I know many people say Zelensky disrespected President Trump and Vice-President Vance on the 28th of February, but I didn’t see it quite that way. If I had been Zelensky, I never would have gone out before the cameras in the first place without having it settled in my mind exactly what it was I’d be signing. But he was 100% right to ask Vance “what kind of diplomacy”, since it was all too obvious to me that he and his country were being sold out and sold down the river for an expedient and bad “peace deal” just so Trump could smile into the cameras and proclaim he’d gotten Ukraine “the best deal evah“.

He can’t say the quiet part out loud, but after seeing all the trillions of dollars that have been wasted by past administrations, especially during the Obama and Biden regimes which plundered and redistributed so much more many trillions than America knows [something I’ll be writing about soon], I can only imagine that Trump believes or knows that the U.S., in its current state of military disrepair and shortfalls, cannot win a war on two fronts, if China and Russia decide to join forces to attack U.S. at any time in the not too distant future. And it actually has scared the ever-lovin’ hell out of him.

No one can blame him for not wishing to spark WWIII and a nuclear conflagration, but I do blame him for his love fest with Putin and Russia simply because he thinks Putin can be trusted. Part of his reasoning comes from years of Russian business and millions of dollars he’s made in Russia and with Russians in America; but part of it is the result of his own bias and intense animus towards Zelensky who he charges campaigned for Biden against him in Pennsylvania, showing his petty side, which also played a part in today’s halt or weapons to Ukraine.

According to David Leach, publisher of The Strident Conservative:

“NATO had already made a commitment to support Ukraine, so Trump’s effort to weaken that support raised a few eyebrows, that is until it was revealed by Donald Trump Jr. at a 2008 real estate conference that ‘Russians [made] up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of [Trump’s] assets,’ before concluding that ‘we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia’.”

I blame Trump for not having the backbone to stand up and say that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was wrong and unjustified and demanding that he leave all Ukrainian territory immediately. As much as many want to hope that he’s trying to cozy up to Putin in the classic “honey catches more flies than vinegar” approach, it’s a false hope. Trump is simply betraying Ukraine and making no bones about it whatsoever; but it won’t be the first time the U.S. has abandoned a country to invaders, and it probably won’t be the last.

The way Ukraine has been handled by Biden and Europe has exposed the weakness of the U.S. and Europe more than ever, and President Trump’s takeover of mess has only served to reaffirm the weakness of the U.S. position currently, which is like waving at red flag at a bull. Say “Good-bye Taiwan”.

Trump is moving to normalize relations with Putin and Russia — Putin is Russia today. I wonder what “normal” looks like in this new world? Should prove interesting, if nothing else. ~ J.O.S.

Nuclear Blackmail by Tyrants

President Donald J. Trump is a pragmatist and a practitioner of realpolitik, and as such, he has made the determination that the world can easily walk away from the young sovereign nation of Ukraine and basically reward President Putin of Russia with any part of it he wishes to conquer or now controls, because no one, other than some few European leaders, is willing to jump start a nuclear war in order to save Ukraine, not even me. By this same token, for those all too willing to place boots on the ground and risk that Putin isn’t enough of a wildcard to utilize tactical nukes, if they are that willing to risk lives all across Europe, they shouldn’t have any problem resorting to economic sanctions and the halt of all trade with Russia, including any gas purchases, in order to bring Putin to heel and act as a civilized member of the world.

But bringing all of Europe into such an agreement is impossible, as seen in past instances where one or more of the European Union members has been found to be cheating in regard to sanctions placed on some bad actor, like Iraq or Iran and so on.

And so, Putin, the leader of a third world country armed with nukes, will be left to his own devices to expand the Russian borders as he sees fit, at any time of his choosing. Many experts say this is not his intent and that he always only just wanted to halt NATO’s expansion towards Russia’s border — such was the lie and the pretense — however, Finland’s acceptance into NATO in 2023 garnered nary a whisper from Putin, even though Finland and Russia share an 830 mile border. And so now, the world reenters a new reality where nuclear blackmail by tyrants rules the day and the world.

Of late, bluffing or not, there have been some suggestion of putting French and British boots on the ground in Ukraine, as it now appears the Europe is somewhat willing to test Putin’s resolve and his own suggestion that crossing his red lines could result in a nuclear attack. Putin and the Kremlin leaders have recently revised their military policy to include a nuclear first strike against Europe and/ or America under the right set of circumstances. If they’re going to go this route, they had better have Russia’s top ten cities pre-programmed and targeted with their own nuclear arsenal.

