The Chosen Fronts of World War Three
The Trump era basically starts off in continuation from the Biden era: Trump is the electorally chosen leader of a beseiged, formerly unipolar superpower and its European vassals, with the further cooption of some important but generally ambivalent powers in the Global South. For “Global South” we should say, the “Global Majority” since even if we limit the term only to those that are full or partner members of the BRICS, we are talking about well over half of the global population. I believe that Trump, like Biden, will continue the hegemon’s desperate fight to postpone its expiry date along any front of its choosing.
NATO Proxy War with Russia over Ukraine
The US chose the proxy NATO war with Russia over China. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it manufactured the war. A recent article in TIME, discussed below, confirms the projection of the 1999 RAND report on Extending Russia. The purpose was not even to win the war, merely to “extend” Russia. We shall see if Trump is successful in bringing this conflict to an end. I am skeptical that his neocon supporters will allow such an outcome or that, should he be sincere in his claims that he wants to end the conflict, he will be allowed to articulate the only terms that would be necessary to close on the deal, since these terms have to do less with Ukraine and much more about a reformulation of the global security architecture, something that either Trump himself, or his base, or both, will find unpalatable.
Trump’s silly statement (so many more of these to come!) that Putin is “destroying Russia,” does not help build confidence in his ability to foster good relations with his opposite number. According to The Hill today, Trump has threatened that if there was not a ceasefire deal soon, he would “have no other choice” but to impose tariffs, taxes and sanctions on “anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.” This is a continuation of the Biden “escalate to de-escalate” foreign policy which we can be absolutely sure will not work on Russia and will guarantee a continuation of the war until the ultimate defeat of either the collective West or of Russia and its allies in the BRICS. And I am not holding my breath as to who the winner is most likely to be, assuming (big assumption, see the Hartung reference below) there is a planet left at the end of it.
Monitoring Russian television, Gilbert Doctorow reports that Russia’s Sixty Minutes program discussed what Trump has in store for Russia if Russians fail to “behave.”
“They laughed aloud at the idea of raising tariffs on Russian goods sold in the United States, since the total volume of Russian exports to the USA in 2024 was 350 million dollars, and much of that was for uranium which US power stations badly needed to stay operating. They also ridiculed Trump for some foolish and ignorant statements that he made to journalists this morning: that he didn’t want to hurt the Russian people, since ‘Russia had helped us to win WWII,’ and that Russia had lost 60 million of its citizens in that war. For Russians, the question of who helped whom to win WWII is precisely the inverse, and their war dead, bad as they were, amounted to 26 million”.
Today’s war has greatly diminished the Ukrainian population through flight, emigration and a collapse of the birth rate and, of course, it has led to a large number of deaths - far higher than the casualties suffered by Russia. In an assessment by Michel Vhahoss published in Landmarks: A Journal of International Dialogue we learn that if we talk in terms of “irrecoverable” losses,” then Ukraine has lost not less than 920,000 men. In addition Eurostat reports that 650,000 men of fighting age have fled Ukraine, and desertions were reportedly over 200,000 in 2024.
“Moreover, actual irrecoverable losses, across the board, are almost certainly understated. For example, many platoon and company commanders simply do not report desertions, for fear of punishment by their field grade superiors. Likewise, the number of missing KIA is massive, given the sheer number of Ukrainian corpses left on the battlefields. A recent composite of casualty estimates puts the KIA total at 780,000. Adding in the severely wounded, total irrecoverable Ukrainian battle losses could be as high as 1.2 million, after 1000 days of war.”
Manufacturing the “Extending Russia” war.
An article by Simon Shuster for TIME magazine (Shuster), and which is commented on by Kit Klarenberg in his Substack column, Global Delinquents (Klarenberg), claims that the US always intended to abandon Ukraine after setting up the country for proxy war with Russia, and never had any desire or intention to assist Kiev in defeating Moscow in the conflict. Ukraine’s victory was never among Biden’s objectives. Supporting Kiev “for as long as it takes”, was never meant to be taken literally. The US “deliberately…made no promise” to President Volodymyr Zelensky to “recover all of the land Russia had occupied.” One objective was “avoiding direct conflict between Russia and NATO” and this has been achieved, more or less. The objective that Ukraine should survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West has not been achieved. Kiev is wholly dependent on Washington.
