Tariffs on Canada and Mexico? Eliminating offensive cybersecurity against Russia? Pausing aid to Ukraine? Indiscriminately cutting the federal workforce, closing national parks and eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ability to perform its function to predict weather, from hurricanes to droughts to tsunamis. The cost savings have been miniscule. The disruption has been traumatic. There is little to no connection to fraud, waste and abuse, but one nation, and only one, applauds our president’s initiatives.
The problem is that it will be hard, if not impossible, to undo the damage if and when the president’s supporters come to realize that the deliberate dysfunction of a nation to assuage a president’s bruised ego and appease a dictator will neither bring down the price of eggs, make America great nor improve anyone’s life. Hate the Dems and the woke all you want. This isn’t an answer.
To the extent that Trump’s dealings with Zelensky and Ukraine are some nifty 4D chess moves to end a war, an argument that has captured significant cachet among his MAGA supporters and dutiful pet Vance, he’s already given away the game. Trump has announced that Ukraine will lose. He’s said that they must give up land to appease the invader. Ukraine can’t join NATO, assuming there will be a NATO anymore, or there still is a NATO given very real doubts that the United States would honor its duties under Article 5. Honor is not Trump’s long suit.
These things are putatively done to bring Putin to the table. As J.D. Vance brilliantly asserts, you can’t have peace if both parties aren’t at the table. So the solution is give away whatever bargaining chips Ukraine had beforehand, alienate every ally the United States has, whether by word or deed (or both). And in exchange, get nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The only word out of the Kremlin is that Putin is happy that Trump is finally seeing things his way and aligning America’s foreign policy with Russia’s.
The sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, back when it was acknowledged that Russia invaded Ukraine rather than Ukraine started the war, are being lifted. Trump has invited Russia to rejoin the G7 and invited Putin to be his honored guest at the White House. It’s unlikely he and his puppy will berate Putin or treat him as some unworthy ingrate.
While Trump stumbles all over himself trying to ingratiate himself with the very manly Putin, Vlad smiles and offers nothing in return. This seems to elude Trump, Vance and the swooning sycophants who mutter the inane rationalizations that fill the void of reason Trump leaves behind.
There is an old lesson from the well of the court, that when things are going poorly for the other side, keep your mouth shut and let them crash and burn. Putin knows this lesson, apparently. Trump keeps throwing gifts his way, blowing kisses at him and smacks at those we used to call friends. The negotiations have been going on for the past few weeks, even if Trump doesn’t realize it, and Putin has manipulated him like an idiot child.
The only thing blocking the deal at the moment is that the rest of the western democratic world sees Trump’s failing and won’t go along with it. No, they’re ill equipped to fill the void created by the United States being the democratic Superpower that would protect western civilization from ruin. It will require a great deal of effort and expense to compensate for America’s dropping its role, refusing to honor its commitments and leaving the western democracies in the vain hope that Putin will someday consider Trump his peer. And it may well end up that Europe fails in its efforts to support democracy after the United States abandons its allies, values and responsibilities upon which other nations relied.
Or there will be a new leader of the free world, and it won’t be the President of the United States of America, who will be relegated to a seat somewhere in the middle of Putin’s table. And even when a new president takes office, should that eventually happen, the free world will remember that the United States can no longer be trusted, so they have no choice but to fend for themselves. But at least we’ll have tariffs on Canada and Mexico to feel good about.
Someone replied to me last week that he or she was sick of comparing business and government. Since then I’ve been pondering the statement from that erudite, articulate “PK” (presumably the initials for Preacher’s Kid, but I don’t know).
Business leaders who seek to upend a bloated and stagnant corporation generally change what is most impactful (in a positive way), set a timeline, and do not fear the short-lived chaos. The problem I see with Rump’s changes is that they are too many and too disorganized with too little time to put things back in order.
I’m sympathetic with DJT’s assessments of the federal bureaucracy and might be inclined to take a wait-and-see approach but for the fact that there are too many federal offices that are enduring too much chaos with no (good) end in sight. I know darling Elon fired everyone in sight at Twitter and it seems to be thriving. If it worked for one business should we assume it will work for the federal government?
What about the legend of Chainsaw Al? Al achieved great success at Scott Paper so he took his chainsaw to Sunbeam. After creating chaos at Sunbeam, he had to cheat to appear successful. He was caught and convicted. In 2019, Al died in disgrace.
If we look carefully there might be one or two important business cases that foreshadow the future Legend of Darth Cheeto.
I am fond of Anil Dash’s concept, “A systems purpose is what it does”. Through ignorance or malfeasance, this presidential administration’s purpose is to do irreparable harm to government services. To the extent that there’s a plan, that’s it.
I hope that America does not need allies any time soon, Putin and Russia won’t risk their lives to defend you. If by some miracle they do, the price will be astronomical.
