisionist states, into the indefinite future. In the words of Putin himself, “The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation are allies in every sense of the word.”[15] Safeguarding American national interests and the stability of international order will be no easy task. Given Russian and Chinese power, ambition, and collaboration, rising to the challenge they pose to the existing international system poses a generational task for U.S. policymakers.
China’s View of the China-Russia Relationship

Chinese leaders sense in Russia a transactional strategic opportunity, not an emotional connection.[16] China does not trust Russia at any deep level but views Russian objectives as largely parallel to its own.[17] Beijing looks to Moscow to endorse China’s sovereignty claims, strengthen the Chinese economy, resist American dominance of existing rules and institutions, and side with (though not to fight alongside) China in any conflict over Taiwan. As one of China’s premier Russia experts, Zhao Huasheng, stresses, China seeks a “relatively stable strategic rear . . . invisible and seemingly unremarkable in times of peace, but its strategic relevance to China will be revealed were our country to be faced with a major upheaval.”[18]

Since taking office in 2012, Xi has decisively shaped China-Russia relations. His first overseas trip as leader was to Russia, he refers to Putin as his “best friend and colleague,” and he has met one-on-one with the Russian leader more than forty times, far more than any other world leader. In the weeks before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the two declared a “no limits” partnership between their countries.[19]

From China’s perspective, it reaps substantial practical benefits from close ties with Russia. Moscow advances Beijing’s global diplomacy at the United Nations and in regional organizations.[20] Its provision of advanced military equipment and training as well as joint exercises fortifies China’s defense capabilities.[21] It supplies vital energy to China’s domestic economy, and at discount prices.[22] It represents a relatively modest but increasingly important destination for Chinese exports.[23] It is a gateway for China to the Arctic and the critical Northern Sea Route, unlocking new avenues for the PRC’s trade and influence.[24] Most important, Russia works with China to oppose what both Putin and Xi view as American refusal to accept the legitimacy of their political systems.

As noted above, Chinese leaders retain reservations about Russia. In addition to policy differences and regional competition, China worries that the Kremlin’s confrontational risk-taking will provoke Europe into a sustained anti-China posture. It remains concerned that Russia’s ostentatious aggression will lead the West, and especially the United States, to strengthen its resolve and defenses to meet the authoritarian challenge, with negative implications for the geopolitical balance in the Indo-Pacific.

Finally, there is the ultimate strategic nightmare for China regarding Russia: Putin or his successors are overthrown by a popular revolution like that in Ukraine, and Russia joins the West in a united effort to undermine Chinese Communist Party rule. That worry on its own is sufficient to continue China’s support for Russia, including in the Ukraine war, which Putin routinely frames as not against Ukraine but rather the entire West.
Russia’s View of the China-Russia Relationship

Russian leaders view China as an economic lifeline, a military supplier, and an autocratic partner similarly discontented with the existing international system. Putin has invested heavily in his personal relationship with Xi, spending hundreds of hours in conversation across more than sixty personal meetings, and the two are linked by a determination to alter the U.S.-led order, which, they believe, serves as little more than a smoke screen for American domination at their expense.[25] Russia wants Chinese technology and components, markets and financial arrangements, diplomatic cover and political support.

As the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center’s Alexander Gabuev summarizes, Russia values China’s assistance on the battlefield in Ukraine, support for sustaining the Russian economy and circumventing sanctions, and help in pushing back against the West and punishing the United States for supporting Ukraine.[26]

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that enhancing ties with China represents Russia’s top foreign policy priority, and with such tangible results it is not difficult to see why.[27] Even as the United States struggles to pivot to Asia, Russia buttresses its relationship with China. Russian aspirations, however, go beyond immediate benefits, and include Chinese help in making fundamental revisions to existing international arrangements. Putin in May 2024 described bilateral ties to China as a “stabilizing” force in the world, one that acts in defense of a “democratic world order that reflects multipolar realities.”[28]

That includes a healthy respect for great-power spheres of influence. Putin has expressed support not only for China’s actions to “protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” but also to “reunify the country,” a barely veiled reference to Chinese ambitions in Taiwan.[29] The two coordinate a grand narrative, aimed especially but not only at the Global South, that condemns overweening American power as riddled by hypocrisy and accustomed to domination, notwithstanding soaring U.S. rhetoric about liberal order and universal values or the reality of American decline.

Moscow ultimately sees Beijing as assisting its drive for regime security. In their 2022 joint manifesto, Putin and Xi pledged to “stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” and to “oppose color revolutions.”[30] Russian leaders understand that Chinese assistance does not come free, and appear ready to supply air defense systems, submarine technology, and other military support in return, and to support Chinese diplomatic and economic initiatives.[31] Even if Russian trust in China remains limited, Moscow fears neither Chinese efforts to undermine its domestic stability nor Chinese military aggression—the latter illustrated by Russia’s moving its forces to Ukraine from border areas, leaving its frontier with China effectively undefended for some two years.[32]

Where possible tensions could emerge between China and Russia—over influence in Central Asia, activities in the Arctic, or relations with North Korea—Russia has sought to smooth differences and harmonize approaches. For all the betting that the Kremlin would never accept a junior partner status in its relationship with the Chinese superpower, Russia has done just that. China is essential to Russia, and Putin knows it.
China-Russia Collaboration to Undermine the West

The public record demonstrates that China and Russia are embarked on a comprehensive global effort to weaken American diplomatic, military, and economic power and influence. The data in this section, however, is only a shadow of all that they do daily in this regard. Because these two nations can keep secrets, there exists no public record of most bilateral meetings and only scant knowledge of any joint activities and mutual support discussed, planned, and carried out.

In short, what follows is a faint rendering of the full scope of what these two adversaries jointly undertake to undermine the foreign policies and vital national interests of the United States. Nevertheless, that record should constitute both a concern and a challenge to U.S. policymakers.
Diplomatic Collaboration

In recent decades, Beijing and Moscow have launched a joint diplomatic offensive. Only once before 2006 did they jointly veto a proposed resolution at the UN Security Council.[33] As their national interests and policy objectives have increasingly aligned, however, the two states have vetoed sixteen resolutions together since 2007, all to thwart U.S. foreign policy objectives.[34] They rejected an American-led proposal in 2007 that called on Myanmar’s government to release political prisoners and end human rights violations against ethnic minorities.[35] The following year, China and Russia voted down a text that condemned Zimbabwe’s arbitrary political arrests and supported fair and free elections in the country.[36] In its explanation of its veto, Moscow stated its firm intent to continue to “counter” a perceived expansion of Security Council power in all future decisions.[37]

After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, China and Russia continued to oppose American policies at the Security Council. On four separate votes from 2011 to 2014, collectively intended to hold Syria accountable for attacks on civilian population centers and enjoin an immediate end to Syrian human rights violations, Beijing and Moscow responded with joint vetoes.[38] The two again acted in concert and killed a 2016 proposal calling for an immediate cease-fire in Aleppo.[39] They then prevented the passage of a resolution put forward by the United States in 2017 that held top Syrian officials accountable for using chemical weapons against Syrian citizens.[40]

In 2019, China and Russia thwarted a U.S. resolution that called for free and fair presidential elections in Venezuela, as well as two more texts that demanded a cease-fire and improved humanitarian assistance in Syria.[41] The pair were the only two votes against a U.S. resolution at the Security Council the next year to indefinitely extend the arms embargo on Iran.[42] Two Security Council motions in 2020 that urged Syria to comply with international human rights laws and supported a mechanism to supply humanitarian aid were also met with back-to-back joint vetoes.[43] When North Korea in 2022 launched an intercontinental ballistic missile in violation of international law, the two quashed a UN proposal to strengthen sanctions against the country.[44] A U.S. attempt in 2023 to condemn Hamas’s attack on Israel and call for the protection of Israeli and Palestinian citizens was vetoed by China and Russia, as was an American-led proposal the next year that urged a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.[45]

Of the twenty-three cases where the Russian Federation has exercised its veto power alone, China has abstained twenty times.[46] Indeed, Beijing has not opposed a Security Council resolution without Moscow since 1999.[47] Every Security Council member voted in favor of a 2014 resolution to condemn Russia’s annexation of Crimea except Russia, which vetoed the resolution, and China, which abstained.[48] Moscow was also the sole veto against four separate draft resolutions in 2017 to intensify investigations of Syria for chemical weapon use against its population.[49] Beijing abstained in each case.[50] It abstained once again when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, while Russia vetoed a condemnation of its own actions.[51]

The Russian veto reappeared in March 2024 on an American resolution to extend UN surveillance of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and assess the need for further sanctions (once again, all other Security Council members voted in favor other than China, which abstained).[52] In April 2024, Russia denied a resolution cosponsored by the United States to prevent the placement of nuclear weapons in outer space, while China abstained.[53] Beijing then sided with Moscow in October 2024 during a Security Council debate over accountability for the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosion. China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations echoed the Russian chorus alleging a cover-up of the United States and Britain’s role in the explosion.[54] Not since the founding of the Russian Federation has one nation vetoed a Security Council resolution proposed by the other.[55] Thus, Beijing and Moscow are much more than close partners in the Security Council; they march in lockstep.

In the UN General Assembly (UNGA), China and Russia are similarly strong diplomatic comrades. From 1991 to 2020, they together opposed Washington on over 1,500 resolutions, supported by a strong coalition that they jointly helped organize. In 86 percent of these cases, the Sino-Russian position prevailed.[56] Although these resolutions are nonbinding, they demonstrate both the weak standing of many U.S. policy preferences among the nations of the world and successful lobbying efforts by Beijing and Moscow.[57] The two have voted together against each of the twenty-two resolutions that expressed deep concern for human rights violations in Iran proffered from 2000 to 2023.[58] In 2021, the United States was defeated in a resolution supported by China and Russia that criticized using sanctions for geopolitical purposes; the vote was 119 to 7 in favor of the resolution, with 46 abstentions.[59] Beijing and Moscow also increasingly disrupt routine procedures at the United Nations. In September 2024, for instance, Moscow prevented the imposition of sanctions on Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces accused of genocide, and both states blocked a plan to establish a UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti.[60]

In this context, China has utilized the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to rally votes in the UNGA behind Russian policy preferences. For instance, on a 2022 UNGA resolution that called on Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine, thirty-six of the thirty-eight countries that opposed or abstained were BRI recipients.[61] In February 2023, the UNGA passed another resolution that called for an end to the conflict: thirty-five of the thirty-nine abstentions or opposing votes received BRI funds.[62] As the American novelist Emma Bull put it, “Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.”[63]

China and Russia have consistently demanded across twenty-nine resolutions in the UNGA that the United States end its economic embargo of Cuba, all supported by a vast majority of the General Assembly.[64] Further, the two elevated the role of the China- and Russia-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in a 2023 UNGA resolution that the United States opposed; the vote won eighty to two against the United States, with forty-seven abstentions.[65] Beijing and Moscow then successfully cosponsored a proposal that insisted on “no first placement” of weapons in outer space, despite the fact both countries had already deployed dual-use space capabilities with potential military applications; they were joined by 125 other countries in opposition to Washington’s position.[66]

Beijing has moved beyond votes in the United Nations and has expanded its leadership over the institution itself, with Moscow as the consistent junior partner. By 2019, China became the second largest financial contributor to the United Nations and, as one senior European diplomat put it, “At the UN, China’s influence is massive. They really are so powerful there and so much more sophisticated than, say, the Russians, who are only really able to spoil things. . . . They know how to work the system to their advantage.”[67]

In 2020, China led an unprecedented four of fifteen UN special agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization—which China still heads—the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Industrial Development Organization, and the International Civil Aviation Organization, all also important to Russia. Through strong influence on these standard-setting organizations, Beijing has supported autocratic models of government, similarly advanced by Moscow.

During the eight years it held the secretary-general position at the ITU, China advocated limiting online freedom of speech, and in other UN-affiliated bodies such as the Human Rights Council (HRC), it sponsored resolutions and amendments supported by Russia to disregard human rights mechanisms, empower states to delegitimize civil society, and emphasize sovereignty over basic citizen rights.[68] China unsuccessfully attempted to keep Russia on the HRC in April 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine and abused Interpol’s Red Notice System, a mechanism for locating and extraditing criminal suspects, as part of its forced repatriation of dissidents.[69]

Beijing provides more peacekeepers to the United Nations than the other four Security Council permanent members combined.[70] By expanding into UN peacekeeping, China safeguards its own national interests, especially in Africa where more than 75 percent of China’s peacekeeping forces are deployed.[71] A Chinese national was appointed special envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa, in a move that could help “open doors at the highest levels in the Great Lakes region” to Chinese officials.[72] With the same joint objectives, Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group and its successor have provided political and security support to authoritarian regimes in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Sudan.[73] Together, China and Russia’s power and influence in Africa have surged dramatically in the past decade, often at the United States’ expense.[74] Thus, throughout the UN system, the duo collaborate, often with success, to thwart American policies and undermine traditional principles of international order.

China and Russia have also expanded their diplomatic arsenal to include non-Western multilateral institutions, where they exert even greater influence. In this spirit, Beijing and Moscow founded the BRICS—a group established in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, and joined the next year by South Africa. As of this writing, BRICS has hosted fifteen summits, and the organization has consistently been silent on or endorsed policies that violate standing international norms. In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and deployed forces in eastern Ukraine, for instance, the BRICS leaders called only for “a comprehensive dialogue” and “the de-escalation of the conflict,” without acknowledging Russian aggression.[75]

The group was similarly quiet after Putin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and only expressed support for “talks between Russia and Ukraine,” consistent with China’s position that would cede to Russia all Ukrainian territory it occupied.[76] At a June 2024 meeting of BRICS foreign ministers, the organization was also highly critical of Israel’s military action in Gaza and voiced its “serious concern at Israel’s continued blatant disregard of international law,” with no mention or condemnation of Hamas, mimicking the position of the Chinese and Russian governments.[77]

BRICS communiqués have also stressed the need to develop a new group reserve currency to reduce their reliance on the dollar and shield against U.S.-led economic sanctions—a process spearheaded by China and Russia as they increasingly trade in their own currencies.[78] In July 2015, BRICS established the New Development Bank to provide financial assistance to developing states, absent the human rights requirements imposed by the World Bank.[79] The organization further championed a global economic pivot away from the West in August 2023, when the bloc advocated “reform of the Bretton Woods institutions . . . including in leadership positions,” proclaimed “the importance of encouraging the use of local currencies in international trade,” and announced their opposition to “unilateral illegal measures such as sanctions” as used by the United States.[80] To undermine the influence of Western financial institutions such as the banking messenger SWIFT, the BRICS launched a payment task force and a rival payment mechanism—BRICS Pay—and, in the weeks before the October 2024 summit in Kazan, BRICS finance and central bank officials met in Moscow. There, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov continued to push for an alternative international financial system, arguing, “It is necessary to form new conditions or even new institutions . . . within the framework of our community, within the framework of BRICS.”[81] During his remarks at the Kazan summit, Xi made a similar argument, as he insisted that “the urgency of reforming the international financial architecture is prominent.”[82] The group also challenged attempts by Western states to curtail Chinese electric vehicles and climate technology flooding their markets, as in June 2024 when BRICS condemned “unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures,” with no mention of China’s own unfair trade practices.[83]

Consistent with their efforts to organize nations against Western policies and standards, Beijing and Moscow have expanded BRICS membership. In August 2023, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were invited to become BRICS members.[84] Apart from Argentina, which declined, and Saudi Arabia, which remains undecided at this writing, all invitees subsequently joined.[85] Ahead of visits by Putin and Chinese Premier Li Qiang to Southeast Asia in June 2024, Thailand and Malaysia announced their intention to join the bloc as well; in August 2024, Azerbaijan asked to join the group, followed by a formal request from Turkey a month later, and then by Cuba in early October 2024.[86] Thirty-six delegations participated in the October 2024 BRICS summit, including over twenty heads of state.[87] In Kazan, Xi announced four new initiatives—the BRICS Deep-Sea Resources International Research Center, China Center for Cooperation on Development of Special Economic Zones, China Center for BRICS Industrial Competencies, and BRICS Digital Ecosystem Cooperation Network—aimed to bolster Beijing’s own interests and investment opportunities while promoting China-dependent industrial development in BRICS countries.[88] The group also established a BRICS Grain Exchange, a Russian initiative designed to dilute the dollar’s dominance in food exports.[89] Thus, an ever larger and more influential BRICS grouping seeks to reduce the impact of Western-led institutions around the world, and to diminish U.S. influence, especially in the Global South.

