Yuri Felshtinsky. The Icebreaker Known as Trump
The Republican Party hopes to use Icebreaker Trump to realize its program and ambitions.
Israel thinks that thanks to Icebreaker Trump its security will be increased.
Putin plans to use Icebreaker Trump to remove sanctions, bring legality to Russia’s seizure of neighboring territories, dissolve NATO and put the Soviet Union back on the world map.
Where will Icebreaker Trump in fact head and who will direct it?
Russian-American historian and political scientist Yuri Felshtinsky, co-author of "Blowing up Russia" & "The Corporation: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin"
If one relies on Trump’s election platform, the picture is a gloomy one. Hailing from the business world, Trump favors simple solutions. It is not a coincidence that for propaganda Trump’s primary instrument is Twitter: all problems and their solutions reduced to a short phrase. If the problem is very complex, two phrases. But in the current political context there are no simple problems and no simple solutions. The primitive slogan, “America First”, is nothing more than a throwback to America’s isolationist policies of the 1920's and 1930's. The result of these policies is well known: World War II.
Undoubtedly, all politicians, and not just American ones, must think first and foremost of their own country and people. In this sense, there is nothing wrong or unnatural about the slogan “America First”, especially when used in an election campaign. The important question is what is included in this slogan and how it is implemented. The search for a “golden middle ground” is always challenging and problematic, particularly in a democratic country such as the United States. The executive orders and decrees that Trump is now eagerly and regularly signing are not a formula for successfully governing the United States.
Protectionism, which Trump now espouses, can lead to some short-term gains (e.g. it is seen as a positive by the American stock market, with the Dow Jones recently breaking the 20,000 mark for the first time). Protectionism can boost employment, incomes, and increase American manufacturing. But it can also lead to inflation. The increase in prices will primarily affect the consumer, that is the entire population, and is in essence an imposition of a new tax and one that is not progressive, but a “per capita” one. With one hand inflation affects the poorest segment of the population and with the other hand reduces the competitiveness of the United States in the world. The American automobile industry at one time became non-competitive in the world and gave up its leading role to Japan primarily due to its excessive reliance on the support and protectionism of its own government, and not on the discipline of a free market. From this defeat the American auto industry, once the world’s leader, still has not recovered. These are all basic truths that are obvious to everyone. However, Trump hopes that during the four or eight years that he is in The White House the negative consequences of protectionism will not be felt, and how they are to be resolved after his departure does not concern him.
The same logic applies to illegal immigration. This issue against which Trump has directed his crusade is indeed a serious problem for the United States. If it wasn’t for illegal immigration (and illegal cash-based wages), the government would collect more taxes, labor power would be stronger in the USA and in particular, incomes for low-skilled workers would increase. However, this would also lead to increased prices for manufacturing and agricultural products.
Nobody is opposed to tackling illegal immigration, which for any country is an unfavorable phenomenon. But illegal immigration exists primarily because there is no simple solution to the problem.
Throughout history the traditional response to invasion has been simple - a wall. Many walls have been built around the world to surround castles, cities, and even whole civilizations, if one is to include the Great Wall of China, which actually isn’t completely solid. A very famous example in history was the Berlin Wall, which prevented Germans from escaping from East to West Germany. Currently, in Israel there is a wall on the West Bank barrier meant as a safety precaution and stretching over 430 miles that took ten years to construct.
Will Trump be able to build a wall between the United States and Mexico in a decade? Yes. The only question is how much it will cost the US Treasury (i.e. the American taxpayer) and how long the project will take, the latter question having little meaning as Trump’s term will come to an end regardless after four or eight years.
The feasibility of constructing such a wall between the United States and Mexico is questionable. In implementing the restriction imposed by the Berlin Wall, guards were instructed to shoot to kill and only in this way was the barrier enforced. Israeli border guards also use weapons to prevent the penetration of terrorists into Israel. Whether American guards will shoot Mexican immigrants trying to cross into the U.S. illegally is a very important question. How will the resulting deficit in the budget of The Department of Homeland Security, out of which the wall is currently set to be paid for according to Trump, be overcome is another question. The final question, of course, is whether a wall will actually reduce the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, and if it does, will the reduction be significant.
