Time to take a quick stock of the Trump 2.0 so far. I have no stomach to sweat out some not-so-clunky prose on this dismal subject, so I will just iterate through a couple of points. Starting with the geopolitical ones.
Tariff war against Canada and Mexico. It's an easy one to be wise about because it happened already. Trump threatened with tariffs, Canada (I suppose Mexico as well) answered with their threats, then Trump blinked. Canada and Mexico reiterated promises they already made last year and Trump declared a great victory. Fyi for those who think that this 5-dimensional chess grandmaster just pretends to be the madman who uses outlandish threats in service of his cold hard calculations. He didn't achieve anything beyond uniting Canada as a nation against the US. Well played.
I almost forgot, he also would like to annex Canada, I guess that's postponed now.
Greenland. Shitting on allies is one thing, but concretely threatening them with physical force unless they give up some of their territory? I just love how conservatives piss blood while trying to spin it. Nevertheless, I don't think anything will come out of it.
Gaza-a-Lago. As obvious from the previous posts, I'm on Israel's side in the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict (but not on the far-right opportunistic/batshit-crazy Israeli government's side). But simply shovel 2 million Palestinians away and build condos where they lived? Anyway, it would be a diplomatic and logistical nightmare, nothing will come out of it.
Ukraine. Everyone knew that Trump would sell Ukraine out. Niall Fergusson, Douglas Murray, Konstantin Kisin, and all the other "principled conservatives" now act indignantly as if Trump just broke a personal promise to them. The poor snowflakes will get over it. However, America actually taking the side of the Russians? Demanding half of Ukraine's natural resources for "protection"? Blocking the UN resolution that states that Russia started the war? I hope all Republican congressmen start their days by taking a good look in the mirror and vomit. Coming to think of it, I hope his voters do the same, too.
What will happen? Ukraine will reject the "offer", and keep fighting. Will the Europeans actually put soldiers on the ground? Unfortunately, I don't think so. There are no Churchills here. Furthermore, and here comes my wild conjecture, if Europeans did that, Trump would threaten them with tariffs, or directly with military force.
No one (sane) ever raised the question: what if America decides to attack Europe? Not that people thought the idea impossible, it never even came up (outside of the mind of Noam Chomsky and other useful idiots). Now, it does come up, and it's no longer impossible. This is just mind-blowing.
Taiwan. A year ago, I would have bet money that China wouldn't try anything. The Ukrainian war probably made Xi Jinping ponder, "Is my military the same type of Potemkin army as Putin's, or is it even shittier?" Now I would bet that they will attack Taiwan. Trump not only won't lift a finger, he will gleefully comment on how his tough guy buddy crushes the Taiwanese. A caveat here is that I don't know how Taiwan's fall would affect the business of Trump's Silicon Valley ass-lickers. If it does, they will try to influence Trump.
I forgot the Panama Canal. No, that would require some organization, too.
Iran? This gives me a bit of a pause. I'm 50-50 on whether Trump will order American attacks on it. But, on second thought, nah, probably not.
To summarize, Trump won't do anything direct abroad, because he cannot. He is not capable of managing anything more complicated than...I can't even find a metaphor. He is not a chess master, he doesn't have a world-view, he is a witless ape throwing shit on the wall who enjoys hurting other people. His administration is made up of warring factions of lunatics, and lunacy is the only thing that we will see from the outside. He will introduce some tariffs, then call them off the first day when they start hurting Americans. He will threaten former US allies and back off at the first sign of resistance.
And that was my geopolitical prediction batch for the next four years.
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