With the same intent, Beijing and Moscow formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in June 2001. The SCO includes China, Russia, Belarus, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and covers 80 percent of the Eurasian landmass, 40 percent of global population, and almost 30 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).[90] The organization advocates a “multipolar international order,” in contrast to what Beijing and Moscow assert is a U.S.-dominated, hegemonic international system.[91] In November 2022, the SCO outlined its aim to create a “Greater Eurasian Partnership” comprised of SCO countries, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The organization consistently affirms support for China’s BRI and provides diplomatic backup for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, including via communiqués that condemn the West’s “unilateral economic sanctions.”[92] A July 2023 declaration by SCO leaders lamented the “unilateral and unlimited expansion of global missile defense systems by certain countries or groups of countries,” a clear reference to U.S. policy.[93]

Eyes on Asia

Insights and analysis from CFR fellows on the latest developments across Asia. Monthly. With Xi at his side in July 2024, Putin explicitly labeled the SCO as a “new framework” to replace “the obsolete Europe-centric and Euro-Atlantic models that granted unilateral advantages to certain states” and warned that “[t]he use of force is increasing, the norms of international law are systemically being violated, geopolitical confrontation and conflicts are growing, and risks to stability in the world and the SCO region are multiplying.”[94] Putin decried “unilateral attempts to resolve this Palestinian deadlock, most notably by the United States” and repeated his claim that the conflict in Ukraine is “a result of the reckless and intrusive policies of the United States and its satellites.”[95] Beijing also used the July 2024 SCO Summit to condemn the United States, as Xi cautioned his audience about the “real risks of small yards with high fences,” a reference to U.S. policy on export of key technologies to China, and called on the members to “resist external interference.”[96]

More important, China continually reinforces Russia’s war aims in Ukraine and conducts disinformation campaigns that adopt Russia’s formulation that the invasion is a “special military operation,” provoked by the United States and NATO expansion.[97] China’s barrage of misleading information includes fabricated stories about U.S. bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine, claims that the United States and Ukraine falsified footage of the atrocities in Bucha, and assertions that Ukraine’s military—rather than Russian forces—was responsible for the civilian deaths in the Kramatorsk bombing.[98]

In February 2023, Beijing issued a twelve-point proposal for negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, a plan that failed to condemn the invasion and opposed Western sanctions against Russia.[99] In April 2024, Lavrov unsurprisingly endorsed China’s proposal as “a reasonable plan that the great Chinese civilization proposed for discussion.”[100] The Kremlin agreed to enter such negotiations on the condition that they reflect “new realities” on the battlefield—a signal that Russia will demand control of its occupied territories in Ukraine under the Chinese settlement framework.[101] On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2024, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi partnered with Brazilian foreign policy advisor Celso Amorim to rally developing countries behind Beijing’s peace proposal.[102]

Ukrainian officials have openly condemned China’s support of the Russian position on Ukraine.[103] During the June 2024 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “using Chinese influence in the region, using Chinese diplomats also . . . to disrupt the peace summit,” in reference to a Swiss-organized peace conference.[104] He later added that it “is unfortunate that such a big independent powerful country as China is an instrument in the hands of Putin.”[105]

Beijing and Moscow also work to take advantage of fractures in the NATO alliance, including by seeking closer ties to Budapest. Hungary and China promoted their bilateral relationship to an “all-weather, comprehensive strategic partnership” in May 2024, and Hungary has been one of the largest beneficiaries of China’s BRI in Europe (alongside Serbia).[106] Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Moscow in April 2022 and again in July 2024, in defiance of the EU and U.S. attempt to diplomatically isolate Russia.[107] During his July 2024 talks with Putin, Orbán advocated “the shortest road to end the [Ukraine] war,” and in Orbán’s conversation with Xi the same month in Beijing, they declared, “China and Hungary share the same basic propositions and directions of efforts” on Ukraine—a perspective that includes China’s insistence on a permanent cease-fire that legitimizes Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory.[108]

In parallel, the Kremlin has supported China’s policies in the Indo-Pacific. Amid growing tensions in the South China Sea in October 2021, Putin stood at Xi’s side and opposed “interference from non-regional powers,” an allusion to U.S. policy in the region.[109] In March 2023, Lavrov criticized Western-led partnerships such as the Quad—a grouping that includes the United States, Australia, India, and Japan—and the defense technology–sharing arrangement known as AUKUS—comprising Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—as instances of external interference in the Indo-Pacific, employed “not for economic purposes but trying to militarize.”[110] Not long after, Russia again endorsed Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan and said it “firmly support[s] actions of the Chinese side for the defense of its state sovereignty and territorial integrity.”[111] Putin doubled down in a speech following the March 2024 Russian presidential elections. He alleged that “unfriendly countries” were attempting “to make all kinds of provocations around Taiwan which is an inherent part of the People’s Republic of China.”[112] When Lavrov and Wang met in April 2024, the pair claimed that NATO wished to expand into Asia and warned against the bloc “stretching its hands to our common home.”[113] In October 2024, marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of China-Russia diplomatic relations, Lavrov condemned the United States directly, saying, “the United States and its satellites deliberately stir up the situation in the Strait of Taiwan” and reiterating that “Russia’s position on the Taiwan issue has been unchanged support for China’s territorial integrity.”[114] At the East Asian Summit in Laos later that month, Beijing and Moscow blocked a proposed consensus statement drafted by Southeast Asian countries over language on the contested South China Sea, which Lavrov condemned as an effort by the United States to make a “purely political statement.”[115]

All told, China and Russia have made substantial progress in the past decade and more, in a joint global diplomatic offensive to undermine U.S.-led world order and Western values and to end American leadership in the international system. As Lavrov explained in October 2024, the China-Russia entente desires a “world order . . . adjusted to current realities,” achieved through the irreversible process of “power rebalancing.”[116]
Military Collaboration

In the last decade, Beijing and Moscow have deepened their security ties to tilt the balance of power across the Indo-Pacific and in Europe. This military cooperation rapidly intensified after Xi took office, and again after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Together, the two nations have formulated a “top-level design” to bolster their military planning in tandem and strengthen defense coordination.[117] Two defense collaboration road maps have been developed that extend from 2017 to 2025 to enhance their joint military capabilities through security exercises and patrols.[118] Between 2012 and 2014, Beijing and Moscow conducted nine joint military exercises.[119] A decade later, from 2022 until August 2024, they held fifteen.[120]



The Chinese and Russian militaries have joined forces in a series of dynamic land exercises and pulled nations from the SCO and BRICS into their growing network of combined drills. Since China and Russia first practiced large-scale land and amphibious assaults at the 2005 bilateral Peace Mission, the series has expanded into multilateral engagement that involves member states of the SCO, such as Peace Mission 2021, which included nations from the Middle East and Central Asia.[121] From 2018 onward, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has participated with the Russian army in the latter’s largest combat drills, and the two have enlisted countries such as South Africa and India in training maneuvers as well.[122] Only days before NATO labeled China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the PLA started an eleven-day joint exercise with Russia-aligned Belarus.[123]

Through unified naval and aerial exercises, China and Russia have strengthened their military interoperability and demonstrated their combined military prowess. Every year since 2012, the two have held progressively more complex Joint Sea naval simulations, often in areas of geopolitical importance. The 2016 Joint Sea exercise in the South China Sea improved their ability to attack and seize an island—a drill with obvious parallels to Chinese ambitions in Taiwan—and 2017 maneuvers in the Baltic Sea practiced live fire against surface and aerial targets.[124] Russia joined China’s air patrols around the Indo-Pacific’s first island chain in 2019, when two Russian bombers teamed up with two Chinese counterparts for a flight over the East China Sea and Sea of Japan (often referred to as East Sea).[125] Then, as Quad leaders met for a summit in Tokyo in May 2022, six Chinese and Russian bombers flew over the same area.[126] On the same day, South Korea reported that two Chinese bombers and four Russian warplanes entered Seoul’s air defense identification zone without notice.[127] From April 2023 to March 2024, China and Russia mounted a combined total of 653 incursions into Japan’s air defense identification zone and conducted 133 naval operations that required the Japanese navy to intercept the vessels.[128]

In 2024, China and Russia accelerated their joint naval exercises. In March, the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian navies executed joint operations in the Gulf of Oman, and Chinese naval vessels one month later deployed in the waters between Taiwan and Japan, while a Russian intelligence ship approached the Japanese coast.[129] Just a week after Japan and the Philippines signed a bilateral defense agreement that facilitated joint combat drills, Chinese and Russian warships patrolled together in the South China Sea.[130] In September, China joined Russia’s Ocean-2024 strategic command and staff exercises, which covered the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean, Caspian, and Baltic Seas and involved more than four hundred sea vessels and over ninety thousand troops.[131] The same month, the Chinese Defense Ministry announced another joint exercise with Russia, Northern/Interaction-2024, in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, which was followed by their fifth joint maritime patrol in the Pacific.[132]

As the partnership strengthens, Beijing and Moscow have become bolder and increasingly willing to directly engage Washington. In an unprecedented move that defiantly challenged U.S. sovereignty, two Chinese and two Russian bombers penetrated Alaska’s air defense identification zone in July 2024.[133] This deployment was “the first time that we’ve seen these two countries fly together like that,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin observed. Taking off from Russia’s Anadyr airfield, the Chinese aircraft would have been out of range without Russian support.[134] In October 2024, following the series of joint exercises, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov met with Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia in Beijing to cement the partnership, after which Belousov announced that “the military departments of Russia and China are united in their assessments of global processes, and they have a common understanding of what needs to be done.”[135]

In the past eighteen months, the two militaries have bolstered their cooperation in the Arctic. In April 2023, the Russian Border Guard Service and the Chinese Coast Guard signed an agreement on naval law enforcement in Arctic waters.[136] By providing monitoring equipment, Beijing enhances Russia’s efforts to secure its Arctic coastline and threatens NATO’s communications and data infrastructure.[137] In Svalbard, a northern Norwegian archipelago, Moscow, with Beijing’s support, has exploited a 1920 treaty that granted the Soviet Union limited rights over the territory. Moscow has constructed research centers, held military parades, and projected power across the Bear Gap, a critical maritime thoroughfare to the archipelago’s south.[138] In August 2024, Li and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin agreed in a joint communiqué to consolidate China-Russia collaboration, develop shipping routes, and strengthen technology and infrastructure in the Arctic.[139] Later that month, China sent three icebreakers to the region, and from September 20 to October 10, 2024, Beijing and Moscow conducted their first combined coast guard patrol near Arctic shipping routes in the Sea of Japan.[140]In the Arctic, China and Russia’s coast guard cooperation demonstrates the growing depth of their maritime alliance, which challenges the United States through gray-zone provocations.[141]

This rapid expansion of the China-Russia partnership has established the Arctic as a frontier of strategic competition. The U.S. Department of Defense’s July 2024 Arctic Strategy report pinpointed Sino-Russian joint activities in the region: “The growing cooperation between Russia and the PRC,” it said, has “the potential to alter the Arctic’s stability and threat picture.”[142] For the Kremlin, coordination with Beijing is essential to advance Russia’s Arctic ambitions while minimizing the influence of the Western-led Arctic Council.[143] China’s ambassador to Moscow Zhang Hanhui told Russian media the joint exercises were “a concrete manifestation of the strategic mutual trust between the two countries,” and U.S. Rear Admiral Megan Dean stressed that these joint operations in the Bering Strait demonstrate “the increased interest in the Arctic by our strategic competitors.”[144]



In addition to those joint exercises, China and Russia have increasingly cooperated on arms transfers. Historically, Moscow has had more advanced military capabilities than Beijing, but the gap has narrowed—and, in many domains, China has caught up or even exceeded Russian capabilities, as with stealth fighter jets.[145] Russia maintains a technological edge in submarines, space satellites, and aircraft engines, yet China is swiftly matching and could surpass Russian capabilities.[146]

At the beginning of the 1990s, the PLA had “mostly obsolete military equipment,” according to a RAND report.[147] Yet decades of Russian arms transfers have helped the Chinese military modernize its forces: Chinese arms imports from Russia between 2000 and 2010 were 258 percent higher than the decade prior, and since 2007, 71 percent of China’s arms imports have come from Russia, a figure that rose to 77 percent between 2019 and 2023.[148] These weapons include advanced aircraft, missiles, air defense systems, anti-ship missiles, and Sovremenny-class destroyers.[149] Just two years after Xi assumed office, the Kremlin agreed to send $5 billion worth of Sukhoi Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 missile systems to China, which strengthened the country’s air capability over the South China Sea.[150]

Russia began to send Mi-17 helicopters in 2020 to China to support PLA air maritime expeditionary operations in the Indo-Pacific, including against Taiwan.[151] Although no plans have been publicly announced, many analysts suspect that Beijing and Moscow will work together to operate an integrated regional missile defense system to better detect and respond to a potential missile attack on either state.[152]

Russia is not just funneling weapons to China but is also sharing battle-hardened military expertise. Russian officers who have fought in Europe and the Middle East provide the PLA with invaluable practical insights into modern warfare, such as when Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov met with his Chinese counterpart in June 2023.[153] According to a 2024 RAND report, the Kremlin educates Chinese military officers through professional military exchanges and facilitates their study of military theory.[154]

The SCO helps facilitate this cooperation as well: China has unveiled a comprehensive framework for military collaboration with SCO members and emphasized its intent to leverage Russia’s recent combat experiences.[155] In this way, the PLA shores up one of its critical military weaknesses—lack of combat experience—by tapping directly into Russian battlefield successes and failures.[156]

Although China has not openly equipped Russia with lethal military aid after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it has supplied numerous components used in Russian military manufacturing.[157] In April 2024, President Joe Biden raised “concerns over the PRC’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base” with Xi during their first conversation in over four months.[158] Soon thereafter, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen visited China and “emphasized that companies, including those in the PRC, must not provide material support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, including support to the Russian defense industrial base, and the significant consequences if they do so.”[159]

In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning emphasized that “China will not accept the accusations and pressuring. . . . If certain countries truly care about peace and want an early end to the crisis, they should reflect on the root cause of the crisis and do something that will actually help bring about peace, rather than deflect the blame to China.”[160] Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin similarly complained, “The United States keeps making groundless accusations over the normal trade and economic exchanges between China and Russia, while passing a bill providing a large amount of aid for Ukraine. This is just hypocritical and highly irresponsible. China firmly rejects this.”[161] In October 2024, Lavrov praised Beijing’s support as a “balanced and consistent” approach to the conflict, rightly focused on the root causes of NATO expansion and the “anti-Russian military bridgehead in Ukraine.”[162]

During the same time period, China has furnished Russia with dual-use goods that have enhanced Russia’s capabilities on the battlefield.[163] In the first ten months of the war alone, Chinese companies sent $570 million worth of semiconductors to Russia—an increase from $200 million over all of 2021.[164] By 2023, China provided 90 percent of Russia’s semiconductors, technology vital for the production of tanks, missiles, and aircraft.[165] Much of this trade is conducted under the guise of Chinese shell companies, which China uses to evade U.S. sanctions and send restricted technology components to Russia.[166] After a meeting between Xi and Putin in March 2023, China provided massive shipments to Russia of precision manufacturing equipment used in critical weapons systems—with over ten thousand transactions per month between March and July.[167] China also buttressed Russia’s fighting force by exporting trucks to move personnel and materiel along combat supply lines, including excavators and front-end shovel loaders to dig trenches. It also provides geospatial information that enables Russian forces to target Ukrainian troops on the front line, as well as access to satellite photographs of Ukrainian nuclear plants.[168]

In a meeting with Wang, at the UN General Assembly in late September 2024, Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned China’s dual-use technology support to Russia and later reiterated the dangers of this China-Russia partnership at a news conference, saying “insofar as that relationship involves providing Russia what it needs to continue this war, that’s a problem for us, and it’s a problem for many other countries.”[169]

China’s support has effectively sustained Russia’s war in Ukraine. This crucial assistance has allowed the Kremlin to “almost completely” reconstitute its military, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell stated. “With the support of China in particular,” he said, “dual use capabilities . . . [and a] variety of other efforts, industrial and commercial, Russia has retooled.”[170] A State Department spokesman similarly observed, “What we have seen over the past months is that there have been materials moving from China to Russia that Russia has used to rebuild [its] industrial base and produce arms that are showing up on the battlefield in Ukraine,” and, “If the PRC were to end its support for exporting these items, Russia would struggle to sustain its war effort.”[171]


Economic Collaboration

The China-Russia quasi-alliance has been cemented by strong economic ties. Between 2000 and 2021, China’s annual trade with Russia grew eighteen-fold, and this process only accelerated after the further imposition of sanctions against Russia in 2022.[172] Since then, Sino-Russian trade has provided vital support for the Kremlin amid increasing economic pressure imposed by the West.