Twitter seems to be thriving? Really? Musk paid $44B for it and it’s now valued at $9B. If that’s thriving then I’d hate to see what you consider failing.
Hello. I said, “I’m tired of the lazy conflation of business with government,” to be clear. With your examples last week and now here, I’d emphasize lazy. I’d rather you have focused elsewhere in my reply to you, but this week we’ll try something else, Chesterton’s Fence. “Careful removing fences when you don’t know why they were put up in the first place.” Ponder that this week, if you will. Or better yet: “site:simplejustice.us Chesterton’s Fence”, let the Host and others explain the principle.
While I’m disappointed my first lesson didn’t take, I’m even more disappointed that your comment is so far from geopolitics, the subject of the post, that to quote our generous Host, “FOCUS!”
There are quite a few MAGA Trump readers here, or at least there used to be when you were critical of Biden and Harris. Is this really what they voted for? Did they really want the United States to ally with Moscow and attack Mexico, Canada and Europe? Did they really want to mindless destroy the functioning of the federal government rather than figure out what wasn’t working and deal with it?
I suspect some will answer yes to these questions. When America is reduced to a third world country subservient to Putin, I will remember who they are.
Most of them are still in the Denial/Rationalization phase. Some will never come to grips with the fact they supported a narcissistic buffoon whose goal was to Make America Shitty.
I think for people looking at the long game, it has always been about the lasting damage from this bull-in-a-china-shop personality cult versus the lasting damage from the relatively well organized ideology on the left. Voters had an uncertain prospect, and it looks to me like the wheel is still in spin.
It is much worse than described. In 2022, the West (via Boris Johnson) convinced or pressured Zelinsky to back out of the 2022 peace talks (ref NYT, Spiked, Ukrainska Pravda). Russia’s war efforts have been far more successful in the last year and half. Zelinsky is being pressured, by Trump, to return to peace talks in a much weaker position. This is a huge betrayal of Ukraine.
The NATO issue is largely performative. Obama demanded NATO members meet the minimum 2% spending requirements after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Additional warnings were given in 2018. In 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. Between 2014 and 2023 a full two-thirds of NATO couldn’t be bothered.
How is it that Trump people don’t realize that Putin has done absolutely nothing to indicate any willingness to either come to the table or compromise on anything, yet they keep pounding away at Zelensky and Ukraine? It’s nuts.
The current team venerates “strength,” so that’s what Orange Hotel Proprietor and his Hillbilly Garden Gnome try to emulate. The other team idolizes “equity,” so that’s what the junta behind Uncle Grandpa Icecream tried to emulate.
Both teams pursue the 20% position of their base on 80/20 propositions because those issues strike the corresponding note … especially with donors.
What happens to the economy (and more to the point for either 20% regime, donors) when erratic or malignant behavior undermines the presumption of stability of the dollar? Rubles aren’t the answer. China’s got its own debt woes. And all our crypto are belong to the sinister Korea.
The idea that Russia is our evil enemy and must be driven into the arms of China in order to keep us safe from… something, has been propagated by the establishment for decades. It’s not necessarily a good idea. As the third superpower, behind the US and China, Russia is our natural ally. Weapons manufacturers and other establishment figures are horrified at the idea of making peace with Russia, as are people who read publications owned by those figures, such as the NYT.
[Ed. Note: I shouldn’t be the only person to have to suffer batshit crazy nonsense.]
So, the enemy of your most dangerous enemy is your friend even if he is the most dangerous enemy of your most important friends.
Foreign policy is hard.
The other day I asked something like, “If Trump was Putin’s sock puppet, how would his behavior be any different?”.
I read recently that Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Russia had “a mysterious hold” on Trump. He went on to imply others shared this view and say “McMaster couldn’t figure it out, Mattis couldn’t figure it out, Kelly couldn’t figure it out”. I’ve also read that a former KGB 6th Directorate official claims that the KGB recruited Trump, under the cryptonym “Krasnoff”, in 1987.
Both National Review and The Bulwark have acknowledged Trump/ Vance “ambushed” Zelensky in Oval Office.
There’s a clip floating around w/ Rachel Maddow listing everything that Trump has given away and asking what US or Ukraine has rec’d in return. (No link per rules.) Marcy Wheeler had a post on her site recently reminding readers of other things Trump has done prev’ly that benefit Putin. (No link per rules.)
Maybe Trump just likes humping Tsar Vlad’s leg, but the question stands, “If Trump was Putin’s sock puppet, how would his behavior be any different?”.
Just saw that Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, asked Musk’s AI tool Grok, “What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin-compromised asset? Use all publicly available information from 1980 on and his failure to ever say anything negative about Putin but has no issue attacking allies”.
“Grok estimated 75% to 85% likelihood that ‘Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end’ of that range.”
(No link per rules.)