A restacked map to Trump's foreign policy & who it helps: The necessity of seeing the entire threatscape, when it comes to our current election.
Dear TAT readers,
This is just a short restack. The point of offering this up again post-election, is to give everyone a bit of a roadmap to who the new administration will be supporting with their foreign policy.
It is no secret that Trump is in a deep, decades-long bromance with Putin. The problem is that Putin is now a junior partner in the Axis of Evil, headed by Xi in China. Venn diagrams show common interests and connectivity. With every foreign policy decision, somehow it will support those portrayed in the Venn diagram above… not the US, NATO or our other allies. In the time since originally publishing this essay, I have conclusively decided to add Modi’s India to this diagram.
It is not that I don’t appreciate the Indian people’s democracy but under Modi, it has become something more akin to an autocracy than a democracy. The people of India though and as of the last election, are pushing to restore their democracy and send the BJP, Modi’s ruling party much the same as MAGA in the US, back to the obscurity they hail from.
For all of Trump’s bluster about saving America, what he is really up to is to make the world, along with thugs like Putin, Xi, Modi and the rest into that scene from the original Godfather movie, where all of the New York Mafia Dons meet to divide up their turf.
It may take a while to see this prediction come true but keep it near and dear, advocate such a strategy and please, always defend our true values from the fake patriotism of MAGA and their subservient GOP.
My best for your hump day,
Paul
The necessity of seeing the entire threatscape, when it comes to our current election.
TAT readers,
Woohoo… it’s the weekend and it seems as if an entire month has passed in just a week, if high-profile events and news are the measure of time. As I mentioned in a repost of an essay yesterday, I planned to write only about the myriads of issues surrounding Israel, Gaza and Middle East volatility as the last TAT essay of the week but, now believe a wider aperture would be more valuable to readers.
Much of this recent news, is part and parcel, of our national threatscape and it is not all bad news. Instead of focusing on just one topic today, I will take us on a spin around the most significant threat-related news and developments. As always, I try to give readers not only my assessments but enough background to be well-informed. Due to there being so much to cover, I will also and as has become my norm, include deep dive links to background essays for those with interest and who enjoy the support of more information.
One thing to always remember when looking at threats, is that they almost never live in a vacuum. In fact, most of what you will read today are parts of other serious threats. Generally speaking, any threat picture, whether global, national or local, is more like a Venn Diagram, than a singular threat. There are overlapping threats with each.
An example would be along the lines of the war in Gaza, as part of a volatile Middle East, made exponentially more dangerous due to Iran’s backing of Hamas, Hezbollah and other extremist groups as proxy armies, attacking Israel and other partners, such as Jordan. That Iran is Putin’s hitman to distract scrutiny from his abysmal failures in Ukraine, and which all serves Xi’s purpose in China towards his strategy for global hegemony.
With so much to cover and everyone with one eye already on the weekend, let’s get to it. I know that I tend to write somewhat lengthy essays but with so much to cover, I will do all possible to be as succinct as possible to help manage your information overload. Yes, I have said this before and failed but… let’s see what happens today. ;)
Onward
The big news overnight was the massive prisoner exchange with Russia. Twenty-six prisoners were exchanged with 16 returning home to the US and West, while Russia recovered spies and assassins and. The negotiations, going on for months now is secret, as all such exchanges do, succeeded for a variety of reasons, mostly due to direction from the White House and the success of teams of highly trained and experienced professionals, dedicated to this mission.
Russia, Belarus, the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Turkey, and Norway conducted a high-profile prisoner exchange involving 26 prisoners from multiple countries on August 1. Turkey mediated the 26-prisoner swap, which took place in Ankara.[30] US officials confirmed the release of three US citizens — retired US Marine Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) journalist Evan Gershkovich, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalist Alsu Kurmasheva — seven Russian political prisoners, including Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza — four German citizens from Russian detention — and one German citizen from Belarusian detention.[31] Russian President Vladimir Putin signed pardons for the 15 individuals released from Russian detention, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed a pardon for the German individual released from Belarusian detention.[32] The US, Germany, Poland, Norway, and Slovenia released eight imprisoned Russian nationals, including Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) contract killer Vadim Krasikov, Russian intelligence agents Artem and Anna Dultsev, Russian General Staff's Main Directorate (GRU) agent Pavel Rubtsov, hacker Roman Seleznev, and businessman Vladislav Klyushin, and also returned two minors (reportedly the children of two of the released Russians).[33] Putin met the returned Russian prisoners on the tarmac at Vnukovo-2 airport in Moscow and stated that he is nominating them for state awards.[34] - ISW Ukraine War updates, Aug. 1 - ISW Institute for the study of War - 02 Aug 2024
Like so many the other, major accomplishments of the Biden administration, this one has deep relevancy to the American people. It shows that dedicated professionals within the US government are succeeding at their jobs, instead of the political appointees of the Trump administration who were only doing their jobs, in order to advance their extremist political agendas.
