The scene: the Oval Office, White House, Washington DC.
Present are:
Donald J Trump, president
JD Vance, vice president
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
Pete Hegseth , Secretary of Defense
Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor
A fly on the wall
Waltz: Our starting point is that conflict with China is inevitable at some point. There is no other country that can threaten our hegemony. We must at all costs prevent this.
Trump: Exactly. We are the top predator. The world is too small for two top predators.
Waltz: So our priority is to isolate China. Expand our military power in the Pacific theater. That’s why the war in Ukraine must end. It has driven Russia into China’s arms. The BRICS is now an insignificant talking club but it could be the beginning of an anti-American bloc. We can’t allow this.. We have to detach Russia from China and we cannot do that as long as this war continues. So we are going to impose a peace that lets Russia keep its conquests. In time, we will lift sanctions and normalize relations.
Trump: There is still a lot of money to be made in Russia. I’m thinking of a Trump Tower in Moscow, for example. And in Ukraine there is also a lot to build, they can pay with raw materials.
Hegseth: Besides, the war has produced for us all we could hope for. My predecessor hit the nail on the head when he said that our main goal in this war is the degradation of Russia’s military power. And that has succeeded quite nicely. The Russians have suffered hundreds of thousands of losses and much of their arsenal has been destroyed. The suckers have to buy drones from Iran and import soldiers from North Korea! Meanwhile, their economy is tanking. They have lost their European market and we have taken their place. Europe now burns American gas. And after three years of fighting they have only captured one-fifth of Ukraine and lost even a slice of their own land!
Trump: Thanks to our weapons.
Hegseth: Indeed. We have shown that we can stop the Russians without deploying troops ourselves. Putin has had enough. As long as he gets something out of the fire that he can present as a victory, he will he will be happy to call it quits. And no one will be able to convince him better than YOU, mister president.
Trump: I can see it already: We build a riviera on the Black Sea, I get the Nobel Prize….
Rubio: I agree that we need to expand our military presence in Asia but we cannot let go of Europe.
Trump: I’ve been saying it for years: it’s time for Europe to fend for itself. Why do we have to pay to protect them?
Hegseth: They think “uncle Sam” is “uncle Sucker”.
Waltz: Of course we are not going to evacuate our bases in Europe but they need to double their military spending.
Hegseth: And standardize. Using the same weapons systems everywhere. And that means, in most cases, buying American weapons.
Trump: That’s going to be a bonanza for our arms industry. They are going to burn candles for me.
Rubio: Don’t we risk repelling the Europeans? We don’t want them to make a rapprochement with China either….
Waltz: There is no danger of that. Their hands and feet are tied to us. They cannot do without the American market, without American arms. It is time that they contribute more to Western war preparations. European leaders know that. And they know that we know that. They also realize that we wouldn’t demand that they strengthen their armies if we didn’t consider them allies.
Rubio: I still see a little problem. How are they going to sell that to their people? If there’s peace in Ukraine and the tension in Europe is subsiding, how are they going to convince the population that it’s urgent to arm? Especially now that they have to cut their social spending, because of their gigantic budget deficits.…
Vance: That could indeed become a problem. It requires some political theater, and our European friends know that. They play along. They are unanimously sounding the alarm about the Russian threat, as if Putin is about to invade first the Baltic States and then Poland and then Germany… All we have to do is give the impression that we might not intervene in such a case; that our umbrella will not keep them dry.
Rubio: But article five of the NATO Treaty says we would be obliged….
Vance: That’s why we make it seem that we don’t feel bound by that treaty, that we don’t care about the whole NATO… Without saying so explicitly, of course. The European leaders need the perception that we are abandoning them so that they can say: we have no choice
Trump: So go and scold them in Munich, JD. Shock them in Brussels, Pete. And I will call Putin “my friend,” Zelensky a dictator and the Europeans freeloaders. The more confusion and uncertainty the better. The less friendly we are, the more they will fear us and make us rich. I call it “the art of the deal.”
Sanderr, 2/19
