Trump continues to abandon his America First foreign policy agenda under pressure from his neocon Cabinet members, opting to continue fighting Biden's war in Ukraine with no end in sight.
While President Trump deserves credit for initially pledging to end the war in Ukraine and recognizing the strategic folly of indefinite U.S. entanglement, his recent concessions and alignment with hawkish advisors threaten to turn a war he promised to stop into one he owns.
Trump’s instincts to seek peace and pivot U.S. strategy toward confronting China are fundamentally sound. But arming Ukraine without extracting meaningful concessions from Kyiv or Moscow is not peacekeeping; it’s power projection with no off-ramp.
America’s true strategic interest is not defending shifting borders in Eastern Europe, but preventing the formation of a durable Moscow-Beijing axis. That means Washington must decide: does it want to neutralize Russia as a Chinese ally through strategic detente, or drive it deeper into Beijing’s arms with more sanctions, arms shipments, and endless war?
If Trump continues down this path, history won’t remember him as the president who ended Biden’s war. It’ll remember him as the one who inherited it, escalated it, and lost the bigger game.
Exactly right. Trump's decision to abandon his brilliant plan to form a geostrategic partnership for peace with Russia and neutralize the Sino-Russian military alliance by giving up on peace negotiations and ramping up US military aid to Ukraine means he is likely to be known not as a peace president but as a failed war president. If only, he could see into the future to see how harshly history will judge him if he does not reverse course soon.
It isn't America's place to decide what countries get together with each other or to pass judgement on their intentions.
The U.S. is constantly engaging in hostile acts against countries it calls its friends and those it calls its allies.
U.S.hostile interactuons actions with other countries is what drives those countries together. America, not China or Russia, is America's number one enemy.
Communist China isn't America's enemy. I was watching a series of shows on China yesterday that were on PBS. On one of the shows they dealt with the work of a Catholic missionary who went there to convert the Chinese to Christianity.
Excerpts from his diary were read from and in one of them the missionary marveled at the fact that although the Chinese had the power to dominate and overrun their neighbors, they didn't. They actually outright refused to because they saw no need.
Well that is still true today. China's success isn't a threat to America's existence. It is a threat to its economic might. That isn't a reason to kill.
It's the country with an army that's out of place that is a threat. China's last war was in 1979 against Vietnam. America has had many wars since then. America is the expansive power, not China.
The Belt and Road initiative is something the U.S. should join, and not destroy.
I forgot to mention that this missionary contrasted the Chinese with the Europeans who he said, were continually fighting each to rule e over each other.
This missionary arrived in China in 1622.
It seems Westerners haven't changed one bit but neither has China even in spite of the bad example it has been not only exposed to but ruled by.
You forget China's Hundred Years of Humiliation but China hasn't forgetten. Thankfully they haven't picked up our bad habits when it comes habitually interfering in the affairs of others.
Yes, but they want to preserve the illusion of Western global hegemony which would be shattered if Russia succeeded in rolling back NATO out of Ukraine for the first time in history.
Most likely yes. Probably in the October timeframe or much sooner if Trump bombs Iran which he likely won't now that he has pulled back our B-2 bombers from Diego Garcia.
The USSR could have easily prevented the collapse of the Soviet Union or the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact by the use of force but Gorby unilaterally gave up all twenty captive nations deliberately.
The U.S. has captive nations and its all the nation's of the world. The U.S. can no longer single handedly afford to keep them captive so now it's devising ways to make them pay for their captivity.
The captive nations of the E.U. are being forced to devote more money to NATO and part of the deal is that they have to source a significant percentage of their military purchases from the U.S. M.I.C.
Tariffs are another means the U.S. is going to use to make them involuntarily pay tribute wants to the U.S.
The U.S. didn't have the commonsense to give up its empire. Trump now wants to expand U.S. territory which is the very thing the U.S. has been accusing Putin of. Trump wants to bring back America's Golden Age which again, is what the U.S. accuses Putin of wanting to bring back the U.S.S.R.
How can the U.S. expand its territory without taking over other sovereign countries or their territories? Is the U.S. going to take back the land from the sea?
The U.S. wants Taiwan. It's even removed from its website any reference to Taiwan being part of China. And substituted that with the wording that Taiwan's status is undecided. Just like it wants to do with Crimea and the 4 annexed Oblast.
The USSR choose peace instead of war. And for that we owe a debt of gratitude to Gorbachev. The U.S. rejected the opportunity for peace in Europe and around the world.
