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Donald Trump's blow to NATO and Vladimir Putin's smile

2024-02-17T09:50:00.613Z

Highlights: Donald Trump said he would side with Moscow if it attacks a US ally. Russia returned the gesture with an arrest warrant against the Estonian premier. Putin interpreted the message of the eccentric former North American president clearly and in his own way. If the US moves away from or reduces its involvement with the Alliance, not only Russia would release its forces of conquest, writes Peter Bergen. The Kremlin wants from its entire neighborhood. That is why there is a war against Ukraine, he writes. Bergen: As deterrence erodes, the notion that an attack against one partner, even the smallest, is an attack on all.


Just after the tycoon's disconcerting statement that he would side with Moscow if it attacks a US ally, Russia returned the gesture with an arrest warrant against the Estonian premier, ignoring the sovereignty of that former Soviet republic. .


Donald Trump has not yet won the elections, not even those of his party, favorite in both instances, but he is already

transforming global geopolitics.

He just revealed that if voted in November

he would hold Russia

against its European NATO allies.

"I would not protect them. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever it wants

," he warned at a campaign event in South Carolina. It is important not to fall into simplifications.

This

is not just a provocative comment.

On the contrary, it constructs meaning within a vision of history that today has many important followers.

Trump also speaks from a

concrete real power

that arises from his electoral support.

Perplexed by such bravado that primarily hits the United States itself and its place in the world, the White House reacted by stating obviously that

“encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and deranged.”

From Brussels, Charles Michel, president of the European Commission, more specifically

accused Trump of serving Russian interests.

He is not wrong.

The autocrat Vladimir Putin, just hours later, returned the gesture

by ordering the arrest of the Prime Minister of Estonia

Kaja Kallas and her Secretary of State, ignoring the sovereignty of that nation as when it was one of the 15 nations of the Soviet Union under the influence from Moscow.

This is what the Kremlin wants from its entire neighborhood.

That is why there is a war against Ukraine.

For this reason, he even breaks the limits with the suspicious death of his greatest internal opponent, Alexei Navalny.

The Russian leader

interpreted the message of the eccentric former North American president clearly

and in his own way and it is possible to imagine the global panorama if November consolidates him again in the White House.

Trump maintained that he would act in this way in favor of Russia if a country under attack did not meet the goal of 2% of GDP in defense spending.

A rhetoric, it has been said, with mafia rigor

: if they don't pay there is no protection.

By the way, US influence over Europe is not an expense, it has always been a gain, which is why it exists.

Mockery and authoritarianism

The magnate made that comment not coincidentally along with

an unpleasant mockery against a North American military leader

, the husband of his internal rival Nikky Haley, an army major deployed in the Horn of Africa.

It is not the first time that Trump has mocked his own military to highlight his authoritarian position and his refusal to be discussed.

Gestures.

President Joe Biden.

Bloomberg

In 2016, he mistreated Senator John McCain, a war hero and Republican who questioned him, whom he dismissed as a failure because he was captured by the Vietnamese.

“I respect those who were not captured,”

Trump said that, remember,

he avoided military service five times

for fear of being sent to the front.

NATO is a controversial alliance whose power and efficiency has grown alongside the

imperialist war launched by Russia

on Ukraine, as has the American leadership.

It is like that, whether you like it or not.

But it would be naive to assume that the decay of that structure is the door to a beneficial universe.

If the US moves away from or reduces its involvement with the Alliance, as effectively happened in Trump's first term (Emmanuel Macron at the time described NATO as having

cerebral palsy

), not only Russia would release its forces of conquest.

Great Britain speculates that in the immediate future the Kremlin, but also North Korea, Iran or China will be on

the radar of future wars.

Turkey can be included for its exalted Ottomanist appetite for the Greek islands of the Aegean, the South Caucasus or Armenia.

The truth is that as deterrence erodes, that is, the notion that an attack against one partner, even the smallest, is an attack on all,

the possibility of a future war increases.

It is in that sense that the specters that Trump's comment released must be observed.

To make it clear, let us insist that these are not just provocative words, the magnate's followers in Congress, aligned by fervor or by force due to the former president's electoral potential, have been

blocking key aid to Ukraine, facilitating its defeat.

A multimillion-dollar package approved in these hours by the Senate despite the magnate's fury, is

on its way to being blocked in the House of Representatives where the Republicans have the majority

.

What seems not to be understood is that if Ukraine falls, it is the US and its allies who move on to another stage of history.

This is what Putin and his Chinese partner observe with clarity (and satisfaction).

Moscow needs military victory because in this way, and without necessarily invading other countries, as the case of Estonia shows,

it will seek to impose the alignment of the capitals of the former USSR to the command of the Kremlin

.

With this movement his political and, above all, economic influence would grow.

Russia went to war against Ukraine to resolve

(it imagined a victory in a matter of days)

the fatal contradiction of living with a GDP similar to that of Brazil and below that of Italy.

She knows that economic possibilities nourish political capabilities.

Without the first there is no second.

Disengage from the world

Trump is willing to give Putin that right to collapse the Atlantic Doctrine whose epitome is NATO and ignore the rest of the planet.

He thus returns to the world of the Republican legislators of the first decades of the last century who

celebrated not having a passport

.

The idea of ​​stopping this regression is fictitious.

Trump, with his

post-Americanism

, is a

consequence of the decadence and political dysfunctionality

that has trapped the United States since the beginning of this century and is what makes possible this type of leadership that marks the end of an era and of Their protagonists.

Russia, regardless of its recent and implausible praise for Joe Biden, hopes that Trump will triumph because he has promised to cancel the war in a matter of hours, clearly

with the defeat of Kiev and the loss of an additional 20% of its territory

.

A pause for Moscow in its

decision to completely engulf the country,

as it has done with Crimea and Putin has just ratified in the pseudo report with the Trumpist Tucker Carlson to whom he pointed out - without questioning - that Ukraine is an invented state that should not exist .

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tucker in Moscow Reuters

The return of the Republican leader to the White House also excites the far-right and fanatical minorities in the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, convinced that with his help

they will be able to throw history back and do whatever they want with the Palestinian populations.

A primary and simplistic defense by the former president's allies consists of repeating that there were no wars during his mandate.

The concept, in addition to its superficiality, ignores that Trump made

significant geopolitical errors

in his administration.

The most notorious, the destruction of the Vienna nuclear agreement agreed in 2015 with the Iranian theocracy.

He acted at the request of the Saudis and Israelis who demanded that sanctions be multiplied against the Persian power

whose influence had grown after the victory in the Syrian war

and reached the Mediterranean.

The agreement that Tehran strictly complied with while waiting for a flood of investments prevented new penalties, so Trump ignored it.

But that rain of sanctions

paved the way to power in Iran for the current ultranationalists

.

Many in the region must now miss the moderate government of Hassan Rohani who intelligently negotiated that agreement with Barack Obama.

The other victim of Trump's disorientation was the thaw with Cuba which, if it had continued, would have promoted a middle class, private businesses, another political discussion and an

interaction with the US that would have greatly influenced the design of power in that territory.

one of those that sends the most migrants towards the borders of the Río Bravo.

Trump

naively colluded with Cuban communist hawks

who detested Raúl Castro's rapprochement with Washington.

They are just examples of a long caravan but they confirm that ignorance and dogmatism only build a world of blind people.

© Copyright Clarín 2024

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2024-02-17

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