Cold Imperialism
For the World Socialist Web Site, E.P. Milligan (Milligan) writes that the emergence of the Arctic as a major site of geostrategic conflict has been growing over the course of the past two decades but is only now bursting into the open, fueled by climate change. The region is energy-rich and offers access to substantially shorter trade routes.
As noted here several times in recent posts, these are the prizes that explain Trump’s recent aggressive statements on China and Greenland, and the recent visit by his son, Donald Trump Jr. to Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, and the unveiling of a recent bill legitimizing the annexation of Greenland that allows the President to seek to enter into negotiations with the Kingdom of Denmark to secure the acquisition of Greenland by the United States. Europe and, in particular, Greenland’s current owner, Denmark, will not be sanguine. The US tried but failed to purchase Greenland from Denmark in 1946.
Russia has recently invested considerable sums in developing its onshore and offshore Arctic territories from an economic standpoint, and in developing its military capabilities in the region. China has declared itself a “Near Arctic Power,” and plans considerable investments in scientific research, as well as mineral and oil and gas extraction.
“The Arctic…is a region rich in key raw materials, including oil and gas, and rare-earth minerals (and fresh water! - OBB). The outcome of rival territorial claims to offshore Artic Ocean land-ridges will be decisive in determining which powers can lay claim to these natural resources. Secondly, the Northwest Passage on Canada’s northern coast and the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s Arctic coast are quickly becoming viable trade routes that would massively reduce freight transport times and costs between Europe and Asia. Thirdly, control over the Arctic and its approaches would offer crucial military advantages during a third world war. Missiles fired by North America’s imperialist powers against Russia and China could swiftly reach their targets by traversing the Arctic (and vice versa).
Underneath Greenland’s ice cap is “rock flour,” ground into nanoparticles of dust by the crushing weight of the ice. Scientists have found that this glacial flour contains a particular nutrient composition that could regenerate depleted soils, vastly improving agricultural yields. One study in the use of rock flour on corn fields in Ghana, for example, produced a 30 to 50 percent increase in crop yields. The melting of Greenland’s ice cap uncovers an estimated one billion tons of glacial flour per year. In total, there is enough rock flour in Greenland to cover every acre of agricultural land in the world. Thus, whoever controls Greenland’s ice cap would have a considerable advantage in terms of future food security and access to clean water.
Finally, the Arctic holds vast potential for oil and gas reserves. There are 19 geological basins in the Arctic, each of which has the potential to bear oil and/or natural gas reserves. While some basins have been explored, such as the Alaska North Slope in Prudhoe Bay, only half the basins have been explored. A United States Geological Survey report published in 2008 estimated that areas north of the Arctic Circle may contain as much as 90 billion barrels of oil and 44 billion barrels of natural gas when liquefied—13 percent of undiscovered oil in the world. Of particular interest are three geologic provinces: Arctic Alaska, the Amerasian Basin, and the East Greenland Rift Basin. The annexation of Greenland would give US imperialism unfettered access to the entire East Greenland Rift Basin in particular”.
The Coming War with Iran
The US backed the formation of the nation of Israel (on others people’s land) and then, more aggressively, switched its dependence on Iran as US policeman for the Middle East in the period 1953 to 1979, to Israel. Thence forward it chose to support this relatively small nation (even now barely 10 million), allowing it, in effect, to steal and illegally develop a nuclear weapons capability, which would ensure its safety against rival behemoths (principally Iran, but Turkiye increasingly, while Egypt still simmers under what is essentially a coopted military regime). The US has now not simply allowed but encouraged, funded and weaponized Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Even in the earliest days of the supposed “ceasefire” in Gaza - which is unlikely even to reach its second phase, Israel’s army has invaded Jenin and its surrounding Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The army of the Palestinian Authority, a bankrupt Israeli patsi regime, pulled out even before Israeli tanks moved in. In southern Lebanon, where there is supposed to be a ceasefire prior to Israel’s withdrawal in a few days’ time, the IDF continues to attack villages, to kill and maim.
Most commentators seem to agree that there continues to be a high likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran, although last week’s signing of the strategic partnership agreement between Iran and Russia, if not as militarily focused as some had expected, and although it has been judged to foreclose on the possibility that Iran would acquire a nuclear missile any time soon, is certainly a source of greater confidence, support and strength for Iran.
Perhaps as a salutary reminder of Iran’s considerable military strength, an Iranian news agency today reports that On January 18, 2025, Channel 2 (Iran) the existence of an IRGC underground naval base containing a "vessel city" where numerous naval combat vessels are stored in a "labyrinth of tunnels, one next to the other."