The small minds of the U.S. politicians, technocrats, wealthy elites and captured academics couldn't envision a world without enemies and the Cold War because war is America's major source of revenue.
It's a shame that you would put down Gorbachev because he did a courageous thing. I remember well how the U.S. rushed into Russia and exploited its resources and people.
Never once did the U.S. give up on its goal of breaking up the Russian Federation or to conquer Ukraine.
I watched as the U.S. meddled in European countries to have pro NATO politicians elected all over NATO and non-NATO countries.
The Cold War policy of encirclement was never abandoned.
One other thing is for sure and it applies to the U.S. specifically because the U.S. can't keep its nose out of other people's business.
And what is that thing? It is that Taiwan has never been a part of the U.S. Another is that Taiwan isn't anywhere the U.S. It is so ironic that the U.S. has been running around saying that China is a threat even though China has only fought one war in against Vietnam in 1979 and doesn't have over 700 known and unknown military bases of U.S. occupation around the world and has fought more than ten wars, conducted numerous regime change operations and destroyed the existence of more than a few countries.
The U.S. claims Putin wats to take over the Balkans and re-establish the Soviet Empire but meanwhile it has expanded NATO over the very countries that the USSR once controlled. So I wonder just where is Russia going to expand too?
Why hasn't a stink been made about U.S. occupancy of 1/3rd of Syria? Why is it okay for the U.S. to lay claim to the Panama Canal after having sold it back to Panama for a dollar?
Don't forget that Panama was wrested from Columbia through U.S. aid to Columbian rebels Panama is far away from the U.S. but that doesn't stop the U.S. from claiming that Panama, along with all the other countries of central and Souh America is in America's backyard.
Taiwan isn't a country so it doesn't have a maritime boundary. Only China does.
Nor has China interfered with any commercial shipping. China strident objects to military vessels sailing within the zone and those objections are legitimate. The U.S. has fits when Russian military vessels go to Cuba or anywhere in Central or South America.
I'd love to see the Chinese and Russians engage in naval exercises of either coasts of the U.,S.
You say Taiwan has never been part of China and then you contradict yourself by citing a time before the U.S. existed and then a time after the U.S. existed when Taiwan was a part of China before the PRC and after the PRC
Taiwan has a longer link with China than it has with the U.S. Taiwan was instrumental in the Western and Japanese attacks on China.
And given the fact that the U.S. voluntarily and unconditionally signed the One China policy that alone makes your arguments denying the eternal connection between China and Taiwan specious.
Taiwan is a rouge province of China. The U.S. complains that it is having a hard time getting the majority of Taiwanese to support rebellion against China because they just don't hate China enough.
It's no different than what the U.S. has done with Ukraine to sow anti-Russian hatred there. And the U.S. attempt to sow hatred of China throughout Asia and around the world.
Even now the U.S. is offering countries favorable relations with the U.S. in exchange for them cutting their ties with China. What business is it of the U.S. the countries that other countries trade with?
I'll tell you. It zero. Trade is an exchange of goods. Pure and simple. Sovereign countries have every right to chose who their trading partners, friends and allies are.
Then for the U.S. to come out with this idiotic notion that it has gratuitously been providing for free a public good to the world and can no longer afford to do so. Therefore now it is going to make the nations of the world pay through various options it offers them.
How absurd can the U.S. get. It literally is finally demanding outright what it has been doing all along which is making the countries of the world pay for the U.S. to abuse them by stealing their commodities, financial futures, attacking them with regime change operations, assassinations, illegal sanctions, freezing their assets, embargoes, etc.
If the U.S. doesn't want to trade with China or any other country then it should stop. It has no legal or moral right to demand other countries fall in line.
If the U.S. can't afford to be the policeman of the world, then it should stop. No one's asking it to be. We'd all be better off with less U.S. meddling in the affairs of others.
The U.S. cannot be trusted as long as it holds to it's ridiculously inflated view of itself.
I'm sick of the U.S. The U.S. is the world's number one arms trafficker, drug smuggler, terrorist organization, keeps military occupation outposts around the world.
Trump is delusional if he thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Putin is the only world leader to deserve that recognition. His position has been unchanged. He's always used his position of power to avoid war. I can't say that of any U.S. President. Not even Trump.
