Donald Trump with Richard Grenell, a possible choice for Secretary of State (File)
EA-Times Radio Specials: Putin Wins, Ukraine Loses in US Election
Ukraine War, Day 989: Putin Seeks Trump’s Support for Russia’s Invasion
I joined Poland’s TVP World on Friday to assess how Europe, facing economic and security issues including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, should respond to the incoming Trump Administration.
The 12-minute analysis begins with an examination of Trump’s possible choices for Secretary of State, including the provocative and divisive Richard Grenell, the pragmatic Robert O’Brien, and Senators Bill Hegarty and Marco Rubio.
Then I reflect on Trump’s risk to Ukraine, forcing acceptance of Russian occupation of part of the country, and to European security.
The starting point is that Donald Trump is a transactional President. If people flatter him, he likes, embraces, supports them. If you don’t flatter Trump, if you criticize his statements or his actions, he not only dislikes you, he will try to undermine you.
[Editor’s Note: Two examples of claiming to see lessons in the election by deploying content-free terms which divert from the issues: “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “Wokeness”.]
We can’t be blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome : https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/alastair-campbells-diary-we-cant-be-blinded-by-trump-derangement-syndrome/
Wokeness has been comprehensively defeated in the US election: https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/us-election-donald-trump-woke-blm-latinx-pronouns-critical-race-theory-defund-police-b1192637.html
“It was Barron, the Gen Z whisperer, who came through for dad; Barron who told Trump his generation was up for grabs. Young men were fed up with being patronised and sidelined, he said.”
[Editor’s Note: Of course Russia does not want this outcome. Thus, it will maintain the fiction — having tried to conquer a neighboring country and occupying more than a quarter of it — that it is NATO which is the “threat”.]
Professor Lucas seems to think that Moscow will accept an East-West Germany type of divide for Ukraine, and with NATO forces occupying the western portion of the country. Why would Moscow accept this Cold War 2 outcome? Cold War 1’s Berlin epicenter was much farther away; and NATO was not the offensive, crusader alliance back then that it is today. If Russia sees NATO as a threat to its very existence, why would it accept such a settlement?
[Editor’s Note: This commentary from a “libertarian” is from March 2022.]
The U.S. and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine War: https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-nato-helped-trigger-ukraine-war-its-not-siding-putin-admit-it#
Russian leaders and several Western policy experts were warning more than two decades ago that NATO expansion would turn out badly—ending in a new cold war with Russia at best, and a hot one at worst………..In late 2013 and early 2014, the United States and several European governments meddled shamelessly to support the efforts of demonstrators to unseat Ukraine’s generally pro-Russia president, Victor Yanukovych, some two years before the expiration of his term.”