After the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO governments applied sanctions to punish Russia and attempted to grind its military operations to a halt. The United States froze $5 billion of the Russian central bank’s assets, barred Russian banks’ access to the financial messenger service SWIFT, and suspended U.S. investors’ ability to trade Russian securities.[173] By the end of 2022, Moscow was unable to conduct commerce with much of the Western world, and its economy contracted by 1.2 percent.[174] To offset these economic strictures, Russia pivoted to China for support. In the first year of the war, China provided Russia with just over 40 percent of its total imports, and during the following two years bilateral trade surged from $146.9 billion to an all-time high of $240.1 billion as Chinese exports met newfound Russian demand.[175]

Without European imports, the sale of Chinese goods has soared in Russian markets: Chinese phones now make up 95 percent of Russia’s phone market, its washing machines and refrigerators lead the Russian household appliance sector, and its cars are the new norm on Russian streets.[176] Chinese auto exports to Russia alone exploded by 594 percent in 2023.[177] Trade with China has thus helped ease the sting of sanctions in the Russian economy, which grew by 3.6 percent in 2023.[178] Since May 2023, China has sold more to Russia per month than the European Union (formerly Russia’s largest trading partner) ever did.[179] Given this vital economic support for Russia, it is no wonder that Finnish President Alexander Stubb has asserted that China could end the war with “one phone call.”[180]

In addition to trade, Beijing has provided Moscow with critical financial lifelines. Circumventing Western financial institutions, Russian banks have signed on to China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which saw its average transaction volume rise 50 percent in 2022 and another 25 percent in the first three quarters of 2023.[181] Using CIPS and other platforms, trade between the two countries is increasingly conducted in Chinese yuan, which supplanted the U.S. dollar as the most used currency on the Moscow Exchange in 2023.[182] The renminbi has since become the de facto reserve currency in Russia, despite not being fully convertible. Even as Putin complains about the dominance of the dollar, his regime has reduced the diversity of holdable currencies.[183]

The share of yuan payments in Russian exports has grown from 0.5 percent in 2021 to 34.5 percent in 2024, and includes Russian trade with states beyond China.[184] In 2024, the share of bilateral trade denominated in yuan or rubles passed 90 percent, according to official figures.[185]

The yuan’s lack of convertibility has raised transaction costs for Russian trade, and Chinese monetary policy has already produced damaging side effects on the Russian economy, such as in March 2022 when Beijing relaxed exchange rate controls, causing the ruble to fall.[186] In the second quarter of 2024, Chinese banks reduced assets and halted some trade in Russia under U.S. threats of secondary sanctions, driving up transaction costs by 6 percent.[187] Russian sinologist Vasily Kashin has acknowledged that Beijing will have greater influence in Russian politics and economics in the future: “China,” he writes, “will have the opportunity to use the levers of economic diplomacy to influence our political positions . . . [China] will have the opportunity to dictate prices. And we will have to live with this.”[188]



The two nations have also integrated their Arctic economic strategies. For decades, Beijing’s ambitions in the region were checked by Moscow’s insistence that only the Arctic Council (of which China is but an observer) is entitled to shape policy in the High North.[189] As noted above, however, Russia’s opposition to China’s Arctic presence has significantly relaxed since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as Russia’s economic dependence has given China a much stronger bargaining position. In a shift from Russia’s previous approach, Putin stated in March 2023 that “we see cooperation with Chinese partners in developing the transit potential of the Northern Sea Route as promising.”[190] China has invested $90 billion in energy extraction and infrastructure projects along the Russian Arctic coast, and investments include $300 million for a coal terminal in Murmansk by a state-owned Chinese defense company, and a deep-water port in Arkhangelsk.[191] Similarly, China and Russia have expanded their influence in Antarctica. In February 2024, China established a new research station close to an American one, which has raised concerns that the station will be used to collect intelligence.[192] In October, Beijing and Moscow partnered to block every proposal at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of the Antarctic Marine Living Resources, arguing it would limit their ability to use and develop in the region.[193]

China has further benefited from the discounted rate of Russian hydrocarbons. In March 2022, the United States prohibited imports of Russian crude oil, liquified natural gas, and coal. Later that year, the European Union and Group of Seven (G7) embargoed most Russian oil and established price caps; this was followed by bans on diesel and gasoline the following year.[194] China immediately took advantage of the subsequent deflated price of Russian energy and bought 45 percent of all Russian coal exports from December 2022 through April 2024. By the end of 2023, China had become the largest importer of Russian crude oil at 2.3 million barrels per day, up from 1.6 million barrels per day just two years prior.[195] In 2023, despite an 11 percent increase in Chinese oil imports, China was able to cut its spending on oil by nearly 8 percent through discounted Russian supplies.[196] “Russian natural gas is fueling numerous Chinese homes and Chinese-made automobiles are running on Russian roads,” remarked Wang.[197] This has led the U.S. intelligence community to conclude, “Beijing is balancing the level of its support to Moscow to maintain the relationship without incurring risk to its own economic and diplomatic interests. In return, China is securing favorable energy prices.”[198]

The prevailing narrative around the China-Russia economic relationship often paints it as a one-sided affair, with Russia cast as the dependent partner relying heavily on its eastern neighbor. Yet in reality, Russia is a crucial player in China’s energy security strategy and in 2023 overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s largest oil supplier.[199] A steady flow of gas and oil from Siberia offers an alternate source of energy for China, and greater security in case supplies from the Middle East traveling via the Indian and Pacific maritime routes are cut off in a conflict with the United States.[200] Russia could be “the only foreign source of oil—that China could conceivably continue to preserve,” as Zhao Huasheng, professor at Fudan University, has stressed.[201] In short, the China-Russia economic relationship is a dynamic partnership built on mutual advantage, where both nations are reaping the rewards of their growing collaboration.

The rapid ascent of the China-Russia strategic partnership is reshaping the global landscape, creating ever-growing threats to the United States. As they work together to undermine Western influence, Xi and Putin are not merely tactical allies of convenience but rather joint architects of a revisionist international order. Their surge of diplomatic engagement, military cooperation, energy deals, and technology transfers illustrates their deepening strategic ties and manifests their future intent. Over the long term, China and Russia mean to diminish the United States and its allies as the most important arbiters of global policies, rules, and practices. In sum, their surge in diplomatic engagement, military cooperation, and economic interaction is to ensure that the international system promotes their authoritarian practices and protects their preferred spheres of influence.

Policy Recommendations

The United States today faces an aggressive Russia and assertive China, each powerful in different ways and collaborating more closely than ever before. They lead a collection of dissatisfied states aiming to overturn the principles, rules, and institutions that underlie the prevailing international system. Working together, they enhance one another’s military capabilities; dilute the efficacy of U.S. foreign policy tools, including sanctions; and hinder the ability of the United States and its partners to enforce global rules. Their collective aim is to create an alternative to the current order, which they consider to be dominated by the United States.[202] As CIA Director William Burns stressed in October 2024, “It would be a huge mistake for us at CIA and the U.S. government, or anyone watching that relationship, to underestimate the strength of the partnership right now: the sort of strong personal relationship between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, their sense of shared determination to undermine an international order that the United States has played a very large role in helping to shape.”[203]

As a result, Washington needs to compete with—and if necessary, confront—both Moscow and Beijing simultaneously and indefinitely. It amounts to a daunting geopolitical reality. In 1880, the Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck contended that “as long as the world is governed by the unstable equilibrium of five great powers,” Germany should “try to be one of three.” Among today’s three great powers, two are far closer to each other than to the United States. There is little prospect of any near-term change in this basic strategic equation. As a result, how the United States should operate in a world with two great-power antagonists is the central question in U.S. foreign policy.[204]
 
The Fantasy of Wedge-Driving

As noted earlier, the first task is to reject neat but fanciful solutions. Some in recent years have imagined a grand diplomatic move that would flip Russia to the United States’ side in its competition with China; others have proposed somehow siding with China to balance and marginalize Russian power. Unlike President Richard Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s, however, which took advantage of a Sino-Soviet split to draw China further away from Russia, there is no equivalent ideological or geopolitical rivalry for the United States to exploit today. The price of trying would likely involve U.S. recognition of a Russian or Chinese sphere of influence in Europe and Asia—regions central to U.S. interests and ones that the United States should not allow a hostile foreign power to dominate.[205] China and Russia represent neither chess pieces to be moved through assiduous acts of wise statesmanship nor great-power challengers that can be handled effectively without American activism. They are, rather, enduring and differentiated challenges that should be managed simultaneously.[206]

More modest hopes of driving wedges between the two are equally unrealistic. Attempting to enhance Russia-China tension in Central Asia, for instance, or over North Korea or on some other issue, is likely to fail, for a simple reason: their real differences with each other pale in comparison with those they have with the United States. Moscow and Beijing manage disagreements and tensions in pursuit of their larger strategic aims. There is nothing Washington can offer either, at least at acceptable cost, that would meaningfully open a gap between the two.

As a result, containing Russia and deterring China are the twin tasks of U.S. policy today. For much of its history, the United States has sought to prevent the emergence of a hostile power that could dominate either end of Eurasia. Today, in both Europe and Asia, such hostile powers seek to influence, if not dominate, regions of vital importance to the United States—and they are increasingly collaborating in the attempt.
 
Tackling the Twin Tasks

Crucial to managing the advancing China-Russia axis are clarifying objectives, setting priorities, and making difficult trade-offs across regions and issues. Strengthening alliances, building up domestic strength, and taking advantage of time are critical. Yet even by doing all this, the United States will still be unable to counter Chinese and Russian influence everywhere, and on every issue, indefinitely—nor should it try. It needs to selectively engage in the areas, and on the issues, that are most important. To that end, the United States should take the following steps:

Leverage allies such as NATO, the five Pacific allies, and the G7, and strengthen connections to and among new partners. China and Russia’s economic weight and military strength are formidable, as are their connections with North Korea and Iran—but the combined might of the United States and its allies is greater still. The U.S. alliance structure, augmented by new and non-allied partners, represents a central advantage for the United States. The world’s most powerful democracies are on the United States’ side.[207]

A key to the success of this strategy is not only to work with partners but also to acquire new ones and make the ties among them stronger—hence Sweden and Finland’s joining NATO, AUKUS, and the ascent of the Quad.[208] China and Russia are engaged in their own efforts to enlist like-minded partners such as Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela; the United States has more to offer others and should do so.

Increase defense spending, investments in domestic innovation, foreign aid, and other sources of U.S. strength. Washington today spends less than 3 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, approaching the lowest level since the late 1990s—the height of the post–Cold War peace dividend.[209] A significant increase in defense spending is necessary to deal simultaneously with China and Russia alongside other threats. Efforts to enhance domestic innovation, make supply chains more resilient, invest in advanced technology, increase foreign aid, strengthen the defense industrial base, and defend U.S. election infrastructure are similarly required.[210]

Exploit temporal asymmetries between Russian and Chinese actions. China employs economic coercion and diplomatic pressure but has yet to fully exercise its military option; Russia is using nearly all instruments of national power to conquer Ukraine. This suggests that a major effort to punish Russian transgressions now could render that country weaker, poorer, and far less militarily capable in the future—precisely when China could wish to match its growing strength with overt aggression. The United States should focus a great deal of energy and resources on the Russian threat in its current acute phase while resolving to devote the lion’s share of both to China over the long run.[211]

Adopt measures to offset the Axis of Upheaval. China and Russia are also increasingly working in concert with Iran and North Korea.[212] The four powers identify common national interests, match up their rhetoric, and coordinate their military and diplomatic activities. Russia has been one of Iran’s top weapons suppliers over the past two decades, provides it with intelligence, is Iran’s largest source of foreign investment, and supplies weapons to Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies to undermine U.S. policies throughout the Middle East.[213] Similarly, China has emboldened Iran through joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman for three consecutive years, most recently in March 2024, and continues to be a key economic partner for Iran, representing the number-one buyer of its oil.[214] At the same time, North Korea has expanded its nuclear and missile capabilities without further Security Council sanctions because of Russian and Chinese vetoes, Russia has released millions of dollars in North Korean assets previously frozen in Russian banks, and China remains North Korea’s largest trade partner.

These four governments are fundamentally altering the geopolitical landscape. U.S. efforts to deter key activities by China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia failed for fifteen years across multiple administrations.[215] During this period, Russia annexed Crimea without a consequential U.S.-NATO response. China militarized the South China Sea without an effective U.S. response; expanded its defense, economic, and diplomatic reach throughout Asia and beyond; and now puts ever-greater pressure on Taiwan.

These autocratic regimes increasingly collaborate and have seemingly concluded that they pay an acceptable price—or no price at all—for their destabilizing actions. It is, therefore, no surprise that they currently see little value in geopolitical accommodation with a United States that they perceive is in permanent decline. Until the United States and its allies give them sufficient reasons to relent, they will persist in their malignant designs, diplomacy will hold limited promise, and war will be more likely. As George Shultz wisely observed, “Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.” The West’s strategy has been too cautious, uncertain, and episodic to reverse these perilous trends.

One approach will obviously not fit all these hostile states, but policies should exact harsher penalties against China for its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, violations of freedom of the seas, trade malpractices, geoeconomic coercion, theft of intellectual property, and interference in the domestic politics of others. The United States should also accelerate arms sales to Taiwan,
increase substantially and quicken security assistance to Ukraine, allow Ukraine to attack Russian bases that launch weapons against it, impose wider and tighter economic sanctions against Russia, end Iran’s sanctuary from U.S. retaliation for its attacks through proxies on American and allied forces, impose tougher sanctions against Iran, and substantially strengthen U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia.

This will not be easy. In sum, this approach will require a U.S. administration willing to take more risks than its recent predecessors. It will require a U.S. domestic majority in favor of steps such as these and a grand strategy in which they are embedded. It will require consistent and resolute leadership by the American president. It will require a revitalization of the U.S. defense industrial base, for the United States to once again become an arsenal for democracy. It will require the United States to finally pivot to Asia where its vital national interests are so decisively engaged. It will require a long-term major growth in U.S. and allied defense spending. These countermeasures will not produce victory through regime change in Communist China or in the others, but they could well reestablish a stable world order through sustainable regional and global balances of power and adroit negotiation.

Focus on places and issues that could disproportionately damage U.S. national interests and substantially benefit China or Russia. Assessed individually, every region—Asia, Europe, the Global South, the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere—has a claim to priority, and many issues have constituencies inside or outside government that argue for their importance. Actions by Moscow or Beijing that would contest key principles of international order, constrict Washington’s freedom to act, or undermine the domestic functioning of foreign countries should broadly define what is most important. The large remainder of Russian and Chinese activities around the world thatare undesirable, offensive, and even contrary to U.S. interests should be relegated to a lower tier of priority and receive a significantly smaller share of American national security resources and attention.[216]

Defend key principles and institutions in regions that matter most, such as East Asia and Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violates the cardinal rule against the forcible theft of foreign territory and shakes a crucial foundation of the rules-based order. The United States has a strong interest in ensuring that such a transgression is not only punished but rendered unsuccessful, not least so that the next would-be aggressor is discouraged from pursuing a similar course. Chinese activity in the South China Sea threatens the maritime rules that allow for vital commercial operations and so should represent a key area of focus for U.S. policy. The protection of American democratic practice against malign interference by Russia or China is critical to the functioning of the U.S. political system.[217]

China’s Belt and Road Initiative poses potential debt-trap dilemmas for all recipients, but the United States should contest its expansion in Southeast Asia (where increased Chinese influence could lead to naval bases that could impede U.S. interests) to a much greater degree than in Central Asia (where the United States’ ability to operate will not be affected). Similarly, the United States should focus more on blocking the creation of a Chinese naval facility in the South Pacific than in West Africa, though China seeks bases in both regions, as the downside costs of Chinese military influence are substantially greater in the Indo-Pacific theater than elsewhere.

Redeploy U.S. military forces to the Indo-Pacific to deter China from using force. Here too the United States has a solid foundation on which to build, including a strengthening U.S.-Japan alliance (and significantly increasing Japanese defense capability), new base access in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, the AUKUS defense technology–sharing platform with Australia and the United Kingdom, and innovative efforts in the Department of Defense such as the Replicator Initiative.[218] The United States should relocate U.S. air and naval assets from Europe and the Middle East to Asia, surging only for significant operations such as the Israel-Gaza conflict. As the United States transforms its defense forces to one focused on a conventional Indo-Pacific contingency, it should be possessed by a sense of urgency: the regional military balance continues to shift away from the United States and its allies.

Establish a dynamic U.S. trade policy toward Asia. Following the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Washington watched as each nation in the region became ever more dependent on trade with Beijing and more vulnerable to Beijing’s geoeconomic coercion. Joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership would increase U.S. access to lucrative Asian markets and give the United States the ability to shape rules in the region and beyond. More politically palatable steps toward reentry, such as pursuing a bilateral or regional digital trade deal, could help in the near term. In the meantime, the United States should identify areas of economic dependence with China that incur national security risk and pursue alternative arrangements. Above all, developing a robust U.S. trade policy in Asia would send a broad signal of sustained American leadership and presence in the region.

Prepare for opportunistic aggression by Beijing or Moscow. In a conflict with either China or Russia, simultaneous aggression by the other party represents a real threat. If a Chinese invasion of Taiwan prompts U.S. military intervention, for instance, Russia could be tempted to move against another European country. A widening conflict in Europe could prompt China to make a long-awaited move on Taiwan. Even concurrent, non-coordinated conflicts could overwhelm the West. The United States will therefore need to press allies to invest in capabilities that it could not provide if it were already engaged in another military theater.[219]

Contain Russian expansionism through military collaboration with NATO allies and, as pertinent, sanctions on China. The United States should continue and augment many of the policies put into place since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It should enforce sanctions on Russia, especially export controls that aim to prevent dual-use goods from entering the country, and impose secondary sanctions on Chinese or other companies providing alternatives to Western components. The United States should encourage NATO allies to spend more on their own defense and work with them to deploy forces closer to Russian borders. It should also enhance its efforts, through sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and information releases, to limit China’s support for Russian military activities and the eventual reconstitution of its defense forces.

Improve and better fund U.S. public diplomacy and messaging. China and Russia each boast sophisticated, well-financed broadcasting, print, and social media efforts available around the world and in many languages. Their efforts attempt to draw attention to the United States’ domestic flaws and rally support for alternatives to U.S. foreign policy leadership. Beijing and Moscow have reinforced each other’s efforts as well, parroting each other’s talking points, supporting the other’s policy positions, and defending each other from criticism.

The United States should far more actively contest the information environment. It should consistently draw public attention in Europe to Chinese support for Russia’s war of aggression. It should highlight in Asia the provision of Russian military equipment that threatens China’s neighbors. Congress should fund programs that support democracy and help like-minded countries protect themselves against external meddling. Articulating the positive case is critical as well; the United States should stand for freedom, sovereignty, independence, and a stable world order based on liberal values and the rule of law.[220]

Cultivate the “global swing states.” In the competition between the United States and China and Russia, six global swing states will be particularly important: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey are all middle powers with enough collective geopolitical weight for their policy preferences to sway the future direction of the international order. Washington should make it a priority to deny advantages to Moscow and Beijing in these countries, encouraging their governments to choose policies that favor the prevailing order. In practice, that means using trade incentives, military engagement, foreign aid, and diplomacy to prevent swing states from hosting Chinese or Russian military bases, giving them access to technology infrastructure or military equipment, or helping them circumvent Western sanctions.[221]

Diplomatic engagement with China and Russia is not in opposition to a competitive approach but rather a necessary element of it. Engage in bilateral diplomacy with Beijing and Moscow. Much inherent in the U.S. relationship with China and Russia provokes tensions, and many of the recommendations in this report could increase rather than reduce them. It is worth remembering that China and Russia are each powerful, nuclear-armed great powers. Should competition and containment become crisis and conflict, the price would be extraordinarily high and potentially catastrophic. The United States should endeavor mightily to avoid such a dire outcome.

