The meaning of Trump victory

Why I welcome the victory of Donald Trump over Kamala Harris in the just concluded US elections

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | The re-election of Donald Trump as the 47^th president of the United States is a very welcome development for world peace. The US and other global liberal imperialist coalition and its allied media have been scaremongering that when Trump takes office hell will break loose around the world.

Yet, in all probability, Trump’s re-election presents the world an opportunity to avoid World War Three (WW3). The Jo Biden regime (pun intended) and protege, Kamala Harris, is dominated by a cabal of warmongers who seem to have little or no clue to the dangers their reckless policies present to all of humanity. Trump is a welcome relief from this madness.

It is difficult to explain to those intoxicated with weakening Russia the dangers of their policies. The war in Ukraine has become a zero-sum game. Biden and his warmongers keep saying defeating Russia in Ukraine is their goal. They have placed themselves in a situation where if Ukraine loses, the USA too has lost.

I do not think the Biden-Harris cabal could politically (at home and abroad) afford such loss of prestige. This means that if Russia comes close to winning, however such victory is defined, the USA and her European protectorates (or satellites) would have to escalate.

The problem is that Russia has made it clear that it sees Ukraine’s entry into NATO as an existential threat. Even an amateur international relations person would see that this makes sense. Pro-Ukraine activists may wish away this claim and treat it as bluff. That is a terrible risk.

When Biden and his warmongers talk of winning in Ukraine (defeating Russia) what exactly do they mean? Do they envisage Russian troops beating a hasty retreat from every part of Ukraine including Crimea which hosts Russia’s black sea fleet? Does anyone in their right mind think that Russia would accept such an outcome? You need to be out of your mind to believe such a scenario. And this is where I think the Biden-Harris cabal are lunatics.

Russia is a nuclear armed state. It has the largest arsenal of nuclear war heads, the most powerful nuclear weapons (in terms of megatons of explosive destructiveness) and highly advanced methods of delivering them. At the same time, Russia has limited capability to sustain a fight in conventional war against NATO.

Therefore, the only way it can defend her security is to rely on nuclear weapons. The worse danger is to assume that Russia will not resort to using nuclear weapons to rescue itself if it feels it is losing. Even if my predictions did not turn out true if Russia lost, I would still argue that it was very reckless to take such a risk.

I watched a documentary called Fog of War featuring former US secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, under John F. Kennedy. He tells of the key lesson of the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear confrontation. NcNamara says that when confronting a leader of a nuclear armed state, you need to exercise empathy. Soviet leader, Nikita Khruschev, had placed himself in a difficult position when he placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. America insisted on Russia pulling them out. Kennedy realized he needed to give Khruschev a face-saving exit. Biden and his lunatics have offered Russian president, Vladmir Putin, no such favour except humiliation. Are they thinking?

Trump has made it clear that his aim is to end the war in Ukraine. That is a good starting point to avoiding WW3 and nuclear Armageddon. It surprises me that Biden and his lunatics could not see this simple sense. Trump may fail to deliver on this promise because of vested interests in the USA foreign policy establishment and their European lackeys.

But at least he has the right beginning position. Europe is facing an existential predicament, a creeping irrelevance. It has moved from strategic dependence on the USA security umbrella to a non-strategic and self-defeating subservience to Washington’s agenda, even when that agenda harms Europe. The war in Ukraine has made this evermore clear.

The second issue about Trump is the cause of Palestinians. I am against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and its apartheid system in the West Bank. I am also aware that Trump likes Israel’s genocidal prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. I have no illusions, therefore ,that Trump will not continue the policy of providing weapons and money to aid Israel’s  genocide against the Palestinians. However, I do not think anyone can do worse than Biden-Harris have done in arming the genocidal state of Israel to exterminate Palestinians. Therefore, on this front, the worst Trump can do is do more of the same.

Finally, I welcome Trump’s election because he lacks the evangelical impulse to impose “American values” on other countries, states and societies. Most specifically, he has little interest in, or even concern for, how other countries and societies manage themselves. I have put the words American values in quotation marks because America itself does not govern itself according to those values.

Anyone with basic facts about America knows that it was built on the genocide of native peoples of America and the enslavement of black people, oppression of women and discrimination of everyone else described as “non-white” at different times. This includes Italians, Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Indians etc.

For the last 235 years since the current constitution came into force, the USA has failed to live up to its own ideals. Scores of black people are killed by police on a weekly basis for being black. Many of them are denied rights to vote, public housing, healthcare, education, jobs, chance to sit on a jury etc. simply because they have been convicted of minor offenses like possessing weed. How can a country that blatantly abuses the rights of its own citizens for 235 years claim to be a champion of human rights and democracy?

If our part of the world needs democracy and respect for gay rights, etc. that is our battle to fight, not America’s. It’s time the USA stops the pretense of being the saviour of the world. The USA has its internal problems to handle. America should lead by example, not by lecturing and hectoring others. Fortunately, Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, believe this. We welcome American solidarity in our struggles. However, we want to be active participants in these struggles for our emancipation, and not passive recipients of international charity given by Washington DC.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug