The Trump-Musk betrayal of Ukraine may yet backfire on Putin

In yet another shocking betrayal of America's own allies by the pair of mentally unbalanced billionaires currently fermenting inside the Oval Office, Reuters is reporting that the Trump-Musk demand that Ukrainian turn over its mineral resources to the United States has taken an even darker turn. Trump and Musk aren't proposing that they be handed Ukraine's minerals in exchange for allowing American support for Ukraine to continue, or even in exchange for American neutrality.

They're threatening Ukraine by suggesting that they're going to sabotage Ukrainian troops outright unless they get their way.

U.S. negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine's critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting the country's access to Elon Musk's vital Starlink satellite internet system, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. [...]

During the meeting, Ukraine was told it faced imminent shutoff of the service if it did not reach a deal on critical minerals, said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss closed negotiations.

Such a move would devastate Ukrainian military operations.

It also might mean Elon Musk won't be able to safely travel to Europe for the rest of his possibly-short life; I can't imagine NATO allies responding to such an act with anything less than a declaration that Musk represents a threat to European security grave enough to require banning him, his companies and his every ally from European soil forever.

And, once again, it bears repeating that this new alliance with murderous thug Vladimir Putin is entirely the fault of treasonous Republican senators who could stop Trump anytime they wanted to. That point is especially important to keep in mind as Trump, Musk, and drunken Fox News sex pest Pete Hegseth launch the latest of their purges—this one inside the Pentagon itself. The Friday night purge includes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his proposed, currently retired pro-Trump replacement is a retired 3-star general so unqualified for the role that a waiver of applicable national security laws will be required for Trump to install him.

Also removed from service today: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife, and the senior JAGs of the Army, Navy and Air Force—a move consistent with the drunkard Hegseth's repeated praise of soldiers who commit war crimes.

There's no way to know the possible outcomes from Trump's moves to purge the Pentagon of those unwilling to commit war crimes on his behalf, but the move to blackmail Ukraine outright may well backfire on both Trump and puppetmaster Putin.

As it becomes clear to the rest of NATO that the United States does not merely intend to shift to a neutral position but instead intends to sabotage European security on Putin's behalf, the leaders of NATO nations now have a choice to make.

They can abandon the efforts to keep Ukraine free, letting Putin capture whatever swath he, Trump, and Musk personally settle on. They then must watch as Trump lifts American sanctions on Russia, allowing the aggressor nation to rebuild a military so decimated that it has been forced into raiding museums in the search for workable equipment and has deployed North Korean soldiers as (quickly routed) mercenaries as its own supply of able-bodied fighters shrivels. The end result would be a strengthened Russia and a vastly less secure Europe, with Putin likely swiftly rebuilding his shattered military so that he can press forward with new assaults on other nations he has claimed, so far impotently, as "rightfully" Russian property.

The other path is confrontation. NATO nations may well decide that there will be no better opportunity to crush Putin's ambitions than right now, in the gap between America's betrayal and a Russian rebuilding. That may well take the form of NATO troops being dispatched to Ukraine to take on Russian forces directly.

It would certainly escalate the war, and Putin would likely respond with attempted missile strikes against the nations challenging him. NATO defenses are not insignificant, however. And Russian forces are, at this precise moment, so thoroughly decimated that Putin may be hard pressed to do anything more than that.

Ukrainian forces have themselves invaded and occupied a not insubstantial chunk of Russia all by themselves—that is how flimsy Russia's war operations have now become. NATO commanders and the leaders of their respective European nations must certainly be weighing a new operation deploying troops and air power to Ukraine to swiftly finish off Russia's now-ramshackle forces as possibly preferable to a joint US-Russia carve-up of the nation, now that Trump and Musk's sabotage threatens Europe with a far more precarious future.

The risks of escalation may not be seen as dire as they were at the outset of the war, when Putin was forever threatening nuclear retaliation on NATO members who so much as granted aid to Ukraine during his invasion. Putin has been left with a paper army barely able to protect Moscow from one of Russia's own powerful mercenary corps; being able to flee Ukraine while insisting that it was only due to NATO's new intervention might prove more palatable even to him than the continued destruction of the Russian army at the hands of one of the poorest nations in Europe.

We can't know what NATO leaders are thinking, or will be thinking as the full weight of the Trump-Musk betrayal is felt and new pressure mounts to either confront Russia or abandon Ukraine entirely. But it's a reminder that for all their possibly drug-induced bravado, Trump and Musk are not the masters of the world; they are only two players among many.

If Europe views the Trump-Musk threat to sabotage Ukraine's defense—by flicking off the Starlink terminals they have come to militarily rely on—for what it plainly is, a broader threat to all of Europe, then Europe can respond to Trump and Musk as America once responded to Putin's own kleptocracy.

They can send Musk packing. They can send numerous American companies packing. And they can fill in the gaps that America is leaving in Ukraine's defense. NATO is not as equipped as the United States when it comes to fighting a long, drawn-out war of attrition that empties out warehouses of rusting equipment and near-expired ammo. They are more suited to the long-established NATO doctrine of overwhelming an enemy with technological and tactical superiority, and now that NATO has had years to study and absorb what the Russian military has now proven itself to be?

Trump and Musk may have escalated the likelihood of an expanded European war tenfold, in the last month. Because to European NATO members contemplating Putin's next moves, expanding the war might well be beginning to look like the least worst option.