Much of the MAGA influence campaigns of recent years, attempt to undermine confidence in the US government. Politically speaking, there is some concern, especially on the MAGA side of the aisle, but in government service, the overwhelming majority of professionals, do their job competently, professionally and in respect to the law. Such abuse by MAGA is not only unwarranted, but dishonestly abusive.
Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has increased modestly since 2023. As of April 2024, 22% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (21%). Last year, 16% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time, which was among the lowest measures in nearly seven decades of polling. - Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low - Pew Research Center - 2022
There is a great deal yet unknown, about the details of the prisoner exchange but much of the story will come out over the next few days. As always, please read credible sources to gather further insights. During such a hot election season, there will be all manner of attempts to “spin” this accomplishment, especially from the GOP whose MAGA ideology is built on a series of interlocking conspiracy theories. The bottom line at the moment is… be happy for the returned citizens and their long-suffering families. It would be difficult for most Americans to conceive of what they endured in Putin’s gulag. Speaking of Putin, this provides a good segue to talk for a moment about Russia, Ukraine and related issues.
In Ukraine, Putin is still fully committed to his genocidal invasion. His military failures, now rank with some of military history’s worst failures. After two and a half years, Putin’s costs continue to grow at an unsustainable rate. Putin’s gains are nearly non-existent from where he started and, his misconceived invasion has turned out to be the defining limit, of Russian global aggression. There are a variety of potentially positive outcomes from a war so devastatingly inhumane to its innocent victims. There are though some ominous, in terms of global security downsides as well.
Putin’s approach to Ukraine is classically Russian. In this, I mean that Russian or the Soviets before, them prosecute war with a scorched earth strategy, heavily dependent on human waves instead of maneuver and tactics. Just like the decimation of WW I Russian troops that led to the end of Tsarist Russian in 1917 and that ushered in, the Marxist era, there are failed logistics, human waves, poor or poorly maintained weapons systems and an insistence of brutally savage treatment of their adversaries, military and civilian. Add to these critical failures, Imperial Russia was experiencing debilitating morale nationally due to oppressive, corrupt and incompetent political leadership. If this sounds familiar, it is also… Putin’s Russia.
The genocide is real and cultural in Ukraine, just like Stalin’s mass starvation of Ukrainians in the 1930s called the Holodomor, in which between 3.5 - 7 million Ukrainians, were intentionally starved to death. Still, there are nations around the world, who support Putin. Most are what I term the new Axis of Evil. In order of hierarchy with China at the top, then comes Putin, the theocratic, terrorist regime in Tehran and then the pipsqueak in N. Korea, Kim Jong Un. To make matters even more dangerous, supposedly friendly nations like India and the newly expanded BRICS, support Putin via a variety of tactics. India and China for example, continue to help Putin evade sanctions while also providing manufacturing and commodity support to Russia.
India under Modi’s decade of leadership, Modi says one thing and does another when it comes to global security. His support to Putin and the now expanded BRICS bloc of nations, is undermining US and allied support against the Axis of Evil. India has a massive trade deficit with Xi in China and refuses to stop supporting the genocide of Russia and China, via market cooperation. India is sadly for her citizens, still severely hampered by grossly inadequate infrastructure the is in some senses, her critical vulnerability relative to national security.
The threats from Putin specifically and in conjunction with the Axis of Evil, takes us neatly, into the next topic, Israel, Gaza, Hezbollah and Iran. Spoiler alert, Putin’s failures in Ukraine and his begging for help from the Axis of Evil along with some BRICS nations, have demoted Russia from the top of the heap to second place. This simply means that in a sense, all of them take actual and implied direction from Xi, another genocidal aggressor.
Though it has somewhat disappeared from our headlines, the war in Gaza is still horrific. The western media in general, have in general, done an immoral disservice to their audiences in their coverage of the war. The civilian casualties although horrific, were never the massacres by the IDF that the media portrayed. Israel, like all western militaries, operates in accordance with LOAC, the international law of armed conflict. In fact, as assessed by the prestigious Lieber Institute at West Point, there are also observations that the IDF has set the bar higher operationally than LOAC requires. Constraints on operations put armies at risk as we learned tragically, in Vietnam.