These vessels include "Red Hornet" speedboats reportedly equipped with a "huge" number of cruise missiles, Zolfaghar boats that have been recently updated with weapon systems and high-explosive cruise missiles that can "destroy" an American aircraft carrier on their own, and Taregh stealth-capable speedboats that have a carbon fiber fuselage – supposedly causing them to appear on enemy radars as a fishing boat – and can fire "smart" cruise missiles even when traveling at speeds exceeding 180kph. The base was also visited by IRGC Navy Commander General Alireza Tangsiri, and the IRGC Commander-in-Chief has said that the IRGC Navy "is now capable of dealing with threats even beyond the Persian Gulf."
Another report from Iran describes the Iranian Army's recent receipt of 1,000 new drones, both combat drones and "destroyer" drones, including Moharram, Kaman-99, and Arash-2 stealth-capable UAVs. Kaman-99 drones have a range of 2,000 kilometers. Arash-2 drones have an AI-based navigation system that makes it highly resistant to electronic warfare. “Loitering drones of the IRGC's ground forces are said to monitor "terrorists" inside and outside of Iran.
The Forever Non-Existent Iranian Nuclear Threat in Context
Inevitably, the US under Trump and with shrill reinforcement from Tel Aviv will continue to try to give propaganda substance to the lie that Iran is a “nuclear threat.” Even as in the US a powerful lobby is anxious for ever more intensification of the nuclear threat that the US has itself posed to the world.
For Consortium News, William Hartung (Hartung) reports on the nuclear hawks who want to build more kinds of nuclear weapons and ever more of them in addition to the Pentagon’s current plans for spending up to $2 trillion over the next three decades to create a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, stoking a dangerous new nuclear arms race. Northrop Grumman is the largest beneficiary of the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons spending binge, as the lead contractor on both the future B-21 nuclear bomber and Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The Sentinel program drew widespread attention recently when it was revealed that, in just a few years, its estimated cost had jumped by an astonishing 81 percent, pushing the price for building those future missiles to more than $140 billion (with tens of billions more needed to operate them in their years of “service” to come)
October 7th Lies
Jean Shaoul, for World Socialist Web Site (Shaoul), reports the statement of Israeli prosecutor Moran Gaz to the effect that her department has no evidence of any rapes or sexual assaults and is not filing any such cases for prosecution against the Palestinian attackers held in Israeli jails. Shaoul comments:
“Once again, Israel’s propaganda about Hamas savagery, rape, mutilations and beheaded babies that it put out to justify the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians has been revealed as a tissue of lies. But there has been little or no mention of Gaz’s admission in the mainstream media”...
This confirms the conclusion of a UN panel that looked into the rape allegations last March that stated explicitly that as far as the first day of the raid was concerned (the raid and the Israeli response lasted from early Saturday morning till Monday evening), they had been unable to verify any sexual violence.
“Three of Israel’s claims were positively disproved and the rest were unverified, with many based on the “inaccurate” and “unreliable” claims of a group of people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Furthermore, without forensic evidence and survivor testimony, it was impossible to determine the scope and veracity of other claims of sexual violence.
“It is telling that just last week Israel blocked a request from the UN panel to carry out a further probe of the October 7 rape allegations, reportedly to avoid any scrutiny of rape and other abuse committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails, typically without charge. It prompted Israeli women’s rights groups to warn that this could lead to Israel, instead of Hamas, being added to the UN’s sexual violence blacklist…
“The report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, “Welcome to Hell”: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps, has documented in great detail Israel’s systemic policy of abusing and torturing thousands of Palestinians in its custody...
“Israel’s entire narrative surrounding the events of October 7 has been shown to be a pack of lies. First of all, far from being unprovoked and “coming out of the blue”, the attack by Hamas militants was itself the product of countless deliberate provocations aimed at inciting retaliation, as then occurred on October 7. Al-Aqsa Flood provided the casus belli for a pre-planned campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians beginning with Gaza and then moving on to the West Bank and including Israel’s two million Arab citizens.
“Secondly, there is mounting evidence that Netanyahu’s government and Israel’s army and security services knew a military incursion was about to happen—Egypt and Israeli soldiers have stated so quite explicitly—and that these warnings were ignored and the security forces stood down.
“Once the attack took place, large numbers of Israeli casualties—at least 360—resulted from a massive military operation carried out by the IDF that lasted several days, using its infamous and secretive Hannibal Directive. But the exact number can only be confirmed by releasing the results of autopsies that would show the type of bullets used...