And yet, surreal as it is, the nations of the European Union keep right on buying as much natural gas and oil as Putin can pump their way. This might change after President Trump manages to help the U.S. oil and natural gas industries restore their peak capabilities pre-Biden years, but it will be several months, possibly a couple of years off, before oil companies are ramped up at full production and able to send oil and gas surpluses overseas.

Trump, for his part, is now naively suggesting that if Ukraine makes an economic deal with the U.S. and hands us Ukraine’s rare earth minerals that the mere presence of U.S. corporations conducting business in Ukraine will be enough to deter Putin from further attacks. This is laughable at best and so wrongheaded it defies real logic and the assertion that Trump is “a stable genius”. He has suggested that he “trusts” Putin to uphold any negotiated peace deal, even though Putin has violated twenty previous cease-fire deals, and he reminds me of G.W. Bush who said that he had “looked into his [Putin’s] eyes and saw a good soul”.

To puke now or later, that is the question.

Trump has already shown his hole card and made it clear any notion of taking the world to the brink of nuclear war is off the table. I can’t fault him there, except that Putin has already stated and acknowledged his own readiness and willingness to do just that very thing.

And so, should Putin attack Ukraine again and kill American workers and businessmen, just what is Trump going to do? I’ll tell you what. Absolutely nothing. He’ll lumber off on his bone spurs fist-bumping the air making one excuse after another, as he capitulates and cedes the region to Russia in a terrible defeat for America and the Free World.

This war has always been about Putin desiring to keep Ukraine under Russia’s thumb and influence in order that Russia can continue to abuse and plunder Ukraine just as it has over the centuries, taking its rare earth minerals and agricultural largesse to serve Russia’s purposes and, in part, to start the reconstruction of Mother Russia’s old Russian Empire.

Many so-called “experts” have thrown the idea into the press time and again that the U.S. was the “aggressor” against Russia and that the U.S. essentially caused the invasion, by pushing the U.S. Empire and the “progressive ideology” into the nations bordering Russia and trying to bring Ukraine into the sphere and under the influence of America. This supposedly forced Putin to act, which again is an absurd assertion once one sees Finland as NATO’s newest member in 2023.

On February 28th, President Trump told President Zelensky of Ukraine:

“You don’t have the cards [to win the war against Russia]. With us, you have the cards. I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States. … Come back when you’re ready for peace.”

Somehow, I don’t see President Trump shouting Putin down the way he did Zelensky.

In an unfathomable manner, President Trump recently went so far as to blame Ukraine for provoking Russia’s invasion, which is totally false. Some pundits have speculated that this is simply a clever gambit aimed at pleasing Putin and adding worth to the idea of a new U.S.-Russia friendship and focused on prying Russia from under China’s guidance and influence. If America must be ruthless at least let Her be brilliant is the hope expressed by onlookers aghast at the thought of an America actually retreating into the quiet shadows of isolationism or simple separation from Europe.

The bare truth of the matter is Russia, under dictator Putin’s watchful and purposeful intent, has its own plans and acts on them. Putin has never been just sitting quietly by to react only when some new action from the West prompts him to do so. He has long held desires to pursue a westward strategy, brutally conquering anyone who stands in his way in order to exert Russia’s dominance in the world. Under Putin’s guidance, Russia is expanding when and where it can, in the same manner of Xi and Communist China is very aggressively moving to dominate, if not outright annex, countries that are now attempting to reject its bare overtures and attempts to influence their internal political situation.

Running scared from either Russia or China will not halt their continued aggressions against any and all nations of the world. But as an aside, it is both interesting and ironic that China is accomplishing most of its global agenda without ever firing a shot, by peaceful, if aggressive, economic means and contracts that give it an upper hand against the leaders of the respective nations. Where Russia conquers through military might, China does so with intimidation, coercion and simply stepping up and saying “We’re repossessing [insert region” for the People’s Republic of China” [read “the Chinese Communist Party].

To be fair, Americans are sick and tired of being dragged into “forever wars”, and with so many Americans currently struggling for a litany of reasons, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the California Wildfires, it’s a bitter pill to swallow when one hears that the U.S. government has handed President Zelensky and Ukraine $280 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to conduct his defense against Russia. Much of this money was spent during the Biden regime who was simply content to wage a proxy war to bleed Russia without any plan to win it or any true desire to end it by way of a “good faith” negotiated settlement.

As National Security Advisor Mike Waltz stated on Sunday, March 2nd:

“The patience of the American people to keep giving billions and billions and billions with no end in sight is not unlimited.”

