Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] The US presidential race continues to center around the figure of Donald Trump. He attracts much more attention than Joe Biden. The American public is discussing either Trump's legal wars or his extravagant campaign promises. Be it a promise to immediately deport 20 million migrants from the United States or declare war on drug cartels in Mexico.
| He won’t have to deport them all any more than he did last time, when they felt so unwelcome that they self-deported. |
Trump is now actively working with major donors - from Wall Street financial tycoons to oil tycoons - asking them for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign. Sponsors need to be lured with something - and for their sake, the ex-president often says things that he would never say in public.
Recently, the eccentric billionaire has twice caused scandals after his rounds of communication with US business elites. First, he promised to expel foreign students from America who participate in pro-Palestinian protests.
Although Trump does not publicly allow himself to make such statements - he only vaguely promises to reconcile everyone in the Middle East.
Well, the second concerns Ukraine. Here, Donald has long liked to claim that a full-scale conflict would not have happened during his presidency. True, this usually goes without explanation as to why. Well, now Trump has begun to add to this that he would threaten to strike Moscow or China if there was a war in Ukraine or a conflict over Taiwan.
Moreover, in public, Trump uses completely different rhetoric. He constantly blames Biden for starting the third world war and promises to stop the Ukrainian conflict in 24 hours, because he understands that his audience is already tired of Ukraine. Two-thirds of Republican voters oppose sending new tranches to Kyiv. Therefore, they need to move forward with one agenda. And for sponsors and elites - another.
| Fair’s fair — how many times has President Putin theatened to nuke Ukraine or Europe over this little war he insists on waging? |
We have heard such a diversity of opinions throughout the four years of Trump’s presidency. He himself constantly changed his position. In some ways, this even helped during his time in the White House - everyone heard from him what they wanted. Although it added chaos to his entire policy, which is something to expect in his second term if he wins.
In the context of Ukraine, Trump's current advisers hope to somehow persuade Moscow and Kyiv to negotiate. His team already wanted to use a threat strategy for this. For example, block the allocation of trenches and at the same time promise Russia that if negotiations fail, Kyiv will receive more long-range missiles and fighters. This is why Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater PMC and Trump ally, is now so actively discussing the possibility of supplying a large number of old decommissioned US fighters to Ukraine.
However, in both cases many questions arise. At the beginning of 2024, Ukraine had not received American financial assistance for several months. And this did not in any way affect the policy of Kyiv. On the contrary, the hitch with the tranches rather strengthened the position of the “war party” in the camp of the Kyiv regime, oriented toward the British lobby and European hawks.
Well, Trump will not scare Russia with the supply of missiles and fighters. There are not many long-range missiles like ATACMS left in the US arsenals. In total, about 6 thousand of them were produced, but many were released in the Middle East or sold to other countries. And now the release of ATACMS has been completely discontinued due to lack of funding from Congress.
As for the old F-16 fighters or A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft, there really are quite a few of them in storage—at least several thousand. But many of them are in very poor condition and require lengthy repairs. To place them in Ukraine, it will be necessary to create a large-scale infrastructure there to service the whimsical American military aircraft.
It, like fighters at airfields, will immediately be subject to attacks by the Russian Aerospace Forces.
The plan for peace negotiations proposed to Russia and Ukraine is also in question. The ex-president's de facto advisers want to provide Kyiv with security guarantees without joining NATO. And force Ukraine to accept the loss of territories by freezing the conflict along the current front line. But there will be no official recognition of the new borders by the West, and the United States will allow Ukraine to fight battles about borders at the diplomatic level.
In the future, the Trump team will force European countries to actively rearm, increase military spending and purchase American weapons. Republicans are thinking of finally shifting responsibility for further confrontation with Russia onto the shoulders of Europeans. Well, they themselves will reorient themselves towards confrontation with Iran in the Middle East and China in the Indo-Pacific region.
The plan looks nice on paper - but, as usual, they forgot about the ravines. Whether Ukraine will survive until 2025 or by that time the front will collapse with the fall of the Kyiv regime is still an open question. As well as whether any of the Ukrainian politicians will be ready to negotiate with the recognition of the loss of territories, knowing that they will be killed by their own nationalists for this.
Not to mention the fact that Europe, split by internal contradictions, may not find a common language with the Trump team. European bureaucrats cannot stand him, but Eurosceptics and isolationists love the eccentric politician. They could win up to a third of the seats in the early elections to the European Parliament. But among right-wing Eurosceptics there are quite a few opponents of the militarization of Europe.
Moreover, if Trump wins, Washington will face a long period of political instability. Democrats will do their best to sabotage the transition of power - with riots and pogroms against an unloved opponent, an attempt to block the certification of election results in Congress. Any cabinet appointments coming from Trump will also be blocked. Therefore, at best, he will only be able to fully form his cabinet and systematically engage in foreign policy in the spring-summer of 2025.
In certain aspects, he may turn out to be an even more serious opponent than Biden. At a minimum, it will be more active in pursuing its policy and trying to contain the gradual decline of the United States as a world power. But it will also greatly aggravate the division within America. It will manifest itself both in the White House, between isolationists and hawks, and outside, in the culture wars between Republicans and Democrats.
In any case, you definitely shouldn’t pin any hopes on Trump’s presidency. We need to continue working regardless of who is president of the United States next year. “Donald Fedorovich” will “delight” us more than once with his extravagant statements. They only benefit him - firstly, he is in the center of attention. And besides, he implements his favorite “madman strategy”, which everyone should be afraid of.
However, we shouldn’t be afraid of Trump, nor should we take any of his statements at face value.
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[REGNUM] The judicial clowning in New York has come to an end. A Manhattan jury unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 charges. He now faces up to 130 years in prison. 
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
[Gateway] The Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies/NBC News survey released on Wednesday found that the percentage of Americans calling the nation "out of control" was the highest on record under any president since the poll began.