“Another lie, soon exposed, was that Hamas had planned to attack the Nova music festival, where the largest number of deaths occurred—364 people, including 17 police officers—and where 40 people were taken hostage. This was impossible as the festival organisers switched sites just two days earlier after the original location fell through. Palestinian fighters only found out about it by accident after the festival was then extended by a day at short notice, even though Israel had received warnings that an attack was imminent”.
China and Taiwan
Again, the US chose to pretend that Taiwan is independent of China (though it isn’t, as Nixon and Kissinger acknowledged back in 1972) and should therefore be “protected,” - or should we say, in the light of the experience of Ukraine - simply exploited for propaganda purposes in another unsuccessful attempt to “extend,” contain and fragment China.
International agreements in 1943 and 1945 acknowledged that Taiwan (which had been seized and occupied by Japan from the 1890s) should be returned to China. This was prior to the end of the civil war (1927-1949) in China. On the victory over Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government by Mao Zedong in 1949, the Kuomintang forces retreated to Taipei. The indigenous people of Taiwan had little say in the matter. Many of them were ancient Austronesian tribes although these had been joined and outnumbered by waves of Chinese migrants from the sixteenth century onwards.
The logic of Trumpian foreign policy as it was initially suspected of being - the replacement of unipolar hegemony with a multimodal balance-of-power - seems now to be undermined by Trump’s attacks on his main allies and regional partners including Canada and Mexico (on trade with which he will impose 25% tariffs), and Europe (tariffs of at least 10% expected) as well as competitors such as China (whom he threatens with tariffs of at least 10%, although in the recent past far high percentages have been mentioned).
Amelioration of these penal measures seem to be conditional on “better behavior” such as more control by these countries over fentanyl exports to the US, or of migration to the US, or on suppression of drug cartels. We should certainly consider why the hell can’t the US control these things by its own means? And then to contemplate the obvikous problems and limitations with Trump’s approach. The imposition of tariffs is a unilateral. They are not the product in any way of careful consultation with the victims. They reek of imperial “bullying” and a sense of entitlement. They may be intended, as noted, to extract “concessions,” even if, at the end of everything, there were still be higher prices that Americans will have pay for what they buy in the US, and there will be additional costs that must be bourne by US allies who, in the case of Canada, Mexico and many countries of Europe, previously thought they were privileged members of "a free trading” system. Meanwhile the Pentagon is sending up to 1,500 troops to help “secure” the southern border.
Trump’s behavior, in short, is not the most likely to win friends; on the contrary, it is likely to convert friends into former friends who will be strongly motivated to look elsewhere for allies and trading partners. Trump’s approach is likely to sow division within and break up the USA’s own “sphere of interest.” It is likely to provoke former trading partners into imposing tariffs of their own or engaging in manifestations of other aggressions that are not favorable to American interests.
There is more than a tinge of insanity behind a revolution that does not dare to clarify what exactly it is revolutionizing, or why, and in whose interests, and which seems, in practically every way, to augur very bad news for ordinary people in the USA and around the world. But the immediate victims, Americans, have been brainwashed too long into somnambulance as to where their real interests actually lie.
America’s oligarchs, so feted on the day of the inauguration, so repulsive (as in Elon Musk’s fascist salutes), so derisive, so incipiently cruel (e.g. depriving the children of undocumented immigrants of their birthright citizenship), are laughing at America. Note that Musk in the same week as his black suited, fascistic display, is pressuring California to launch one hundred more Starlink satellites a year from Vandenburg Air Base in Lompoc. These shake the houses and terrorize the residents of California for up to a hundred miles all around.
The New York Times notes some, but only some, of the extent of the damage that Trump is about to inflict:
“Mexico, China and Canada account for more than a third of the goods and services that are imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs. Together, the countries purchased more than $1 trillion of U.S. exports and provided nearly $1.5 trillion of goods and services to the United States in 2023, the last year government data is available”.
Trumpian politics is politics for billionaires and billionaires will be his most grateful beneficiaries. An Oxfam report (Takers Not Makers) reports that in 2024, the number of billionaires rose to 2,769, up from 2,565 in 2023. Their combined wealth surged from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months. This is the second largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began, according to Oxfam. The wealth of the world’s ten richest men grew on average by almost $100 million a day —even if they lost 99 percent of their wealth overnight, they would remain billionaires.