This requires intensive diplomacy with both adversaries. Diplomatic engagement with China and Russia is not in opposition to a competitive approach but rather a necessary element of it. Washington should discuss matters including strategic stability, outer space, artificial intelligence safety and stability, and more with Beijing and Moscow.

Pursue domestic political unity and international leadership. China and Russia are emboldened by the sense that political divisions at home or exhaustion with international engagement will keep the United States distracted, inwardly focused, and unable to develop national solutions to critical problems. A comprehensive, well-resourced U.S. strategy with bipartisan support would help counter that impression. This should be coupled with an affirmative articulation of the United States’ international role and then vigorous actions to make it real. The alternative—a reduction in the U.S. global presence—would leave the fate of crucial regions in the hands not of friendly local powers but of axis members seeking to impose their revisionist and illiberal preferences.[222] The United States has the power, economy, population, geography, allies, and values necessary to prevail in a long term contest with China and Russia. The only question is whether it will muster the unity and political will necessary to do so.
 
Conclusion

China and Russia have been clear about the world they seek. They want no further NATO enlargement, no color revolutions, no globe-spanning U.S. missile defense system, and no American nuclear weapons deployed abroad. They wish to resist actors “representing but the minority on the international scale”—that is, the United States and its allies—who continue to interfere in other states and “incite contradictions, differences and confrontation.”[223] In the world to come, no one would pressure China or Russia on human rights or interfere in their internal affairs. Democracy itself would be redefined and subject to no universal standard. China and Russia would support reunification with Taiwan and oppose alliances in Asia that China finds threatening.[224] They would together oversee the transition to a world in which great powers dominate their regions and no one attempts to impose or enforce global rules.

The upshot, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates puts it, is that a “new American strategy must recognize that we face a global struggle of indeterminate duration against two great powers that share authoritarianism at home and hostility to the United States.”[225] Because of Russian-Chinese collaboration, the war in Ukraine is longer and more brutal than it would otherwise be, the Indo-Pacific military balance of power has shifted away from the United States more quickly, and more countries dissatisfied with the constraints of Western-led world order are increasingly vocal and active in resisting it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 erased any last vestiges of the post–Cold War era and ushered in a new, more dangerous era. Moscow and Beijing had long coordinated and increasingly aligned their efforts, but the war gave rise to a new, more active and more determined alignment. For all the real limits to their partnership, the two are bound by shared opposition to a U.S.-led world that, they believe, affords them too little security, status, and freedom of action.

The era is daunting but also contains real strains of hope. Ensuring that Europe and Asia remain free of hostile domination is, of course, not a new objective of U.S. foreign policy. In this fresh effort, the United States and its allies have everything they need to succeed. Their combined economies are larger than China’s and Russia’s, and their militaries more powerful. Their values are more attractive and their democratic system more stable.[226] U.S. leaders should add to those advantages a clarity of purpose, resolve, and confidence in their system and in the American future. Some critics will say that all this is just too hard for the United States at such a contentious and divisive period in its history. That conclusion, however, would profoundly test the Churchillian theorem that the United States always wakes up late to far-reaching external dangers, but never too late.
 
Source: https://www.cfr.org/report/no-limits-china-russia-relationship-and-us-foreign-policy
 
Before it was shuttered, USAID routed funds to Soros-aligned causes, terrorists and drag queens
 
Before the Trump administration closed USAID’s doors, the agency regularly routed funding to causes aligned with George Soros’ nonprofit empire, terrorists and drag queens. The agency came under scrutiny from the new administration over failures to ensure transparency in its funding to organizations across the globe and concerns that the leadership was not responding to explicit policy directives from the State Department and the wider executive branch to align its programs with Trump policies and the U.S. national interest. 

In recent days, the Trump administration identified USAID programs ranging from contraceptives for Afghanistan to LGBT diversity programs for European countries as clear evidence that foreign aid needed to be paused and reevaluated, a task that fell to the Rubio State Department. The development agency for years also funneled money to several nonprofit groups that also received substantial backing from components of George Soros’ empire. Some previously came under scrutiny during the Obama administration for “democracy promotion” and judicial reform efforts in European countries that critics claimed promoted leftist politics. 

For example, U.S. government spending records show that the East-West Management Institute, which is in part backed by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, received more than $260 million over the years in grants from USAID to, among other things, promote the rule of law in Georgia, strengthen civil society in Uganda, and advance Serbia’s accession talks with the European Union. That same nonprofit group came under scrutiny during the Obama administration after Judicial Watch uncovered government records and communications showing that the East-West Management Institute’s “Justice for All” campaign in Albania received $9 million in funding from USAID. 

The assistance concerned several GOP Senators, who sent a letter to the newly appointed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017, alleging the campaign funded by the U.S. government helped craft an Albanian judicial reform proposal that may “give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over the judiciary.” Those same Senators also raised concerns about a similar Soros-backed program in neighboring Macedonia where they said a local affiliate called Foundation Open Society-Macedonia received backing from USAID through the Open Society Foundations and pushed “a progressive agenda.” Other Soros-backed organizations that received funding from both his Open Society Foundations network and USAID include the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine and Transparency International. 

According to the group's own records, the Anti-Corruption Action Center began receiving funding from USAID the same year the Maidan Revolution overthrew Ukraine’s elected, Russian-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych. The group, by its own admission, was heavily critical of Yanukovych’s government and ministers, which aligned with U.S. State Department policy at the time. During the 2014 Maidan Revolution, then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland visited Ukraine and was recorded on a leaked phone call discussing how the United States could influence the formation of a new government in Kyiv. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations did not respond to a request for comment. 

After temporarily shutting down USAID operation, the Trump administration defended the move, citing other left-wing causes that received funding grants from the agency. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted several when speaking with reporters on Monday, including $1.5 million for diversity measures in Serbia, $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru, and $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland. House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., also flagged other examples of USAID funding, including $15 million for condoms sent to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and over $3 million for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean.” 

The government watchdog overseeing the agency also warned USAID’s leadership in a stinging January memo that it had created serious "vulnerabilities" by doling out billions of tax dollars to overseas countries and groups without fulling vetting for terrorists. That inspector general’s report also determined that USAID grants were being insufficiently monitored. In one egregious example, a Syrian national was charged by the Justice Department last year for diverting more than $9 million worth of humanitarian aid paid for by USAID to a designated terrorist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq. 

The suspect, Mahmoud Al Hafyan, was the head of a Syrian nongovernmental organization that employed 160 individuals and was awarded $122 million by USAID between January 2015 and November 2018, according to the Justice Department. That money was designated to pay for food kits for Syrian refugees fleeing conflict zones. During this contract, the Justice Department alleges Al Hafyan worked with co-conspirators to funnel “millions” in food kits on the black market to the Al-Nusra Front, a local Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that is also designated a terrorist organization by the United States. 

The USAID inspector general warned about the limits on the agency’s ability to monitor expenditures for programs in “nonpermissive” environments, like the conflict zones in Syria, meaning what happened there could happen in other places, like Ukraine or Gaza, where there are similar international or local organizations operating that are recipients of U.S. cash. In another example, food aid in Ethiopia was diverted to warring armies in the Tigray region. According to reporting from Reuters, the UN’s World Food Program — a close partner of USAID — was aware that aid was being stolen from its programs for years before the discovery. In all, thousands of tons of USAID-funded grain shipments meant to feed the hungry in the midst of the civil conflict were diverted.

 
Project 2025: The right-wing wish list for Trump's second term


It is a 900-page policy "wish list", a set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision. During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, after a backlash over some of its more radical ideas. But he has nominated several of its authors to fill key government positions, and many of his initial executive orders closely follow proposals outlined in the document. Here's your guide to Project 2025, which lays out one vision of how Trump might govern over the next four years.

Where did Project 2025 come from?

Project 2025 is a product of the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington's most prominent right-wing think tanks. It first produced policy plans for future Republican administrations in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was about to take office. It has produced similar documents in connection with subsequent presidential elections, including in 2016, when Trump first won the presidency. That's not unusual - it's common for US think tanks of all political stripes to propose policy wish lists for future governments. There's no denying Heritage has been influential during Republican presidencies. One year into Trump's first term, the think tank boasted that the White House had adopted nearly two-thirds of its proposals. Its latest set of recommendations was unveiled in April 2023, but went largely unnoticed outside of policy circles until the heat of the presidential campaign, when Democratic opposition to the document ramped up. Democratic politicians launched a "Stop Project 2025 Task Force" and even set up a tip line to collect insider information on Heritage's activities. The Harris campaign and its surrogates consistently brought up the project in interviews and speeches. Trump began actively pushing away from the document in July 2024.  "I know nothing about Project 2025," he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. "I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

The team that created the project was chock-full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president. Dans later left the project. But other Project 2025 authors have been welcomed into government jobs. Russell Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist, wrote a key chapter in the document and was confirmed by the Senate to lead the Office of Budget Management, which administers the $6.75tn (£5.44tn) federal budget. Vought - who Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer called "the chief architect of Project 2025, its intellectual inspiration" - was also put in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that the Trump administration has indicated it would like to close. Other Project 2025 authors nominated to government positions include CIA director John Ratcliffe; Brendan Carr, chosen to oversee the Federal Communications Commission; Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar"; Paul Atkins, nominated to head the Securities and Exchange Commission; and trade advisor Peter Navarro. More than 100 conservative organisations contributed to the document, Heritage says, including many that will now be hugely influential in Washington. The document itself sets out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation's sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely. Some of the proposals have already formed the basis for Trump's executive orders - although in a number of cases they are also mentioned in other policy documents, including the Republican platform and Trump's Agenda47 campaign manifesto.

Government

Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory". In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas. The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees. The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization". It calls for drastic overhauls of the agency and several others, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education. Shortly after being sworn in, Trump moved to eliminate job protections for career civil servants, and freeze federal spending. Through Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the White House has moved to chop billions in federal spending, although the details and legal status of the cuts are hazy at best. DOGE is not an official government department, but rather an outside team advising Trump with broad authority from the president. It's clear however that Trump intends to take a sledgehammer to the federal government as it currently stands - a goal broadly in line with Project 2025 suggestions.

Abortion and family

The mentions of abortion in Project 2025 - there are about 200 of them - have sparked some of the most contentious debate. The document does not call for an outright nationwide abortion ban, and Trump says he would not sign such a law. However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and using existing but little-enforced laws to stop the drug being sent through the post. The document proposes new data collection efforts on abortion and more generally suggests that the department of Health and Human Services should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family". Trump, by contrast, has generally said that abortion laws should mostly be left to individual states. However, during confirmation hearings, Trump's nominee for health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said the president had ordered him to examine the safety record of mifepristone and left open the possibility of further regulation of the drug. Trump also issued an executive order designed to stop federal funds being used for abortion, a move that was outlined in detail in the Project 2025 document.

Immigration

Increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border - one of Trump's signature proposals in 2016 - is proposed in the document. But Trump's signature immigration policy - a pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants - is not spelled out in any detail in Project 2025. The document does include language calling on Trump to "thoroughly enforce immigration laws". But in the main chapter dealing with immigration, Project 2025 authors suggest dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation. Other proposals include eliminating visa categories for crime and human trafficking victims, increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium. But it was mass deportations - not a bureaucratic shuffle, visa changes or a longer, taller border wall - that was Trump's top pitch to voters. On this issue, his administration promises to go in a slightly different direction - and potentially much further - than the Project 2025 proposals.

Energy, climate and trade

Energy policy is a broad area of agreement between Trump and the Project 2025 proposals, summed up by one of the president's campaign slogans: "Drill, baby, drill". The new administration wants to ramp up fossil fuel production and has taken the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which seeks to limit emissions and global warming. Project 2025 proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and calls for the next president to "stop the war on oil and natural gas" - ideas that the Trump campaign has enthusiastically taken up. The document sets out two competing visions on tariffs: one suggesting boosting free trade and another pro-tariff position. Trump has clearly sided with the latter camp, announcing import taxes targeting Canada, Mexico and China. The economic advisers of Project 2025 suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency. While the president has made comments about proposals in some of these areas, the economic talk in the early days of his administration has been dominated by tariffs.

Education, tech and DEI

Almost immediately upon taking office, Trump moved to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and decreed that government departments would recognise only two genders. Those moves are broadly in line with Project 2025, which took aim at DEI and gender terminology as part of what it describes as a wider crackdown on "woke" ideology. The document also calls for greater school choice - essentially subidising religious and private schools with public funds - which was also the subject of an early Trump executive order. And it calls for abolishing the Department of Education, another idea that Trump has signalled he supports. In other proposals, Project 2025 suggests banning pornography and shutting down tech and telecoms companies that allow access to adult material. This has so far not been a focus of the new administration, which has drawn support from a number of top tech bosses. Trump's views on the tech industry have regularly shifted, and don't appear to have much to do with sexual content.

The plan's uncertain future

The writing of Project 2025 was a massive undertaking, backed by a $22m (£17m) budget from Heritage. It includes strategies for implementing policies, such as the creation of a database of conservative loyalists to fill government positions, and a programme to train those new workers. There are clear areas of agreement and overlapping personnel. However, many of the themes of Project 2025 were independently being touted by the Trump campaign. It's very early in Trump's second term, and still unclear how far the president will be able to go in reshaping the vast US federal government. Democrats have indicated they will continue to oppose the proposals and highlight Project 2025's influence. And many of the president's executive orders and other actions will continue to face political and legal challenges.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do
 
Dmitry Trenin: Why 2025 is going to be more dangerous than you think


Predicting the future of international relations is always a risky endeavor. History shows that even the most confident forecasts can fall flat. For instance, the last Pentagon propaganda pamphlet on 'Soviet Military Power' was published in 1991 – the year the USSR ceased to exist. Similarly, the Washington-based RAND Corporation’s 1988 scenario on nuclear war included the Soviet Union engaging Pakistan over Afghanistan in 2004. Nevertheless, the urge to anticipate the future is natural, even necessary. What follows is not a prediction, but an attempt to outline reasonable expectations for the state of the world in 2025.

Ukraine

US President Donald Trump’s bid to secure a ceasefire along Ukraine’s battle lines will fail. The American plan to “stop the war” ignores Russia’s security concerns and disregards the root causes of the conflict. Meanwhile, Moscow’s conditions for peace – outlined by President Vladimir Putin in June 2024 – will remain unacceptable to Washington, as they would effectively mean Kiev’s capitulation and the West’s strategic defeat. The fighting will continue. In response to the rejection of his plan, a frustrated Trump will impose additional sanctions on Moscow. However, he will avoid any serious escalation that might provoke Russia into attacking NATO forces. Despite strong anti-Russian rhetoric, US aid to Ukraine will decrease, shifting much of the burden onto Western European nations. While the EU is prepared to step in, the quality and scale of Western material support for Ukraine will likely decline. On the battlefield, the tide will continue to shift in Russia’s favor. Russian forces are expected to push Ukraine out of key regions such as Donbass, Zaporozhye, and parts of Kursk Region. Ukraine will mobilize younger, inexperienced recruits to slow Russia’s advances, but this strategy will lead to limited success. Kiev will rely increasingly on surprise operations, such as border incursions or symbolic strikes deep into Russian territory, in attempts to demoralize the Russian population. Domestically, the US and its allies may push for elections in Ukraine, hoping to replace Vladimir Zelensky – whose term expired in the middle of last year – with General Valery Zaluzhny. While this political reshuffling might temporarily strengthen Kiev’s leadership, it will not address the underlying challenges of economic collapse and deteriorating living conditions for ordinary Ukrainians.

United States

Despite a peaceful transfer of power, Trump’s second term will remain fraught with tension. The risk of attempts on his life will linger. Trump’s foreign policy, while less ideological than Biden’s, will focus on pragmatic goals. He will:

– Keep NATO intact but demand higher financial contributions from European members.

– Shift much of the financial responsibility for Ukraine onto the EU.

– Intensify economic pressure on China, leveraging Beijing’s vulnerabilities to force unfavorable trade deals.

Trump will also align closely with Israel, supporting its efforts against Iran. Tehran, already weakened, will face harsh terms for a nuclear deal, and a refusal may prompt US military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Trump is likely to meet Putin in 2025, but this will not signal a thaw in US-Russia relations. The confrontation between the two powers will remain deep and enduring. Trump’s strategy will prioritize America’s global dominance, shifting the burden of US commitments onto allies and partners, often to their detriment.

Western Europe

European nations, wary of Trump’s return, will ultimately fall in line. The EU’s dependence on the US for military and political leadership will deepen, even as European economies continue to act as donors to the American economy. Over the past three decades, Western European elites have transitioned from being national actors to appendages of a transnational political system centered in Washington. Genuine defenders of national interests, such as Alternative for Germany or France’s Rassemblement National, remain politically marginalized. Russophobia will remain a unifying force in Western European politics. Contrary to popular belief, this sentiment is not imposed by the US but actively embraced by EU and UK elites as a tool for cohesion. The Russian military operation in Ukraine has been framed as the first stage of an imagined Russian attempt to “kidnap Europe.” In 2025, Germany’s new coalition government will adopt an even tougher stance toward Moscow. However, fears of a direct military clash with Russia will deter other European nations from deploying troops to Ukraine. Instead, Western Europe will prepare for a new Cold War, increasing military spending, expanding production, and fortifying NATO’s eastern flank. Dissent within Europe will be suppressed. Political opponents of the confrontation with Russia will be branded as “Putin’s useful idiots” or outright agents of Moscow. Hungary and Slovakia will remain outliers in their approach to Russia, but their influence on EU policy will be negligible.

