Dakota Beacon

As the long-awaited inauguration approaches, what should we really expect on Trump foreign policy?  What about Ukraine?

If we are to listen closely to Mike Walz, Trump’s choice for national security advisor, it doesn’t sound like an end to the Ukraine war is anywhere in sight.  Were we all flim-flammed again?  We should be suspicious.  I know a lot of us had been hoping that upon taking office, Trump would end funding for this carnage. With funding dried up, the war would have to end and the strutting little comedian who has been spending more time in D.C. demanding money than with his troops, would fade away to his graft-funded (allegedly) estates in the U.S. or whatever paradise he chooses.  

But apparently this was too much to hope for.  Just as he did when he put Anthony Fauci in charge of America’s domestic policy back in his “45” days, he has assembled a team who would appear to have a big interest in keeping this misery going for another four years.  Advisor Walz weighed in with his recommendation - force Ukraine to conscript more 18-year-olds.   After all, we aren’t sure that Ukraine has become incapable of replacing its population by now.  We need to kill off more potential Ukrainian fathers.  According to Walz, Ukraine just isn’t trying hard enough.  

It should be quite obvious that any more men or women forced into this bloodbath will not win the war.  Nothing they have received from the West has made much of a dent, other than to extend the horrors of war and the terrible loss of life.  Anyone who voted for Trump should let him know what they think of keeping this pot boiling, continuing the killing.  He claimed he was against more killing.  If he thinks Americans are willing to watch their tax dollars flow into this bottomless pit, enriching arms dealers along the way, perhaps on the secret promise of allowing international corporations to raid Ukraine’s natural resources and protecting the illicit U.S. bio weapons labs, maybe he should review the speeches which earned acclaim at his rallies.  (Most of us are aware that these are illegal - as are the ones in China and in the U.S. and Canada.)  

What we should be doing is cutting off funding to this war cold.  We should do the math and get our country out of NATO.  NATO is not a defensive pact at all.  It long ago - back in about 1991 - transformed itself into a war-promoting machine.  It had to.  There was nothing to defend against.  There would be no threat to Ukraine today were it not for the presence of NATO.  One would have thought that these peace time treaties would have been frowned upon after the bitter experience of World War I, which was ignited by them.  Think of the destruction and loss of life across Europe in two world wars and the conflicts since.  World War I gave rise to the communist movement, which had been in delicate infancy in Russia up until that disastrous war.  The new Soviet Union actually did pose a threat, expanding its influence throughout Europe and the rest of the world.  It would not have been likely to succeed in this without the gateway of World War I.  A complex network of these ill-conceived treaties brought the entire western world into terrible conflict.  I guess we never learn.  We have a lot of otherwise normal, decent Americans today who think of NATO as sacred, like the Pledge of Allegiance or the Constitution, when, in fact, NATO is a threat to America, not so much to Russia.

We voted in November to stop the irresponsible spending, especially in foreign wars, especially in foreign wars where a possible outcome could be nuclear anihilation.  Americans said they had had enough of Biden’s foreign policy and here is Trump and his little team confabbing together to find another way to keep the fighting going, the killing going, most likely to include the propping up of either Zelenskyy or another U.S. puppet of Trump’s choosing (or his surrogates’ choosing).  If this is the case we were lied to.  

There is so much disgust with the Biden administration that people are resisting slamming Trump, but we can’t let Biden become the excuse for poor performance by the Trump people.  If we are going to compare everything to Biden’s behavior as President, we might as well have elected Daffy Duck.  

All those who voted for Trump and put stock in his leadership had better let him know if we don’t want to keep this dangerous war in Ukraine going.  Russia has already won it basically.  And they had good cause to fight - America would have done the same (and has done the same) when our borders were threatened as Russia’s have been.  In fact, it would do us a lot of good to emulate Russia and get to work to protect our own southern border.  Shame on Walz and shame on any of the rest of the Trump gang who are even willing to stay on the side of Ukraine.  Ukraine is not a “democracy” by any stretch of the imagination.  Russia would be closer to a democracy than Ukraine.  So far, Russia has not shut down any churches or jailed their priests.  Journalists are no less free in Russia than in Ukraine.  U.S. journalist Brent Renaud was killed while reporting in Kiev, and American journalist Gonzalvo Lira died in a Ukraine prison for his reporting.  No one on our side had much to say about either one.  In the case of Lira, his death was avoidable - he died of neglect and abuse in an official Ukrainian prison where he was held for simply writing and telling the truth.  All political parties have been banned in Ukraine, as have all news outlets and elections were canceled.  What are we doing defending this POS?  

I have no doubt that most Americans who are waving the Stars and Stripes today and who will be celebrating next Monday, Inauguration Day, will feel let down within a few short weeks as Trump’s plans are rolled out.  Instead of cutting spending and saving our currency, he will be looking into orders to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.  It will stick as long as Cape Kennedy did, but it’s a nice distraction.  Maybe we can spend money on another war - let’s take on Denmark. Someone in Trump’s acquaintance would profit from this.  

Instead of getting control of our border (I have high hopes for Tom Homan, by the way) Trump’s team is focused on expanding H-1B programs - a disgusting indentured servant scheme to enrich certain favored businesses at the expense of American workers and in place of beefing up our own educational system.  We aren’t hearing much these days about shutting down the Department of Education either.  I hope we were not deceived in that one.

All in all, none of our new presidents has really satisfied or lived up to his promises.  Trump is no different.  He is different in that he is bombastic, over-bearing, clumsy and like a poor man’s Teddy Roosevelt.  Some will appreciate this, but most will not be very happy if we find that his promises were empty and that he is the crony capitalist some of us thought he would be and always has been.  Character and principles matter, even after four years of Biden.