Can Less War Mean More Liberty?

As Trump seeks success abroad, keep watch at home

Jan 16, 2025

∙ Paid

Part two: Trump's Domestic Outlook - Will he push back against globalists as in 1st term? (Jan 18, 2025)

Gaza ceasefire may be tentative proof of Trump's pledge to stop conflict
But wars have their own impetus from which giant forces profit
Can Trump's realpolitik replace foreign adventure?
His pitch for Greenland and Panama may signal return to spheres of influence...
And perhaps stability

Jan 16, 2025

The Trump adminstration has begun, as he prepares to resume office. Part one of two.

Days before Donald Trump's inauguration as president, two things are clear. The world is in flux, and his administration intends to try to reshape it.

We have already discussed his overtures to Greenland, Panama Canal and Canada. They are not whimsy, regardless of your opinion on the merits.

Now a ceasefire in Gaza (Don't hold your breath - it has already hit roadblocks).

The Western order, as established by world wars one and two is dead. The option is to reshape it, as best you can, or adopt the ostrich pose.

Head in sand is what we have witnessed for four years.

It was a narcissistic carnival, in which we were forced to witness the mental dysphoria of government officials (search the words "Sam’s nuclear woman's dress”) while in several states the local Nero literally set the house ablaze.

You can forgive yourself for being transfixed — morbid fascination is the snake's technique of mesmerising its prey.

This was no accident. Policy, foreign in particular, was based on values not geography; feelings not truth. Policy based on "feels," unlike pantomime, has real human cost.

To make matters worse, no-one took personal responsibility. Joe Biden was not in charge, U.S. secretary of state Anthony Blinken made 16 visits to Israel where we must assume he was seeking advice. If, as many suspect, former president Barack Obama was pulling the strings, it was an exercise in unaccountability. He said of Biden, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--k things up."

Regardless of your political persuasion, that's no way to run a bar, let alone a country.

Dr Gilbert Doctorow says the world is seeing a return to great powers controlling their neighbourhood.

Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago press conference on January 7, was watched closely in Moscow and Beijing.

"Regarding Greenland, regarding Panama, they rejoiced because they saw that he had completely scrapped the Democratic Party foreign policy based on values and was speaking the language they understand best, called real politik." [1]

They took this to mean that there will be a White House-Kremlin summit, and that "Ukraine will not be on the agenda because the Ukraine problem will be allowed to be solved by the Russians themselves."

This, Doctorow says, will be followed by a new security architecture for Europe and the World based on spheres of influence.

War is a threat to liberty, as James Madison warned: “armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

Wars end

Donald Trump has said he'll stop wars, even before he takes office.

The ceasefire in Gaza may be one sign of that.

The problem is that war has its own momentum. Wars are not fought out of hate; people may fight skirmishes over tribal or border differences, but these can also be provoked. Such fireworks are often used as the false flag pretext for war.

It is money that drives war: the ambition to grab land and resources. It was banking that made possible extended war; it is bankers who profit from the long-term debt wars create. [2]

Russia advances westward towards the Dnieper river. It took a lithium mine. It illustrates the gamble that investors lost in Ukraine.

Money talks

The city of Kurakhovo is a store for lithium worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the Shevchenko deposit. Australian company European Lithium has the mining rights for the deposit but has abandoned it due to the war. Russia has also acquired large deposits of coal, iron ore, manganese, titanium and uranium.

But countries that don't gain the spoils of war are left with the debt.

This could lead to a toxic mix of repression at home — Britain’s summer riots were more than a hint — to squeeze dry the wage slaves. The numbers tell the story.

Countries like Britain lent heavily to Ukraine and the Bank of England underwrote loans in the name of the World Bank, loans which will be repaid from more loans, and ultimately by taxpayers. It is costing $15-18 billion a year.

Alex Krainer has pointed out, the timing of the invasion of Kursk region in August 2024 coincided with nervous sounds from asset managers like BlackRock about money owed, and a tranche of new lending.

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