Trump is no friend of Russia

by Vince Dhimos


 
It’s just so ironic. The Democrats and Neocons are in a feeding frenzy desperately accusing Trump of being a Kremlin stooge, and yet, the fact is, Trump is no friend of Russia at all. In fact, Trump seems most of the time to viscerally hate all countries that are not the USA.  Probably the best descriptor for him is mundophobe, ie, hater of the world.
 
We have written about Trumponomics before. In this world view, international competitors are treated not as rivals but as mortal enemies to be destroyed totally. This can be compared to a mafia boss going into his own casino and shooting all his customers just in case any of them hit the jackpot and cost the house a fortune. This is not far removed from the US Establishment view but is more virulent in Trump’s case.
 
In traditional economics, foreign competitors are beaten by developing better and cheaper products. Some will recall the now-archaic concept of “free market” economics, where fair competition was the guiding principle.
 
But that concept is gone and it is not Trump that eliminated it. It has been on the decline for years now. Of course, the US has always allowed China to do most of its manufacturing for it. But the goal was not to be kind to the industrious Chinese. Not in the least. The underlying motive was to create a strong China with which to oppose Russia. It was a colossal failure as all but the brain-dead know and the West is starting to reap the consequences. Trump has, by the way, tried to reverse this somewhat by using sanctions to drive a wedge between China and Russia. Sentient beings know that both countries see the US as an enemy that can be combatted only by a strong alliance including China and Russia. The goal is to counter dollar hegemony. Turkey is now part of that de facto alliance thanks to sanctions.
 
Thus, many US elites are anxious to claw back all the economic losses of the past 50 years of surrender to the dragon and, true to form, are shooting themselves in the foot in their efforts.
 
The US is paying for its sin of trying to bankrupt Russia, and cosmic justice is upon America, which must witness the great rapprochement and intimate cooperation between China and Russia in the economic, geopolitical, military, and other spheres. Russia and China got it all wrong. They were supposed to hate and mistrust each other. Ask Kissinger.

Though Trump-bots and Democrats alike are certain that Trump is eager to embrace Russia and restore healthy relations, Trump shows no signs of doing any such thing. He recently became furious with Mama Merkel for her acceptance of Nord Stream 2, the next Russian gas pipeline to Europe. Remember that Russian gas supplied via pipeline is significantly cheaper than American LNG gas, most of which must be extracted from shale by the expensive fracking method, and must then be compressed and treated cryogenically to liquefy it, then loaded onto specially designed, extravagantly expensive ships, shipped to its destination and subsequently stored in horrendously expensive storage domes that require further cryogenic processing, all before sending it on to the final consumer.  Obviously, competitive pricing is impossible with this white elephant product.
 
In the days of free market enterprise, no one in his right mind would have even thought of trying to compete with pipeline gas using LNG. But the free market system that is emblematic of the Land of the Free is now but a distant memory. It is now unpatriotic to mention that US gas is horrendously expensive or that shale gas producers are all slowly going bankrupt due to unaffordable production costs. And it is not just gas that is subject to unfair competition. The US has used the threat of sanctions in an attempt to bully various countries into refraining from buying Russian arms. And it has used tariffs against other countries that have been too successful in selling their products to Americans or have purchased Russian arms.
 
The problem is that when a whole nation acquires a reputation as an economic bully, there is a problem with trust and with national pride prompting countries to fight back. Take Turkey, for example. Erdoğan is now standing up to the US bully by going through with a deal to buy a Russian air defence system over US protests and threats, even though the Russian system is arguably superior to any US air defence system and costs less (see a pattern?). Since Turkey is a very important NATO member, it is using its NATO membership as a cudgel to punish the US, threatening to leave if abused. China, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the EU are weighing countermeasures to Trump’s tariffs on their goods. China and Japan each hold over $1 trillion in US Treasuries and have the option of selling most of these off. (Both have been hurt by Trump’s tariffs). That would impact the value of the dollar at a time when China, Russia and Iran (and now Turkey) are already plotting to bring down dollar hegemony. (The latest report on possible Chinese countermeasures includes billions in LNG purchases that were originally promised before the tariff war).
 
