Subject: Trump and His 83 Dimension Chess


But a funny thing happened to Trump’s attempt to hand Ukraine over to his comrade in thuggery: the war has turned in Ukraine’s favor. The fighting remains a gruesome slugfest, but Ukraine’s superior flexibility and capacity for innovation have gradually given it the upper hand in the drone warfare that increasingly shapes combat. In fact, Ukraine is so proficient at drone warfare that the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — which are facing drone attacks as a consequence of Trump’s disastrous Iran war — have signed agreements to draw on Ukrainian technology and expertise.

Zelenskyy, it turns out, does have quite a few cards, while Trump has far fewer cards than he imagined.

Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential: Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves. But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust. By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.

And now the fact that the world is managing economically despite Trump’s tariffs, while Ukraine is surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees, has revealed that we are much less essential than everyone assumed

Krugman