Taiwan belongs to China. China should have been allowed to reintegrate them in a mop up operation after the revolution. The US prevented this via the so-called Sino-American Mutual Defence Teaty (ca 1950-1980; the "Mutual" in its name is ridiculous) and even nuclear threat. After the Chiang Kaishek terror-regime they established a kind of democracy and the Taiwanese have been propagandised via the American method to reject Chinese unity - even though nowadays they would no longer be viable without their integration into the Chinese economy. Even less so, after the transfer of the essential assets of TSMC to Arizona.
Some points:
- "... the United Nations considers “Taiwan” as a province of China with no separate status, and the Secretariat strictly abides by this decision in the exercise of its responsibilities Thus, since the adoption of this resolution the established practice of the United Nations has been to use the term “Taiwan, Province of China” when a reference to “Taiwan” is required in United Nations Secretariat documents." (UN Juridical Yearbook 2010)
- 1943 Cairo Declaration
- Joint Communiqué of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America ( August 17, 1982)
- Joint Communiqué of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America (February 28, 1972)
- Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America (December 16, 1978)
Of-course the Americans are in breach of their agreements with China, serving as another example that agreements with Western countries are worthless.
That China does not need an unsinkable US aircraft carrier permanently moored of the coast is a matter of-course.
Nixon planned to give up Taiwan to the PRC in 1975 had he not resigned over Watergate. But now its time to negotiate an EU style confederation deal between the PRC and Taiwan to prevent WW3.
There is a good news update: Trump just announced that he has stopped bombing the Houthis. While he says that the Houthis capitulated, it's actually more likely that he actually capitulated - he knew that he couldn't win the war against them. Daniel Davis had former CIA intel analyst Larry Johnson on his show, who noted that the Houthis will never stop fighting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqVCQkfa9o8
Furthermore, Responsible Statecraft is reporting that it was likely to calm tensions ahead of Trump's visit to the Middle East. However, they also noted that the ceasefire may last for the duration of Trump's negotiations with Iran and might reflect awareness with his base's preferences.
Yes Trump agreed to a cease-fire on the Houthis terms. They offered weeks ago to stop targeting US ships in exchange for a cease-fire but can still target every other country's ships it chooses to.
It's not Biden's war. This has always been Trump's war during his first presidency and now under his second.
Trump was never negotiating in good faith because he never had any intentions of walking away and because he was in a conflict of interests.
Trump, or Mr. America, had too many national interests to protect. He needs to arrive at an agreement that saves face for America. He has been equipping the Ukrainians and providing them with intelligence the whole time, The U.S.A. trained Ukrainian intelligence forces assassinated a Russian General and he never condemned Ukraine for it. He equipped Ukraine with lethal weapons during his first presidency and never once spoke out against the war.
The only way Yrump could've shown this wasn't his war was by walking away from supporting all U.S. involvement with Ukraine on his first say in office.
What does he do instead? He sets up a fake role for himself as mediator of the conflict the U.S. started and tried to get a grand bargain out of the peace process along with an undeserved Noble Peace Prize for himself.
He forgets about the fact that neither he nor the U.S. comes to this process with clean hands. Trump is just as invested in this war as Biden was. And he's attempted to actualize that investment through a fake minerals deal that is actually a Ukrainian security deal. This was the whole goal of the so called peace process's.
Making the U.S. and Ukraine look like they wanted peace while working on side deals that would keep the U.S. invested in Ukraine.
A true arbitration doesn't benefit personally from his/her work. Hasn't previously or presently taken a none neutral stance against one of the parties involved in the conflict or committed acts of violence against one of the parties.
In conclusion, this is Trump's war in every conceivable way. Just as it's impossible to be a little pregnant so also it's impossible for Trump to be absolve of any tangible or intangible connections with this war.
I don't agree. Trump has ripped on Zelensky calling him a dictator without elections and even cut off all US military aid to Ukraine for a week but his neocon cabinet members keep pushing him to keep arming Ukraine. He was sincere about wanting to negotiate peace but you're right he was never actually willing to negotiate a peace deal with Russia. He offered them one peace deal and then told Putin to take it or leave it. Russia accepted most of it but Zelensky rejected all of it. Then he decided to reward Zelensky for refusing to offer a single concession for peace with a ten year security pact and rescinding his demand for democratic elections.
If his Neocon cabinet members are the problem than he should fire them. This can't be divorced from him. He owns them as long as he keeps them because he hired them. Right now Trump is pushing thr Kellog plan, supporting Zelensky, selling F16 to Taiwan etc.