Middle East

After significant military victories in 2024, Israel, with US backing, will attempt to consolidate its gains against Iran. The US-Israeli strategy will involve combined pressure, including military actions, against Iranian proxies like the Yemeni Houthis and efforts to deepen ties with Gulf Arab monarchies under the Abraham Accords. While Russia signed a treaty with Iran in January 2025, it does not obligate Moscow to intervene militarily if Tehran is attacked. Thus, a full-scale Middle Eastern war involving Russia and the US remains unlikely. Domestically, Iran faces uncertainty as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, now 86, nears the end of his leadership. Russia’s influence in the Middle East will wane as its military presence diminishes. However, logistical routes connecting Russia to Africa will remain a strategic priority.

East Asia

US-China tensions will continue to rise, fueled by American efforts to contain China’s economic and technological ambitions. Washington will strengthen alliances in Asia, particularly with Taiwan and the Philippines, to counter Beijing. While an armed conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea remains possible, it is unlikely to erupt in 2025. Russia’s partnership with China will grow stronger, though it will stop short of a formal military alliance. From a Western perspective, this relationship will increasingly resemble an anti-American coalition. Together, Russia and China will push back against US global dominance in geopolitical, military, and economic spheres.

Russia’s near abroad

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is expected to secure another term in January 2025, cementing his alignment with Moscow. Meanwhile, Russia will work to stabilize its relations with Kazakhstan, though Moscow’s lack of a compelling vision for Eurasian integration could come back to bite. The year 2025 will be marked by strategic instability, ongoing conflicts, and heightened geopolitical tensions. While Russia has achieved notable successes in recent years, it must guard against complacency. Victory is far from assured, and the world remains nowhere near equilibrium. For Moscow, the path forward will require resilience and a clear focus on long-term goals. Peace will come, but only through continued effort and eventual victory – perhaps in 2026.


Is Trump Engineering the Decline and Fall of the Dollar?


Dollar devaluation and dollar dominance are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But the approach to weakening the greenback that US President Donald Trump’s administration is considering would almost certainly spell the end of the US dollar’s reign as the dominant international currency.

In 1985, US officials met with their counterparts from the other G5 countries at New York City’s Plaza Hotel to negotiate a coordinated intervention to bring down the value of the dollar. The successful Plaza Accord is now apparently serving as inspiration for US President Donald Trump’s administration, as it seeks ways to weaken the dollar and, it hopes, improve America’s trade balance. True to form, Trump and his devotees – notably Stephen Miran, the incoming chair of the Council of Economic Advisers – would call the arrangement the “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” as it would be negotiated at the president’s eponymous Florida resort. One could imagine a sensible proposal for coordinated intervention among major economies to weaken the dollar. The United States would take steps to reduce its budget deficit, and large surplus countries like Germany would increase theirs, thereby addressing the fundamental driver of today’s international trade imbalances.
 
But the Mar-a-Lago Accord does nothing of the sort. Instead, it is a coercive vision that risks doing exactly what the Trump administration fears: hurting America’s ability to finance its deficits (and, in particular, to keep interest rates low) and undermining the US dollar’s status as the leading international currency. Start with interest rates. An intervention by foreign central banks to weaken the dollar’s exchange rate would entail a reduction in their holdings of US Treasury bills. But falling demand for T-bills would lead to declining prices and rising interest rates.
 
Think about it this way: if the trade balance improves when the economy is at full capacity, components of domestic demand (household consumption and business investment) have to be crowded out. As for the dollar, its dethronement is, in a sense, integral to the vision animating the Mar-a-Lago Accord. The first person to use the term was reportedly the economist Zoltan Pozsar, who proposed a “Bretton Woods III” agreement which would replace the dollar-based global monetary system with a system based on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), together with gold or other commodities. According to Pozsar, the US government would strengthen its balance sheet by revaluing gold.

But such an effort to devalue the US dollar could well lead to the greenback’s demise as the dominant global currency – a process that would be accelerated if monetary easing by the US Federal Reserve was part of the agreement. While Trump has pushed for a more accommodative monetary policy, he has also made clear that he wants to maintain the US dollar’s global primacy, even if he has to use tariffs to force countries (such as the BRICS economies) not to undermine it.

To be sure, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has noted, dollar devaluation and dollar dominance are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In the late 1990s, for example, the dollar simultaneously depreciated and accounted for a larger share of central banks’ foreign-exchange reserves. But there is a clear tension between the two objectives. If a Mar-a-Lago Accord discourages central banks from holding US Treasury securities, it is especially hard to see how the dollar’s global status would survive. Yet that is precisely what Miran seems prepared to do. He proposes making foreign central banks hold 100-year US bonds without coupon payments instead of the T-bills they now hold. (This would amount to restructuring US debt, which is equivalent to default.) Alternative – or additional – provisions include the introduction of “user fees” charged to foreign central banks that hold US debt and a more general tax on foreign investment in the US (reminiscent of the Tobin tax on short-term currency transactions that was proposed in the 1970s).
 
The sovereign wealth fund (SWF) that Trump has ordered be created is apparently also supposed to play some unspecified role in the Mar-a-Lago vision. It is not clear where the money for this SWF would come from. Like developing economies, the US would be well advised not to start an SWF that it would have to borrow to fund owing to insufficient international reserves. It is also worth noting that SWFs work best when – unlike Trump’s proposed fund – they are invested in foreign, rather than domestic, assets.

Even setting aside the SWF, Miran’s proposal is not grounded in reality. Why would the world’s central banks and other investors accept 100-year bonds – which would pay no interest for a century – in place of good old T-bills? Why would they swallow new fees and taxes on their US debt holdings or investments? Trump might say that the answer is simple: so they can avoid punitive tariffs. But he has brandished this weapon so relentlessly – in the name of so many objectives, with so many postponements and reversals – that it is quickly losing its impact. Far from sticking around to kneel before Tariff Man, countries are trickling toward the exits. If Trump pushes too hard, the trickle may well turn into a stampede away from the dollar

Attempts to leverage US military and geopolitical power to coerce countries into accepting the terms of the Mar-a-Lago Accord would likely prove similarly ineffective. Yes, in the 1960s, Germany agreed to cover the costs of stationing American soldiers on its territory, in order to preserve the Bretton Woods system. And in 1991, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia covered a large share of the costs the US incurred fighting the Gulf War. But there is a critical difference between now and then: goodwill.

With his propensity for threats and coercion, willingness to betray friends and allies, and disregard for rules and norms, Trump has systematically destroyed whatever international political capital he inherited, decimating US global leadership in the process. The coercive Mar-a-Lago Accord – which harks back to the Roman Empire’s demand for tribute from territories its legions occupied – would only accelerate America’s decline. The Mar-a-Lago brand is best reserved for golf tournaments and rococo weddings.


Is the North American Union Back on the Agenda?


When Donald Trump posts a map merging Canada with the United States and calls Canada a “51st state,” it’s tempting to dismiss it as classic Trump showmanship. But combine that with whispers of his supposed “deal” for Greenland, Trudeau’s resignation, and the eerie re-emergence of the Club of Rome’s “Ten Kingdoms” map, and you start to wonder: Is the North American Union being dusted off?

For those unfamiliar, the North American Union (NAU) was the fever dream of globalist elites back in 2008, folding the US, Canada, and Mexico into one neat package, complete with a new constitution and currency (the “Amero”). The idea? To dissolve national borders under the guise of “free trade” and usher in the next chapter of the New World Order. It faced massive public backlash, and the globalists quietly shelved it. Or did they?

Fast forward to today, and suddenly we’re watching the same play unfold with different actors. Greenland - strategically vital and resource-rich is back on the bargaining table. Canada is framed as a “drain” on the US economy, its sovereignty trivialized. All while Arctic resource wars with Russia and China heat up, and Washington angles for dominance over the last untapped frontier.

And here’s the twist: Trump. A man once heralded as the anti-globalist could be positioned to deliver on their most audacious plan yet. Call it the ultimate psy-op: get conservatives, who rightly opposed the NAU when Obama floated it, to cheer for it now. Same agenda, different salesman. The ouroboros eats its tail.

For Canadians, the message is clear: sovereignty is under siege. Trump is just saying the quiet part out loud. The real question is, why isn’t Canada looking to the Global South and BRICS for inspiration? Sovereign nations finding strength in cooperation, not in servitude to Washington.

As for Greenland? Trump’s bravado about “buying it” feels less like comedy and more like foreshadowing. The Arctic isn’t just about ice, it’s about resources, shipping routes, and global dominance. The chessboard is set, and the elites are betting you won’t see the move until it’s too late.

The North American Union isn’t just a conspiracy theory but also a reminder that sovereignty is a fragile thing, and the globalists never really let go of their grand designs. Whether it’s called NAU, the Amero, or “just business,” the goal is always the same: consolidation of power, resources, and nations into the hands of the few. So, Canada, what’s it going to be? Independence, or the 51st star on the flag? Your move.

Source: https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/01/08/961640.html

Is a Second U.S. Civil War Imminent?


I have learned many lessons in my studies of authoritarian takeovers of once thriving democratic nations throughout the ages leading often to genocides. Strong leaders whip up sentiments by employing dehumanizing stereotyping and scapegoating of entire groups, while other citizens or entire nations often refuse to intervene or even contribute to authoritarianism. On a micro level, this is also apparent, for example, in episodes of schoolyard, community-based, as well as electronic forms of bullying. Many others, not only the direct perpetrators of oppression, play a key role in the demise of democracy and bullying, sometimes leading to genocide. Dan Olweus, international researcher and bullying prevention specialist, enumerates the distinctive and often overlapping roles enacted in these episodes:
  • the person or persons who perpetrate bullying
  • the active followers
  • those who passively support, condone, or collude in the aggression
  • the onlookers (sometimes referred to as “bystanders”)
  • the possible defenders of the targets of aggression
  • those who actually defend the targets of aggression
  • those who are exposed, attacked, targeted, victimized.
We can also relate these roles in the case of national politics. A plurality of 49.8% of the U.S. electorate voted for the twice impeached, 34 criminal count indicted, with a verified and documented by The Washington Post of 30,573 false or misleading statements, or an average of 21 per day in his first term. Many political forecasters predicted members of the wealthy or upper classes, who expected Trump to continue or enhance the corporate and income/wealth tax breaks from his first term, to vote for the former president. Many who voted for Trump, however, were also blue-collar working-class people who might have fared better voting for Kamela Harris and the Democrats whose policies during the past four years made the U.S. one of the strongest and most resilient economies of the world.

So why did people presumably vote against their own economic self-interests to elect a billionaire and his plutocratic enablers to the highest and more powerful office in the land? Did they “buy” the propaganda and lies of the Republicans and the Right-wing media factory? Should we hold the uninformed voter, the politically disengaged, at least partially accountable for the current state of affairs? During Trump’s first time in office, he conspicuously moved the extremists on the political right from the margins to the center of his MAGA movement. At a Democratic fundraiser in advance of the 2022 midterm elections, President Joe Biden blasted the so-called “Make America Great Again” philosophy arguing that it is “like semi-fascism.”

Though many top Republicans pushed back against Biden’s representation of a significant extremist segment of their Party, in August 2022, “Threats to Democracy” rose to the number one position as the most important issue facing the country in a plurality of registered voters in an NBC News poll. This came on the heels of a survey conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center with Tulchin Research indicating that 53% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats believe that the U.S. “seems headed” toward another civil war.

The Southern Poverty Law Center survey also found support for the “Great Replacement Theory” referenced by the mass shooter who opened fire in a Buffalo supermarket this summer of 2022. The theory, called the “Great Replacement,” has its origins in Europe. The reiteration is a racist trope that dates back to Reconstruction in the United States. Replacement ideology holds that a hidden hand (often imagined as Jewish) is encouraging the invasion of nonwhite immigrants and the rise of nonwhite citizens to take power from white Christian people of European stock. When white supremacists marched with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, they changed, “Jews will not replace us!” 

A Second Civil War?

Most historians agree that the nearly 20 years and two trillion dollars spent, which resulted in 2,401 United States military deaths and another 20,752 wounded U.S. service members in Afghanistan embodied our country’s “longest war.” While this may be true, arguably the War Between the States, also referred to as the “American Civil War,” which began on April 12, 1861, could be considered as our “longest war.” While a treaty of surrender to Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant was signed by Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865, which was meant to suspend combat, no such secession of hostilities or retreat from overt and covert combat have transpired. “This is democracy’s most challenging hour since Fort Sumter,” argued Historian John Meacham. Meacham’s words may be true, but not that a second American Civil War may be imminent. I would agree, instead, that we are seeing the ramping up of the continuing hot war that did not actually end in 1865. 

A War between Liberal Democracy and Fascist Autocracy

Benjamin Franklin was one of the nation’s “founders” who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to draft our now-famous founding document. At the age of 81, though a perennial optimist, he had no illusions and thought it impossible to expect any group of people, no matter how wise or brilliant, to create a “perfect production.” Even “with all its faults,” however, Franklin believed that this Constitution was far superior to any alternative that could possibly emerge. He had a warning, though. As the story is told, when departing the Constitutional Convention, a group of citizens approached Franklin and asked him what kind of government had the delegates created? His response: “A republic, if you can keep it.” International security and defense analyst, Monica Duffy Toft, found that all civil wars share at least three common features. First, they come about after a prior conflict, for example, a previous civil war. Neither the issues, though, nor the direct fighters need not be the same as the old. Very often, a charismatic leader arises and articulates a narrative about past glory or grievance that aligns with “their ideology, political ambitions, or even flows from simple historical ignorance.” Second, according to Toft, is a severe rupture in national identity:

“National identity is divided along some critical axis, such as race, faith, or class. All countries have fracture lines and cleavages,” wrote Toft, “but some divides are deeper than others. Even initially minor cleavages may be exploited by domestic or foreign actors committed to redistributing wealth or power.”

Third is a shift from tribalism to sectarianism. In tribalism, groups question whether other groups adhere to or project the best interests of the larger general community. In sectarian environments, though, the elites (economic, social, and political) and those they represent determine that anyone who disagrees with them are unpatriotic, evil, and that they are actively attempting to undermine communities and the larger society. The rise to sectarianism and authoritarianism develops by what Toft calls “a severely damaged information space.” With the rise of cable news programming and entire networks from the 1990s, there has been an “ongoing shift from broadcasting to narrowcasting,” from professional journalism with a shared agreement of what are facts from fiction and propaganda to a “new disconnected world” with “multiple competing versions of reality (‘alternative facts’).”

Barbara F. Walter, in her book How Civil Wars Start, regrets that

“We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe…,” she warns. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline or headed toward war,” but, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America…you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United State, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

Indeed, the United States has already gone through what the CIA identifies as the first two phases of insurgency: 1. The “pre-insurgency” phase, and 2. The “incipient conflict” phase, and only time will tell whether the final phase is fully activated: The “open insurgency” phase, began with the sacking of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. Things deteriorated so dramatically under Trump, in fact, that the United States no longer technically qualifies as a democracy. Citing the Center for Systemic Peace’s “Polity” data set – the one the CIA task force has found to be most reliable in predicting instability and violence – Walter writes that the United States is now an “anocracy,” somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state. U.S. democracy had received the Polity index’s top score of 10, or close to it, for much of its history. But in the first five years of the Trump era, it tumbled precipitously into the anocracy zone. By the end of Trump’s first term as President, the U.S. score had fallen to a 5, making the country a partial democracy for the first time since 1800.

“We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,” Walter writes. “That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica, and Japan, which are all rated a +10 on the Polity index.”

Dropping five points in five years greatly increases the risk of civil war. “A partial democracy is three times as likely to experience civil war as a full democracy,” Walter states.

“A country standing on this threshold – as America is now, at +5 – can easily be pushed toward conflict through a combination of bad governance and increasingly undemocratic measures that further weaken its institutions.”

Others have reached similar findings. The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance puts the United States on a list of “backsliding democracies” in a report in November 2021.

“The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself,” the report said.

We are on the doorstep of the “open insurgency” stage of civil conflict, and Walter writes that once countries cross that threshold, as the CIA predicts, “sustained violence as increasingly active extremists launch attacks that involve terrorism and guerrilla warfare including assassinations and ambushes.” I wonder whether the United States would be experiencing an overt form of civil war if Trump had lost to Kamala Harris last November. And I wonder where assessment agencies like the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance will place the U.S. on its list of backsliding democracies at the conclusion of Trump’s second term. Returning to Dan Olweus’ overlapping roles enacted in episodes of bullying and connections with autocratic systems and genocides, there are no such things as “passive” or “innocent bystanders.” As the title of both Howard Zinn’s autobiographical book and song by Vinnie Paz suggest, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” because which way we move depends on us all. 
 
Project 2025 Would Destroy the U.S. System of Checks and Balances and Create an Imperial Presidency


Introduction and summary

With American democracy already at a crisis point, extreme right-wing operatives have crafted an authoritarian playbook that would push it over the edge, destroying the nation’s 250-year-old bedrock system of checks and balances to create an imperial presidency. The Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership is a 920-page road map for a future president to wield excessive power to implement a dangerous policy agenda, ripping out democracy by its roots and replacing it with a system that most Americans would find unthinkable.1

For many decades, there have been efforts to advance radical proposals to weaken America’s middle class, stripping them of fundamental freedoms and subverting the rule of law, most notably by capturing the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Project 2025 blueprint makes those prior efforts look quaint. Project 2025 unabashedly promotes the wholesale violation of norms and laws, consolidating enormous power in a president and trampling on Congress’ constitutional role—to take away Americans’ long-cherished freedoms and opportunities. Not only would this authoritarian playbook make it easier for a far-right executive branch to weaken the independence of public agencies, install political cronies throughout the government, punish people it disagrees with, and control what news the media can report, but it would also allow the government to eliminate abortion access, health care choices, overtime pay, educational opportunities, and countless other programs that benefit communities and families.