Can the US really afford all of this pushback? Trump and the rest of the Establishment seem never to have contemplated the very real possibility of losing significant trade and alliances as a result of their sanctions and tariffs.
 
Anyone following Washington’s rhetoric on economics and foreign relations in recent years knows that Trump is actually a model representative of the people his supporters call the Deep State. The differences between him and the Deep State are minimal but we are constantly reminded of them. He wants closed borders while the Deep State wants open ones (and yet his walk has not matched his talk in this area). They think dialogue with Russia is treachery, while he wants to talk to Putin. Yet both he and the Establishment want to keep Russia poor with unfair sanctions, the latest being based on the obvious fabrication that Russia was behind the unsolved poisoning of a KGB turncoat and his daughter in Salisbury, UK. Dialogue between Trump and Putin will go nowhere, as the so-called Deep State (ie, Democrats and Neocons) knows, but their political posture requires them to pretend such dialogue with Russia would be fatal to each and every citizen (in fact, such dialogue would melt away most of the Establishment lies, and hence the risk of peace breaking out). As for war, he supports the anti-Iran rhetoric of Israel and Saudi Arabia on the preposterous notion that Iran could wage war on those two states. So does the “Deep State.” As for the erosion of Christianity, which was a theme in Trump’s campaign, his administration has so far granted next to no visas to Middle East Christians. Further, while he has issued visas to South African boers persecuted for their colour, he has wound up deporting every one of these mostly Christian exiles, while allowing many Muslims to stay.
 
It is nothing short of a miracle that these Establishment scoundrels have succeeded in feeding their swill to such a high percentage of the US population. It is also a resounding tribute to the mind deadening US education system that so effectively insulates students from K to grad school from glaring objective truths that are so obvious and crystal clear that any home-schooled 3rd grader could see it without any outside assistance. The churches, too, are overwhelmingly pro-Establishment, even in terms of war, thanks to the overwhelming percentage of “Christian” Zionists among them (in case you missed our analysis: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/culture/the-worlds-most-dangerous-cult-its-not-wahhabism
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/culture/the-worlds-most-dangerous-cult-its-not-wahhabism-part-ii           
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/culture/the-worlds-most-dangerous-cult-its-not-wahhabism-part-iii)
 
The purpose of this article is not to turn anyone against Trump or any politician for that matter. The aim is to defend the objective truth about political conflicts raging in the US, which are light years removed from the vain imaginings of everyone, including Trump supporters, Trump haters, Hillary supporters, Russophiles, Russophobes, Dems, Republicans, church leaders, kindergarten teachers, rock stars, yes, everyone. The truth can be kept buried for a while but eventually it will out. And when that happens, people become very disillusioned, as they did when conservatives woke up to the fact that GW Bush was not “God’s man” after all. Worse, the ill effects of lying to the public will be manifested and the US economy will be further jeopardized unless the public is told the uncomfortable truth. So far, the Establishment has succeeded, for example, in making people believe that soaring stock prices are an indication of a healthy economy. In reality, higher stock prices are not an indicator of new wealth. A bubble is being created and some economists are warning that the consequences of this bubble’s bursting will eclipse the housing bubble of 2008. The fact is, since borrowed money is considered as revenue by the sneaky federal accountants, much of the economic “gain” touted by Trump is the result of borrowing another trillion to finance another bloated budget including $700 billion of weapons that the US does not need. Every new ship or plane is a sitting duck for the Russian hypersonic wonder missiles that Putin tried to warn us about. Most of what is purchased with those billions will be obsolete as soon as the Russian hypersonic weapons are fully deployed.
 
The Fed has run out of options for keeping a decrepit economy afloat. The last option is war. We can only hope and pray that the tectonic shift in sympathies and trust from West to East and the strengthening of new alliances in Asia will manage to block this last unthinkable option.