American remake: lessons not learned or a solution not found?

Exclusive. A comparison of the discussions of the past and current elections in the USA reveals their identity. Unless the pandemic was replaced by wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the issue of abortion has reached today's acuteness. Everything else is the same: China, immigration, carbon emissions. An article about the 2020 elections is easily mistaken for an article about the 2024 elections. The same pair of candidates made it to the finals. This means that the problems are deep and have not been resolved in four years.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden

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And also: if the 2020 elections were held in an environment of very tough confrontation, which culminated in the storming of the Capitol, then the current elections, closer to the end, and further, during the inevitable disputes about the correctness of the vote count, promise to be even tougher. Both parties are forced to fight for votes "here and now" by any means, since the society is split along party lines approximately in half: approximately 40% for each party and 20% wavering. At the same time, the supporters of each party, and even more so the vacillating ones, are also very heterogeneous.

All this contributes to extreme radicalization of the inter-party confrontation, which sacrifices everything, including common sense. Within the parties, the tension is also growing.

Is it possible for one of the parties to split? Supporters of the Democrats are divided to the greatest extent by their attitude to the events in Gaza. Excessive, according to Palestinian sympathizers, the Biden administration's support for Israel is capable of pushing some of the votes of vacillating voters away from Biden, and, in part, of firm supporters of the Democratic Party, as shown by the Minnesota primaries. But these voters are unlikely to move away from Trump. It is more likely that they will simply not vote, which, given the precariousness of the situation, is also, of course, extremely unpleasant for Biden. Nevertheless, the loss of a part of the votes is still not a split. There are no signs of a split in the Democrats.

But there are signs of a possible split in the Republican Party. Not everyone is happy with Trump and his course. But the party still does not have a sufficiently energetic and popular leader capable of leading such a split, taking a big political risk.

Nikki Hala could become such a leader if she were to self-nominate as the third candidate. Currently, Haley has officially refused to run for nomination from the Republican Party, but the option of self-nomination is possible for her. Most likely, she would take part of the votes of the Republicans with her, and would leave Trump with a chance to be elected. But what then? Could Haley use Trump's defeat to strengthen her position in the party and move away from the GOP in the 2028 election? A sober calculation suggests that, with today's schedules, most likely not. Moreover, this move would most likely be the end of her political career, at least within the ranks of the GOP.

But Hayly, who dared to put herself forward, would not act alone, but relying on sponsors. So it is impossible to rule out her self-nomination for 100%. Everything depends on what kind of support she will receive against Trump. In addition, the question remains as to how great the chances of the GOP's survival are regardless of Hala's behavior.

Trump, Biden and American Sinophobia

Trump is annoying a lot of Republicans today, and the MAGA he relies on is still no match for the GOP. But MAGA is gaining strength, gradually replacing the GOP. This increases the chances of counter-resistance to the pressure of MAGA, the split of the Republicans, and the creation of a situation where Haley would not become its initiator, but would only jump on the footboard of a passing train, which, of course, would suit her much more. However, Trump has a serious trump card, capable to some extent of balancing the dissatisfaction of MAGA - American sinophobia.

See also: MAGA: National Socialist American Workers Party

According to polls, more than half of Americans are very concerned about the situation with China in foreign policy. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are taking a back seat against the background of China. The problems of the DPRK and Iran are even more so. How true is this approach?

On the one hand, a bloc of totalitarian, anti-democratic countries, which includes Russia, the DPRK, Iran, and the People's Republic of China, has formed against the United States.

The PRC plays the role of an industrial, technological and financial leader in this bloc, in general, a role similar to that played by the United States in the Western liberal-democratic bloc. This gives rise to the temptation to reduce the idea of ​​a confrontation between two blocs and two approaches to the world order to a confrontation between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

But such a simplification is wrong. Despite the opposition to the liberal-democratic world order, China remains the most important part of the world economy, included in global financial and technological chains. This fundamentally distinguishes it from the other three members of the block, which are deeply marginal. Russia is a purely raw material country, with a dying industry, capable of producing only fairly primitive military equipment, and even then, on the basis of contraband components. North Korea and Iran are recognized as roughly the same, minus rich resources.

All three existing regimes are locked in war for the reason that they are unable to exist normally, that is, peacefully, in the modern world. In the closest analogy to human society, they are social scum without a profession, losers in life, forced to go to crime precisely and only because they do not know how to earn a living, staying within the law.

China, which started after Mao as such an outcast, today has become the most important production platform of the global level. China today is ambivalent, it is engulfed in a severe crisis, it is unstable and extremely unstable. The past, weighed down by the omnipotence of the Communist Party of China and by economic, social, and, more broadly, existential problems that cannot be solved without dismantling it, pulls him into marginal neo-feudalism, which has a specific form of Maoism in China. But far from all Chinese, and even far from all CCP functionaries, agree with this reversal, although today its supporters, led by Xi, have won the upper hand.