President Trump isn’t negotiating in good faith with Ukraine either. He doesn’t mind forcing Ukraine to surrender to terrible “peace terms” so long as America gets the rights to the rare earth minerals it needs so badly for the advancement of artificial intelligence and so many other technologies, which Putin also seeks control over. Trump is much more concerned over the money to be made from taking these resources and becoming a top leader in the AI industry than he is concerned over dead and dying Ukrainians and Russians. So, everybody should stop pretending he is dealing honestly or in good faith with Zelensky when he demands for Zelensky to make the deal without any security assurances — the assurances that Zelensky was right to demand, given Ukraine’s past and terrible abuse at the hands of Russia.

Today, March 3rd 2025, the Trump administration has halted financing for new weapons sales to Ukraine and Trump’s people are considering the suspension of arms shipments from U.S. stockpiles, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is in response to the little kerfuffle between Zelensky, Trump and Vance on February 28th, and it certainly won’t save any Ukrainian lives or do anything to make the situation better.

Curiously however, as Trump rails against Zelensky for not being grateful and saying “thank you” — even tho’ he has on numerous occasions, he just used emergency powers on March 1st to approve a $3 billion weapons transfer to Israel, including arms that Traitor Joe had refused to send to Tel Aviv. The Pentagon announced three arms packages for Israel that totaled over $3 billion and included over thirty-five thousand MK 84 and BLU-117 bombs with 2000 pound warheads, four thousand Predator bombs, and two-thousand-pound bunker-busting munitions.

Please note that even in 1994, the European Allies, America and Russia signed an agreement — The Budapest Memorandum — that ensured border security and Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine relinquishing its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Had Ukraine kept those nukes, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.

And as for Putin, he never has negotiated anything with Ukraine in “good faith” since he is intent on forcing Ukraine back under Russian influence as a vassal state or taking it outright. He wants its mineral wealth and its massive agricultural industry, because he sees both as necessary and integral to reconstructing the old Russian Empire. Putin isn’t about to negotiate in “good faith”, not anytime soon and not without something giving him a hard push towards a real and lasting peace, whatever that may be.

Everybody needs to drop the act and acknowledge that the Free World doesn’t have the moral backbone or the political will to make certain that an innocent people and their nation isn’t conquered and subjugated by another tyrant — and Ukraine is about to get royally screwed — again. So much for the U.S. being “the leader of the Free World” — not now, not anytime soon, perhaps to be never no more.

Some Americans, many in fact, have asked why we should defend a country rife with cultural and political immorality [or Europe for that matter] that is led by a man who is a cocaine-snorting advocate for that immorality, including all the disgusting gay, queer and transsexual antics one now finds across Ukraine. That alone is almost enough to convince me, except for the fact that the majority of Ukrainians are good and decent people, with 72% Orthodox Christian and 9% Catholic, most of whom don’t broker this trash at all. But then again, one might ask that same question of Americans about our own homeland — why should we defend Her when She is so rife with immorality and blatant evil people and lifestyles.

Please note that China and Russia have held joint military maneuvers each year since 2006, with their mock up “enemy” being the United States. But, they really do look at the U.S. as their enemy in real life and the here and now, which is why we witness them moving aggressively against U.S. vital interests on all fronts abroad and even within the domain of the contiguous United States, Hawaii and Alaska too.

This is about defending freedom and liberty across the globe, and even here in America, and stopping the ascendency of tyranny. We cannot fight every battle, but we can and should fight enough of them to set the tyrants back on their heels and stop them dead in their tracks. Otherwise, how many countries must fall before we finally decide it’s time to act decisively — until the world is completely swallowed by tyranny and its masters and we are left standing alone waving our American Flags on top of some lonely hill.

No. America cannot afford to carry the lion’s share of the cost of this war between Ukraine and Russia, but we shouldn’t try to force a bad peace deal upon Ukraine that rewards Putin. If Trump can walk away with a clear conscience, he should do just that, but if he actually allows Putin to get away scot-free with his invasion of Ukraine and keep 20% or more of Ukraine, the ramifications and consequences will be long ranging and lasting well into the next few decades in ways that will be extremely detrimental and dangerous for America and Her interests — quite a conundrum for a man who claims to put America first.

