I think OP is correct that Kremlin smarties will be thinking of possible attacks that would work in Trump’s interest and in Putin’s interest. But it would be a high priority to keep their involvement clandestine. They want to incite another actor, not act overtly themselves. (What do we know about firings and resignations at NSA, CIA, FBI? The Putin-Trump team is trying to degrade U.S. intelligence efforts.)
An attack by Iran in the Gulf or against Israel would help Putin and Trump, I think. (I’m already suspicious of Iran’s attacks on ships.) Somehow co-opting U.S. immigrants or would-be immigrants to go rogue with guns would be another way. Doubtless some of you can think of better ploys. *** In any case, Russia and the GOP would need to ensure no “fingerprints” are left behind.***
People have been announcing an imminent conflict with Iran since I was listening to Everclear on my Discman. I’m no geopolitical expert but my layman’s intuition tells me that Iran does not want conflict and has never wanted conflict, against the US, Israel, or anyone else. For all we’ve been hearing about the sinister boogeyman of Iran, nothing has materialized, even as the rest of that region is embroiled in war. I remember people insisting that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were going to engineer a conflict with Iran during their second term. I remember likewise people insisting that Israel was going to engineer a conflict with Iran and deliberately draw America into it.
Haven’t people realized now that full scale wars between nation states under the color of official flags are just not a thing anymore?
Of course, now I’m curious what would happen, just hypothetically, if Iran conducted a nuclear test in the next ten months. Does Trump get to say “I told you that Iran deal was the worst deal in history” and get believed by some, while others claim his pulling out of the deal is to blame?
Of course he does get to say that and of course as we no longer live in a shared reality, many Trumpites will blame Obama and most Dem leaning will blame Trump.
That’s all true. But I believe these problems could be solved if:
[ul]
[li]a major attack on US soil can be successfully attributed to a foreign nation’s government;[/li][li]that government in is the USA’s backyard (so to speak), and[/li][li]that government possesses a natural resource that the US government could, with some veneer of legitimacy, confiscate.[/li][/ul]
My guess is that in Vlad’s meetings with his puppet, he has been emphasizing how much Oil there is in Venezuela, waiting to be seized. Those Venezuelans are a basket case! Americans will be doing them a favor by coming in and putting the whole country on a paying basis!
Trump would love that idea. He’s been champing at the bit to seize someone’s oil since before he got elected. This would be his chance.
For Putin, the appeal is obvious: First, the US would be doing what Russia has been getting sanctioned for: invading a neighbor. How can the US keep any sanctions at all on Russia if it is doing exactly what it criticized Russia for doing???
Second, Trump would naturally withdraw all US forces from Europe in order to carry out the takeover of Venezuela. And if all US forces are being withdrawn from Europe, then there’s no point in the USA staying part of NATO!
Of course this plan requires that “Venezuelans,” “on the instructions of their government,” carry out an act of terrorism that will really get Americans’ attention. How about a bombing that kills someone in Trump’s family? Someone who’s aged out of his interest range, perhaps? No one would suspect Trump of being part of a plot against someone who lives in the White House!
Or perhaps it could be an act of terrorism taking place at a major sporting event. That would make Americans boiling mad and ready to enlist to fight that awful terrorist nation!
In any case, Trump would need someone trustworthy to set it all up:
I think Trump is way too afraid of bungling a war, to try to get involved in one. He has enough of a sense of self-preservation to know that it’s too risky for him to attempt when the consequences of it backfiring are so severe. I just do not see any of these Tom Clancy plots coming to fruition, and it’s unsettling to me that people are so paranoid about it.
His “sense of self-preservation” didn’t prevent him from trying to strongarm the president of another country to influence the upcoming election. The question to ask in evaluating trump’s actions isn’t “Are you paranoid?”, it’s “Are you paranoid enougn?”
(Doesn’t take a Tom Clancy plot, after all. It just takes, say, Erik Prince becoming aware during one of his visits to Venezuela that some particular Venezuelan official will be present in the United States during some particular time period. That’s really all Prince would need in order to set up a nice frame. Pretty simple, really.)
I disagree. I don’t think that everyone who voted for Trump in 2016 is a true believer. He also needed a lot of voters from outside his hard core base.
And I feel there are going to be a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who won’t be voting for him in 2020. Some people who believed his promises in 2016 are going to be disappointed by his failure to keep those promises in the last four year. And some people are going to be turned away by the various negative things that have happened.
I’ve never seen any signs that Trump worries about the possibility of him doing anything wrong. Even after he’s done something wrong. He’s very self-confident.
Some people have a strangely low or paranoid view of the average American voter. That despite somehow all those military adventures in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and war fatigue, and 4,000 American troops dead, and thousands more wounded, and trillions of dollars spent, and all that PTSD, and all that negative media coverage, and Trump’s low approval rating, …that somehow Trump launching a war to seize Venezuelan or Iranian oil would lead to millions of voters being like ***“Aw YEAHH” ***and enthusiastically vote him into reelection.
I used to have a low opinion of the average American voter. I now have an abysmally low opinion. Like through the Earth’s mantle, heading for the core.
Why do they need a useful idiot? There are plenty of competent people who are happy to promote military spending. They’re probably more reliable than somebody like Trump and less likely to get involved in some public scandal.
If anything, Trump’s mercurial nature makes him a greater threat to the military-industrial complex. He’s likelier to say crazy things like “Let’s cut our defense budget by $300 billion next year” than any mainstream D or R. Even Democrats like Obama promoted slow, steady increases in defense spending year on year by year.
Man, if the U.S. is so full of suckers and chumps that ideas as simple as this would work, how the hell did you keep your country going for as long as it has? It sounds like you should have devolved into Civil War II decades ago.
There was at least enough faith in ‘the system’ that the smart guys - aka the elites - more or less knew what they were doing in government. People these days probably believe that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson could be president, or their local bartender. More and more people believe that the system is hopelessly corrupt. There have always been, and always been, a health population of morons participating in a democracy, but it’s the cynicism and detachment from reality that makes their ignorance that much more potent.
I agree with Velocity: I think Trump is a shit talker, but I think he wants no part of war. He understands that he will get blamed for dead troops – say what you want about his intelligence and his sanity at times, but he understands that much.
Besides, I’ve never gotten the sense that Trump was into remaking the world into America’s image; he’s more into remaking America into his image.