The buck stops with him. He can hire better people but he doesn't have the courage. Just like he didn't have the courage to walkaway from Ukraine. He's only buried himself more deeply in it with this so called minerals deal that is a cover for a continued NATO presence on Russia's border.
And I'm tired of him playing the role of victim. Saying he doesn't want to do this or that but he'll do it if he has to. We only do what we want to do.
He never did cut off Ukraine. That was just shameless public propaganda.
You're right, Trump did call Zelensky a dictator but then the following week when a U.S. reporter asked him if he still believed Trump was a dictator, Trump responded by saying, "did I say that? I don't think I said that. It doesn't sound like me"
The reporter didn't press him on his response. He didn't play the recording.
I hadn't forgotten though. How could I forget because the U.S. press made such a big deal about Trump calling Zelensky a dictator.
No one seems to want to remember either that Trump said that he understands why Russia wouldn't want NATO on its border. If he understands then why is he fighting to keep NATO on Russia's border.
It's like the Bible says, "faith without works is dead."
Trump has no faith. He has no core values for peace that he's willing to not sacrifice. His values are being liked, making deals, preserving his image.
Trump is as useless as a moderate Muslim. People who don't believe all Muslims are alike love to give the example of moderate Muslims ad proof but where are these moderate Muslims when there's an honor killing, terrorist attack.
Robert MacNamara's son tells the story of how, when his father was dying, his father asked him if he thought God would forgive him for his role in Vietnam. The son said yes.
Well bedside confessions are worthless to the dead and the living. That's what Trump is morally.
He loves to quote, peace through strength, thinking that the phrase teaches a viable route to peace but it doesn't do that at all.
The phrase actually legitimate war and preparation for war. It excuses America's vaccuous argument for every extraterrestrial transgression on the nebulous rationalization of protecting U.S. interests.
There is no reason for the U.S. to be in Ukraine, Taiwan, Iraq, Greenland etc. The problem with the U.S. is that it believes it's a god, above any law. That a nation of 330 million people, 4% of the population, should rule over a world with billions of people.
Trump puts the U.S. saving face over the truth that this war exists because the U.S. lied and that a future war with China is being plotted because the U.S. lied.
Trump has done nothing to get rid of the Deep State. He's only taken its tools, repackaged and rerouted them. He's restored funding to N.E.D. and rerouted it in the State Department. Regime change operations and assassinations, which are both acts of terrorism and murder, will continue under him.
Trump isn't trying to negotiate with the Russians. He's trying to herd them into a corner.
Thank ypu for your reply. I appreciate the discussion
I suggest Mr Trump is most unsuitable for the office he holds. A leader guides his team, and not vice versa. It seems, that there is also increasingly an understanding that the Ukraine negotiations were never intended to lead to a meaningful outcome, which essentially was clear two weeks after they had commenced. I suspect, the same is the case with the Iran negotiations. As I am at it: just recently Ms Merav Ceren, a former Israeli citizen and Israeli Ministry of Defense official was appointed as leader of the Israel and Iran desk at the National Security Council. The US has more than substantial problems.
Trump showed amazing promise when he took office but just like last time around, his foreign policy is becoming more conventional because he chose America Last neocon warmongers to serve in his Cabinet. As the saying goes "personnel is policy." At least he ousted Israeli agent Mike Waltz from his post as National Security Advisor.
I saw a recent interview by Scott Ritter on the "Dialogue Works" podcast. During the interview, as Ritter was lamenting Trump's rhetoric and actions regarding Russia and Iran, he said that he believes to this day, if Kamala Harris had won the Presidential Election, we would have likely gotten into a nuclear war with Russia.
I suspect that if she had been elected President, and if we hadn't gotten into a nuclear war with Russia by the beginning of April, the Chinese drills around Taiwan around that time might have turned into a blockade and she would have made good on Biden's repeated promises to get into a war with China to defend Taiwan.
Putin likely plans to use them to invade and surround Kyiv again to force Ukraine to capitulate. That has always been the key to victory for the Kremlin. If only Putin hadn't withdrawn Russian troops from Kyiv prematurely, then Zelensky would have been forced to sign the Istanbul Agreement and the war would have ended on April 9, 2022.
While President Trump deserves credit for initially pledging to end the war in Ukraine and recognizing the strategic folly of indefinite U.S. entanglement, his recent concessions and alignment with hawkish advisors threaten to turn a war he promised to stop into one he owns.