Much like China, which has used its massive year after year trade deficits and technology thefts from the U.S. to grow its economy and expand its military, President Trump is trying to stop the plunder of our national wealth and assets through tariffs and economic warfare, which worked well before 1913. He’s pulled the U.S. from the Paris Accord, the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Commission and several other UN organizations that were draining our Treasury and working against us globally, and he is now moving to strengthen America and turn Her into a fortress with an Iron Dome Missile Defense from coast to coast, while he hopes his deal making abilities will serve to defend American interests. Rather than turning to the United Nations, where three-quarters of the nations are steeped in tyranny and hate America, or looking towards NATO, the new order of the day will be unilateral military and economic actions against those outside America’s domain that are seen as threats.

If America and Europe fail to stop Putin in Ukraine with even a modicum of success, it won’t be but a matter of a year or two, maybe months, before China makes its move to take Taiwan. An American loss in Ukraine will only serve to strengthen China and Russian geopolitical positions, while weakening the U.S. Already, President Trump is seemingly willing to accept a multipolar world with China and Russia seen as equals through his eyes.

A bad peace in Ukraine is no peace at all. Europe will not be stable without a good peace deal that leaves Putin punished to some degree and wary of committing any future invasions. Trump’s promise to end the war quickly was always his bluster and arrogance talking and it was always unrealistic. The route he’s taking now, he might fail to ever end it. However, no matter his stated desire, his words do not coincide with the imperative of preventing Ukraine from losing and the new tyrants and axis of evil from winning a war that has taken a quick and unmistakable turn in the wrong direction.

America’s enemies are gaining ground and are on the move against Her and Her allies, as we see Russia, China, North Korea and Iran forge alliances and drive forward with their hostility to our principles of freedom and liberty. They threaten war and disrupt and assault our peaceful, prosperous world, interfering with our vital interests abroad and even funding the radicals who riot in our streets and burn our cities. They are the resurgence of the tyranny of the 20th century, endeavoring to make the world safe for their predation upon the weak and tyranny, to make it an unfit place for freedom, a place where the people are even afraid to speak the word “freedom”. Dangers we thought long dead have flared anew today.

Xi, Putin, Kim and the Ayatollah are revisionist powers seeking to overthrow the international order of things that has long been led by America and the Western Powers. They are smashing every convention, every treaty, every accord that ever worked to preserve peace worldwide. Putin is exerting his “principle” that says it’s just fine for strong nations to attack and conquer weaker nations, while China’s revanchist claims and maritime coercion in the South China Sea are meant to exhibit that large, powerful nations can simply grab all they can exert control over globally. And the Ayatollah rejects Western civilization entirely and continuously attempts to bring the Middle East and the entire world under Shia Islamic dominance, while regularly threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz and funding their Houthis proxy in Yemen to attack shipping in the Red Sea.

Americans were repulsed and disgusted by four years of weakness stinking up the Oval Office during the Biden regime, and they have demanded better of President Trump, while somewhat schizophrenically eagerly advocating for their isolationist impulses. We must never lose sight of the fact, that whether it’s a weak U.S. or simply an absent U.S., both will eventually damage America’s objectives, priorities and interests. Weakness and absence are two sides of the same strategic coin that degrade deterrence and make extreme increases in aggressions and attacks by our enemies much more likely.

Many Americans think the Ukraine War is absolutely of no concern to our country, since it is thousands of miles away and nothing really requires or demands our involvement — unless it’s our consciences. And yet, they forget why we live free today, as they also fail to recognize this conflict is only a small part of a broader war brewing that will pit the U.S. and whatever allies we still have the moment the war is upon us against the combined forces of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and lesser countries who hate America. This conflict is fundamentally a war between tyranny and freedom, evil and good. Those who remember history understand that Ukraine might be the target today, but it will not be the last country to come under attack if the tyrants win. Make no mistake, Putin has conducted his war against Ukraine with the help of China, Iran and North Korea. We turn our gaze away from the murder of freedom in Europe and Asia, in the comfort of our false sense of security an ocean away at our own peril.

Trump keeps saying he is going to bring a peace dividend to America by making “peace through strength”. Well he better get about it in a hurry. More than realpolitik, the smell of isolationism and American retreat from the world stage is in the air, and it smells like shit in the shadow of surrender.

Americans should brace themselves for the prospect that the world is about to become a much darker place.

Trump seems intent on being the gravedigger for the American world order rather than its savior.

March 3, 2025

~ The Author ~
Justin O. Smith has lived in Tennessee off and on most of his adult life, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, with a B.S. and a double major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – minors in Military Science and English, for what its worth. His real education started from that point on. Smith is a frequent contributor to the family of Kettle Moraine Publications.