Our visit, research, subsequent interaction with the IDF, and our own military experiences led us to three over-arching conclusions. First, the IDF’s MAG Corps is an exceptionally competent group of advisors on the law of armed conflict that is organized to ensure IDF commanders have access to high-caliber legal advice in real time. Second, we concluded that Israeli positions on the law of targeting are well within the mainstream. Israel is not a party to the 1977 Additional Protocol I (AP I) to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which sets forth the key treaty-based targeting rules for parties to the instrument. And finally, the Israeli context is unique. Hostile neighbors and terrorist groups surround Israel. Some seek its destruction and the annihilation of its people. It enjoys no strategic depth; there is nowhere to which the IDF may retreat, and when Israeli soldiers fight, they do so within hours, even minutes, of their homes. Perhaps most noteworthy is the high value Israel places on the safety of its soldiers and its civilian population. - Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Inside IDF Targeting - Lieber Institute at West Point - John Merriam - 20 October 2023
Dishonest reporting by the likes of REUTER, the BBC and most western media have established false narratives in most of the world, which is in my professional opinion, the biggest reason for the massive campus protests we have all watched. Is there massive suffering in GAZA? Yes, of course there is. From a professional perspective and from having served in contested urban combat environments during my career in CT, I can safely say that Hamas especially is responsible for the majority of civilian casualties via one method or another. Often, the Israeli bullets or bombs may have inflicted death, but not after “call outs,” phone call warnings, evacuation warnings and assistance etc.
Like most terrorist organizations, Hamas relies on using CIVCAS/ civilian casualties, as propaganda to halt military responses after their initial and ongoing attacks. Western media and the UN allowed themselves to be complicit in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian propaganda campaigns. There is not an ounce of Journalism ethics in their coverage. Our campus protests and those in other western capitals were the result of this. It is ongoing.
Now that Gaza is less of a main focal point for news media, the prominence of Iran in causing this war is coming more into focus. This is also the link to discussing Putin and Xi, in the last section. Iran has significant importance to both Putin and Xi, Putin in particular. Iran’s enormous support to Hamas and Hezbollah is much of the reason that Hamas was empowered to start this war with Israel in the first place. It provides Putin a global diversion from his failures in Ukraine and Iran has no choice but to provide support. She depends on Russia and China for support and commercial reasons, including Xi’s China Dream/ BRI policies.
To avoid all of the reading in the linked essays, below is a succinct view of what Xi is up to:
Xi is well along in his China Dream Strategy towards regional hegemony in 2035 and global in 2049. The skeleton of this strategy of his aggression is the BRI or Belt and Road Initiative. It is based on the ancient concept of "Silk Roads" of Marco Polo fame. In other words, to build relationships and infrastructure around the world that gives him influence to create the ancient Chinese version of a Tributary System of government headed by and in support of China. It's fair to say he and his successors wish their own dynasty as "emperors." In short, he wants to rule the world. - Cobaugh - 02 August 2024
So, to wrap up this section, let’s put all of this Axis of Evil talk into perspective as a primary threat to US and allied national security. In fact, it is the most dangerous global threat since World War II.
So, when we consider places like Ukraine and Gaza, it is important to see them in relevance to the Axis of Evil, their global intentions and their depth of commitment to replacing the RBIO/ Rules-Based International Order. Every single time that Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Putin, China and their other support nations have even a minor success, China is a bit stronger because it is they that are the top dog in the Axis of Evil. If we as a nation and NATO members do not keep this in mind in regard to how we support Israel and Ukraine and the other targets of any of them, then we will not be addressing the core threat. Their collective agenda is to destroy western civilization for the simple reason that it gets in the way of dictatorship and all of the evil that comes with it. This makes democracy itself, their primary target. This makes the perfect transition the most serious threat of all, discussed in the next section.
The last threat to global stability and democracy is today’s MAGA GOP and this section is dedicated to the reasons why. I understand that there is a lot leading up to this last threat but without the background, the severity of the collective threats would be much more difficult to fathom.
It is no secret that former and treasonous president Trump, has a deep love and admiration for Putin and Putin’s oligarchical style of government. In many respects, Trump fawns over Putin and knows that he’s subservient to him, even when he occupied the Oval Office. Official GOP policy throughout the Trump era, has been far more in support of Putin, than the US and NATO.
He handed over Syrian and Iraqi oil to Putin. Did little or nothing to stop Assad’s genocide in Syria, tried his best to destroy NATO and undermined any serious strategy to corral Chinese aggression. This is the short list. All of this gave incremental but significant “wins” to the Axis of Evil, especially the undermining of NATO. For the record, had Trump had a second term, he would have removed the US from the alliance that has kept Europe at peace since 1945, and the end of the second world war. More than any other single factor, NATO and its Article 5, collective defense were the sustained policies that ended the Cold War.
The GOP blindly supported 95% of all this via Congress and political appointee loyalists in Trump’s administration. The GOP agenda has not changed and still, in all respects supports Trump’s agenda. They share far-right ideology, including White Christian Nationalism and ignore any law or truth that is inconvenient to their extremist agenda. As noted, this includes fawning over Putin and dictatorships. They are in their current form, anti-American, unconstitutional and in support of destroying the one single most important link in the chain of global democracy, the United States. Xi, Putin, Iran and N. Korea along with BRICS are in their eyes, the replacement for the western liberal order, we all have lived under for the past 80 years.
