PREPARED TO NEGOTIATE?

Trump must have understood that the games of hide-and-seek are over and it is time to sit down and negotiate like rational men. The only thing that remains is, where do we meet?

 

By Sir Charlattam 

Taking out any prejudices we may have about Donald Trump, we should expect the use of reason to guide his administration, with one of his first policies being to curb the warmongering processes initiated and enhanced during the outgoing Democratic administration, which outgoing UN Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield described as ‘leadership’. The existing constraints are very strong and dangerous for Trump, as the Establishment has become accustomed to a fiscal militarism that profits from the arms industry.

Against this backdrop, Trump's promise to end the war in Ukraine and establish peace talks between the parties is hardly credible. If we go by Biden's latest speech at the State Department saying among other things that ‘America is winning the global competition compared to four years ago. America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker.’ Are the British stronger, more prosperous and safer (children I don't think) with Keir Starmer, how are the Germans with the pro-US vassalage policies pursued by Olaf Scholz, do the more than 46,000 Palestinians killed as adversaries or the half a million Ukrainians slaughtered for their hybridised and proxy war against Russia enter in? So, if we leave aside that these words come from a senile old man, what does it mean? They are certainly not words for consensus.

Trump inherits this situation and it is not very difficult to disbelieve his promises, especially if we remember that for him ‘Biden turned the US into the “laughing stock of the world”. If he believes that, what might his policies be to reprimand and re-establish global fear of Washington?

Perhaps the most sceptical about this speech is Russian President Vladimir Putin who throughout the Biden era has been tested on the degree of patience a statesman must have in order not to drag the world into a nuclear holocaust, but how long will Putin continue to tolerate this little game? At the same time, let us not forget that Trump during his first presidency imposed sanctions on Russia and provided Kiev with much of the support it would later use against the Ukrainians in Donbass and participated in the violation of the Minsk II agreements.

Given this background, can Trump's promises be credible?

Let's look at the situation and reason: If Trump intends to make good on his promise, what would happen to the monstrous Western arms lobby that largely drives policy decisions in Washington dc, will they stand idly by if he decides to cancel their juicy defence contracts? First of all, Trump should tell the American people who really benefits from this industry and the fallacies that for decades politicians (employees of the deep state) have been claiming about the supposed economic prosperity they bring to the nation, as economic historian Robert Higgs explains in his book Depression, War and the Cold War: Challenging the Myths of Conflict and Prosperity.

If someone once said ‘the truth shall set you free’, Trump is an oaf who cares little about the truth unless it serves his own interests, though consider also that on the other side there is a whole universe of oafs who have grown rich on the back of the wars, instability and genocides we are seeing. Defrauding them could literally cost him his head.

Also on the Russian side, the arms industry sector, which is under the control of the Ministry of Defence, would lose many of the profits and privileges that the war has given them. It is worth noting that there are undisguised tensions between the executive (especially Vladimir Putin's) and this sector of bureaucrats, especially over the terrible mistakes in managing resources for the troops on the front line and then the misunderstandings over the ‘Ukrainian’ raid on Kursk. As we can see, Putin also takes risks and has internal enemies, but unlike Trump, the Russian leader is a statesman in every sense of the word, allowing him to manoeuvre with greater independence of judgement.

In Ukraine, Biden, through NATO, has tried to wear down Russia so that his intervention will be costly in both human and material terms. And this is where Putin should ask himself: will Trump intend to continue this?

Beyond these elements of reality, Trump will have to seek without delay or artifice to bring the parties together or sit down with Vladimir Putin himself at a negotiating table, since there are some considerations that the US president cannot avoid: The first is the costs of continuing to sustain the adventure in Ukraine; second the already demonstrated tactical advantage of Russian forces with the ‘Oreshnik’ missile systems that could complicate the US forces themselves in Europe and as a third, the possibility that if provocations persist (such as the incursion into Kursk) the conflict could spiral into a nuclear holocaust.