Trump is operating within the scope of his presidential term. The United State of America, as a country, is operating under a completely different framework. It became a great power not out of a desire to be a global hegemon, but because the European world (and the Muslim world today) without the involvement of the United States is in a constant state of self-destruction. For Europe, the clearest examples of this self-destruction are the two world wars. For the Muslim world - the permanent war against Israel. It is hard to imagine how prosperous the Muslim world could be, if it stopped considering Israel as its enemy. In fact, Muslim terrorism today in many ways is largely geared towards the elimination of Israel quickly and in a radical manner.
Yes, America, as a great power, does spend an insane amount of money on its foreign policy projects. In some instances, this spending goes towards helping other countries or international organizations. In others, it is involvement in foreign conflicts and sometimes even outright military action against a particular country or regime. It is clear that all of these projects are expensive.
Between the First and Second World Wars, America did not intervene in European politics, for 20 years it conducted an isolationist policy and saved its money. But this policy proved to be very costly for the USA economy. It was during this time of saving on foreign activities that the Great Depression occurred. Then came World War II. The United States was forced to provide aid first to Great Britain, and then to the Soviet Union (the debts from this were basically forgiven by American banks). Even with this aid it proved impossible for the United States to not intervene in the European conflict, and following its intervention the United States was forced to spend even more money on war measures and following the war, on the aid to a devastated Europe (The Marshall Plan). It must also not be forgotten that approximately 400,000 Americans died in World War II. So, it is impossible to say that the isolationist policies following World War I were successful. They will also not be successful under Trump.
The Middle East policies of the United States (and today, more broadly, the policies of the United States towards Muslim countries) is full of mistakes and is not criticized simply by the lazy. Therefore, I will not join in the general chorus. Clearly, there is no quick solutions (within a century) of this problem. But in the example of Syria - even just Syria - we can see the consequences of a refusal by the United States to take an active and timely role in the conflict: the spreading of this internal conflict of a civil war to an almost complete collapse of the government and to an unprecedented since World War II problem of refugees with grave consequences first and foremost for Europe. And this is just one government, Syria, with a population of 18 million. If we project this onto the entire Middle East and we see that American isolationism towards this region would amount to a tsunami for Europe.
We still haven’t even touched the Iranian problem…which is simple at its core. Iran is a Middle East superpower, at least that is what Iran claims and to what it aspires. We will leave aside whether it was right or not for President Obama to sign the nuclear agreement with the Iranian leadership. Let’s just assume that it is completely wrong and operate under a worst-case scenario: in the coming years Iran will obtain nuclear weapons. If under this circumstance, Iran does not renounce its primary foreign policy goal, the elimination of Israel, this could lead, with the acquiescence of President Trump, to nuclear war between Israel and Iran.
I write “with the acquiescence of President Trump” because declarations of support for Israel and the moving of the capital to Jerusalem is not sufficient for guaranteeing the integrity of Israel. It is also necessary to prevent Iran from becoming a regional superpower. This is impossible without taking on Putin over the Iranian question, because Russia is a primary, if not the only, serious ally of Iran. But to take on Putin is something to which Trump is categorically not inclined as there is an agreement between Trump and Putin over a wide range of foreign policy issues, one of which is assistance to Russia in “The Middle East” for the joint fight against radical Islamic terrorism.
Having established that an Iranian-Israel military conflict in the coming years could become one of the most serious in the world, let us return to Europe. In a recent report the Pentagon named three strategic threats to the United States: The Islamic State, Russia, and China. With the first, Trump plans to do battle based on his vision and understanding of this problem (a battle also fought by the two previous administrations). The second enemy Trump plans to unite with in his battle against the first and third. In this Trump is planning to use Russia to battle the first threat and the third he will take care of himself.
