Trump Might Not Be as Bad as He Appears if he is fighting to get out of the Establishment’s traps
Paul Craig Roberts
Yesterday Nima and I discussed the lies that are ricocheting around news events and how political figures think they can succeed with such obvious lies as the Strait of Hormuz is open, the US is in control of the Strait, and 20 million barrels of oil are being transported through the Strait daily. https://www.youtube.com/live/V2kwURVOV5Q
Nima was concerned with the latest claim from Trump that a deal has been reached with Russia in which Russia will provide 4.8 million tons of diesel fuel to the market in exchange for Trump removing the sanctions on Russia. To facilitate the deal Trump asked Zelensky to quit attacking Russian diesel facilities, and he asked Putin to stop attacking Kiev. Both Zelensky and Russia, according to reports, say they are unaware of this deal. The Russians say that they have no interest in a temporary ceasefire and that what Russia wants is a negotiated comprehensive end to the conflict with the West. Nima asked how could Trump announce an agreement that Zelensky and Putin didn’t know about. NOTE: This morning, October 13, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the supply of Russian diesel fuel to the market “is a very mutually beneficial element of Russian-US cooperation,” but there is no direct link between the US decision on Russian diesel fuel and Russia’s position on Ukraine negotiations. Peskov goes on to say that Moscow has only read media reports about a US-European plan to resolve the situation in Ukraine: “No, we have not heard anything about it. We have seen reports in the media, but we have not heard anything about it,” Peskov told reporters. https://sputnikglobe.com/20261013/russia-us-agreement-on-diesel-fuel-meets-interests-of-both-countries—kremlin-1124874918.html
I replied that I could only speculate. One possible answer, perhaps even a likely answer, is that Trump is putting out a narrative that if it takes hold could lead to a solution. One part of the solution is to protect the Republicans in the midterm elections from higher energy prices and the inflation that rising energy prices cause. Trump might also see that a deal in which sanctions are removed in exchange for more energy supply is a way to extract Washington from the conflict Washington started in Ukraine without it looking like an American defeat. If sanctions are removed and energy is flowing, what is the point of a return to hostilities? I have always thought that Putin’s choice of Stanford and Harvard educated Kirill Dmitriev as Russia’s negotiator and Trump’s choice of business men Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law as Washington’s negotiators was crafted so as to produce a deal that would present a mutually profitable business arrangement more profitable than an unpopular military conflict.
I am a long time critic of Putin for ignoring Napolean’s important statement that “The reputation of one’s arms in war is everything, and equivalent to real forces.” I and Doctorow have concluded, correctly or incorrectly, that Putin’s refusal to use sufficient force to stop Ukraine’s ability to continue the military conflict has caused the conflict to greatly widen and that this widening implies eventually a nuclear conflict. We see many signs of this as the conflict is no longer limited to the Donbas battlefront but has expanded deep into Mother Russia as a result of long-range weapons supplied by the US and Europe and targeting information supplied by the US and MI6 to Ukraine. Two more formerly neutral European countries have joined NATO and more NATO countries have agreed to host US nuclear missiles on their territory. Clearly the war has widened.
Nevertheless, I understand Putin’s approach which does risk nuclear war when Russia has no further room to back away. Putin understands that if he ends the conflict by striking down Ukraine’s ability to continue the fight, which Russia could have done 4.5 years ago and could do tomorrow with conventional weapons alone, he will have obtained Russia’s aims but without Western acceptance. So in effect the conflict doesn’t end.
If Putin imposes a military solution, the West will say: “See, we told you. Putin intends to resurrect the Soviet Empire and spread it into Europe. Germany will be next.” Indeed, Germany seems already to think that Germany is going to be next as Germany prepares for war with Russia, an ill-advised enterprise.
The disagreement between Putin and myself is which of us has the best odds in the gamble on the table. My concern is that Putin’s sacrifice of a decisive military victory is resulting in more Western provocations that will result in nuclear war. Putin’s concern is that a Russian imposed military victory will not be a good victory because it will harden Western opposition to Russia, whose demonstration of strength would be regarded as a threat to all of Europe.
I cannot say that I am right and that Putin is wrong. I just hope he is aware of the risk.
This concludes what Nima and I discussed, so you can save the time of listening to our discussion. Nima’s questions on occasions are provocative and push me into clarifying statements of how I view events as they unfold.
I will end with giving you important information. As a high level Reagan political appointee instrumental to President Reagan’s two important issues–the defeat of stagflation and the end of the Cold War, I can tell you that most presidential appointees are not in office to serve the President but to serve their own careers. It is not unusual for presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, dictators even, to have ministers working against the titular head in behalf of their own agendas and career. In my time in the Reagan administration my main opponents were Reagan’s appointments as his chief of staff, as his budget director, as his chairman of the council of economic advisors and their media whores who thrived on leaks against Reagan’s agenda.
For example the budget director, David Stockman had the intention of being the first budget director to balance the budget. From this achievement he would go on to become US Senator from Michigan or wherever it was he was from, and from there to the presidency. Stockman saw Reagan’s tax rate reduction as an obstacle to his career ambitions.
Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the council of economic advisers, was busy reassuring conservative foundations that supported his situation at Washington University that he was against budget deficits and thus gave little if any support to Reagan’s economic policy.
Reagan’s chief of staff, Jim Baker, just wanted to reassure Wall Street and believed that a small tax rate reduction of 5%, which would be wiped out by inflation before it could be enacted, sufficed to show a Reagan victory in lowering taxes.
The facts which I had in my hands as Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic policy had no influence against these agendas. I simply had to run over them, which meant no further government career. But that is what it took to get to get Reagan’s economic policy out of his own administration so that Congress could vote on it.
I prevailed because I was right, had Reagan’s support and support in Congress and was willing to take the hits. Today 45 years later only Elon Musk can afford to take the hits. Today not even the US Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., can prevail over Big Pharma’s influence over the FDA, CDC, NIH–all of which report to Secretary Kennedy and all of whom obey Big Pharma. Secretary Kennedy cannot even get the proven dangerous Covid-19 vaccines prohibited. Big Pharma’s political campaign contributions are more powerful than the Secretary of Health.
In my opinion, it is the inability of elected governments to prevail over powerful private interests, such as the Israel Lobby, the military-security complex that President Eisenhower warned us about as long ago as 1961, and Big Pharma, that has given rise to an ideological Democrat Party that sees the institutional structure of American society so corrupt that it must be overthrown. The US Supreme Court destroyed the accountability of the US government when it ruled that corporations had First Amendment rights to purchase the US government to serve their agendas.
I doubt that the US will have a French or Leninist revolution, but that is the intention of the new ideological Democrats, and I understand the frustrations that have led them to their war on existing society. There is no doubt whatsoever that the republic established by the Founding Fathers has been corrupted.
Where will redemptive American leadership come from? Trump was defeated by his captivity to the Israel Lobby. The Democrats are committed not to the restoration of America but to America’s overthrow.
It is a true statement that “Where there is no vision the people are lost.” In a world in which the only interests of peoples is in self-affirming narratives the people are doubly lost. A life in false narratives is a life in The Matrix.
Life in The Matrix is life in Western countries today. It is not a life worth living. The question is: In all of the world today do any people other than the Israelis and Zionist MAGA Americans believe in themselves, believe in their country?
Perhaps the Iranians?