Trump vs Biden

QUESTION:

Who is better for Russia: Biden or Trump?

ANSWER:

As a researcher of macro-history, it is perhaps more correct for me to ask a more general question: which of these two political veterans is more necessary and useful — for America itself, for the Western world, as well as for the rest of the non-West, including Russia.

Let’s go in order.

For America itself, Donald Trump is undoubtedly more necessary and useful. It is like a bitter medicine for the USA. The great country is seriously ill; it simultaneously has two dangerous illnesses that need urgent treatment.

The first is a progressive (in every sense) cultural-ideological dementia. It is forcing new generations of Americans to forget the country’s past, starting with the legacy of the Founding Fathers. Aggressive radical “progressives” — the American version of the Bolsheviks — entrenched mainly in the ranks of the Democratic Party, are trying to twist and rewrite the key formative episodes of US history — the War of Independence, the development of the West, external imperial expansion, the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, the great industrial breakthrough , two world wars of the twentieth century, ascent to world leadership. America took place both as a successful state project (conceived, came to the “virgin” continent, built, raised to a pedestal), and as an ideological complex, and as a geopolitical leader of a large Western coalition (with a leading American-British component).

These are the dreams and efforts of many generations of Americans realized over more than 400 years. All this civilizational heritage of global significance is now being defamed as the criminal creation of white racist men, as barbaric exploitation, cultural violence, centuries-old discrimination, sexism, bisexual chauvinism and the like. There is a rapidly expanding part of the population (already at least a third) who are confident that the state is deeply guilty before them, is obliged to repent and compensate for the damage to the “victims” of the yoke for decades. The “victims” themselves are rushing to every level in government administration, education, culture, and the media environment. From now on, they want to dominate forever in order to complete the remaking of America, to make it irreversible.

This whole terrible toxic mass of pseudo-progressives is gradually absorbing and digesting the US Democratic Party. And even old-school politicians, including Joseph Biden, already look and act like they’re half-digested.

The second disease of America, which also affects mainly supporters of the Democratic Party, is an obsessive mania for global hegemony. In the manic-morbid consciousness of the “hegemonists” (especially clearly in women like Hillary Clinton or Victoria Nuland), America is extremely, simply critically needed by the whole world as a model in everything, a source of rules, a skillful manager of the world economy, as well as a manager, broker and gendarme in international relationships. And in this mission commanded from above, the United States is indispensable, because there is only one alternative — general chaos. Even the UN makes sense only as an instrument in the hands of America, which Providence did not accidentally place in New York.

The development of this disease has brought America into enormous imperial overload, dangerously depleted its resources, provoked many local wars, and in recent years has pitted the United States against the anti-hegemonic rebellion of the Global South.

So, America is dangerously sick, and Joseph Biden has become a clear symbol of its painfully inadequate state. Continuing in power with him personally, or the line that he embodies, is fraught for the United States in a more or less distant future with a systemic collapse — project and civilizational.

Here we must immediately cool down the enthusiasm of Americanophobes. It would be extreme folly to dance around and rejoice at such a prospect. The collapse of the giant will inevitably hit both the entire world-system and Russia. The space of global disorder will quickly be filled with various types of radicalism, whose adherents will rush to tear up and divide the great inheritance. And since the great Christian empire of the European type will collapse, Islamist and anti-European radical forces will succeed in dividing the inheritance. They will be the main beneficiaries of the Pax Post-Americana world.

Donald Trump as a person and politician has a bunch of obvious — and, due to his age, irremovable – shortcomings. But it just so happened that it was on it that the New World came together like a wedge. Trump is 90% fanfare, bluff and shocking. But 10% of the time he is the one who is needed now, because there is no time to look for others. He captures and accumulates signals emanating from Historical America, which does not want to give up and finally degenerate into a “progressive” antagonist, reminiscent of the “alien” from the series of films by Ridley Scott. It so happens that intellectuals like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, media stars like Tucker Carlson, and technocrats like Elon Musk are now betting on Trump.

Trump’s task is not to create miracles beyond his reach, but to at least stop two chronic American diseases before they develop into an irreversible crisis. To force America to remember itself, to get rid of the destructively excessive external burden, to take care of itself and try to preserve the main thing from its real self.

For now, Trump’s chances of winning the November 2024 election are favorable.  His victory would benefit America as a bitter medicine, which would be taken hard, with side effects, but should at least partially improve the national body.

In Russia, the assessment of Trump’s “second coming” to the White House depends on the general attitude towards America. Convinced opponents of the United States as such, who are not ready to tolerate it on the planet in any form, would like to see Joseph Biden or a politician of the same clinical type (“progressivism — hegemonism”) as president. They say, let the “Bidenoids” quickly finish off the weakened hegemon, who is stubbornly striving to overstrain himself. The sight of a colossus in ruins will delight the hearts of Americanophobes.

For more far-sighted and constructive politicians and analysts who are not prone to Manichaeism, Trump is preferable from the actual pair. He has limited negotiability. With it, you can really try to transfer the military conflict in Ukraine into the mainstream of a diplomatic settlement with international legal fixation of the new reality. This is, so to speak, a minimum task. And if Trumpism as an American revivalist ideology can gain a foothold as a political line, then Russia could probably get a serious international partner for building a fair polycentric world order.

Well, we’ll see how it turns out pretty soon.