(from the series “Trump’s America in the New World Order”, part 4)

The world of politics and business is now divided between those who hope that Donald Trump will fulfil his promises and those who think that Trump will fail. And the number of pessimists among politicians and businessmen is decreasing every day.

However, it should be noted that among those who support Trump, most see what is happening superficially, without realizing how profound are the changes in the world that Trump’s team is bringing.

Moreover, there is another important question that no one at this point have a clear answer:

Do Donald Trump and his closest associates understand the causes and depth of the problems they will have to solve, the complexity of the reforms they will face? Without understanding the sources of the problems, the reasons, it is difficult to find the right and effective way to solve problems, and it is possible to lead a country, even a superpower, into an unexpected abyss.

Forty years ago, in 1984, Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader, who at that time had the support of almost the entire population of the USSR, also tried to solve problems that in terms of complexity, nature, character and origins were close to the set of problems that the Trump team will have to solve in the coming years.

At that time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, problems arose not only for the leadership of the USSR, but also for Western countries. Gorbachev did not understand the nature and scale of the tasks facing him. He rushed to reform the Soviet system, caught up by the idea of the inevitability of positive result given the desire and will of politicians and the “progressive” character and direction of reforms – that historical optimism and positivism that largely shaped ideologies in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Marxism, post-Marx communism and liberalism, and was the basis of the Soviet version of communist ideology of the post-Stalin period, adopted by the Soviet party bureaucracy.

In the end, a few years later, Gorbachev killed this optimism, and what is still missing in modern Russia is the historical optimism. Will Trump be able to avoid a similar failure? That is the question.

The attempt to restructure the economy, society, and international relations undertaken by Gorbachev ( “toropyga” – “bustler, hurry-up,” as Gorbachev was once called by another Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, who had brought Gorbachev to Moscow, into the Kremlin, not suspecting what his choice of successor would lead to) ended in failure, the collapse of the USSR, that at the time of the beginning of “perestroika” was not only one of the two world superpowers in economic, political, and military terms, but also a state with the highest level of education, culture, and social protection of the population.

The unexpected and rapid collapse of the USSR and the socialist camp saved the West, gave the USA and Western Europe the opportunity to solve their problems and capture huge new markets, absorb or get under control most of the resources and potential of the USSR and the socialist camp that had been destroyed by Gorbachev’s reforms. However, this did not solve the contradictions and problems of the West itself. Those problems were only preserved for thirty years and at the beginning of the 21st century began to sharply increase and aggravate.

This aggravation of problems and contradictions was caused by the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the rise of economies and the growth of military power in China, India, the countries of Southeast Asia, the entire so-called Global South, as well as the beginning of the restoration of Russia and the so-called “Russian world”, which still cannot overcome the crisis caused by the collapse of the USSR.

It should be noted that as a result of the collapse of the USSR, Russia got rid of only a few of the problems that Gorbachev faced in the 1980s. Most of the problems and contradictions that arose during the years of Soviet power were not resolved under Yeltsin and Putin.

Moreover, the problems continued to grow and deepen, including because instead of solving them, the clans that came to power in the Kremlin in 1991, began transforming the economy and society according to the existing and already outdated Western model, which itself contained many of the contradictions that led to the demise of the USSR. It is precisely these contradictions that Trump will now have to resolve.

At the beginning of the 21st century, unresolved problems began to worsen not only in the United States, but also in Europe and Russia. These problems became especially evident during wars, primarily in Ukraine and the Middle East. It was during the military actions of the last three years that even the half-blind became aware of one of the main contradictions that Gorbachev tried and failed to resolve, that led to the collapse of the Soviet system.

And this is the contradiction between the outdated part of the military-industrial complex that at the time of the collapse of the USSR made up the major part of not only the Soviet military-industrial complex, but also the entire Soviet industry, and the demands of technological progress, the needs of defence and the armed forces of the new era that was coming.

In the 21st century, the outdated part of the military-industrial complex has proven itself to be extremely ineffective, too expensive and incapable of ensuring victory even over a weaker enemy during military operations.

This applies to all types of armed forces. For example, aircraft carrier groups, large strike and landing ships have turned out to be too big and easy targets at the new level of development of missiles, air, sea and underwater drones.

The difference in the cost of attack weapons, such as missiles that can destroy a strike cruiser or aircraft carrier, and the cost of the target itself is hundreds of times, and in the case of an aircraft carrier group, this difference is thousands of times.

The movement of large army groups, especially over long distances, across seas and oceans, at the current level of development of modern means of detection, surveillance and attack, has become not just problematic, but impossible. That needs to reconsider the entire logistics system, making it extremely difficult to wage an effective large-scale war far from the main territory, especially on another continent.

That forces the major world powers, in order to protect themselves and guarantee the effectiveness of military operations, to create new macro-regions around their civilizational and military-political centres.

The new reality forces the world’s civilization centres to integrate adjacent territories and peoples into their macro-regions, making themselves much more protected than remote territories. This is where Trump’s attempts to integrate Canada, Panama, and Greenland into a single North American macro-region come from (although there are other reasons besides military-strategic, and those reasons will be discussed in the following materials).

If just a few decades ago the surface fleet ensured control over the oceans and seas, now, at a new level of development of missile strike technology, drones and space reconnaissance and strike systems, the surface fleet becomes a target and can be destroyed before it gets close enough to carry out its combat mission.

Drones have become one of the most efficient and important weapons, what machine guns were during World War I. The cost of drones is tens and even hundreds of times less than the cost of the enemy’s combat equipment they destroy, and the number of soldiers killed by drones reaches several hundred and even thousands per one drone operator.

