Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the defenders of Ukraine and all modern civilization!
Today’s edition includes:
- Trump, NATO, and Ukraine
- The virtual world of the 47th president: he claims to have spoken with one of the former presidents about Iran. All former presidents deny having spoken with Trump
- Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent resigned, stating he disagreed with the president’s decision to go to war with Iran, as he believed Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the security of the USA
▶ On Tuesday, the 47th president started one of his old favorite “songs” about leaving NATO. He did so at another “television show” in the Oval Office, this time in connection with his meeting with the Prime Minister of Ireland. However, today Trump said that he hasn’t yet thought about it, but generally hinted that he might consider it, emphasizing that, in his view, he does not need Congress’s approval for this. So, if he decides to leave NATO, then he will decide. And he won’t ask anyone.
Let’s remember that in his book about working in the first Trump administration as National Security Advisor, John Bolton detailed how in 2018 Trump, then the 45th president, was planning to announce at a NATO summit the withdrawal of the US from NATO. How Bolton, the then Secretary of State Pompeo, and the then Secretary of Defense Mattis persuaded him not to do it. And how Trump abandoned the idea of making such a statement already on the way to the hall where the NATO summit was taking place.
The latest statement by Trump on NATO has several dimensions.
One dimension is whether he needs formal congressional permission to exit NATO. In December 2023, Congress passed the US Defense Budget Act for 2024, and, seemingly fearing the possible return of Trump to the White House, senators, while discussing the relevant bill, decided to include a clause that the president cannot make a unilateral decision to withdraw the US from NATO and that to make such a decision, the president will need to secure the support of 2/3 of the Senate, or Congress will have to pass a corresponding special law.
However, there is a legal theory that puts the 2023 law article into question. This theory actually has a substantial basis. Here’s why. Section 2 of the United States Constitution, which outlines the powers of the president and the executive branch, states that the executive power, i.e., the president, may enter into international treaties of the United States with the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. However, it does not stipulate that the president may only withdraw from international treaties with the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. Therefore, the legal dilemma is that if, for example, Trump decides to withdraw from NATO, ignoring the 2023 law, his opponents will have to challenge this decision in court, motivating their lawsuits with the law adopted in 2023 and signed by then-President Joe Biden. These court proceedings will be prolonged and will surely reach the Supreme Court. But what decision the court will make and how long such proceedings might take in various courts is hard to predict. American law is precedent-based, and there has not yet been a precedent requiring Senate consent for a president to withdraw from an international treaty. Thus, courts may either create a new precedent or choose not to, citing that the Constitution does not require Senate consent for the U.S. to exit international treaties. It is clear that Trump, when he claims he doesn’t need Congress’s consent, believes that the 2023 law is unconstitutional, and he can test its constitutionality only by issuing an order to withdraw from NATO so that the courts determine what is unconstitutional – his order or the law.
Another aspect of this issue is that Donald Trump confirmed his stance towards NATO and the United States’ NATO allies.
He confirmed it by saying, “NATO made a foolish decision” not to support the U.S. war against Iran.
It should be noted that NATO as an organization did not make any decision. No one requested consultations under Article 4 of the NATO treaty. No official letters were sent to NATO country leaders. If the 47th president thinks his tweets are official U.S. requests to other countries, this opinion only holds significance in his own virtual world.
The 47th president always speaks of NATO with disdain, in the third person. That there is something called NATO, and there is America, the strongest, which needs no one.
Here is a quote from Trump’s tweet published on Tuesday at 11:18 am:
“Most of our ‘Allies’ in NATO have informed the United States that they do not wish to participate in our Military Operation against the terrorist regime in Iran… Yet, their actions do not surprise me, as I have always considered NATO — for whose protection we annually spend Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, defending the same countries — a one-way street: We protect them, but they do nothing for us — especially in difficult times… In fact — and I say this as President of the United States of America, undoubtedly the most powerful country in the whole world — WE DON’T NEED ANYONE’S HELP! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
In his virtual world, there’s absolutely no question about what this NATO is compared to the United States. In his virtual world, NATO is a debtor to whom he, on behalf of the United States, has sold a lot on credit and who owes him personally money.
He constantly talks about NATO as something completely separate from the US. Does the president understand that the United States is as much a member of NATO as the other 31 countries? Does he know that the NATO alliance was created at the initiative of the US—at the initiative of President Truman? He has probably never read the NATO treaty. Because if he had, he would hardly be able to demand that NATO countries support the US war against Iran. The NATO treaty states that NATO is exclusively a defensive alliance, that NATO countries will fight together in the event of an attack on one of them, as according to Article 5, an attack on one country is considered an attack on all. But at the same time, Article 1 of the treaty obligates all NATO countries to resolve international disputes with other countries peacefully, through diplomatic negotiations, and Article 8 prohibits NATO countries from taking actions that would contradict the NATO treaty and could draw other NATO countries into conflict.
Iran did not attack the US, so invoking Article 5 is impossible in this case. Trump is unlikely to know about the only historical instance when Article 5 was invoked after the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, when all NATO countries agreed that this attack on the US was an attack on all and they fought together with the US in Afghanistan.
