© informazione.it/ AP/KJNFormer and future US President Donald Trump • Volodymyr Zelensky
Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election won't alter the country's antagonistic stance, but will make it harder for Kiev to tap into American taxpayers' money, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. The Republican nominee declared victory on election night after projections showed that he was highly likely to get over half of the electoral college votes.
Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, has argued that the outcome won't change the bipartisan anti-Russian consensus in the US, particularly on Capitol Hill.
Medvedev wrote in a Telegram post on Wednesday morning:
"Trump has one quality that's useful for us. As a dyed-in-the-wool businessman, he hates wasting money on all sorts of freeloaders and tagalongs: on wacko allies, misguided grandiose charity projects, and insatiable international organizations."This applies to Kiev, he said, referring to the overwhelming dependence of the Ukrainian government on Western military and financial aid.
"The only question is, how much will Trump be forced to fork out on the war? He's stubborn, but the system is more powerful."During Trump's first term in office from 2017 to 2021, US foreign policy was pushed in opposite directions by stakeholders in Washington, DC. The president was skeptical of costly foreign military adventures and criticized European NATO allies who failed to meet the recommended level of defense spending. But the diplomatic and national security establishment, known as "the blob" in the US, sought the continuation of its decades-old course.
Trump arguably contributed to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict by starting weapons shipments to Kiev, which his predecessor, Barack Obama, had declined to do.
The Republican candidate claimed on the campaign trail that the hostilities would not have started in February 2022 if he had been in office at the time. He said he would end the conflict in 24 hours, if reelected.
In his celebratory speech, Trump stated: "I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars."
Reader Comments
The United States’ victory against the Soviets laid the foundations for the Wolfowitz Doctrine. First, the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan, due to Pakistan’s tactical use of guerrilla warfare, helped drained the Soviet economy and the USSR to its collapse in 1991. Secondly, the United States’ own victory over Saddam Hussein through a “tune-up” war in the same year, allowed Washington to showcase its supreme military might, regain some lost pride after the defeat in Vietnam, and rebuild the confidence of its allies.In conjunction with this, the Wolfowitz Doctrine stipulated that the United States could silence and integrate two former major powers, Germany and Japan, “into a U.S-led system of collective security and the creation of a democratic zone of peace.” Russia, on the other hand, was dealt with differently—the country fell off the radar. It became insignificant as a geopolitical competitor in the eyes of the West, as its gestures of peaceful offerings were rebuffed and guarantees given to it regarding NATO’s expansion forfeited.[Link]
The Soviet Union did not "fall", but voluntarily scale back and dissolve. And especially the Russians, the core of the USSR, never fully lost control over their country and their system. Which is why they were able to turn it around with the begin of Putin's era, without a "revolution" or similiar bloody events. And it took them less than two decades to rebuild their economic and ethical base, and reassert themselves internationally.
Let's see if the US is capable of the same.