Let’s start with the first strategic threat: China. China is a communist dictatorship, who has in the view of the world market successfully reformed its socialist economy. Socialism in China remains just in the fact that the majority of people work for pennies in inhumanely difficult conditions producing things that are then sent as exports out of the country. The government profits immensely from this system. The well-being of the rest of the population is not important, but is still growing (although it started out a very low level, there has emerged a significant group of Chinese businessmen). Today China is the largest trading partner of the United States.
The foreign policy ambitions of China were limited by their declaration that Taiwan is the historical territory of China. However, China did not attempt a military takeover of Taiwan. China also did not attempt a military takeover of Hong Kong, rented to England for a century, but waited patiently for the end of the rent agreement.
The spoiler of the party was the building by China of an artificial island in the South China Sea, which are in essence military bases, but should currently fall under the range of navigation of the seas in the region. This island and claims by China that the sea around the island belong to it, is the reason that China was labeled by the Pentagon as a strategic threat.
Trump plans to oppose these aggressive actions of the Chinese government. And all members of the world’s progressive population are on his side in this case. The problem is that Trump plays the “China Card” not in an attempt to stand up to Communist China, but more domestic cover for his other foreign policy strategy: the weakening of NATO and the surrender of Eastern Europe to Putin. Conflict in Asia, be it conflict with China or military operations against North Korea, who is developing nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles capable of inflicting damage, are just distractions, a new front, that will “require of USA” to stop funding of NATO or even the disbanding of this “obsolete”, in the words of Trump, organization, the departure of the United States from Europe and its union with Russia for war in the Asian theater.
However, if the United States leaves Europe for its actions on the Asian front, the history of World War II will repeat itself: an aggressor will begin to take possession of its neighbors. Today this aggressor is Russia. Twice in this century Russia has intervened in the affairs of foreign governments and taken part of its territory: in 2008 Russia started a war with Georgia and as a result of the war grabbed Abkhazia and South Ossetia; in 2014 Russia entered into Ukraine and took Crimea and the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Like Hitler, who took territory in 1938-39 under the banner of unification of the German nation under one government; like Stalin, who took territory in 1939-40 under the banner of reunification of "fraternal" peoples living in the USSR and in order to guarantee the security of the borders of the Soviet Union, -- Putin undertook his territory grabs based on the interests of Russians living outside of Russia’s borders. If there was anything “hybrid” in this military campaign of Putin, then the military actions of Hitler and Stalin must also be called hybrid.
There is no reason to suppose that the military ambitions of the Kremlin are limited to these territorial grabs. Putin and the Russian propaganda machine openly state that the strategic goal #1 of the current Russian leadership is the re-establishment of the Soviet Union, the breakup of which for Putin personally, and for the country as a whole, was a catastrophe. Clearly, no one is calling for the re-establishment of the “USSR” in its previous form. But Soviet symbolism, from the national anthem to “TASS”, is coming back slowly. The actual name of the new "Russian World" state is not that important.
To achieve strategic objective #1, it is necessary to first achieve strategic objective #2 - the formal disbanding of NATO or the annulment of NATO’s Article 5, which provides mutual assistance to NATO countries in the case of an attack on one of its members. The accomplishment of this task has been entrusted to Icebreaker Trump. The rest will be taken care of by Putin, as without the American nuclear umbrella and Article 5 of NATO statute, Europe will be indefensible in the face of Russia.
If this scenario appears to some as too primitive or pessimistic, I want to remind you that in 2013 the annexation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine looked just as fantastical.
Much depends on Rex Tillerson. In the president’s circle, Tillerson will be a liaison between Trump and Putin, while General Flynn, adviser to Trump on foreign policy, will serve as the liaison between Trump and all other Russian politicians and diplomats, both those work in Russia and outside of it. In the coming days, Trump will begin to “sell” to the American people on closer ties with Putin as beneficial for the Untied State of America.
Four to eight years is not a long historical period for the deciding of major geopolitical questions and for territorial grabs. The main players of these events, Trump and Putin, will act decisively and rapidly. The exact nature of these plans we shall find out very soon. But military operations on several fronts might be the inevitable result of the Trump-Putin agreement on NATO and Europe.
