The Russians also know how Trump handled negotiations with the Taliban. In his eagerness to withdraw U.S. troops, President Transactional basically sold out the Afghan government and, in the words of his own national security advisor H.R. McMaster, signed “a surrender agreement with the Taliban.” With a deadline for U.S. withdrawal and no implementation mechanism to hold the Taliban to its promises, Trump set the conditions that led to the disaster the Biden administration had to deal with several months into its first year.

Wars can end practically overnight.

Just look at Syria, which was locked in a civil war for a dozen years. Having survived a succession of uprisings, Bashar al-Assad seemed on track to become a tyrant for life. Then, in the space of a couple weeks, his allies effectively deserted him, his army melted away, and he and his family had to decamp to the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin is already in the Kremlin, so that’s one place he can’t escape to if things in Russia go south. Unlike Assad, he doesn’t face rebel armies (not yet, at least). But he should still be worried, given Russian losses on the battlefield, in geopolitics, and throughout the economy.

How long will it be before Putin and Assad both have to leave town to take up residence in that last refuge of scoundrels, not patriotism as Samuel Johnson insisted, but Pyongyang?

That’s certainly not what Donald Trump meant when he said he would end the war in Ukraine on day one of his administration. He was not talking about helping Ukraine retake its occupied territory, precipitating a regime change in Russia and sending Putin into exile. That was the old Republican Party, which was anti-Russian to its core. The new MAGA party, with an illiberal agenda that overlaps with Putin’s, doesn’t have a foreign policy so much as an arsenal of threats.

Want to read more? Please click… HERE!!!