Take Action

Quite simply, if Project 2025 is implemented, the United States would be unrecognizable. Instead, it would resemble autocracies around the world, such as Hungary and Turkey, which in recent years have severely weakened their democracies and vested inordinate power in authoritarian leaders who serve the interests of themselves, not the public. Once this backsliding occurs, it is incredibly difficult to fix. Make no mistake: This could easily happen in the United States without a firm system of checks and balances. Ominously, the Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025, and its president declared in July 2024 that they are in the process of the “second American Revolution” and suggested that political violence may be necessary to effectuate their authoritarian blueprint if Americans resist.2

If Project 2025 is implemented, the United States would be unrecognizable. Instead, it would resemble autocracies around the world.

This report first discusses the background and draconian goals of Project 2025. It then explains how the plan’s extreme ideas could come to fruition, exploring seven critical guardrails that Project 2025 would demolish, including weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against political opponents and everyday Americans; politicizing independent agencies and executive branch departments; and replacing tens of thousands of nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists to do the president’s bidding. In each instance, this report provides concrete examples of the direct harms that would result from eliminating these crucial guardrails.

Background: Basic facts about Project 2025

Project 2025 provides a plausible pathway for a far-right administration, based on a white, Christian nationalist, pro-corporate, and antiworker philosophy, to degrade democracy and promote radical policy goals it has long wanted to accomplish but has not yet been able to implement. The authoritarian road map of this shrinking political minority3 aims to tear down the system of checks and balances and reimagine an executive branch on steroids and free from any shackles, giving the president and judges they put in place unfettered power to take over the country and control Americans’ lives. In the process, the plan redefines personal autonomy and freedom. Conjuring up the worst of European nationalism from the 1930s, Project 2025 would hurt all Americans, but in abandoning the public interest, it would allow the most dangerous attacks to be aimed at young people, the poor, and other marginalized communities who have a particular interest in creating a government that works for the people.

As the Center for American Progress has discussed in a series of recent articles, Project 2025 is a 920-page manifesto spearheaded and published by the Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank that has influenced conservative administrations since the 1980s.4 Among other things, the expansive plan “would eliminate fundamental personal freedoms while cutting the take-home pay of millions of Americans,” increase taxes on the middle class, allow corporations to stop paying workers overtime, implement a national abortion ban, restrict access to contraception, slash education funding, and raise the retirement age for Social Security.5 Although these policies are unpopular, Project 2025 “would make it even harder for the American people to have a say in their government or oppose policies they disagree with.”6

The Project 2025 blueprint is one of four pillars of a larger plan overseen by the Heritage Foundation.7 The other three pillars include a personnel database of loyalists to potentially replace tens of thousands of federal government civil servants, a private online educational tool to train them, and an unpublished 180-day playbook with transition plans for each federal agency.8 The Heritage Foundation aims to include 20,000 people in the database, and it is already taking its recruitment efforts on the road across the nation.9 When acting together, the four pillars are designed to grease the wheels for a new, far-right administration to quickly start accomplishing a president’s radical agenda.

The tentacles of the larger project are sweeping. It bills itself as a “movement-wide effort guided by the conservative cause” that is “unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement … in its size and scope.”10 Paul Dans, former director of Project 2025, confirmed, “Never before has the entire movement … banded together to construct a comprehensive plan to deconstruct the out-of-touch … administrative state.”11 Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts boasted that “his apparatus is ‘orders of magnitude’ bigger’” than anything similar done before; in fact, he called it part of the “second American Revolution,” which he ominously threatened “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”12

The coordinated effort to enshrine U.S. authoritarianism is steered by more than 100 plugged-in conservative organizations that make up the advisory board, and more than 400 people reportedly helped fashion the Project 2025 playbook.13 One key role is held by Russell Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist who runs the Center for Renewing America, which reportedly is “secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action” for a future far-right president.14 Another contributor is Stephen Miller, who runs America First Legal and has long espoused weakening the system of checks and balances, along with authoritarian policies, including rounding up and deporting millions of immigrants; Miller subsequently attempted to distance himself from Project 2025.15 Project 2025 co-authors also include far-right stalwarts such as Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, and Peter Navarro, who recently served jail time for defying a lawful subpoena related to aiding the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.16 All the aforementioned people held prominent positions in the administration of President Donald Trump. The larger Project 2025 effort draws funding from a secretive, dark money network that includes organizations overseen by the far-right Koch brothers, as well as Leonard Leo, who engineered the far-right hijacking of the Supreme Court.17

These deep-pocketed funders have worked hand in hand for decades with extreme politicians and other allies to weaken the nation’s system of checks and balances—in order to hold onto political power and implement a white, Christian, nationalist, corporatist agenda, even as the nation is becoming more diverse and pluralistic.18 No doubt, they have achieved some degree of success. In two of the past six presidential elections, the United States elected a conservative president who did not win the most popular votes nationwide but won enough votes in the counter-majoritarian Electoral College.19

The far right has also recently captured the U.S. Supreme Court, making a mockery of the rule of law, equal justice, and protection of fundamental rights. The court’s extremist justices now routinely substitute their partisan agendas for laws passed by elected members of Congress or even the plain meaning of the Constitution, ignoring the court’s long-standing precedents, adding new roadblocks for public agencies to keep Americans safe, and seemingly doing the bidding of billionaires or special interests taking them on lavish vacations.20 And just as Congress has become disempowered by the Supreme Court, it has also been paralyzed by extremist lawmakers who are elected in unfairly gerrymandered districts and who abuse the antimajoritarian Senate filibuster rules, which empower senators from the 21 least populous states—representing only 11 percent of the country’s population and only 7 percent of its Black population—to block almost any people-powered legislation.21
 
Project 2025 takes an absolutist view of presidential authority

To wholly reshape government in ways that most Americans would think is impossible, the Project 2025 blueprint anchors itself in the “unitary executive theory.”22 This radical governing philosophy, which contravenes the traditional separation of powers, vests presidents with almost complete control over the federal bureaucracy, including congressionally designated independent agencies or the DOJ and the FBI. The unitary executive theory is designed to sharply diminish Congress’ imperative role to act as a check and balance on the executive branch with tools such as setting up independent agencies to make expert decisions and by limiting presidents’ ability to fire career civil servants for purely political purposes.

The road map to autocracy presented in Project 2025 extends far beyond the unitary executive theory first promoted by President Ronald Reagan, and later espoused by Vice President Dick Cheney, largely designed to implement a deregulatory, corporatist agenda.23 Instead, as discussed further below, Project 2025 presents a maximalist version that does not nibble around the edges but aims to thoroughly demolish the traditional guardrails that allow Congress an equal say in how democracy functions or what policies are implemented. One noted expert at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, Philip Wallach, said, “Some of these visions … start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says—and that’s just not the system the [sic] government we live under.”24

If Congress is robbed of its imperative role as a check and balance on a president’s power, and the judicial branch is willing to bestow a president with almost unlimited authority, autocracy results. And presidents become strongman rulers—free to choose which laws to enforce, which long-standing norms to jettison, and how to impose their will on every executive branch department and agency. 

Project 2025 would demolish political norms on which U.S. democracy relies

Governance of U.S. democracy is anchored not just in laws, but more importantly in norms. Norms often are about showing political restraint, accepting the legitimacy of an opposing party that won elections, and negotiating with opponents, even when partisan actors’ preferred results are not reached. The dangers of norm breaking can be enormous for the rule of law. While often espousing disturbing views on the purported role of government, recent generations of elected conservatives have not advocated radically reinterpreting well-established laws and upsetting age-old political norms that respect checks and balances. But Project 2025 unabashedly breaks that essential barrier in its quest to create an imperial presidency and give politicians, judges, and corporations power over everyday Americans.

When elected leaders have no loyalty to traditional pro-democracy norms, they become unshackled to bend the government to their political will.

When elected leaders have no loyalty to traditional pro-democracy norms, they become unshackled to bend the government to their political will. Such leaders may try to stop the peaceful transfer of power, ask for loyalty from the FBI, attempt to bully the news media into submission, threaten to misuse the military to silence dissenters, assail judges who stand in the way of their agendas, circumvent Congress to divert federal funds to pet projects, and allow corruption, nepotism, and conflicts of interest to flourish. When well-accepted norms are shattered, checks and balances—and democracy—can backslide. 

The judicial branch would not function as a reliable check on executive branch power

If a future far-right administration were to seize as much power as possible under the Project 2025 blueprint, Americans simply could not count on the federal judiciary as a viable check and balance on the president. In fact, a number of justices who currently sit on the Supreme Court have shown that they have become captured by the far right and will play constitutional hardball on its behalf.

In the past several years, the Supreme Court has lurched sharply rightward, now controlled by six extreme justices whose judicial philosophy often seems dictated by what would most empower the radically conservative, pro-corporate, pro-Christian agenda, even where it destroys traditional checks and balances through the clawing back of laws, precedents, and long-cherished rights. As addressed in several CAP articles, the unelected justices on the high court increasingly jettison precedent when necessary to reach their preferred policy results, kneecapping the rule of law, legal accountability, equal justice, and the protection of fundamental freedoms, such as abortion access and voting rights—in other words, putting power over reason.25

In just the past few months, the Supreme Court’s far-right majority rendered a democracy-shaking decision that perilously places presidents above the law, for the first time in American history.26 The high court effectively rewrote the American constitution by deciding that presidents are largely immune from criminal prosecution and therefore unaccountable if they break the law while carrying out official acts. This is a stunning display of deference to presidents and the unitary executive theory, bestowing upon them king-like powers, with the Supreme Court giving itself the authority to review any future prosecution of a president, who will inevitably claim immunity from accountability.27 With this lamentable decision, Congress will lose much of its ability to check the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution when he ignores criminal laws while allegedly carrying out his constitutional duties—all of which threatens Americans’ fundamental rights. The Supreme Court seemingly has left only one remedy for Congress to try to constrain presidents: impeachment and removal. But in the current political environment, the removal of a president, which requires a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate after a House impeachment vote, is nearly impossible.

Yet there is more. In its just-concluded term, the Supreme Court also empowered judges across the country to overrule congressional intent and government agency experts from protecting Americans from harms such as workplace abuses, pollution, and unsafe food and medicine—an enormous victory for corporate interests and billionaires.28 Within days, the high court amplified that pro-corporate decision by giving companies almost unlimited time to challenge regulations, which could imperil the functioning of the federal government.29 The radical majority of the Supreme Court has also recently taken away Americans’ fundamental rights, for example, in the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where it overturned 50 years of precedent to deny the right to abortion.30

Looking more broadly at the federal judiciary, the current composition of judges substantially reduces the chances that courts will block a right-wing president’s abuse of laws and political norms. In addition to the Supreme Court, more than 200 federal judges are right-wing jurists, many of them members of the conservative Federalist Society, nominated by the last conservative president, and rubber-stamped by a Republican Senate majority.31 Some of these judges were even deemed unqualified to serve by the nonpartisan American Bar Association, which, since 1956, has rated judicial nominees’ qualifications.32

Moreover, these conservative judges, who are stunningly homogenous and fail to reflect the diversity of the American people, often advance extreme legal arguments in their decisions, giving further credence to the prediction that the federal judiciary would likely approve many of the presidential power grabs envisioned in Project 2025.33 In just one recent example, federal district court Judge Aileen Cannon, a far-right Trump appointee, dismissed all charges against the former president in a federal prosecution involving classified documents, using a long-discredited legal theory about the powers of special counsels.34 It sadly is unsurprising to see some extremist judges seemingly maintaining political loyalty to their partisan patron who appointed them to their judgeship.

In recent years, the country of Poland stands as a stark example of how the weakening of the independent judiciary has promoted democratic backsliding. There, the far-right ruling party took many steps, including refusing to seat judges associated with opposition parties, forcing out unfavorable judges, and replacing them with party loyalists.35 In 2020, the Polish judiciary outlawed the right to abortion and effectively imposed a national abortion ban.36 Similarly, Hungary’s autocratic government implemented many measures to control the judiciary, including packing the Constitutional Court with political allies, which later upheld a series of antidemocracy laws that helped cement the president’s political power.37

In the next section, this report probes more specifically how Project 2025 is designed to quickly shatter laws, norms, guardrails, and other components that comprise the United States’ traditional system of checks and balances and separation of powers without any reasonable structural methods to constrain a president who takes up Project 2025’s authoritarian road map.

How an authoritarian administration following the Project 2025 road map would destroy checks and balances

If an administration were to follow the authoritarian road map presented by Project 2025, it could quickly dismantle the checks and balances undergirding American government and impose extreme far-right policies. This section discusses seven key methods by which an authoritarian presidency could shatter the guardrails of democracy in ways that would produce an autocratic regime unimaginable to most Americans:
  1. Weaponizing the DOJ for political purposes:
  2. Ending the independence of independent agencies
  3. Replacing expert civil servants with political loyalists
  4. Circumventing Congress’ power to decide how to spend federal funds
  5. Weakening the independent media and news reporting
  6. Misusing the Insurrection Act against Americans to stifle dissent
  7. Neutralizing the Senate’s role of confirming executive branch nominees
Indeed, as discussed throughout this report, many of these tactics have been successfully deployed in recent years by autocratic leaders in nations formerly considered democracies. The same could happen in the United States under the far-right Project 2025 road map. 

Weaponizing the DOJ for political purposes

A tool favored by authoritarians is to use state powers to tarnish the reputations of political opponents—and remove them from civic life—by investigating and arresting them for criminal activity. The purported criminal activity often takes the form of false allegations of corruption, spreading disinformation, or treason, but it can also include more technical violations of laws that may be vague and are only selectively applied or prosecuted. Current world events provide ample examples. In Russia, Alexei Navalny, perhaps the most notable opposition leader to President Vladimir Putin, was repeatedly falsely prosecuted for embezzlement, contempt of court, and extremism, dying in imprisonment under questionable circumstances after a previous assassination attempt.38 In August, the attorney general of Venezuela announced an investigation of opposition leaders to President Nicolás Maduro for calls to oppose him, in light of evidence he rigged the recent presidential election in which Maduro sought another term in office.39

A tool favored by authoritarians is to use state powers to tarnish the reputations of political opponents—and remove them from civic life—by investigating and arresting them for criminal activity.

The potential for abuse is particularly acute in any political system in which a president or chief executive has direct control over federal police and prosecutors. Despite a roughly 50-year tradition of DOJ independence from the White House—particularly on individual matters of investigation or prosecution—there have never been laws stopping a president from directing the investigation or prosecution of an individual. To the contrary, after the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, there was strong opposition to a proposal from the American Bar Association and constitutional scholars to make the DOJ a truly independent agency.40 It was argued by some that political appointees can be fired by the president and provide some democratic accountability to voters. At the same time, norms of independence—that can be rescinded with relative ease—have been put in place to help stop political or partisan consideration from influencing “investigatory and prosecutorial powers.”41 This has included DOJ and White House policies limiting contacts between the two entities.42

Project 2025 explicitly calls for the reexamining of these limits, allowing an administration to apply incredible pressure directly to individual prosecutors or investigators. The backdrop for this pressure would be the selection of a White House counsel “above all loyal to the President” and the ability to remove the attorney general or other DOJ political appointees at will—such as if they refuse to open an investigation into a political rival in contravention of DOJ rules and procedures.43 Furthermore, Project 2025 envisions a “vast expansion” in the number of political appointees at the DOJ, noting, “The number of appointees serving throughout the department in prior Administrations—particularly during the Trump Administration—has not been sufficient either to stop bad things from happening through proper management or to promote the President’s agenda.”44

Such political appointees could easily block investigations into corruption by Cabinet members, stifle civil rights enforcement activities, or pursue antitrust cases against competitors of companies supporting a president. As discussed above, the recent decision by the Supreme Court’s extreme right-wing majority in Trump v. United States makes plain that the courts would provide no help should a president pursue politically motivated prosecutions of rivals, writing, “The Executive Branch has ‘exclusive authority and absolute discretion’ to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute. … The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials.”45

Finally, another key function of the DOJ is to provide the White House with impartial advice on the extent and limit of the president’s powers to issue executive orders and in the national security context. Should norms around independence be stripped away, one cannot expect the DOJ to provide truly impartial advice that serves to limit presidential action where it could be illegal. Practically, this could lead to a president issuing executive orders that are illegal or unconstitutional and could harm Americans, by ordering, for example, widespread electronic surveillance of political rivals or individuals seeking an abortion across state lines; the mass detention of protesters exercising their First Amendment rights; or even the elimination of birthright citizenship. 

Ending the independence of independent agencies

Congress created some public agencies as independent agencies that are distinct from standard departments in the federal government and are led by bipartisan, multimember commissions. These agencies are supposed to operate without political interference from the president, with commissioners who can only be removed “for cause,” such as neglect or malfeasance.46 The Supreme Court upheld the right of Congress to shield commissioners of these quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial bodies—such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—from removal in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.47 Other examples of such independent agencies include the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Election Commission (FEC), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Project 2025 shows disdain for any such independence conferred by Congress and the courts, calling them “so-called independent agencies.”48 More tangibly, the far-right road map calls for overruling Humphrey’s Executor to give the president more power to remove independent agency commissioners at will, ostensibly of either party, if they do not buy into the president’s agenda.49

Project 2025 also calls for the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to review, and ostensibly revise or block, rules and significant guidance issued by these independent agencies—further limiting their independence.50 Agencies are not allowed to share draft or final rules with the public until OIRA has completed its review, giving OIRA enormous power to kill or hold hostage draft regulations unless an agency agrees to make changes. There is virtually no transparency to this review, and Project 2025 aims to empower political White House staff further to exploit this process to reshape or block agency rules.

