Yes, Trump just allied the US with Putin and against our allies

This doesn’t end well

TAT readers,

Welcome to another Monday in the fight to shut down Trump and his GOP coup. As I announced yesterday, I would be writing the next part in my series regarding the ongoing coup attempt. Apparently, a flu bug or similar bug preferred that I stay in bed, for far too long this morning to finish such a detailed essay. Instead, I will share some brief professional insights stemming from last Friday’s fiasco. No, not that fake patriotism oozing from today’s, fully MAGA GOP, but what America has always stood for, until Trump and his oligarchs, began spewing their fake version, of “God, Guns and Trump.” Now, even MAGA is sorry, as that Trump, Putin and Musk, are throwing them under the bus too. They will suffer, right alongside the rest of us honest, non-MAGA Americans. America as a constitutional republic, global leader for democracy and defense of the defenseless, is over. We are now just one more addition, to the Axis of Evil.

I confess, I’m still fuming over Trump’s pro-Putin tirade against President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, this past Friday. As that it was a deeply emotional event and one that has raised mountains of criticism around the world. I thought it worthwhile to add a couple of professional insights, to the national and global security implications from such behavior. You may wish to peruse these considerations, with an adult beverage. Were I feeling better, I would likely be writing this with such a beverage next to me.

I and others with my experience, have been writing about the certainty of last week’s capitulation to Putin, since at least, late 2014. I have worked professionally, to preempt, this capitulation for over a decade, but we cannot get today’s Republican Party, to listen. They are no longer conservative, but a zombie-like party, fully subservient to Trump, who is subservient to Putin.

Like an expected death in the family, when it finally occurs, the fact that it was expected, does little to stem the emotions of the loss. In many ways, what the Trump GOP is now doing, is such an enormous loss that a mourning analogy, fully applies. Fortunately, with enough support from non-MAGA Americans, we may be able to stave off loss and in fact, enable the resurrection of our constitutional republic.

From the perspective of Russia and global security, what Trump did towards the end of last week, should make it apparent to any malignantly uninformed GOP voter, that Trump surrendered to Putin and is now making the US an ally of Russia and quite likely China, in the long run. If this is not treason, I don’t know what is.

It’s easy to say that I accuse the subservient, brainwashed, Republican Party of aligning with Russia, but allow me to add some professional insights to make it perfectly clear.

First, much of my post, uniformed military career, consulting and analysis work, was much of my work. Largely, that work revolved around planning to mitigate the nation’s worst enemies. When the term “GPC or Great Power Competition came along, I worked mostly against China and Russia, but had a great insider view into the other primary threats as well. For nearly a year, I worked on a team headed by that extraordinary patriot, then LTC Alexander Vindman. In the Trump era, LTC Vindman was an exceptionally talented expert for understanding Russia and especially, her relationship with Ukraine and other neighboring nations. I place his insights alongside such experts as Fiona Hill, which should help you understand the depth of my respect for his leadership and knowledge.

What most Americans don’t realize, is that in the modern era, beginning with the Soviets, Russian aggression against the West, has long been institutionalized. The names of the Soviet and Russian global perspectives may have changed over the decades, but their actual worldview has not. Putin’s goals are even more aggressive and ambitious, than his previous Soviet mentor’s intentions. Those goals are expressed in plenty of scholarly documents, but today I wish to talk just a bit, about Putin’s world view based on Russian/ Soviet long-held perspectives on global power and security. In some ways, Putin wishes to expand what he considers the glory and power of Russia, far beyond any previous Tsar’s dreams.

Putin believes in a concept, loosely translated as Three Sovereigns. In other words and in our current era, he believes that only the US, China and Russia should control everything and everyone else, is a subservient nation to one of these three. This concept is captured in the quote below,

“The concept of a multipolar oligarchy leads to the Russian concept that true sovereignty is possessed by only a few great powers; the sovereignty of states it views as dependent on great powers is limited. The territory of true sovereigns and those states under Russian protection is sacrosanct and can be defended by force; for the others, it is impermissible to regain territory that is “in dispute” by force.”

- Russia at the United Nations: Law, Sovereignty, and Legitimacy
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Philip Remler
- Published on January 22, 2020

The point that I’m trying to make is: that what Trump is signing our nation up for, is membership in an exclusive club of oligarchs, whom the entire world toils for. The only other members of the club, Russia and China, are genocidal, autocrats running abusive nations for oligarchs. Oh… and the unsaid part is, that every person in every nation, essentially becomes a serf, to the three leaders. When it comes to serfdom, there is little joy, if anything else to be had. Joining Putin overtly and most likely Xi, more covertly, is what I have long claimed to be the “new world order” that Putin spoke about, after congratulating Trump on his election win.

Also, my long deep experience of tracking Russia and China within the national security community, means that I was also well informed about the post Cold War geo-strategic realignment, globally. I’m not the only one who has watched this crisis coming over a couple of decades. We didn’t prepare and we failed to defend the nation from foreign influence operations. It was those operations, and in conjunction with the Republican Party, that led Americans to believe in conspiracy theories and to support the narrator of those theories, Donald Trump. In many ways and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US became arrogantly sluggish, as a unilateral superpower. Now we are paying the price.

Now, here we are watching Trump hand over our nation and global leadership to Putin on national TV. He might as well of just waved a white flag. Last week, in further capitulation to Putin, it was announced that the US would fully cease defending ourselves from Russia in the cyber and influence realm. Such an announcement signals to our adversaries, that not only is the US vulnerable but every one of us citizens are individually as well. The Pentagon is now abandoning several locations around the world that require a strong US force as a deterrent. Yes, it appears that we’ve surrendered completely.

Knowing what has just been discussed, it is easy to see future, US forces operating with Russia and against NATO. It is easy to see that oligarchy will reach new heights, without citizens willing to publicly stand up and restore our nation. It is easy to see a future US military that under orders from the president, treats its citizens the way Russians are treated by their security services, when they dissenting. Not one single thing about the America we were living in, will remain the same.

We cannot look at this threat through the same lens, that we used to understand pre-Trump America. It is pretty hard, even for me who understands these threats very well, to get my head around the fact that these threats, are actually occurring in America. It is incomprehensible that our family and friends, often support the current Trump regime. If we are to stop this coup, it’s time that we started using new thinking. That thinking must include active participations against the administration. Protests against media that refuses to publish truth or that protects the coup with selective reporting. Journalism ethics are meaningless, if not employed. We must also be willing to risk the ire of family and friends, by publicly acting against their extremist beliefs.

We must be willing to devote the time and energy to stand outside of GOP congressman’s offices, en masse, to show them that their sycophancy, will not be tolerated, especially at the ballot box. We must be willing to wage economic warfare against those oligarchs, corporations and billionaires, who supported and still do support the MAGA GOP. In short, we must show up for our republic. Our window of opportunity to reestablish our republic, won’t stay open for long. I think that Malcom X sums up our situation with simple eloquence, in the quote below.

As for me, I probably require another day or so, to recover from what it ailing me. Still, I will do my best to get on with the next edition of the Coup Series.

My very best to all,

Paul