Israel thinks that thanks to Icebreaker Trump its security will be increased.
Putin plans to use Icebreaker Trump to remove sanctions, bring legality to Russia’s seizure of neighboring territories, dissolve NATO and put the Soviet Union back on the world map.
Where will Icebreaker Trump in fact head and who will direct it?
Russian-American historian and political scientist Yuri Felshtinsky, co-author of "Blowing up Russia" & "The Corporation: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin"
If one relies on Trump’s election platform, the picture is a gloomy one. Hailing from the business world, Trump favors simple solutions. It is not a coincidence that for propaganda Trump’s primary instrument is Twitter: all problems and their solutions reduced to a short phrase. If the problem is very complex, two phrases. But in the current political context there are no simple problems and no simple solutions. The primitive slogan, “America First”, is nothing more than a throwback to America’s isolationist policies of the 1920's and 1930's. The result of these policies is well known: World War II.
Undoubtedly, all politicians, and not just American ones, must think first and foremost of their own country and people. In this sense, there is nothing wrong or unnatural about the slogan “America First”, especially when used in an election campaign. The important question is what is included in this slogan and how it is implemented. The search for a “golden middle ground” is always challenging and problematic, particularly in a democratic country such as the United States. The executive orders and decrees that Trump is now eagerly and regularly signing are not a formula for successfully governing the United States.
Protectionism, which Trump now espouses, can lead to some short-term gains (e.g. it is seen as a positive by the American stock market, with the Dow Jones recently breaking the 20,000 mark for the first time). Protectionism can boost employment, incomes, and increase American manufacturing. But it can also lead to inflation. The increase in prices will primarily affect the consumer, that is the entire population, and is in essence an imposition of a new tax and one that is not progressive, but a “per capita” one. With one hand inflation affects the poorest segment of the population and with the other hand reduces the competitiveness of the United States in the world. The American automobile industry at one time became non-competitive in the world and gave up its leading role to Japan primarily due to its excessive reliance on the support and protectionism of its own government, and not on the discipline of a free market. From this defeat the American auto industry, once the world’s leader, still has not recovered. These are all basic truths that are obvious to everyone. However, Trump hopes that during the four or eight years that he is in The White House the negative consequences of protectionism will not be felt, and how they are to be resolved after his departure does not concern him.
The same logic applies to illegal immigration. This issue against which Trump has directed his crusade is indeed a serious problem for the United States. If it wasn’t for illegal immigration (and illegal cash-based wages), the government would collect more taxes, labor power would be stronger in the USA and in particular, incomes for low-skilled workers would increase. However, this would also lead to increased prices for manufacturing and agricultural products.
Nobody is opposed to tackling illegal immigration, which for any country is an unfavorable phenomenon. But illegal immigration exists primarily because there is no simple solution to the problem.
Throughout history the traditional response to invasion has been simple - a wall. Many walls have been built around the world to surround castles, cities, and even whole civilizations, if one is to include the Great Wall of China, which actually isn’t completely solid. A very famous example in history was the Berlin Wall, which prevented Germans from escaping from East to West Germany. Currently, in Israel there is a wall on the West Bank barrier meant as a safety precaution and stretching over 430 miles that took ten years to construct.
Will Trump be able to build a wall between the United States and Mexico in a decade? Yes. The only question is how much it will cost the US Treasury (i.e. the American taxpayer) and how long the project will take, the latter question having little meaning as Trump’s term will come to an end regardless after four or eight years.
The feasibility of constructing such a wall between the United States and Mexico is questionable. In implementing the restriction imposed by the Berlin Wall, guards were instructed to shoot to kill and only in this way was the barrier enforced. Israeli border guards also use weapons to prevent the penetration of terrorists into Israel. Whether American guards will shoot Mexican immigrants trying to cross into the U.S. illegally is a very important question. How will the resulting deficit in the budget of The Department of Homeland Security, out of which the wall is currently set to be paid for according to Trump, be overcome is another question. The final question, of course, is whether a wall will actually reduce the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, and if it does, will the reduction be significant.
