Yeah he’ll withdraw troops and NATO support no matter how things go in Europe …

He’ll need more armyboots at home defending his regime … also needs to recoup costs due to losing out on tax income and tariff lies. Then there is this thing where he wants to give Putin this favor of dismantling NATO.

So, his demand was 2% in 2017 … and countries are exceeding that, Poland is already spending more than even the US, and Germany is climbing, so he upped it to 5% to get the excuse of the US backing out.

Even if they meet 5%, in a few years he’ll up it further.

Ofcourse for now he’ll assume the NATO members still feel bound to keep supplying intelligence information and buy American weaponry, even if NATO falls apart.

He needs Russia to win…

Because Putin demands it of him to force it that way.

I suspect Trump hopes Putin will give him 20% anyway

Yes, it’s mostly Putins goal, he knows the US will be too busy internally/incompetent to mean anything on a world stage so Russia takes the lead.

Musk is a firm believer of being part of the destruction of the world and desires to be on the forefront of reshaping it… For him it’s all good 'till the restructuring begins.

So the path to world war has been firmly set in motion:

Trump fully destroys the US’ international influence by dismantling the NATO and UN memberships, closing bases on foreign soil and discarding its external intelligence machine.

Ukraine will not want to be conquered and can make its own nukes, will be a huge pain for Russia.

Russia will attempt to take back eastern Europe, first through (political)chaos then by force, like it has done times and times again in the past.

Iran will see the US kneeling before Russia and openly attacks Israel with all it has, the US will try to call on the Arab states to intervene, but it would be in the name of Israel which… yeah is a bit awkward…

India and Japan will declare neutrality, Japan closes itself off from the world as in the olden days, and India has a few worms to pick with Pakistan…

Afrika is a tribal bloodbath on it’s own and no party in this.

China will feel legitimized in taking Taiwan and perhaps all of Korea, which destroys the Wests supply of silicon. Causing a tipping point into all out war over the whole globe…

Alas, the message Heggseth is spreading in Trump’s name in Europe and Ukraine is that all will be given to Putin and all the fighting and killing and spending of billions has been moot.

No US protection, no NATO soldiers in Ukraine to keep peace.

No return of taken lands, no reparations to be paid by invader russia.

No NATO membership.

No large Ukrainian army allowed.

And ofcourse: No guarantees that Putin won’t return to forcibly claim the rest or destroy Ukraine 5 years on.

And it is not spoken of but the valuable resources go to Russia, not the US. The seized Russian assets ofcourse will be given back to Putin under a gesture of severe groveling and kneeling by the west.

In effect, the USA lost all and Putin won the conflict.

Think about it … the USA LOSES this conflict against a severely outclassed enemy. Only because Trump is afraid of his idol Putin.

Remember when Trump did away with the regulations to register car accidents caused by electric vehicles and self driving mechanisms?

Now there’s no way to prove its a problem with the car when Tesla starts sueing customers in the US, and it learned it can do that from China.

Putin is signaling to his adoring fan Trump that Ukraine’s special resources “belong” to Russia.

To both Trump and Putin this is not about Ukraine at all.

The crux of the matter is: did Trump wake up about the value of those resources and prefers to permanently claim them for himself? Or will he see it as a great gift to hand them to Putin on a later date so that both can “save face”?

Putin wants the resources and will destroy the identity of Ukraine and make it Russian so it will never leave the flock again. He will also keep trying, in 10 years or more he will keep coming back for the resources. He has done it in 1990, in 2014 and in 2021. But he needs Ukraine to be fully disarmed.

In 1990 he forced Ukraine to give away it’s nuclear armaments, later he made it give up the navy that Ukraine was left with when it split from the USSR. In 2014 he saw chance to take parts of Ukraine by force, thinking he could take the rest by subterfuge of having his own soldiers fight anonymously as “breakaway Ukraine rebels” but it failed because Ukraine was still armed well and intent on defending it’s identity. 2021 Putin tried again, thinking Ukraine’s armaments now were hopelessly outdated and Russia had a lot of “modern” material, his 3-day takeover plan was thwarted by the Ukrainian fighting spirit. And what is worse, it showed that the military might of Russia was a paper tiger, the equipment was not up to snuff to an enemy intent on defending itself, so Russia had to fall back to it’s centuries old tactic of overwhelming the enemy with cannon fodder.

But now the limit of reasonability is reached, Putin can not endlessly throw cannonfodder at Ukraine. With all the western weapons far outclassing what it can fabricate and train, Russia has lost the military fight and will turn to political paths. First to keep the conquered Ukrainian lands and designate them as Russia, then have the West lose interest in Ukraine’s membership of NATO and perhaps the EU. But still demand the delivery of the resources to Russia. And in about 15 years he’ll come with the same excuse again and try to take Ukraine once more.

Russia wants the resources … In time the gas supplies will have its prices slashed due to the continued growth of renewable energy.

And his adoring fan Trump can and likely will aid him speed it all up if he can use him to have the west withdraw all support.

Not just that, but frankly for a company like Proton it’s prudent to “cry along with the wolves, lest you get killed” …

As long as Proton’s products still stand on their own in the light of the Trump regime I don’t think it is useful at all to torch the company because of remarks of its ceo now that Trump is in office…

Ofcourse one can frown and be miffed but there are far worse companies out there that everyone uses, and people shrug off direct comments of anyone on the board of directors.

It’s a smart move and from the EU’s point of view it locks Trump in.

The problem is the EU assumes Trump still comes from the beneficial side of nato … but he comes from the side of putin, china and the US economy, and all of them say hurt nato and the money comes pouring in.

Trump feels pressure to plain get out of nato or do crippling damage to it. He himself just does not know how exactly because the US needs nato’s intelligence machine.

Last time he demanded 2% across the board (some were lower, some higher), now that a bunch of countries bolstered spending to 2% or higher he is suddenly shouting I want 5% … in 2 years he will demand 8% …

He will just claim, unreasonably, “they can afford it” like he did last time.

I also expect him to demand they buy all weapons in the US, Germany would need to abandon its highly regarded modern tank program, no more Swedish fighter planes or EU designed firearms… The US tried it before with the JSF program, which turned out not quite beneficial for the EU.

At some point I can see the EU forming its own defense pact and mostly ignoring trump shouting into the nato box. But it will have weakened both, and putin sits on his throne and laughs.

Added to this: they do have him cornered on the gas market, if he does keep bullying over tariffs and higher nato payments and breaks agreements they will plainly tell him you will lose all of EU’s gas imports to putin. And that will damage his “Drill baby drill” program.