Trump’s instincts to seek peace and pivot U.S. strategy toward confronting China are fundamentally sound. But arming Ukraine without extracting meaningful concessions from Kyiv or Moscow is not peacekeeping; it’s power projection with no off-ramp.
America’s true strategic interest is not defending shifting borders in Eastern Europe, but preventing the formation of a durable Moscow-Beijing axis. That means Washington must decide: does it want to neutralize Russia as a Chinese ally through strategic detente, or drive it deeper into Beijing’s arms with more sanctions, arms shipments, and endless war?
If Trump continues down this path, history won’t remember him as the president who ended Biden’s war. It’ll remember him as the one who inherited it, escalated it, and lost the bigger game.
Exactly right. Trump's decision to abandon his brilliant plan to form a geostrategic partnership for peace with Russia and neutralize the Sino-Russian military alliance by giving up on peace negotiations and ramping up US military aid to Ukraine means he is likely to be known not as a peace president but as a failed war president. If only, he could see into the future to see how harshly history will judge him if he does not reverse course soon.
It isn't America's place to decide what countries get together with each other or to pass judgement on their intentions.
The U.S. is constantly engaging in hostile acts against countries it calls its friends and those it calls its allies.
U.S.hostile interactuons actions with other countries is what drives those countries together. America, not China or Russia, is America's number one enemy.
Joe Biden and the Democrats were America's number one enemy. Now with Biden gone, Communist China is our greatest enemy.
Communist China isn't America's enemy. I was watching a series of shows on China yesterday that were on PBS. On one of the shows they dealt with the work of a Catholic missionary who went there to convert the Chinese to Christianity.
Excerpts from his diary were read from and in one of them the missionary marveled at the fact that although the Chinese had the power to dominate and overrun their neighbors, they didn't. They actually outright refused to because they saw no need.
Well that is still true today. China's success isn't a threat to America's existence. It is a threat to its economic might. That isn't a reason to kill.
It's the country with an army that's out of place that is a threat. China's last war was in 1979 against Vietnam. America has had many wars since then. America is the expansive power, not China.
The Belt and Road initiative is something the U.S. should join, and not destroy.
I forgot to mention that this missionary contrasted the Chinese with the Europeans who he said, were continually fighting each to rule e over each other.
This missionary arrived in China in 1622.
It seems Westerners haven't changed one bit but neither has China even in spite of the bad example it has been not only exposed to but ruled by.
You forget China's Hundred Years of Humiliation but China hasn't forgetten. Thankfully they haven't picked up our bad habits when it comes habitually interfering in the affairs of others.
I still fail to see the reason why Europe wants to continue the war in the Ukraine. Can't they see that Russia already has won the war ?
Yes, but they want to preserve the illusion of Western global hegemony which would be shattered if Russia succeeded in rolling back NATO out of Ukraine for the first time in history.
- China is planning to invade Taiwan later this year ????
Most likely yes. Probably in the October timeframe or much sooner if Trump bombs Iran which he likely won't now that he has pulled back our B-2 bombers from Diego Garcia.
China can't invade itself. It has every right to stop a part of China from leaving China.
Imagine how the whole Ukraine fiasco would've been different had Russia had the strength in 1991 to put down Ukrainian secession back then.
The USSR could have easily prevented the collapse of the Soviet Union or the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact by the use of force but Gorby unilaterally gave up all twenty captive nations deliberately.
The U.S. has captive nations and its all the nation's of the world. The U.S. can no longer single handedly afford to keep them captive so now it's devising ways to make them pay for their captivity.
The captive nations of the E.U. are being forced to devote more money to NATO and part of the deal is that they have to source a significant percentage of their military purchases from the U.S. M.I.C.
Tariffs are another means the U.S. is going to use to make them involuntarily pay tribute wants to the U.S.
The U.S. didn't have the commonsense to give up its empire. Trump now wants to expand U.S. territory which is the very thing the U.S. has been accusing Putin of. Trump wants to bring back America's Golden Age which again, is what the U.S. accuses Putin of wanting to bring back the U.S.S.R.
How can the U.S. expand its territory without taking over other sovereign countries or their territories? Is the U.S. going to take back the land from the sea?
The U.S. wants Taiwan. It's even removed from its website any reference to Taiwan being part of China. And substituted that with the wording that Taiwan's status is undecided. Just like it wants to do with Crimea and the 4 annexed Oblast.