In the virtual world of the 47th president, there are no allies, no values. In this virtual world, there are 3 supreme rulers: Putin, Xi Jinping, and naturally, himself. He considers himself the most important ruler, sees Putin and Xi Jinping as almost equal to him, and all others, including this NATO, as some minor nuisances underfoot that interfere, and to avoid interference, they must obey those supreme rulers in whose sphere of influence, according to Trump’s vision, certain countries should be.
A world where the United States has allies exists not only outside the mind of the 47th president but also in the US National Security Strategy, published in early December 2025, which is an official document proclaiming the foreign policy doctrine of the current administration. It only states that the US has interests, but says nothing about their allies. It states that the United States needs a Europe where countries are not dependent on the European Union, needs European countries with ultra-right or right-wing populists in power, needs smooth, good relations with China, with which the US can trade, needs similarly smooth good relations with Russia, with which the US can also trade. And those who are dissatisfied with such an “order” should deal with it themselves.
In Trump’s view, Ukraine should be within Russia’s sphere of influence and therefore should surrender to Russia. If it doesn’t want to surrender, then, according to Trump’s perspective, as he stated on Monday, Ukraine will resemble Lebanon. This means Ukraine will be bombed and will constantly live under bombs, as it will be its choice. The other choice, offered by Trump, is capitulation. In his understanding, capitulation is the right choice because, as he believes, it would allow him to trade with Russia and, more importantly, earn the $12 trillion promised to him by Putin.
It should be noted that in the real world, the 47th president received a strong response from both leading NATO countries and Ukraine. Responses came from Germany and Canada, whose leaders publicly announced how, at the G7 virtual summit, leaders of the six countries and the EU unanimously rejected Trump’s demands to lift sanctions from Russian oil. Responses also came from France and the UK, who warmly welcomed President Zelensky. Ukraine responded by sending its specialists on fighting Iranian drones to the Middle East countries, which Donald Trump cannot protect from Iranian attacks, and daily neutralizing a thousand or more of Putin’s volunteer fighters.
▶ On Monday, the 47th president’s imagination ran wild, and he completely confused the real world with the virtual one. He claimed to have recently spoken with a former US president, who complained that he wanted to strike Iran but didn’t and praised Trump for doing so. After Trump’s statement, all four living former US presidents—Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden—either directly or through their representatives, issued statements saying they had not spoken with Trump and had not discussed the issue of war with Iran with him.
▶ Today in the US, the first high-profile resignation related to the war with Iran occurred. Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned.
It should be noted that Joe Kent is a man of ultraconservative views, a representative of the MAGA movement. In 2020, Kent actively supported Trump when he tried to overturn the results of the lost presidential elections. In his resignation letter to the president, Kent wrote that he could not continue his work as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center because he disagreed with the president’s initiated war with Iran, as Kent believes Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the national security of the US, and that the war was initiated by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the US.
Kent held an important position. The US National Counterterrorism Center tracks all activities of Middle Eastern and other terrorist organizations, monitors drug trafficking, and serves as the main center for combating relevant threats.
When appointing Kent to this position last year, Trump called him brave, courageous, a lifelong fighter against terrorists, and stated that Kent would protect us from all terrorist threats. When asked about Kent’s resignation during a “TV show” in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump replied that he “always considered Kent very weak on security issues.” It’s interesting to wonder when the president was lying—when he appointed Kent or when Kent resigned?
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, to whom Kent directly reported, tweeted that the intelligence job is to provide the president with information, and the president decides based on that whether something poses an immediate threat to national security.
And the president decided that Iran poses such an immediate threat. Notably, Gabbard did not write that intelligence reached that conclusion.
Meanwhile, as reported by the media citing their sources, intelligence actually forecasted that the Iranian regime would not fall as a result of missile attacks and bombings, that Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz, and that it would launch missile attacks against Israel and Arab countries in the region.
Kent’s high-profile resignation indicates serious disagreements among American ultra-right circles concerning the war with Iran. Clearly, a part of the MAGA movement, which Kent represents, as well as, for example, his close ally, ultra-right propagandist Tucker Carlson, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, are categorically against the war with Iran. Similarly, both Carlson and Greene openly oppose U.S. support for Israel.
There are 1040 days left until the end of the story titled “Fear: Trump in the White House” © (the title of a book by Bob Woodward, published in 2018).
Thank you to everyone who read this. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Take care of each other and help one another. Wishing everyone good health.
Ultimately, what happens in the world depends on us. Whether we fight against evil, do good, remain mere observers, passively wait and believe that someone somewhere will decide for us, or fight against evil and do everything possible for good to prevail.
We must not allow evil to triumph. The triumph of evil would mean the end of the world we live in. We cannot allow this. Especially now.
Ukrainian friends, I embrace and love you all. Please take care of each other, I ask you sincerely.
Ukraine is and always will be.
And evil will be defeated and punished. And it will happen inevitably.
