< The Latest 2025-01-21T18:47:06+0000
The Pasadena Star-News | Tue 01/21 10:47am PST | John Seiler
President Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Address synthesized themes he rode to victory. The speech mainly was about domestic policy. But the key was foreign policy. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end,” he said. “And, perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
Gone are the days of “regime-change wars,” as they’re called by U.S. Army combat veteran and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee to be director of national intelligence. These are not the 1990s, when America was the “sole remaining superpower” and got involved in senseless and expensive wars in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved, China’s economy was 1/15 th that of the United States. Today, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, it’s 26% larger, at $31.2 trillion to our $24.7 trillion. We’re no longer No. 1. The next two largest are India at $13.1 trillion and Russia at $5.8 trillion.
Note Russia now has a bigger economy than Germany and Japan. Moscow survived President Biden’s sanctions over the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It thrived by shifting its economic focus to China and India. Russia’s ground and air forces, although not its navy, now are equal to or stronger than ours.
Then here are the nuclear arsenals, as tallied by the Federation of American Scientists: Russia 5,580 nuclear warheads, U.S. 5,044, China 500 (and rising), France 290, UK 225, India 172, Pakistan 170, Israel 90 and North Korea 50.
Let’s add on Jan. 17, just three days before Trump’s inauguration, President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran traveled to Moscow to sign a trade and military agreement with Russian Vladimir V. Putin. This changing situation helped Trump arrange a cease fire between U.S. ally Israel and Iranian ally Hamas in Palestine – even before taking office.
The world is arranging into what’s being called “multipolarity.” The good news is that means those at the top, basically the four major economic and military powers, can arrange peace in most of these flashpoints.
On domestic policy, America cannot thrive in this multipolar world with a $36 trillion debt rising at $2 trillion a year. Our industrial base, stressed by giving arms to Ukraine and Israel, and to prepare to defend Taiwan, buckled under Biden. Vice President JD Vance provided the details last April in an op-ed in the New York Times. Few factories, few bombs. That’s a major reason Trump wants to use tariffs to rebuild our factories.
The multipolar rivalry also is what’s behind Trump wanting to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland. The Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 20, “The new administration views China-owned infrastructure as leverage over the waterway.” And Russia is the only country with nuclear-powered icebreakers , which it’s using do develop the arctic as a new waterway for trade and the military. Trump saying Canada should be a state, I believe, is just a call to bring our two lands closer and for our neighbor to restore its once-great military to strength, especially in the arctic.
Trump said, “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons…. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.”
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The Taiwan situation will return to a benign stalemate, with Taiwan independent but not a country. It was the late President Jimmy Carter who arranged in 1979 what the State Department website describes as, “acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”
Not all Trump’s policies will be the right ones. But he’s preparing us for the increasing competition that, if all goes right, will be peaceful.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at: johnseiler.substack.com