The USSR choose peace instead of war. And for that we owe a debt of gratitude to Gorbachev. The U.S. rejected the opportunity for peace in Europe and around the world.
The small minds of the U.S. politicians, technocrats, wealthy elites and captured academics couldn't envision a world without enemies and the Cold War because war is America's major source of revenue.
It's a shame that you would put down Gorbachev because he did a courageous thing. I remember well how the U.S. rushed into Russia and exploited its resources and people.
Never once did the U.S. give up on its goal of breaking up the Russian Federation or to conquer Ukraine.
I watched as the U.S. meddled in European countries to have pro NATO politicians elected all over NATO and non-NATO countries.
The Cold War policy of encirclement was never abandoned.
Taiwan has never been part of the PRC and was only part of China from 1945-1949 and before that from 1683-1895.
One other thing is for sure and it applies to the U.S. specifically because the U.S. can't keep its nose out of other people's business.
And what is that thing? It is that Taiwan has never been a part of the U.S. Another is that Taiwan isn't anywhere the U.S. It is so ironic that the U.S. has been running around saying that China is a threat even though China has only fought one war in against Vietnam in 1979 and doesn't have over 700 known and unknown military bases of U.S. occupation around the world and has fought more than ten wars, conducted numerous regime change operations and destroyed the existence of more than a few countries.
The U.S. claims Putin wats to take over the Balkans and re-establish the Soviet Empire but meanwhile it has expanded NATO over the very countries that the USSR once controlled. So I wonder just where is Russia going to expand too?
Why hasn't a stink been made about U.S. occupancy of 1/3rd of Syria? Why is it okay for the U.S. to lay claim to the Panama Canal after having sold it back to Panama for a dollar?
Don't forget that Panama was wrested from Columbia through U.S. aid to Columbian rebels Panama is far away from the U.S. but that doesn't stop the U.S. from claiming that Panama, along with all the other countries of central and Souh America is in America's backyard.
Taiwan isn't a country so it doesn't have a maritime boundary. Only China does.
Nor has China interfered with any commercial shipping. China strident objects to military vessels sailing within the zone and those objections are legitimate. The U.S. has fits when Russian military vessels go to Cuba or anywhere in Central or South America.
I'd love to see the Chinese and Russians engage in naval exercises of either coasts of the U.,S.
You say Taiwan has never been part of China and then you contradict yourself by citing a time before the U.S. existed and then a time after the U.S. existed when Taiwan was a part of China before the PRC and after the PRC
Taiwan has a longer link with China than it has with the U.S. Taiwan was instrumental in the Western and Japanese attacks on China.
And given the fact that the U.S. voluntarily and unconditionally signed the One China policy that alone makes your arguments denying the eternal connection between China and Taiwan specious.
Taiwan is a rouge province of China. The U.S. complains that it is having a hard time getting the majority of Taiwanese to support rebellion against China because they just don't hate China enough.
It's no different than what the U.S. has done with Ukraine to sow anti-Russian hatred there. And the U.S. attempt to sow hatred of China throughout Asia and around the world.
Even now the U.S. is offering countries favorable relations with the U.S. in exchange for them cutting their ties with China. What business is it of the U.S. the countries that other countries trade with?
I'll tell you. It zero. Trade is an exchange of goods. Pure and simple. Sovereign countries have every right to chose who their trading partners, friends and allies are.
Then for the U.S. to come out with this idiotic notion that it has gratuitously been providing for free a public good to the world and can no longer afford to do so. Therefore now it is going to make the nations of the world pay through various options it offers them.
How absurd can the U.S. get. It literally is finally demanding outright what it has been doing all along which is making the countries of the world pay for the U.S. to abuse them by stealing their commodities, financial futures, attacking them with regime change operations, assassinations, illegal sanctions, freezing their assets, embargoes, etc.
If the U.S. doesn't want to trade with China or any other country then it should stop. It has no legal or moral right to demand other countries fall in line.
If the U.S. can't afford to be the policeman of the world, then it should stop. No one's asking it to be. We'd all be better off with less U.S. meddling in the affairs of others.
The U.S. cannot be trusted as long as it holds to it's ridiculously inflated view of itself.
I'm sick of the U.S. The U.S. is the world's number one arms trafficker, drug smuggler, terrorist organization, keeps military occupation outposts around the world.
Trump is delusional if he thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Putin is the only world leader to deserve that recognition. His position has been unchanged. He's always used his position of power to avoid war. I can't say that of any U.S. President. Not even Trump.