Trump is operating within the scope of his presidential term. The United State of America, as a country, is operating under a completely different framework. It became a great power not out of a desire to be a global hegemon, but because the European world (and the Muslim world today) without the involvement of the United States is in a constant state of self-destruction. For Europe, the clearest examples of this self-destruction are the two world wars. For the Muslim world - the permanent war against Israel. It is hard to imagine how prosperous the Muslim world could be, if it stopped considering Israel as its enemy. In fact, Muslim terrorism today in many ways is largely geared towards the elimination of Israel quickly and in a radical manner.
Yes, America, as a great power, does spend an insane amount of money on its foreign policy projects. In some instances, this spending goes towards helping other countries or international organizations. In others, it is involvement in foreign conflicts and sometimes even outright military action against a particular country or regime. It is clear that all of these projects are expensive.
Between the First and Second World Wars, America did not intervene in European politics, for 20 years it conducted an isolationist policy and saved its money. But this policy proved to be very costly for the USA economy. It was during this time of saving on foreign activities that the Great Depression occurred. Then came World War II. The United States was forced to provide aid first to Great Britain, and then to the Soviet Union (the debts from this were basically forgiven by American banks). Even with this aid it proved impossible for the United States to not intervene in the European conflict, and following its intervention the United States was forced to spend even more money on war measures and following the war, on the aid to a devastated Europe (The Marshall Plan). It must also not be forgotten that approximately 400,000 Americans died in World War II. So, it is impossible to say that the isolationist policies following World War I were successful. They will also not be successful under Trump.
The Middle East policies of the United States (and today, more broadly, the policies of the United States towards Muslim countries) is full of mistakes and is not criticized simply by the lazy. Therefore, I will not join in the general chorus. Clearly, there is no quick solutions (within a century) of this problem. But in the example of Syria - even just Syria - we can see the consequences of a refusal by the United States to take an active and timely role in the conflict: the spreading of this internal conflict of a civil war to an almost complete collapse of the government and to an unprecedented since World War II problem of refugees with grave consequences first and foremost for Europe. And this is just one government, Syria, with a population of 18 million. If we project this onto the entire Middle East and we see that American isolationism towards this region would amount to a tsunami for Europe.
We still haven’t even touched the Iranian problem…which is simple at its core. Iran is a Middle East superpower, at least that is what Iran claims and to what it aspires. We will leave aside whether it was right or not for President Obama to sign the nuclear agreement with the Iranian leadership. Let’s just assume that it is completely wrong and operate under a worst-case scenario: in the coming years Iran will obtain nuclear weapons. If under this circumstance, Iran does not renounce its primary foreign policy goal, the elimination of Israel, this could lead, with the acquiescence of President Trump, to nuclear war between Israel and Iran.
I write “with the acquiescence of President Trump” because declarations of support for Israel and the moving of the capital to Jerusalem is not sufficient for guaranteeing the integrity of Israel. It is also necessary to prevent Iran from becoming a regional superpower. This is impossible without taking on Putin over the Iranian question, because Russia is a primary, if not the only, serious ally of Iran. But to take on Putin is something to which Trump is categorically not inclined as there is an agreement between Trump and Putin over a wide range of foreign policy issues, one of which is assistance to Russia in “The Middle East” for the joint fight against radical Islamic terrorism.
Having established that an Iranian-Israel military conflict in the coming years could become one of the most serious in the world, let us return to Europe. In a recent report the Pentagon named three strategic threats to the United States: The Islamic State, Russia, and China. With the first, Trump plans to do battle based on his vision and understanding of this problem (a battle also fought by the two previous administrations). The second enemy Trump plans to unite with in his battle against the first and third. In this Trump is planning to use Russia to battle the first threat and the third he will take care of himself.
