Alastair Crooke : Trump
and Putin's World Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJBdPkw1mmk
by By Pepe Escobar via https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/02/11/keep-on-trumpin/
Either Ukraine surrenders unconditionally – or the war show must go on. Meanwhile, let’s Keep on Trumpin’.
Mr.
Disco Inferno has reverted to his default mode of throwing tantrum after
tantrum because nearly everybody in West Asia and beyond is sayin’ NO to the
Gaza Riviera Resort and Casino scam.
Here’s a partial pile-up:
Egypt: the Palestinians will not be ethnic cleansed here, or in Jordan, or
anywhere else.
Saudi Arabia: We will not normalize with Israel before there is a sovereign
Palestinian state.
Turkey, via Sultan Erdogan: No power can remove Palestinians from their
“eternal” homeland.
Arab League: this is a “complete detachment from reality.”
Hamas: there will be no more ceasefire violations.
Iran, via Leader Khamenei: we will NOT negotiate anything with you.
And this is just the beginning.
Russia, via Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov: “Washington’s attempts to
give Moscow ultimatums or to demonstrate the alleged ‘big favor’ in exchange
for unacceptable U.S. demands are doomed to failure in the dialogue with
Russia.”
So we should expect Mr. Disco Inferno to go totally ballistic in the next few
days, literally burning the [geopolitical] dancefloor: “Burning, burning (Disco
Infernoooooo) / burning burning / burn that mother down”.
Now gimme $500 billion in rare earth metals
Mr.
Disco Inferno has stated that under his Gaza Riviera scheme, Palestinians would
have no right of return after they are expelled because “they are going to have
much better housing.” That will signify the normalization of ethnic cleansing
under a Nakba 2.0 on steroids – billed as a “humanitarian” real estate
development opportunity in a “phenomenal location”.
It’s no wonder that even feeble Arab vassals of the Empire of Chaos had to
reject it. Not to mention that would Nakba 2.0 be implemented, Palestinian
armed resistance will go sky-high, with instrumental input by a rejuvenated
Hezbollah.
The Trump Gaza Riviera Resort and Casino scheme is essentially reviving an
Israeli Ministry of Intelligence deportation framework detailed as early as in
October 13, 2023 – and leaked by the Israeli news magazine Calcalist 11 days
later.
At the time, the plan called to deport the people of Gaza to north Sinai, after
totally “clearing” Gaza and installing them on tent cities in a “closed
security zone” within Egypt. This plan was at least partly implemented.
Then, in May 2024, Netanyahu’s office came up with an even more detailed
four-step plan which started with – what else – “demolition”. Trump has used
the exact terminology to describe Gaza.
The Israeli plan included setting up “Hamas-free zones supervised by an UAE-led
coalition; designing “new cities” from scratch; and if everything went swell,
rinse and repeat in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. We may be on stage 1 of this
plan.
Gaza is in fact the toxic blueprint for a much larger and insidious NATO
project, encompassing vast tracts of West Asia, as Israel all the way through
has been weaponized by U.S. and UK; Turkey continued to supply it with Azeri
oil from the BTC pipeline; and Arab “leadership” has behaved like eunuchs – at
least until the announcement of Gaza Riviera.
Compared to the upgraded Forever Wars chapter in West Asia, the Forever Wars
chapter in Ukraine is a much tougher proposition.
Mr. Disco Inferno’s much hyped “peace” plan for Ukraine was actually put on hold,
as he decided to send his special envoy, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to the
Munich Security Conference to feel the pulse of the NATO vassals.
Translation: let’s cut a deal on all those rare earth metals. The sweaty
sweatshirt actor in Kiev is ready to give up all available Ukrainian land and
resources to save himself. Problem is the absolute majority of those rare earth
metals are in Novorossiya, and already in the possession of Russia.
Mr. Disco Inferno did not beat around the bush:
“They have very valuable lands in terms of rare earth metals, oil and gas. I
want our money to be protected, we are spending hundreds of billions of
dollars. And they may make a deal, they may not. They may become Russian
someday, they may not become Russian. But we will have all this money, and I
say I want it back. I said I want the equivalent of, say, $500 billion in rare
earth metals. And they basically agreed to do that. So at least we don’t feel
like fools.”
U.S.-Russia relations “on the verge of rupture”
Kellogg is dismissed in Moscow’s circles of power as “a representative of the
U.S. industrial-military complex” and more bluntly, as the proverbial imperial
asset: a militarily illiterate Cold War-style general with zero knowledge of
geopolitics. Whenever he opens his mouth in public, that is duly confirmed.
Moreover his daughter, Megan Mobbs, is the president of the RT Weatherman
Foundation, which since the start of the war in 2022 runs a logistical hub on
the border with Romania to evacuate wounded and killed American mercenaries to
a medical center in Germany, as well as to deliver different firms of “aid” to
Ukraine.
In January 2023, her foundation sponsored Kellogg’s trip to Ukraine, after
which he called the U.S. Senate to “provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs
to defeat Russia’s military, implement strict accountability measures for that
military assistance, and do it now.”
The mood in informed Moscow is that a potential U.S.-Russia negotiation will
have less than zero effect on the current plans of Russia’s General Staff. On
the battlefield, Russian forces continue to advance and consolidate what is
defined as a “road net” – former Ukrainian supply routes -, preparing for
better weather in Spring which will potentialize even more their advantage on
air power and drones.
Once again it was Ryabkov who laid down the line on what Moscow expects from
Trump 2.0:
“The first step towards normalizing bilateral relations, meaning negotiations
based on the principles of mutual respect and equality, should be taken by the
United States. We are open to dialogue, ready to negotiate in a tough
bargaining mode, taking into account the realities ‘on the ground’ and our
national interests, predetermined by history and geography. So the decisions
and choice are up to Trump and his team.”
The problem is the Empire of Chaos does not do “mutual respect and equality”;
it is exceptionalist by definition. The Empire of Chaos does not do “dialog”:
it’s always “my way or the highway”. And the memory-impaired Empire of Chaos
dismisses both “history and geography”.
After detailing how “relations between Moscow and Washington are balancing on
the verge of rupture”; how Russia “sees no practical changes” in the U.S.’s
Ukrainian policy; how Moscow and Washington “have not yet agreed on high-level
contacts”; and how Moscow “does not expect its relations with Washington to get
much better” under Trump 2.0, Ryabkov, as a clincher, in fact already painted
the Big Picture ahead:
“Washington’s attempts to give Moscow ultimatums or to demonstrate the alleged
‘big favor’ in exchange for unacceptable U.S. demands are doomed to failure in
the dialogue with Russia.”
Neither Trump nor Kellogg seem to have gotten the message.
Not to mention that the CIA is feeding them a comet of stupidities when it
comes to the state of the Russian economy.
Russia’s economy grew by 4.1% in 2024. Energy and raw materials continue to be
sold across the Global Majority and bring in a lot of revenue which now stays
in Russia, because transferring capital out is nearly impossible. So now all
profits are invested across Russia, which was not the case before the start of
the SMO nearly 3 years ago.
The war may be far away from Moscow – over 1,000 km. But the Russian economy as
a whole can now be characterized largely as a war economy. The revival of the
arms industry generated a lot of jobs in several provinces and in fact
redistributed the flow of money within Russia.
All the bombast coming from Trump, the inanities coming from Kellogg and the
massive P.R. to come out of the Munich Security Conference won’t alter facts on
the battlefield. There will be no two-bit “ceasefire”. Either Ukraine
surrenders unconditionally – or the [war] show must go on. Meanwhile, let’s
Keep on Trumpin’.
Original article: Strategic Culture Foundation
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