A summary:
Taiwan belongs to China. China should have been allowed to reintegrate them in a mop up operation after the revolution. The US prevented this via the so-called Sino-American Mutual Defence Teaty (ca 1950-1980; the "Mutual" in its name is ridiculous) and even nuclear threat. After the Chiang Kaishek terror-regime they established a kind of democracy and the Taiwanese have been propagandised via the American method to reject Chinese unity - even though nowadays they would no longer be viable without their integration into the Chinese economy. Even less so, after the transfer of the essential assets of TSMC to Arizona.
Some points:
- "... the United Nations considers “Taiwan” as a province of China with no separate status, and the Secretariat strictly abides by this decision in the exercise of its responsibilities Thus, since the adoption of this resolution the established practice of the United Nations has been to use the term “Taiwan, Province of China” when a reference to “Taiwan” is required in United Nations Secretariat documents." (UN Juridical Yearbook 2010)
- 1943 Cairo Declaration
- Joint Communiqué of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America ( August 17, 1982)
- Joint Communiqué of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America (February 28, 1972)
- Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America (December 16, 1978)
Of-course the Americans are in breach of their agreements with China, serving as another example that agreements with Western countries are worthless.
That China does not need an unsinkable US aircraft carrier permanently moored of the coast is a matter of-course.
Nixon planned to give up Taiwan to the PRC in 1975 had he not resigned over Watergate. But now its time to negotiate an EU style confederation deal between the PRC and Taiwan to prevent WW3.
Excellent points of historical fact.
There is a good news update: Trump just announced that he has stopped bombing the Houthis. While he says that the Houthis capitulated, it's actually more likely that he actually capitulated - he knew that he couldn't win the war against them. Daniel Davis had former CIA intel analyst Larry Johnson on his show, who noted that the Houthis will never stop fighting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqVCQkfa9o8
Furthermore, Responsible Statecraft is reporting that it was likely to calm tensions ahead of Trump's visit to the Middle East. However, they also noted that the ceasefire may last for the duration of Trump's negotiations with Iran and might reflect awareness with his base's preferences.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-deal-houthis/
Yes Trump agreed to a cease-fire on the Houthis terms. They offered weeks ago to stop targeting US ships in exchange for a cease-fire but can still target every other country's ships it chooses to.
It's not Biden's war. This has always been Trump's war during his first presidency and now under his second.
Trump was never negotiating in good faith because he never had any intentions of walking away and because he was in a conflict of interests.
Trump, or Mr. America, had too many national interests to protect. He needs to arrive at an agreement that saves face for America. He has been equipping the Ukrainians and providing them with intelligence the whole time, The U.S.A. trained Ukrainian intelligence forces assassinated a Russian General and he never condemned Ukraine for it. He equipped Ukraine with lethal weapons during his first presidency and never once spoke out against the war.
The only way Yrump could've shown this wasn't his war was by walking away from supporting all U.S. involvement with Ukraine on his first say in office.
What does he do instead? He sets up a fake role for himself as mediator of the conflict the U.S. started and tried to get a grand bargain out of the peace process along with an undeserved Noble Peace Prize for himself.
He forgets about the fact that neither he nor the U.S. comes to this process with clean hands. Trump is just as invested in this war as Biden was. And he's attempted to actualize that investment through a fake minerals deal that is actually a Ukrainian security deal. This was the whole goal of the so called peace process's.
Making the U.S. and Ukraine look like they wanted peace while working on side deals that would keep the U.S. invested in Ukraine.
A true arbitration doesn't benefit personally from his/her work. Hasn't previously or presently taken a none neutral stance against one of the parties involved in the conflict or committed acts of violence against one of the parties.
In conclusion, this is Trump's war in every conceivable way. Just as it's impossible to be a little pregnant so also it's impossible for Trump to be absolve of any tangible or intangible connections with this war.
I don't agree. Trump has ripped on Zelensky calling him a dictator without elections and even cut off all US military aid to Ukraine for a week but his neocon cabinet members keep pushing him to keep arming Ukraine. He was sincere about wanting to negotiate peace but you're right he was never actually willing to negotiate a peace deal with Russia. He offered them one peace deal and then told Putin to take it or leave it. Russia accepted most of it but Zelensky rejected all of it. Then he decided to reward Zelensky for refusing to offer a single concession for peace with a ten year security pact and rescinding his demand for democratic elections.
