A comprehensive solution to ending U.S. aggression and militarism is not a change of personnel at the White House.
The presidential nomination of Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance as his running mate raises the prospect of a peaceful settlement to the conflict in Ukraine. Both have been vociferous critics of the NATO proxy war and the arming of the Kiev regime. Vance has even proposed a peace settlement that is close to Moscow’s demands.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is recently pushing peace diplomacy, has voiced optimism that the omens are good for a settlement later this year to the worst war in Europe since the Second World War – if Trump and Vance are elected.
Only days after Donald Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt, he was officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate amid ecstatic scenes at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
After the tumult and drama over the last week – a long time in politics, as the saying goes – the Trump election campaign is in the driving seat. His vice presidential running mate is 39 years of age and gives the Republican Party a youthful zest. Both men are very much singing from the same hymn sheet regarding their “Make America Great Again” vision.
Trump has united the GOP under his leadership. All former party rivals lined up this week in Milwaukee to endorse the former real estate magnate in his bid to seek re-election to the White House in November. That helps to solidify his manifesto, which bodes well for diplomacy in Ukraine.
By contrast, the election campaign of Democrat incumbent President Joe Biden has run into a ditch.
This week he was self-isolating in Delaware having reportedly incurred a third-time Covid infection. Biden increasingly looks toast. His apparent mental decline – the latest gaffe this week was not remembering the name of his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, referring to him haltingly as “a black man” – has provoked a crisis in the Democratic Party and the largely favorable U.S. corporate news media.
Senior figures including former President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are reportedly urging Biden to stand down and pass the torch to a younger candidate. Panic is in the air.
There are reports that Biden may throw in the towel within the next few days as the Democrats head into their National Convention to officially nominate their presidential candidate. The trouble for the Democrats is they do not have a viable alternative candidate at this late stage in the campaign – with less than four months to election day on November 7.
That means there is now a serious chance that Trump could return to the White House after he lost the election in 2020, which MAGA loyalists hotly disputed as “stolen”.
That election outcome turns attention to one issue in particular: the war in Ukraine. The conflict erupted in February 2022 and has cost the lives of over 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Under the Biden administration and aligned European NATO members, there is no sign of the war coming to an end. Biden and European allies have pledged to keep sending weapons to Ukraine and tens of billions of dollars to prop up a hopelessly corrupt NeoNazi regime in Kiev.
Trump and Vance have pitched a diametrically opposite policy on the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
That stance is causing the Deep State and its military-industrial complex acute anxiety. The Ukraine war racket has been a bonanza that vested interests in the U.S. ruling class do not want to end.
That tension provides a plausible explanation for the attempted assassination of Trump during an open-air rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Salient questions remain about how the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old student, gained access to such a high-security position to fire his rifle at Trump.
The Republican candidates have warned that the Ukraine conflict is in danger of spiraling into a nuclear world war. Trump has said that he would end the war immediately by cutting off the military aid spigot and forcing the Kiev regime to begin negotiations with Russia.
Tantalizingly, JD Vance (R-Ohio) has been even more explicit in proposing that the warring parties should accept the territorial gains made by Russia – including Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson provinces – and that Ukraine must accept Moscow’s demand that it remain neutral and outside of the NATO alliance.
Such a position is a breath of fresh air for its rationality. Many respected American scholars and diplomats have also recommended this historically coherent position as a solution, including Professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs.
At least Trump and Vance seem to be cognizant of this reality, unlike the Biden administration and the rest of the Democrat Party, along with the Western media establishment and European minions who insanely push a fraudulent war to the last Ukrainian.
Moreover, polls show that the majority of American citizens (and Europeans) would prefer to see a diplomatic solution to the worst war in Europe since 1945.
Hungary’s Orban has admirably advocated peaceful diplomacy and for his troubles, his government has been sanctioned by the European Union establishment. Slovakia’s Robert Fico has also called for an end to the war in Ukraine, which many believe led to an assassination attempt on his life in May.
The conflict in Ukraine is a senseless, bloody slaughter that should never have escalated if Russia’s peace proposals in December 2021 had been accepted instead of dismissed out of hand by the Biden administration and its NATO lackeys in Europe. Also, a peace deal was possible in April 2022 but again was scuppered by malicious U.S. and British intervention.
If an American presidential candidate is proposing a diplomatic end to the conflict then that should be welcomed. It seems that common sense is prevailing.
Having said that, however, there are caveats. The Trump-Vance rhetoric could be empty pre-election canvassing for votes.
Trump’s record is one of hyping expectations and not delivering. When he ran for the presidency in 2016, he promised to normalize relations with Russia – and did not deliver.
He also boasted about solving the conflict in the Middle East with a “deal of the century” – only to embolden Israeli aggression towards Palestinians and Iran.
A reality check is strongly advised on what Trump and Vance can achieve.
While both men express skepticism about “endless wars” and NATO, it should be borne in mind that the conflicts the U.S. empire is fueling have a systematic cause. The United States is desperately fighting to maintain its failing hegemony against the rise of a multipolar and more democratic global order.
Washington and its European vassals are unleashing wars as a matter of necessity for preserving their erstwhile global dominance. History teaches that wars are always the refuge of the Western imperialist ruling classes.
It is notable that while Trump and Vance talk about ending conflict in Ukraine, they are at the same time talking belligerently about confronting China and Iran.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans are deprecated by the U.S. establishment as being “isolationists” in their vision of pursuing “America First”.
But the notion of “isolationalism” is an oxymoron when one considers the objective reality of U.S. imperialism. Foreign wars are an insatiable appetite for Western dominance.
American relations with the rest of the world are all about power projection, dominance and ultimately using violence to assert its “might is right” presumed national privileges. That applies whether the incumbent in the White House is a Democrat or Republican.
Trump may sound more reasonable on the issue of conflict in Ukraine with Russia. That alone makes him a more plausible candidate compared with the reckless warmongering of Biden and the Democrat-Deep State nexus.
The war in Ukraine must be stopped as soon as possible and a more reasonable security arrangement for Europe must be negotiated as Russia has long been consistently advocating.
Any diplomatic opening towards achieving peace and ending the killing must be welcomed.
Trump and Vance might just deliver on ending the hostilities in Ukraine which in itself would be a huge step forward away from the abyss of all-out war with Russia. On that score alone, their election might bring about an improvement.
But alas there is a contradiction. Don’t expect world peace to break out in other parts of the globe, because U.S. imperialism is cranking up its war machine. Trump and Vance are hawkish in their policy towards China and Iran.
A comprehensive solution to ending U.S. aggression and militarism is not a change of personnel at the White House. A profound, systematic change in American politics and economics is required.
Is partial peace sufficient? Maybe it is for now.
By SCF Editorial
Published by SCF
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com