Trump's plan now contemplates restoring America's industrial (read mercantile) power which he believes can be achieved only at the cost of those alliances, especially those alliances among mercantile nations which mean Europe and Western level Pacific rim nations.
Hence, the commentator in this video comes to the conclusion that alliances with these nations, expressed as multinational organizations, will come to an end. These include EU, WTO, NAFTA (and NATO.)
It is interesting that the imposition of tariffs on Liberation Day do not nicely coincide with the old national security objectives of America as expressed in conventional terms. For example, Trump imposes strong tariffs on Vietnam even while America has been wooing that country as counterpoint to China. In other words, the plan to make America a mercantilist nation is to be done even at the cost of any alliance that would normally be regarded as enhancing America's national security.
In that context, Ukraine is certainly an obstacle to the secondary part of Trump's plan, to enlist a close trade relationship, and no doubt a close diplomatic relationship, with Russia because Russia can supply the minerals, petroleum, timber etc. so necessary to a manufacturing nation which he wants America to become.
This implies that Trump does not regard Russia as a potential adversary, certainly not a potential mortal adversary. So NATO is unnecessary, and to the degree that NATO proves an impediment to that new relationship with Russia, it must go.
Trump's brutal treatment of Ukraine now comes into focus. To the degree that support for Ukraine requires estrangement from his relationship with Russia, Ukraine must be sacrificed, and so it has been.
Some time ago on March 21, I published this reply which suggests that key to understanding Trump's plan respecting Russia lies in his endorsement of AFD in Germany:
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While speculating, let us speculate further about Trump's plan after he concludes a cease-fire. I believe he is deliberately destroying NATO because he wants a new global arrangement with Russia and China. I believe his foreign policy is made clear by the express policy of AFD the German political party which he, Vance and Hegseth have endorsed that calls for removal of American nuclear forces in Germany and Europe, the ending of NATO, the ending of the EU, and a reset with Russia and China. AFD wants energy from Russia and trade with China. AFD wants close diplomatic relations with them and, quite obviously, estrangement to some degree from America.
I believe Trump is bent on stopping the Ukraine war to rearrange the map and world alliances. NATO and even Europe become at best impediments and at worst obstacles. Just as he is bent on structuring the power alignments in Europe respecting Russia, even at the cost of Ukraine, so he will not commit the United States to kinetic war against China on behalf of Taiwan.
In other words, Trump seeks a realignment with China. Does that include acknowledging Chinese privacy in the Pacific as America withdraws to its hemisphere between Panama and Greenland? Does the reset with China mean wide open relationship with adjusted trade conditions? Does all this only mean that Trump thinks that he can somehow separate Russia from China?
Trump seeks nothing less than a breathtaking rearrangement of the world with new relationships between us, Russia and China.
These are speculations, granted, but they do begin to explain the rather odd deal making spree against Ukraine that is hardly in keeping with, "the Art Of The Deal."
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As I have said in a previous reply concerning our precarious fiscal condition, I count myself a deficit alarmist. I think Trump eyes $37 trillion debt and concludes that he must find a solution to that and fast, that he is in a foot race to achieve that solution before the music stops.
Trump's lifelong aversion to globalism, perhaps better defined as a life long attachment to tariffs, may have been born of a desire to increase the standard of living of the nation, but the need for speed to address the nation's debt peril impels radical action now to convert to mercantilism.
America can no longer find its security by acting as the world's policeman, nor from its alliances but only from the healthy condition of its balance sheet. It is not just that American can no longer afford to operate under the old globalist world order, it is a mindset that does away with characterizing competitor nations only as kinetic threats or allies. The new thinking regards nations as sources of raw materials or places to sell finished goods. Europe, for example, has very few raw materials but might make a ready place to sell our finished goods. China, despite its aggressions and its mercantile capacity, nevertheless stands as a place to sell products. Therefore, China should be cultivated as a market rather than feared as a competitor for world domination.
One cultivates China by refraining from kinetic war, that means not defending Taiwan, that means negotiating mutually beneficial trade relationships by negotiating at first through tariffs. So war for both sides simply becomes bad for business.