If his Neocon cabinet members are the problem than he should fire them. This can't be divorced from him. He owns them as long as he keeps them because he hired them. Right now Trump is pushing thr Kellog plan, supporting Zelensky, selling F16 to Taiwan etc.
The buck stops with him. He can hire better people but he doesn't have the courage. Just like he didn't have the courage to walkaway from Ukraine. He's only buried himself more deeply in it with this so called minerals deal that is a cover for a continued NATO presence on Russia's border.
And I'm tired of him playing the role of victim. Saying he doesn't want to do this or that but he'll do it if he has to. We only do what we want to do.
He never did cut off Ukraine. That was just shameless public propaganda.
You're right, Trump did call Zelensky a dictator but then the following week when a U.S. reporter asked him if he still believed Trump was a dictator, Trump responded by saying, "did I say that? I don't think I said that. It doesn't sound like me"
The reporter didn't press him on his response. He didn't play the recording.
I hadn't forgotten though. How could I forget because the U.S. press made such a big deal about Trump calling Zelensky a dictator.
No one seems to want to remember either that Trump said that he understands why Russia wouldn't want NATO on its border. If he understands then why is he fighting to keep NATO on Russia's border.
It's like the Bible says, "faith without works is dead."
Trump has no faith. He has no core values for peace that he's willing to not sacrifice. His values are being liked, making deals, preserving his image.
Trump is as useless as a moderate Muslim. People who don't believe all Muslims are alike love to give the example of moderate Muslims ad proof but where are these moderate Muslims when there's an honor killing, terrorist attack.
Robert MacNamara's son tells the story of how, when his father was dying, his father asked him if he thought God would forgive him for his role in Vietnam. The son said yes.
Well bedside confessions are worthless to the dead and the living. That's what Trump is morally.
He loves to quote, peace through strength, thinking that the phrase teaches a viable route to peace but it doesn't do that at all.
The phrase actually legitimate war and preparation for war. It excuses America's vaccuous argument for every extraterrestrial transgression on the nebulous rationalization of protecting U.S. interests.
There is no reason for the U.S. to be in Ukraine, Taiwan, Iraq, Greenland etc. The problem with the U.S. is that it believes it's a god, above any law. That a nation of 330 million people, 4% of the population, should rule over a world with billions of people.
Trump puts the U.S. saving face over the truth that this war exists because the U.S. lied and that a future war with China is being plotted because the U.S. lied.
Trump has done nothing to get rid of the Deep State. He's only taken its tools, repackaged and rerouted them. He's restored funding to N.E.D. and rerouted it in the State Department. Regime change operations and assassinations, which are both acts of terrorism and murder, will continue under him.
Trump isn't trying to negotiate with the Russians. He's trying to herd them into a corner.
Thank ypu for your reply. I appreciate the discussion
I suggest Mr Trump is most unsuitable for the office he holds. A leader guides his team, and not vice versa. It seems, that there is also increasingly an understanding that the Ukraine negotiations were never intended to lead to a meaningful outcome, which essentially was clear two weeks after they had commenced. I suspect, the same is the case with the Iran negotiations. As I am at it: just recently Ms Merav Ceren, a former Israeli citizen and Israeli Ministry of Defense official was appointed as leader of the Israel and Iran desk at the National Security Council. The US has more than substantial problems.
Trump showed amazing promise when he took office but just like last time around, his foreign policy is becoming more conventional because he chose America Last neocon warmongers to serve in his Cabinet. As the saying goes "personnel is policy." At least he ousted Israeli agent Mike Waltz from his post as National Security Advisor.
I saw a recent interview by Scott Ritter on the "Dialogue Works" podcast. During the interview, as Ritter was lamenting Trump's rhetoric and actions regarding Russia and Iran, he said that he believes to this day, if Kamala Harris had won the Presidential Election, we would have likely gotten into a nuclear war with Russia.
I suspect that if she had been elected President, and if we hadn't gotten into a nuclear war with Russia by the beginning of April, the Chinese drills around Taiwan around that time might have turned into a blockade and she would have made good on Biden's repeated promises to get into a war with China to defend Taiwan.
In a nutshell ........ Trump continues to disappoint.
Putin likely plans to use them to invade and surround Kyiv again to force Ukraine to capitulate. That has always been the key to victory for the Kremlin. If only Putin hadn't withdrawn Russian troops from Kyiv prematurely, then Zelensky would have been forced to sign the Istanbul Agreement and the war would have ended on April 9, 2022.