Danger Close For Trump

Donald Trump won the US election handily early this morning. He rode a wave that he didn't create, but was wise enough to see - the disaffected. The people in the US that feel their country was lost due to trade agreements, and foreign trade to Asia, that effectively stripped the United States of its industrial might - and the jobs that went with it. The people who have become war weary after 13 years of straight war in never ending guerilla wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. The constant state of war that George Orwell noted in his book 1984.

The US people rejected their establishment. Both the political and to some extent the financial establishment. They are deeply angered as they watch their country slip from a model to the world (in their eyes) to a wreck on the way to the bottom. In other words they acted out. They lashed out. They made a statement. Contrary to some of the ludicrous mass media analysis that framed the vote as racist (white men acting racist) and/or sexist, the Trump election was the result of his "movement" coming together to throw out the US political establishment - Republican and Democrat. It was an easily foreseeable result given the explosive tension in the US, the anti-establishment movement enveloping the Western world, and the establishment's "let them eat cake" approach to a twenty first century educated populace. The Clintons obvious ties to the odious and dark political "elite" made Hillary Clinton the wrong woman, at the wrong time, to become the first female President of the United States. Not rocket science.

That brings us to today, and the next six weeks or so before Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. If you believe that there is a political establishment that crosses party lines and looks after its own, then you must believe they aren't happy at the possibility of losing control of the country to a man they consider a "loose cannon". Of course, by loose cannon they mean they can't control him. For them that is a big problem, and that means the next six weeks may be dangerous for the world.

Trump on the face of it appears to be a pragmatic person looking for pragmatic results. It seems obvious to me that as a family man, with a large collection of kids and grandkids, that Trump's motivation for seeking the office of President at the age of 70 is his concern for the future those family members may face in the US. That's my own take, my gut feeling on him. He has made it clear he wants to mend fences with countries like Russia, although perhaps not so much for Iran (which is potentially dangerous in itself), and there has been a concerted effort by powerful elements within the US establishment and government to promote hostilities with Russia and China. The question is this: Will those forces attempt to use Obama's last six weeks in office to start a conflict that Trump will have no choice but to continue when he is sworn in?

A conflict that derails his agenda for a pragmatic world peace. An amicable agreement on spheres of influence, etc. For example, an American strike on  Syrian forces that sees the Russian military shoot down one or more US fighter aircraft. Of course there are many other such scenarios that could green light an American conflict and leave Trump powerless to produce peaceful pragmatism. Furthermore, such a conflict would derail Trump's plans for cancelling trade agreements as the US and those same countries would be allies in any large conflict, and the feasibility of cutting off a fighting ally would be almost nil.

My point is that the next six weeks are "danger close". They are vulnerable to manipulation of international events to maintain a global agenda of successive free trade agreements that marginalize the sovereignty of nations and lay the path for continuing the New World Order of the Bush era. They won't sit back idly while Trump undoes their work, and they won't be able to realistically attack him directly right now as his "movement" has the political capital of a big agenda in the making. Some people believe that Mike Pence somehow represents a modern day Lyndon Johnson scenario. I doubt that as the public is not the relatively naïve public of the 60's.

No, what Trump and his people need to be watchful for is suddenly aggressive escalation of American military actions in either the Middle East, Ukraine or China. Personally, if such a move is made to derail Trump's agenda before he hits office, I believe that Syria holds that distinct potential. It's a place where American and Russian military hardware is operational in close proximity. It's also a place where the US has already painted Russia as the bogeyman in the siege of Aleppo. That despite attempting to do the almost identical thing with their Iraqi allies in Mosul, Iraq. My point is this: Things are dangerous right now in the political vacuum of the exchange of power in the US. There are very powerful forces that don't want to see any peace with Russia or China. My estimate is they will act to make sure that doesn't happen, and they only have six precious weeks to instigate against it. That's why things are danger close for President-Elect Trump right now.