However, this situation is still reversible. If China, in one way or another, has left its totalitarian and criminal environment, which exerts a bad influence on it, strengthening the positions of supporters of the anti-Western course, it can be turned to a liberal-democratic path in a completely peaceful way. Of course, such a turnaround will be neither quick nor simple, and its result may differ very significantly from the usual liberal-democratic society presented to us.

Moreover, the liberal-democratic model has reached the limits of its development today in the West, and, above all, in the USA, and it is transforming into something else before our eyes, and there are several options for the implementation of this otherness. But the peaceful integration of China into the community of liberal-democratic countries, conventionally called the West, is still possible. This path is preferable to economic, and even more so, classical warfare.

But, as already mentioned, the weakening of the supporters of neo-Maoism led by Xi Jinping would be greatly facilitated by the elimination of Beijing's border guards.

First of all, this concerns Russia - the most marginal, aggressive, ambitious, and at the same time resourceful of the three, and, at the present time, absolutely Nazi.

Thus, the way to a truce between Washington and Beijing, and to resolve their differences, including a solution to the Taiwan problem, lies through Russia's defeat in Ukraine. And since we are talking about a country that has no nuclear weapons, this defeat must be of a hybrid nature: combining an exhausting war and suffocating sanctions. This requires time and long-term assistance to Ukraine. As an option, you can play all-in, considering that 90% of Russia's nuclear weapons are probably a bluff, and the Russian side will not dare to use the remaining 10%. However, the methods of approaching the defeat of Russia are a separate topic...

Trump himself may not understand this, but he has qualified consultants. Nevertheless, Trump prefers to play a direct escalation with China, while at the same time seeking a compromise with Putin. The reason is simple: Trump is an enemy of American democracy.

He is even more hostile to it than Putin and Xi. His political views are closest to Putin's - real, not proclaimed propaganda: these are the views of a gangster who seized the state. The game of escalation with China and buying Putin's sympathies at the expense of concessions to the Kremlin, first of all, in Ukraine, will allow Trump to reliably and permanently introduce the USA into a state of "war and siege", even if it is only economic at first.

By taking such a step, Trump solves two tasks at once: he marginalizes US society, which is already in crisis, driving it into a state of readiness to exchange part of civil liberties for the promise of victory in this war, and he gets a chance to somewhat revive US domestic production by replacing Chinese imports with American products , which will strengthen his position. And although for Trump, even in the event of his victory, this will be the last presidential term, he is determined to transform the USA into an American analogue of the Third Reich, and the GOP into MAGA, developed into a full-fledged federal party of the first rank - in fact, the American version of the NSDAP .

Can it work for him? At the current crisis point, unfortunately, it can. So Trump's victory and further marginalization of the ego project of the Republican Party and American society as a whole is truly dangerous. For Ukraine, it can turn into a real catastrophe, but this is already private, we are not talking about Ukraine now.

In the US, Trump's plan will certainly meet resistance. But, relying on deep-rooted Sinophobia, Trump can win, and the Biden administration, for a number of reasons, was unable to establish priorities in foreign policy that are understandable to the majority of Americans, and will put Russia, not China, as the number one danger.

Naturally, Trump's victory is Moscow's wildest dream, since it would provide the Kremlin with, if not a complete victory over Ukraine, then at least a truce on Moscow's terms. But in Beijing, where the elections are also being followed, they would probably prefer to see a Biden-2 administration in the White House. In the event of Trump's victory and the introduction of tariffs on Chinese products, the fate of Chinese imports to the United States will drop significantly. According to Oxford Economics, from 20 to 3%, in value terms this is a drop from $350 to $50-60 billion.

Reasoning purely theoretically, Si's calculations may be different. His own situation within the CCP and the People's Republic of China, despite the appearance of an absolute victory, is quite complicated.

At first glance, the drop in exports will be a disaster for him, but, on the other hand, it can create a situation when Chinese society, which is not inclined, as a whole, to support a military conflict with America, due to significant economic ties to them, may face such a conflict decide After all, you are not Putin, and such a game seems unlikely for him.

In any case, by ceding Ukraine to Putin, namely, the GOP faction in the lower house of Congress is currently occupied with it, at the insistence of Trump, the USA can provoke first an economic, and then a military conflict with a much more dangerous enemy than Moscow. At the same time, blocking aid to Ukraine is not at all Trump's pre-election game against Biden. Trump has repeatedly said that he "will not give Ukraine a single cent", since investments in confrontation with Russia are meaningless for the USA. The last time he repeated this thesis was during a meeting with Viktor Orbán, which Orbán reported after the meeting with Trump. The very fact of the meeting is a completely clear signal sent by Trump to both Moscow and Brussels.

Sergey Ilchenko, deputy editor-in-chief Newsky