The real-world consequences of attacks on agencies’ independence could be easily felt by all Americans. For example, the FTC could have been blocked from publishing its new popular rule prohibiting the imposition of noncompete agreements on most workers.51 A loss of the FCC’s independence could lead to intense pressure by a president to favor or disfavor certain broadcasters, such as by revoking their broadcast license, the threat of which could serve as a powerful pressure on broadcasters to skew their coverage of news or refrain from criticizing a president. Similarly, the EEOC, which enforces civil rights protections in the workplace, could be pressured to stop enforcing the law or to ignore flagrant violations of women being paid less than their male colleagues at companies run by benefactors of the president. 

Replacing expert civil servants with political loyalists

Installing loyalists throughout government who will unquestioningly and swiftly carry out a president’s orders is an essential component of Project 2025. These loyalists would root out civil servants who might push back on the legality or appropriateness of such instructions and be zealous advocates in resisting any checks and balances from Congress or the courts. To accomplish this, Project 2025 calls for reinstating executive order 13957, signed by President Trump in 2020 but rescinded by President Joe Biden, to create a new Schedule F for federal hiring.52 According to James Sherk, one of the architects of the executive order, this order was designed to strip about 50,000 career nonpartisan public servants of their civil service job protections, making it easier to immediately fire some employees and threaten others to comply with the president’s plans.53 This would make it difficult to distinguish these newly reclassified Schedule F positions from existing political appointees, of which there are about 4,000, who can be hired and fired at will and are not subject to merit requirements, such as prohibitions on discrimination based on political affiliation.54 The ability to hire or fire government workers based on their political beliefs—not their expertise or competence—is likely seen as a critical feature by those on the right. As Sherk opines, “That was the vision. But at the same time, I do believe that you need some more political appointees in the government. … You need more people who basically share the President’s policy agenda to carry it out effectively.”55

Hiring and firing based on political fealty raises concerns about widespread cronyism in the federal government that existed prior to the establishment of a merit-based civil service. In the past, presidents put political loyalists in government jobs—and the federal government was replete with incompetence, corruption, and straight-up theft. As Jay Cost of the American Enterprise Institute writes, “While the patronage system helped establish the party system, the corruption it produced eventually became intolerable. Before the Civil War, the patronage system’s fraud and incompetence degraded the quality of government in the United States.”56 Indeed, it was the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by a disappointed job seeker that convinced Congress to create a professional career civil service with the passage of the Pendleton Act soon thereafter.57

One particularly worrisome consequence is that there will not be nonpartisan lawyers who can stop illegal actions; indeed, the text of executive order 13957 is clear that Schedule F is to specifically include attorney supervisors, who would ordinarily be in such a position and who would be newly subject to summary dismissal or intimidation.58 Thus, illegal actions that advance the president’s political ideology or benefit campaign donors would be more likely to move forward.

Replacing career civil servants with partisan loyalists is particularly problematic, as it could represent a deep loss of the nonpartisan expertise needed by public agencies to protect Americans effectively. Affected job positions could include nonpartisan national security directors at agencies that oversee arms control or nuclear policy; scientists who ensure a community’s water is not contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals; aviation regulators who help safeguard airplane safety; and civil servants who oversee enforcement of businesses to ensure they do not steal their workers’ wages or have them work in unsafe mines or factories.

The career civil service has faithfully served administrations of both parties for more than a century. They are the ones who help presidents execute their visions, but within the boundaries of the Constitution, the law, and in service of the American public. Yet undercutting those core functions is precisely what Project 2025 seeks in reinstating Schedule F, removing yet another critical check and balance in America’s system of governance. It is little wonder that dismantling the civil service has been a favorite antidemocracy tactic of autocratic leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.59 

Allowing the president to circumvent Congress’ power to decide how to spend federal funds

Key architects of Project 2025 propose another dangerous tool to weaken the constitutional authorities of Congress and seize control over the federal budget: presidential impoundment. This power, which is illegal under federal law, refers to the executive branch’s refusal to spend appropriated monies per Congress’ directives. Congress erected the important statutory guardrails that ban presidential impoundment after President Richard Nixon abused that power to aggressively block agency spending to which he was opposed.60

The Constitution unambiguously gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse, with the authority to raise money and decide how to spend that money. The law barring presidential impoundment is a major check against presidents wishing to abuse the system by spending or withholding monies to reward political allies, punish political enemies, or obliterate government departments or programs they dislike.61

Yet Project 2025 and some of its key co-authors want to revive impoundment. Project 2025 states, “Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening,” arguing that Congress is empowering a runaway bureaucracy and that a “courageous” president must “handcuff the bureaucracy” and impose “discipline” on federal spending decisions.62 Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration, supports “restoring the President’s authority to impound funds, a necessary remedy to our fiscal brokeness [sic],” and has declared that the Impoundment Control Act is “unworkable” and impermissibly micromanages how the president implements laws.63

That direction would allow a president to exert immense authoritarian control over executive branch departments or agencies and the programs they administer, bending them to the presidency’s will without regard to the traditional powers of Congress. For example, a president could starve entire departments or agencies of their federal funds, effectively killing the departments of Education, Commerce, or Labor. Acting more surgically, a president could deprive government agencies of the ability to regulate air quality or monitor the environmental effects of oil drilling, which would be huge gifts to corporate polluters and a disaster for everyday Americans’ health. A president could also divert federal funds to boost federal prosecutions of political enemies, stop government enforcement of laws against discrimination, or target doctors who help women receive abortion-related care. 

Weakening the independent media and news reporting

Project 2025 proposes steps to weaken the reach and effectiveness of the media’s news reporting, depriving everyday Americans of vital information about what their government is doing. These proposals are an affront to the proud tradition in the United States, since its founding, of a robust press that acts as a check and balance on elected officials, including the president. The media’s seminal role in American society is anchored, of course, in the First Amendment. Throughout U.S. history, there has been a healthy tension between the media’s reporting of news to the American people and the desire of presidents to do their jobs without scrutiny. Project 2025 proposes steps to weaken the reach and effectiveness of the media’s news reporting, depriving everyday Americans of vital information about what their government is doing.

As discussed above in the section about independent agencies, Project 2025 would allow a president to manipulate the levers of the FCC—perhaps in conjunction with the DOJ and other government components—to assail media companies, and their licensed outlets, that report negatively about the administration.64 For example, an FCC controlled by the president could revoke the broadcast licenses of channels affiliated with major networks such as NBC, CBS, and ABC, on whom many Americans depend for their news. In addition, the DOJ and a newly nonindependent FTC could launch dubious antitrust investigations into media companies that criticize the president.

Moreover, Project 2025 would make it harder for the press corps to carry out its essential reporting duties, allowing an authoritarian president an easier path to hide lawbreaking and power grabbing from the public. The blueprint explicitly states that the president should “reexamine” the long tradition of providing workspace for the media on the White House campus, arguing, “No legal entitlement exists for the provision of permanent space for media.”65 Project 2025 also proposes to eliminate federal government funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and convert the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America into propaganda machines for the president, rather than legitimate news reporting outlets.66

Government crackdowns on the media are a favorite tool of authoritarians abroad. For example, Hungary’s president and his allies have been so effective at weakening and controlling the media, including by packing the media regulator with political cronies, that they are now “beginning to resemble state media under Communism.”67 In India, the authoritarian regime now targets and prosecutes journalists with whom it disagrees.68 Borrowing this authoritarian tool, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) drove legislative efforts to make it easier to sue reporters for defamation when they criticized him.69 

Misusing the Insurrection Act against Americans to stifle dissent

One of the most dystopian proposals advocated by the authors of Project 2025 is to break yet another central political norm and stretch the boundaries of the federal Insurrection Act, allowing the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.70 For example, a president could send troops into major cities across the nation to arrest—or even use deadly force against—Americans engaging in lawful protest. The president could also station armed forces in communities to suppress women’s marches, pro-worker or pro-racial justice rallies, LGBTQ Pride parades, or even individuals gathered to conduct speech or activity that runs counter to the president’s agenda.

The United States has a long, proud tradition of prohibiting military involvement in domestic law enforcement under ordinary circumstances, a principle known as “posse comitatus.”71 However, an exception lies in the Insurrection Act, originally enacted by Congress in 1792 and last updated in 1871.72 That law allows a president the power to use the military and federalized National Guard to “take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”73 Although this “arcane but extraordinary authority” exists, presidents have rarely used it in recent decades, instead respecting pro-democracy values and norms.74 Because this law gives presidents wide latitude in determining when to invoke its use, there are very few checks and balances that can be imposed by Congress, the courts, or state and local officials.

The Insurrection Act is ripe for abuse under the vision of some of the authors of Project 2025, who reportedly have drafted an executive order to prepare an authoritarian president to use the military for domestic law enforcement in response to protests.75 According to Politico, documents being drafted by the Center for Renewing America, led by Russ Vought, include “invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests,” although the center generally denies this report.76 Yet, in a July 2024 video, Vought stated that presidents have “the ability both along the border and elsewhere to maintain law and order with the military.”77 Stephen Miller, another far-right conservative involved earlier with Project 2025, advocated during the Trump administration for deploying troops at the southern border within the United States, but top military officials prevented it after concluding there was no legal foundation to do so.78

Lamentably, the Supreme Court has already planted the seeds to allow crackdowns on dissent. Just a few months ago, the high court declined to hear McKesson v. Doe, a case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that “effectively gutted the First Amendment right to protest.”79 Pursuant to that lower court decision, “a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act,” even where the protest organizer did not direct or intend the illegal act.80

Neutralizing the Senate’s role of confirming executive branch nominees and instead installing acting appointees on day one

Project 2025 proposes to erase another critical check and balance on the president’s authority by allowing the Senate’s role in confirming executive branch nominees to be bypassed—and instead letting the president install appointees on day one in “acting” administrative roles.81 If the opposing political party controlled the Senate, this end run around the upper chamber of Congress would be particularly problematic and not reflect the will of American voters. Unqualified or excessively partisan nominees for senior executive branch positions would escape the necessary transparency surrounding their background, qualifications, and plans. In turn, the nation would run the risk that unqualified political cronies would be installed to aggressively implement the president’s authoritarian agenda, instead of working to keep everyday Americans safe and secure. For example, a completely unqualified personal ally of the president, rife with conflicts of interest or hidden business dealings, could be installed at the departments of Defense, Justice, or Energy.

The Constitution and long-standing political norms dictate that presidents make good faith efforts to comply with the Senate confirmation process, a foundational component of the separation of powers. Project 2025 concedes that the Constitution requires such a process, but it nevertheless attempts to run roughshod over it. For example, the blueprint’s chapter regarding plans for the Department of Homeland Security includes a section titled “An Aggressive Approach to Senate-Confirmed Leadership Positions.”82 There, Project 2025 blithely states that “the next Administration may need to take a novel approach to the confirmations process to ensure an adequate and rapid transition … of the Day One agenda,” namely by placing nominees “for key positions” into positions as “actings,” including senior officials helping oversee U.S. Customs and Border Protection.83 To further break norms, Project 2025 contends, “The department should also look to remove lower-level but nevertheless important positions that currently require Senate confirmation from the confirmation requirement,” even though it concedes legislation would be necessary to accomplish this.84

Conclusion

Project 2025 is a “how-to” authoritarian guide for remaking America. This conclusion is not hyperbole or misplaced fear. Rather, it is informed, in part, by what has occurred in other democracies in recent decades, where destruction of checks and balances has resulted in authoritarian governments cementing their power, depriving citizens of fundamental rights, and reducing peace and prosperity.

America is at a crossroads, and democracy is being stress tested in unprecedented ways, with extremists trying to take far more control of the nation and everyday people’s lives. Creating an imperial presidency, while simultaneously giving more power to unaccountable judges and corporations, would make this situation far worse. The United States is the oldest continuing democracy in the world. But Americans must understand that Project 2025 provides a plausible road map to dismantling the republic and taking away their rights and freedoms.


 How Trump Will Change America This Time


Those expecting a continuation of Donald Trump’s first term are in for a shock. Back then, he came to office with no experience governing and no understanding of the machinery through which he could implement his will. Over time, he learned and then spent the next four years stewing in resentment and plotting revenge. “In the first term, things were chaotic. Trump did not achieve most of his policy goals, and mostly the institutions survived. They took some damage, but mostly they held up reasonably well,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. “I think that is not going to be true for the second term.”

When he comes to power in January, he will have the benefit of a judiciary stocked with his own appointees, not least in the Supreme Court, which this summer decided a president has immunity from criminal prosecution for anything he does in an official capacity. What’s more, Trump will be abetted by a unified Congress held by a party that is more compliant than before. “The checks will not be there,” says Steven Levitsky, a professor of political science at Harvard and co-author of How Democracies Die. “This is going to be a much more authoritarian government.”

One of his first moves will be to carry out a massive purge of the officials who might stand in his way. Trump plans to reclassify some 50,000 civil servants so that he can fire them at will. He has already signaled that he intends to axe the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, whom Trump himself appointed in 2017 and who has a ten-year term set by Congress in order to insulate the bureau from partisan politics.

Trump’s power, though, will not be limitless. The Republican majority in the House is razor thin, and most judges are non-MAGA. Lawsuits may slow the implementation of Trump’s initiatives, and Congress could block others — Republican senators already derailed Trump’s pick to head the Justice Department, Matt Gaetz, and look likely to do the same to Pete Hegseth for the Pentagon. So how widely will the wrecking ball ultimately swing? Though chaos is by its nature unpredictable, Trump’s past moves and the pushback they generated offer some guidance as to what lies ahead. Here’s a look at how Trump tried to remake the U.S. government the first time, what he says he’s going to do this time around, and how his plans may pan out.

The Civil Service Gets Purged

Last time: Most of the federal government’s 5 million employees are nonpartisan career employees overseen by political appointees who are replaced when a new administration takes over. The consensus for the past century has been that the bureaucracy should function without ideological bias for the general good. Supervising it all is the Office of Management and Budget, which “oversees the implementation of the president’s vision across the executive branch.” During Trump’s first term, his director, Russel Vought, tried to change the civil service by introducing a new category of federal employee called “Schedule F.” That would allow the president to fire huge swaths of the civil service at will, making them answerable to him personally. But Vought was unable to implement the change before Trump was ousted, and Joe Biden immediately rescinded the move.

This time: Trump has announced that Vought will be returning to the post in the new administration, saying he “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.” Vought has spent the past four years developing plans to expand presidential power, which he wrote into a chapter of Project 2025, advocating not only for reintroducing Schedule F but also for the idea that the president should be able to spend or withhold funding without congressional approval. Critics say that’s antithetical to the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution, but Vought has written that “we are living in a post-Constitutional time.”

What it will mean: Schedule F would turn the civil service into a patronage machine loyal to Trump, and Vought’s ideas on spending would expand Trump’s ability to wield power, allowing him to defund programs or move money around at will — building the border wall or detention camps for mass deportations, for instance. “With Trump, it’s about seizing the means of maintaining power in government,” Moynihan says. 
 
Weather Data Comes at a Price

Last time: The Commerce Department is a sprawling agency with nearly 50,000 employees that do everything from forecast the weather (National Weather Service) and manage civil aviation (the Federal Aviation Administration) to collect economic data (the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Its mission might seem profoundly nonpartisan in nature, but during Trump’s first term, information got politicized. In 2019, for instance, as Hurricane Dorian approached the Southeast, Trump tweeted out a list of states that could be affected, incorrectly including Alabama. Amid the ensuing brouhaha, he refused to admit he’d been wrong, even going so far as to draw on a weather chart with a Sharpie to show the storm heading into Alabama. Under pressure from the White House, the weather service issued a statement reversing its assessment and backing Trump’s claim.

This time: Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick to head Commerce, is a big donor and chief executive of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. He is also a fervent supporter of cryptocurrency, in which both he and Trump have significant investments, and of replacing the income tax with tariffs on imported goods, which would reduce both men’s taxes. Lutnick also favors slashing the size of the federal government, which may mean the elimination or privatization of the National Weather Service, as Project 2025 calls for.

What it will mean: With a sprawling workforce that carries out a grab bag of vital but often obscure functions, the Commerce Department is a ripe target for the kind of budget slashing Trump has promised. But firing legions of seasoned professionals is bound to undermine the delivery of services the public has come to rely on. Daily weather reports, for instance, derive from data gathered, processed, and delivered to the public for free by the National Weather Service. The benefits are obvious: Forecasts help farmers decide when to plant and help fishermen avoid storms. If the department is privatized, that information will go selectively to those who are willing to pay. 
 
Vaccines Become Harder to Get

Last time: Trump’s skill at bending the news cycle could not overcome the sheer unspinnable reality of the pandemic, which bulldozed his claim the coronavirus was “going to disappear” by killing over a million Americans. He never seemed to fully grasp the science underpinning the disease; during a news conference, he famously suggested that the disease might be combatted by “bringing light inside the body” and injecting a disinfectant. Rather than accept responsibility for the ensuing death toll, he attacked his officials at the National Institutes of Health, labeling Dr Anthony Fauci “a disaster” and calling his staff “idiots who got it wrong.”

This time: Feeling burned by his administration’s perceived failures during the pandemic, Trump became a critic of the medical Establishment. His pick to run Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a conspiracy theorist who has said the pandemic was probably planned and that COVID was a weapon “ethnically targeted” to spare Jews. He also has called COVID vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” His choice to head the Centers for Disease Control, former Florida congressman Dave Weldon, has falsely linked vaccines to autism.