Let’s start with the first strategic threat: China. China is a communist dictatorship, who has in the view of the world market successfully reformed its socialist economy. Socialism in China remains just in the fact that the majority of people work for pennies in inhumanely difficult conditions producing things that are then sent as exports out of the country. The government profits immensely from this system. The well-being of the rest of the population is not important, but is still growing (although it started out a very low level, there has emerged a significant group of Chinese businessmen). Today China is the largest trading partner of the United States.
The foreign policy ambitions of China were limited by their declaration that Taiwan is the historical territory of China. However, China did not attempt a military takeover of Taiwan. China also did not attempt a military takeover of Hong Kong, rented to England for a century, but waited patiently for the end of the rent agreement.
The spoiler of the party was the building by China of an artificial island in the South China Sea, which are in essence military bases, but should currently fall under the range of navigation of the seas in the region. This island and claims by China that the sea around the island belong to it, is the reason that China was labeled by the Pentagon as a strategic threat.
Trump plans to oppose these aggressive actions of the Chinese government. And all members of the world’s progressive population are on his side in this case. The problem is that Trump plays the “China Card” not in an attempt to stand up to Communist China, but more domestic cover for his other foreign policy strategy: the weakening of NATO and the surrender of Eastern Europe to Putin. Conflict in Asia, be it conflict with China or military operations against North Korea, who is developing nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles capable of inflicting damage, are just distractions, a new front, that will “require of USA” to stop funding of NATO or even the disbanding of this “obsolete”, in the words of Trump, organization, the departure of the United States from Europe and its union with Russia for war in the Asian theater.
However, if the United States leaves Europe for its actions on the Asian front, the history of World War II will repeat itself: an aggressor will begin to take possession of its neighbors. Today this aggressor is Russia. Twice in this century Russia has intervened in the affairs of foreign governments and taken part of its territory: in 2008 Russia started a war with Georgia and as a result of the war grabbed Abkhazia and South Ossetia; in 2014 Russia entered into Ukraine and took Crimea and the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Like Hitler, who took territory in 1938-39 under the banner of unification of the German nation under one government; like Stalin, who took territory in 1939-40 under the banner of reunification of "fraternal" peoples living in the USSR and in order to guarantee the security of the borders of the Soviet Union, -- Putin undertook his territory grabs based on the interests of Russians living outside of Russia’s borders. If there was anything “hybrid” in this military campaign of Putin, then the military actions of Hitler and Stalin must also be called hybrid.
There is no reason to suppose that the military ambitions of the Kremlin are limited to these territorial grabs. Putin and the Russian propaganda machine openly state that the strategic goal #1 of the current Russian leadership is the re-establishment of the Soviet Union, the breakup of which for Putin personally, and for the country as a whole, was a catastrophe. Clearly, no one is calling for the re-establishment of the “USSR” in its previous form. But Soviet symbolism, from the national anthem to “TASS”, is coming back slowly. The actual name of the new "Russian World" state is not that important.
To achieve strategic objective #1, it is necessary to first achieve strategic objective #2 - the formal disbanding of NATO or the annulment of NATO’s Article 5, which provides mutual assistance to NATO countries in the case of an attack on one of its members. The accomplishment of this task has been entrusted to Icebreaker Trump. The rest will be taken care of by Putin, as without the American nuclear umbrella and Article 5 of NATO statute, Europe will be indefensible in the face of Russia.
If this scenario appears to some as too primitive or pessimistic, I want to remind you that in 2013 the annexation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine looked just as fantastical.
Much depends on Rex Tillerson. In the president’s circle, Tillerson will be a liaison between Trump and Putin, while General Flynn, adviser to Trump on foreign policy, will serve as the liaison between Trump and all other Russian politicians and diplomats, both those work in Russia and outside of it. In the coming days, Trump will begin to “sell” to the American people on closer ties with Putin as beneficial for the Untied State of America.
Four to eight years is not a long historical period for the deciding of major geopolitical questions and for territorial grabs. The main players of these events, Trump and Putin, will act decisively and rapidly. The exact nature of these plans we shall find out very soon. But military operations on several fronts might be the inevitable result of the Trump-Putin agreement on NATO and Europe.