The losses in modern warfare, both of manpower and equipment, have reached unprecedented levels, and that force the parties to the conflict to hide their losses, to understate them by tens of times, in order to avoid shock and public outrage. We see this in Ukraine, which has become a field of experiments and rivalry of new technologies and weapons for Russia, the United States, Great Britain, China and many other countries.

If in the first two years in Ukraine the seizure of territory was recorded by video surveillance of the appearance of soldiers of the opposing sides hoisting flags and banners at a particular object and place. Now the appearance of ground drones capable of firing and controlling the territory is frequently recorded. Control over territories is provided by unmanned vehicles and combat drones.

Space has already become a fully integrated warfighting domain, and the United States has pulled ahead in some important areas, ahead of China and Russia, but the threat of China and Russia overtaking the United States remains.

Putin’s mistakes in appointing leaders in the most important areas including the space industry, became strategic mistakes. And the problem of leadership, whose decisions are too often influenced by clans rather than state interests, remains one of the most critical for Russia.

The same problem of intellectual and moral inadequacy of leaders and top managers to the tasks of the new era is facing Europe, where the process of replacing political elites has begun as a storm. These problems led to the loss of power by Democrats and old Republican elites in the USA and to the arrival of Trump’s new team.

The one who makes a qualitative leap to a new technological level in space technology, AI, drones in the coming one-two years will receive huge advantages in war and peace. The necessity and inevitability of this leap are obvious.

The intensity of the battles themselves has also risen to a new level. Even in the absence of a massive offensive, on average, the Russian army group in Ukraine, numbering 700 thousand servicemen, uses up to 2,000 kamikaze drones daily, about a hundred Geran long-range drones, each capable of destroying a large object or military facility. The Russians use daily from five to ten thousand artillery shells, up to 200 group shots from Rocket launchers. And this is in the conditions of positional battles and the absence of a large-scale offensive and intensive combat operations. In the event of a large-scale offensive by one of the parties, the intensity of the expenditure of shells, warheads, drones and equipment increases from three to six times.

This means that in a current war, even in a regional conflict, a country involved in military operations must produce at least six kamikaze drones per soldier per year to replenish its reserves (from 2 to 10 million drones per year), and from five to thirty artillery shells per soldier (from 1.5 to 10 million shells per year, in total).

Given current world market prices, this means that each war participant must spend up to $50 billion a year on artillery shells alone in the event of an intense regional conflict. And this is at current world prices that are rising rapidly. Using its own resources and production capacities, Russia has managed to contain the rise in prices, and that allows it to endure the wartime crisis.

The increase in production to the level of modern warfare by several countries at once in two-three regions of the world will lead not only to an even sharper increase in prices, but also to the inability of countries to produce the amount of weapons they need. The intensity of wars has reached such a level that war has become economically impossible for most countries, including those that are economically developed and financially strong.

Such a war, even a proxy and hybrid one, has become impossible for the US if they are confronted by a strong technical and military opponent, such as Russia or China. This changes the entire political landscape.

Already in the late 1970s, the USSR faced the problem of the existing military-industrial complex not meeting the new defence challenges and needs. That was caused by the contradiction between outdated production and the new technological order that the USSR and the USA were rising to. Even in 1980-s, the new types of weapons developed made it possible to destroy old types of weapons with maximum efficiency, with the least cost, making huge amounts of equipment and weapons useless. This changed the strategy and tactics of war.

However, the majority of the leadership of the Soviet military-industrial complex, the communist party bureaucracy, especially the aging party leaders and their protégés, who had seen nothing but “party work” in their lives, were against the development of new types of weapons, AI, and thus slowed down the transition to a new technological level of the entire economy.

The Soviet military-industrial complex employed hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of workers who, according to communist ideology, were the “ruling class,” and the communist bureaucracy was scared. The bureaucracy was unable to carry out reforms, to stop and liquidate the outdated military-industrial complex.

Gorbachev’s attempt to force the bureaucracy to cut the old military-industrial complex resulted in a series of catastrophic mistakes, including the cessation of production of weapons and military equipment for export that led to a drop in the USSR’s GDP by $30 billion in one year, in the prices of 1985.

The communist bureaucracy found a way out in the collapse of the entire Soviet system, the entire military-industrial complex and in the privatization of industry, public property, and the economy through the collapse of the planning and state management system.

The same or similar problems are now facing the United States, Trump and his team. However, Trump understands that it is impossible to stop the work of a significant part of the US industry, that it will not be possible to collapse the outdated production without a social unrest and financial crises. Trump is faced with the task of continuing the work of the outdated military-industrial complex, while reducing and transforming it, but gradually continuing, unlike Gorbachev, the supply of weapons for export.

The main task is to make other countries to sharply increase arms purchases from the American military-industrial complex. That will allow Trump’s team to rebuild the American economy. To do this, US allies must take on a significant portion of the costs, increase arms purchases several times. For this, a war or confrontation in Europe was needed. That war must now be stopped, but the defence expenses of European countries must be increased at least to 5-6%.

Moreover, the problem of the inconsistency of traditional industries and production with the new technological order exists not only in the military-industrial complex, but also in most other industries, as well as in the sphere of finance, education, science and the system of political and public administration.

The first days after Trump’s arrival in the White House will demonstrate the ability or inability of Trump and his team to carry out the perestroika in the United States and the entire West, or a tragedy will occur similar to the one that happened in the USSR in 1984-1991, to Gorbachev’s perestroika.

(To be continued)