Why does Donald Trump want so badly to stop both Ukraine and Gaza wars? Is it because he is the most devoted pacifist since Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King? No, it is not.
Biden sowed the seeds of war in Gaza, then regularly cultivated and watered the ground there. Trump now wants to reap the harvest of war. He wants beachfront property in Gaza and rare earth minerals in Ukraine. He can’t get his hands on either of those two treasures until hostilities cease.
Why would Trump want a war right now in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe when he has his hands full with his first-100-days-war against America? He is plowing like a tank through everything America has stood for over the past 250 years, including public health, liberty for frightened immigrants fleeing from other autocratic regimes, history and science in the public schools, rule of Congressionally decided law, judicial independence, accountability for criminal and civil actions, the federal civil service … and the list goes on interminably.
His base doesn’t care what he overturns or destroys in this war against Democrats, cities, honest living, good faith contracts and charitable living in support of one’s neighbors. They believe he is doing Jesus’ work even though Jesus taught the opposite of everything he is doing. For their part, Democrats don’t know how to counter all his depredations and besides, they may be more interested in just waiting him out.
Also, people are missing the point about Trump’s assertion that Ukraine started the war with Russia. This is the exact line Putin has long used with the Russian people to get them motivated to fight the Ukrainian war. Trump is handing Putin corroborating testimony for his war propaganda that helps keep Putin in power during what are always perilous political times during foreign war.
Trump expects that Russia will owe him one after this ridiculous lie. This is an example of political back-scratching that has been a part of the authoritarian playbook since kings in medieval Europe chummed it up mercilessly with each other while they were all doing evil things. For Trump, it is just an extension of the same tactic he has been using with the authoritarian government of Israel. Trump is giving the Israeli dictator Netanyahu everything he could ever want on a silver platter: a Gaza strip empty not only of Hamas but of 2 million civilians too; and the green light to muscle residents out of the West Bank and exert hegemony over Lebanon and likely Iran as well.
Trump is just getting warmed up in terms of his upcoming war efforts. Even while he is busy subduing the American people, he is already sowing the seeds of new wars. He has installed a leader at the Pentagon who stresses “lethality” of the military in place of the “peacekeeping” mission of military touted by previous presidents. He has initiated bullying threats and economic warfare through tariffs. He will happily use boots-on-the-ground colonial expropriations against Canada, Mexico, Panama, Greenland and who knows what other hapless nations that fall under his famous “fight like hell” gaze if those boots should prove necessary.
With respect to Mexico, he is already sending drones over it to survey his upcoming “kinetic” activity there and has already moved troops to the southern border, ostensibly to stop an “invasion” there. That is exactly what Putin did before rambling on into Ukraine. And that is exactly what President James Polk did at the Mexican/Texas border in 1846. He claimed that Mexico had moved troops over the border into Texas. He then sent an army to Mexico City in order to extract California, Arizona and New Mexico from the Mexicans.
Those troops at the southern border today and the many more soon to be amassed there will be well positioned to enter Mexico to clean up cartel leaders who will demonstrate themselves to be just as elusive as Hamas in Gaza. We have seen how easy it is to “eliminate” terrorist enclaves like Hamas. They must be buried under the rubble of their own communities, or they will never go away, or so say far-right conservative authoritarians.
If Trump’s current pacifism is real in some way, perhaps he will manifest it by quoting from the writings of authentic pacifists of the past. Or perhaps he will keep his foot off the gas on incursions into Mexico. However, all of that remains to be seen
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books about democracy, religion and the American presidency. He lives in Woods Cross, Utah.