What it will mean: While some of Kennedy’s ideas, such as making the food supply healthier, have bipartisan support, he shows no signs of pulling back from dangerous conspiracy theories that could have tragic consequences. After he spread misinformation about measles vaccination in American Samoa, a subsequent outbreak of the disease killed 80 people there, most of them children. Now that he’ll be backed by the power of high office, his ideas will be far more dangerous. While Kennedy won’t be able to ban vaccines, he could make them harder to get and more expensive, for instance by changing what vaccinations have to be covered by insurance. And since vaccines require herd immunity to work effectively, less coverage could mean fewer shots and put more Americans at risk of outbreaks.
 
Enemies Get Audits

This time: Trump has long promised retribution against the many who he feels have wronged him, and the agency is an obvious tool at his disposal. There will be “retaliation in the form of tax audits,” Trump family biographer Gwenda Blair told the Times. “It’s a classically authoritarian thing to use threats via the IRS,” says Levitsky. Trump could also use his power in the converse way by giving a free pass to himself and his friends. During his first administration, the IRS neglected to carry out an audit of Trump’s taxes as required by law. Early this year, an investigation by ProPublica and the Times found that Trump had used an improper tax deduction that, if the IRS had successfully prosecuted him for it, could have cost him $100 million.

What it will mean: This summer’s ruling by the Supreme Court that a president is immune from prosecution for official acts could in theory give Trump free reign to weaponize the IRS: It would mean that he can evade a 1998 law that specifically prevents the president from directing audits against his enemies. 
 
Troops in the Streets

Last time: Trump has repeatedly tested the limits that U.S. law places on the president’s ability to use military power domestically. When Congress refused to fund his border wall, he illegally transferred funds from other programs. Equally controversially, during the George Floyd protests in 2020, Trump ordered National Guard troops to be deployed in Washington, D.C., against the wishes of the city’s mayor. But he did not always get his way. Pentagon brass held firm against Trump’s requests to hold a military parade, to unilaterally withdraw from Syria, and to shoot protesters. His frustration led to him to reportedly fume that “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

This time: Frustrated by past resistance from the Pentagon, Trump hopes to have found a much more compliant accomplice in Pete Hegseth, his current nominee for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth, a Fox News personality, was never a high-ranking officer in the military and has no experience managing a large organization. According to reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Hegseth was ousted from the leadership of two nonprofit groups for mismanagement, sexually inappropriate behavior, and drunkenness. He was also accused of rape in 2017, though not charged. Hegseth has advocated on behalf of accused war criminals, calling them “heroes,” and wrote a book predicting that if Democrats won the 2020 election, America would erupt into a civil war in which conservatives would need to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents.” His views suggest that he will be a good fit for Trump’s plans, which include firing “the woke generals at the top.” Already, the Trump team is looking at court-martials of officers who led the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

What it will mean: Trump has said he will declare a national emergency to use the military to help carry out promised mass deportations. He has also suggested he intends to use the military to go after his domestic political rivals “I think military commanders are terrified, are losing sleep right now,” says Levitsky. “God knows I would be if I were them. They know that they’re going to be asked to do things that certainly violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution.” 
 
“Lock ’Em Up” Becomes Policy

Last time: Though it’s part of the executive branch, the Justice Department has since post-Watergate reforms operated without interference from the White House. That norm went by the wayside at the beginning of Trump’s first term when he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions for refusing to intervene in the Trump-Russia investigation. Trump later went on to demand investigations into a number of his perceived enemies, including Hillary Clinton and James Comey.

This time: For the first time in history, the branch of the federal government charged with enforcing the law will be under the command of a convicted felon who was also charged in two federal cases. Now the tables have turned, and Trump is talking about using the DOJ to go after his adversaries, including journalists. His current nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, seems likely to go along with such schemes. The former Florida attorney general dropped an investigation into Trump University after Trump donated $25,000 to her campaign, later took part in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and now owns millions of dollars’ worth of Trump Media stock. (Trump has nominated his former defense attorney, Todd Blanche, to be deputy attorney general.) Perhaps even more troubling is Trump’s pick to head the FBI, Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who has vowed that “we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections … whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

What it means: In addition to relaxing enforcement of any number of laws, such as civil rights, the department under Trump is poised to at least investigate and possibly prosecute a variety of Trump’s perceived foes, such as Fauci, Adam Schiff, and Liz Cheney. President Biden, saying he feared politicized prosecution, made the politically fraught decision to pardon his son Hunter. (He is considering preemptive pardons of Trump’s other potential targets.) Some of his more vocal critics are reportedly already preparing to flee the country on short notice.
 
A Less Free Press

Last time: Trump often refers to the media as “the enemy of the people” and has sued outlets that publish stories he considers unfavorable, but he hasn’t yet used governmental power to suppress the free press. During his first administration, Trump suggested that the Federal Communications Commission should revoke the broadcast licenses of networks whose news coverage he didn’t like, but the commissioner, Ajit Pai, demurred, saying, “I believe in the First Amendment.”

This time: His threats are scarier now that his power and his sense of grievance have both swelled. Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead the agency, wrote the chapter about it for Project 2025 and tweeted on the day of the announcement, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.” Days earlier, Steve Bannon warned liberal network MSNBC that its hosts, producers, and guests could face prosecution. Days later, Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a personal meeting with Trump, reportedly because they “were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration.”

What it means: When authoritarians come to power through democratic elections, they generally try to cement their hold on power by pressuring the media to fall in line with state propaganda messaging. That process may already have started, with the owners of both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times overturning their editorial boards’ decisions to endorse Harris for president. Now that he’s won, Trump is once again threatening to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over unfavorable coverage. “Controlling the information flow is the most important thing because you need to have the citizens in line and receiving one message,” says Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “What we’re about to face, I don’t think many Americans understand. It’s going to get extremely dangerous.”

 
 The Incredible, World-Altering ‘Black Swan’ Events That Could Upend Life in 2025



15 futurists, foreign policy analysts and other prognosticators provide some explosive potential scenarios for the new year

2024 often felt manic, with assassination attempts on Donald Trump, war in the Middle East and the implosion of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. But there’s no reason to think 2025 will be any calmer. That’s not just because Trump is likely to preside over a volatile second term in the White House. Based on his first term, that is to be expected. But there will also, undoubtedly, be unexpected shocks that no one can predict in advance. So we asked an array of thinkers — futurists, scientists, foreign policy analysts and others — to lay out some of the possible “Black Swan” events that could await us in the new year: What are the unpredictable, unlikely episodes that aren’t yet on the radar but would completely upend American life as we know it? Our experts floated all sorts of catastrophes, from the threat of AI to deadly epidemics, but they also raised the notion of progress, including in some surprising global hotspots. The following scenarios may or may not take place in 2025, but they shouldn’t immediately be dismissed. When we undertook this exercise last year, a number of predictions proved eerily prescient.
 
‘The Largest Cyberattack in History’

2025 could easily see the largest cyberattack in history, taking down, at least for a little while, some sizeable piece of the world’s infrastructure, whether for deliberate ransom or to manipulate people to make money off a short on global markets. Cybercrime is already a huge, multi-trillion dollar problem, and one that most victims don’t like to talk about. It is said to be bigger than the entire global drug trade. Four things could make it much worse in 2025. First, generative AI, rising in popularity and declining in price, is a perfect tool for cyberattackers. Although it is unreliable and prone to hallucinations, it is terrific at making plausible sounding text (e.g., phishing attacks to trick people into revealing credentials) and deepfaked videos at virtually zero cost, allowing attackers to broaden their attacks. Already, a cybercrew bilked a Hong Kong bank out of $25 million. Second, large language models are notoriously susceptible to jailbreaking and things like “prompt-injection attacks,” for which no known solution exists. Third, generative AI tools are increasingly being used to create code; in some cases those coders don’t fully understand the code written, and the autogenerated code has already been shown in some cases to introduce new security holes. Finally, in the midst of all this, the new U.S. administration seems determined to deregulate as much as possible, slashing costs and even publicly shaming employees. Federal employees who do their jobs may be frightened, and many will be tempted to look elsewhere; enforcement and investigations will almost certainly decline in both quality and quantity, leaving the world quite vulnerable to ever more audacious attacks.

‘A Secret Deal to Stop Iran From Developing Nuclear Weapons’

Russia doesn’t want a nuclear-armed Iran any more than the United States. Russia tried to help Joe Biden revive the international nuclear deal by discussing with Tehran an interim agreement involving limited sanctions relief in return for some restrictions on its nuclear program. Iran rejected it and a month later Russian troops poured into Ukraine. Russia is now more in bed with Iran, dependent on it for drones in its Ukraine war. With the Assad dynasty’s downfall, Vladimir Putin is being criticized at home for Russia’s declining influence in the Middle East. A U.S.-backed attack on Iran would show how little power Russia has. Donald Trump is also in a bind. His Republican allies are out for blood and are goading him to help with an Israeli attack to prevent Tehran from going nuclear. And yet Trump has been warned against action by his good friend Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who doesn’t want a nuclear Iran but fears Iranian retaliation against Saudi oil facilities in case of an Israeli attack. For Trump, that would mean soaring energy prices. Late one night, Putin calls Trump on a private, secure line, telling him he has a secret deal to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Putin has convinced Iran to agree to a 5-year pause on any nuclear weaponization so long as Trump dissuades Israel from attacking. The new U.S. president succeeds in persuading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by passing along MBS’ promise to normalize ties with Israel on condition that he stand down on an Iranian attack. What Trump doesn’t know is that Putin has had to agree to send Tehran advanced air defense arms in a year just in case of an Israeli attack.

‘Secessionists Are on the March’

Midway through his first year in office, President Donald Trump accedes to the request of the Greater Idaho movement leadership to support the goal of moving 15 counties from Oregon to Idaho. The presidential nod of approval — handed out casually at the end of a press conference — thrills Oregonians from the eastern, rural part of the state who are eager to get out from under the legislative authority of the urban, progressive values that dominate in the state’s western cities. As Trump’s off-the-cuff comment makes its way from Greater Idaho leadership into the right-wing social media grapevine and, from there, the national news mainstream, it becomes a rallying cry for sympathetic national legislators (and a handy diversionary tactic from the thick complications of foreign policy, trade and the national economy), and a point of alarm for the many Americans who have never heard of secessionist movements or, at least, have never taken the possibility seriously. But all of a sudden, secessionists are on the march.With this new legitimacy in hand, the leaders of other would-be secessionist movements see public rallies as the next logical move. Within weeks, New State or No State! protests appear in state capitals, sponsored by old groups and new ones hoping to split off from their state, or in the case of Texas and California, from the whole country. The New Illinois hope for an Illinois without Chicago, and the Weld County Coloradans yearn to become Weld County, Wyoming. It is not long before counter ralliers, wearing multicolored All States, Every State (including D.C. and P.R.!) signs and buttons, also show up around the perimeters of the ever more frequent gatherings.By autumn, emboldened — and armed — white supremacist groups and vigilante self-declared sovereign Americans make their way into the fray. No one is surprised when an armed secessionist and an All States counter-protester are both killed by police seeking to contain an overcrowded rally with rubber bullets in upstate New York. As for the president; he has moved on to other issues. In the meantime, however, the secession and border dissolution parameters have taken a step toward greater legitimacy at both state and national levels, with new referenda and task forces planned for the new year.

‘The Outbreak Soon Reaches Epidemic Proportions’

In infectious disease outbreak occurs in a small rural community that is poorly vaccinated. The initial symptoms are “flu like” with fever, headache, muscle aches and sore throat. Local officials initially believe it is a seasonal influenza outbreak, but initial test results for typical viral illnesses like flu, Covid and RSV are all negative. Health officials eventually identify patient zero as someone who has just returned from overseas where an outbreak of an undiagnosed disease has sickened and killed over one hundred people. The state health department is called in to investigate and after a couple of days, so is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Local officials are reluctant to impose traditional public health measures like contact tracing, masking, social distancing and quarantine of exposed individuals because of fears of community hostility; in fact, the impacted community recently passed a law limiting the health department’s powers to control infectious outbreaks. As a result, public health officials can do little. Social media, meanwhile, is full of misinformation, and at least one post that says the disease is spread through the mail has been identified as being amplified by a hostile foreign actor. The outbreak continues to spread and there are now several reported deaths. Over the next few weeks, the outbreak spreads to surrounding communities including one big city and two other states, and the death toll climbs. Despite the reluctance to close schools and businesses, the number of sick individuals means that many have to shut down anyway because of lack of workers. The disease is found to be one for which there is an experimental vaccine, but using it would require an emergency use authorization. The Health and Human Services leadership is now full of vaccine skeptics and so the administration’s health leadership becomes paralyzed by an intense internal debate about whether to use the experimental vaccine. Other therapeutic options are available, but pharmaceutical companies are nervous in this new climate and reluctant to produce the drugs without a guarantee of legal protections and financial support. The Food and Drug Administration struggles with the decision because the advisory committees that normally review vaccines and therapeutics have been dissolved. Because of this, the outbreak soon reaches epidemic proportions across the United States. Other nations respond by imposing travel bans on U.S. residents. The economy is negatively impacted as goods and services become scarce and commodities stack up in the ports of entry. An epidemic that we had the tools to control winds up killing thousands and sending the economy back into a Covid-like downward spiral.‘Market 
 
Crash Triggers a Global Panic’

In the midst of deregulation and government downsizing, President Donald Trump’s tech czars deprioritize scenario planning. Botnets have already proven just how easily and effectively sophisticated AI algorithms can be used to spread disinformation. With the election now over, malicious actors and nation-state malcontents focus on a new target in 2025: financial markets. The AI ingests massive amounts of real-time market data (stock prices, volatility), financial reports (earnings, debt levels), and economic indicators while scraping social media platforms like X and Reddit to gauge public sentiment. Among other factors, the AI assesses vulnerability: targeting companies with weak financial fundamentals, or those with negative public perceptions, that could be susceptible to market shocks. Then, it’s just a matter of spreading misinformation: generating rumors about company leadership, fabricating news about product recalls or safety hazards or creating fake evidence of financial fraud. Before launching the attack, the AI automatically generates millions of scenarios, testing different variables to optimize the best channels and times to release the misinformation campaign. With a strategy in place, the bad actor causes an artificial market panic, as the AI executes high-frequency trades with superhuman precision and leads hedge funds and others to follow suit. The sheer complexity and speed of the attack — combined with lax regulatory oversight — blindsides the Trump administration, whose efficiency gurus downplay it as “a little nonsense.” This scale of technical failure is shocking, but not unfamiliar to them at this point, and they have neither the staff nor a plan to fix it. It’s impossible to detect and attribute the attack, which means countermeasures can’t be easily deployed. The market crash triggers a global panic, with uncertainty plaguing investors everywhere and copycat attacks on the London and Tokyo exchanges. Rumor has it that a far left tech militia is behind all of this, with the intent to destroy Trump using his biggest weak spot: his personal wealth.

‘Loss of Power Will Fundamentally Upend American Life’

nergy security is cause for a major Black Swan event in 2025. As AI continues to pick up steam, greener pastures for crypto unfold, digital consumption accelerates, and we see a full economic recovery post-Covid, there is no question that energy demands will soar in 2025. Not only will emissions skyrocket as a result, but energy security and grid failure are at high risk, exacerbated by extreme weather conditions. We’ve already seen this play out with Hurricane Helene and many others, but if we look to a small island named Cuba, we get a glimpse of a Black Swan event that can take place, even without a natural disaster. Cuba’s grid collapsed due to outdated infrastructure with a storm and earthquake furthering delays of grid repair, leaving citizens stranded for months. In the United States, over 70 percent of transmission lines and transformers are over 25 years old and built for a time when energy demands were light to moderate. On the other end is a cybersecurity risk; hackers will continue to target critical infrastructure from water plants to energy providers. At the heart of the issue is a national security risk. Without power, any county, city and country are vulnerable to cyberattacks targeting health care and financial systems. A loss of power will fundamentally upend American life, and lead to urgent and chaotic political responses. Energy security may be the ultimate Black Swan event of 2025.

‘The Temptation to Reach for the Nuclear Toolbox May Be Too Hard to Resist’

The coming year provides more than its share of scenarios that seem a lot more plausible than they did a year or so ago. Here are a few. The collapse of checks and balances: The push to confirm Donald Trump’s more “challenging” nominees has included clear warnings to Republican senators that their futures depend on abandoning their constitutional role to provide checks and balances. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville has argued that it is none of the Senate’s business to actually vet a president’s nominees, and MAGA loyalists have already raised the threat of primaries against wavering Republicans. But this is only the opening shot of what could be a full-scale fusillade of attacks on the Senate’s role. Recess appointments that skirt the confirmation process; impoundment of funds for congressionally-approved spending; deployment of presidential power in the face of legislative restrictions could all become reality if Republicans feared that the assertion of their senatorial prerogatives would mean the end of their political careers. Crossing the nuclear “red line”: In a recent chilling article for the New York Times Magazine, author William Langewiesche looked back at a 40-year-old war game to explain that the growth of very low-yield tactical nuclear weapons has made the potential for battlefield deployment more likely than in the past. We’ve already heard frequent comments on Russian media that their potential use would be a perfectly reasonable response to setbacks in its war with Ukraine. Should nuclear states like Russia, China and North Korea launch aggressive attacks on their neighbors with the goal of “final victory,” and should those assaults fail, the temptation to reach for the nuclear toolbox may be too hard to resist. (That war game scenario ended with the deaths of millions). A digital disaster: In this past year, “ransomware” attacks have hit major companies like AT&T and Disney, along with city and county governments, costing an estimated $40 billion just in the United States. But these attacks pale in comparison to what could happen if a digital assault cripples the electric grid or disrupts communications nationwide. With credible reports of state actors (China? Russia?) probing for weaknesses in our web-centric society, the potential cost — in money, health and lives — is literally incalculable.

[...]

Posted by 3 comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)