Nothing in the last paragraph is hyperbole or politically motivated. Any number of searches of credible research will establish the veracity of the points made. For those who prefer earlier TAT essays with links to sources, I will add a handful below.
The GOP supporting Putin, is really the GOP supporting Xi, Iran, N. Korea and BRICS. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Our 2024 election isn't politics, it's a new, Civil War (truthaboutthreats.com)
A lesson for those MAGA family and friends: Being a Republican today, doesn’t make you a Conservative (truthaboutthreats.com)
Project 2025; part cheerleading, part war plan and all, bullets of BS, aimed at the heart of American Democracy. (truthaboutthreats.com)
MAGA's sellout of America and Western democracy (truthaboutthreats.com)
To the MAGA controlled GOP, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" (truthaboutthreats.com)
Not only has this version supported Trump blindly since at least 2015, this translates into direct support for Putin’s agenda. Now that Putin is behind Xi in the global hierarchy of adversarial powers, this means that the GOP supporting Putin is the equivalent of supporting the entire Axis of Evil, by default. It has long baffled me that more think tanks, do not make this common sense and evidence-rich assessment of our “fifth column” threat, more clearly to the American people.
A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favour of an enemy group or nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. - Fifth Column, Understanding the Relationship between Corruption and Conflict - Transparency International
Examples of Fifth Column efforts are along the line of dark money PACs with unconstitutional agendas. In the US these overwhelmingly are Corporate and personal oligarchs like Elon Musk and alleged think tanks like The Heritage Foundation who creates doctrine, agendas and strategies to overtly subordinate our constitution with unconstitutional concepts like Christian Nationalism. Just as I am finishing this essay today, another excellent bit of investigative journalism from ProPublica has revealed a global effort by elite wealth to create Ziglag, an organisation dedicated to replacing our constitutional republic with a White Christian Nationalist-styled nation.
“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.” Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads like the work of a political organization. It plans to pour money into mobilizing voters in Arizona who are “sympathetic to Republicans” in order to secure “10,640 additional unique votes” — almost the exact margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use controversial AI software to enable mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states." - Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country - ProPublica - Andy Kroll, ProPublica and Nick Surgey
I have in the past written enough about White Christian Nationalism and Oligarchy as severe constitutional threats so will only add a couple of lengths below for more complete insights. The bottom-line point is simple, elite wealth in conjunction with Christian Nationalist ideology are actively supported extensively and organized to overturn the United States as a constitutional republic. The efforts are coordinated by both foreign adversaries like Russia, China, Iran etc. They work in tandem and with covert cooperation with groups like Heritage Foundation, Ziglag, the GOP and a conglomeration of aberrant Christian organizations.
Today’s essay is long, and since at the beginning, I promised succinct, I must stop now. The summary is actually pretty much bare bones and to the point. We’ve covered a lot of turf today and most of the globe and this admittedly, a lot to absorb. It is always most difficult to communicate effectively when presented with multiple, acute threats. For this reason, I will convey my final points in a series of numbered items, for ease of digestion and clarity.
The US, western democracy and the Rules-Based Internation Order are at severe threat from adversaries working directly and obliquely, together.
The top tier-threats are the Axis of Evil, BRICS in its current form, elite wealth oligarchy, Religious Nationalism and a distinct Fifth Column effort called the GOP.
Ukraine, Israel, the Axis of Evil are just battles in the overall threat and are all very much related
The facts support all of this and any amount of scrolling through the archives of this publication will reveal mountains of evidence, based on multiple credible sources.
The US and NATO national security communities do not recognize this situation as the acute, combined threat as described today. Their methods for managing such threats are antiquated, bogged down in useless doctrine and obstructive operation architectures.
Come November, the only significant obstacle to impending disaster, is the ballot box.
We cannot depend on the GOP. They are as a party, fully complicit in this threat.
Even if we succeed in repulsing the immediate threat at the ballot box, generational changes in national security apparatuses, can sustain effective checks and balances to prevent a resurgence over time.
History is instructive here. This is not the first time the world has been here, nor will it be the last. The Cold War, World War II and other conflicts dating the Roman Empire and beyond have been at the same crossroads. Now that we are here, it is up to us. Our children, grandchildren’s and successive generations of our progeny’s future depend on us now. The key to not repeating the failures of our predecessors, is learning and more importantly, learning from truth.
Yes, I completely understand that this is much to digest but it is imperative that more understand the acute nature than less, if we are to rescue our nation from these threats. The US is the keystone of global democracy and the RBIO. We cannot fail in this mission.
Thank you kindly to everyone who has sorted through all of this. Now, we must take on this challenge with all the vigor required.
Cheers for your weekend,
Paul