The fraudulent war is what researchers refer to as the time between September 1939 and May 1940, when words more than weapons were being used between Germany and its Western allies.
In the United States, we have been witnessing the sham president, as President-elect Trump and his friends have deployed phrases well ahead of being able to take action. Thanks to God, we may be pardoned for predicting that his fraudulent era will finish on January 20  with his inauguration and that we will begin to see the true presidency.
The thoughts, as always with the very media-savvy Trump, have been designed to get attention, both from the British government and from foreign institutions.
During his first election battle in 2016, the person who was then his principal tech-billionaire ally, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk’s former classmate at PayPal, said vividly that with Trump the important thing was to get him” seriously but not absolutely”. Trump doesn’t imply to do everything he says, in other words– but he does, in Thiel’s watch, had significant purposes.
I believe that by combining what he said during the plan and what he has been saying throughout this false president since November 5, we can now draw the following five conclusions about his potential purposes.
Finish number one is that it would be erroneous to claim that Trump or his Republican Party are in favor of a return to the isolationism that characterized American politicians and international legislation in the 1930s, as some critics do. An separatist threatens both to enter Panama or Greenland nor to change Canada into America’s 51st , position.
Trump and his” America First” movements are unilateralists who despise international obligations and disrespect friends, but they obviously have an international appeal and don’t want to cover at home. Also, if Panama and Greenland hold any real value in Trump’s thinking, it must be because he sees them as equipment in America’s conflict with Russia and China, no as stops in themselves.
Finish number two: Trump thinks he needs to appear strong if the American consumer wants to remain persuaded that he will “make America great once” but also that he needs to look strong and confident if he wants to succeed in his foreign policy objectives.
His controversial remarks about Canada, Greenland, and Panama were intended for both of those functions. In line with Thiel’s reply, he should not be taken practically in either case, but he does have a major goal to look and act like a bodybuilder.
This needs to be borne in mind when drawing the third conclusion, about Ukraine and Russia. Everyone, especially Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, knew that Trump’s claim to be able to end the war “in 24 hours” should not be taken literally.
But if he wants to end the conflict, he will now have to act and act strong, not against Zelensky but rather against Putin.
Soon after January 20, he and his chosen envoy, Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, can be expected to look for ways to demonstrate this tough stance: almost certainly by continuing some military support for Ukraine, but also most likely by making it clear that Putin’s maximalist demands have no chance of being accepted. It is Putin’s demands that are preventing any serious peace talks, not Zelenskyy’s.
Trump will soon want to shove Putin off balance and make it clear what position America is adopting as he becomes the self-declared strongman president.
His choice of strategy for doing this will be the most crucial early indication of Trump’s intentions for foreign policy, as it will be watched for both Beijing and Tehran as well as Pyongyang because China, Iran, and North Korea are America’s other allies. He and his team for national security are certain that this choice and action will likely set the tone for the next four years. Its importance cannot be overestimated.
The trickiest contradiction to be identified among Trump’s proclamations is that the fourth one concerns America’s public finances. He and his Republican allies are known to want to raise US defense budgets and demonstrate to China that America intends to maintain its military superiority.
Given that the defense budget he is inheriting from President Joe Biden only amounts to 3.4 % of GDP, his calls for NATO members to set a new target for defense spending of 5 % of GDP, in contrast to the current 2 % target, have less credibility.
For example, for Italy to increase spending from its current 1.5 % of GDP to 5 % would plainly be impossible, given the fiscal constraints the Meloni government lives under.
However, it is also impossible for America to increase from 3.4 % of GDP to 5 % at a time when the US federal budget deficit is currently at 6.3 %, especially for a Trump administration that has promised to keep the income tax cuts that are scheduled to expire. America’s total public debt exceeds 120 % of GDP, which is not far short of Italy’s 138 %.
This also leads to the fifth and final conclusion: that the billionaires surrounding Trump, led by Elon Musk, are likely to be successful in pushing his administration to deregulate all sorts of business sectors, whether energy, social media or finance, but not in getting him to make major new public investments, including in defense. Deregulation costs the Treasury nothing, at least not directly, and brings the lure of faster economic growth, at least in the short term.
Let us just add one further conclusion. It is that anyone, including Argentina’s President Javier Milei or Musk, who thinks that there is now a libertarian and deregulatory axis linking Trump, Milei, Meloni and other European far-right parties doesn’t know anything about Italy. Musk and Milei will soon learn that the Meloni government may stand for a lot of things, but deregulation, libertarianism, and free speech are not just some of them.
This is the English translation of an article that La Stampa published in Italian, first published on Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished with permission.