The Author is former Chief of Staff of a frontline Corps in the North East and a former helicopter pilot. He earlier headed the China & neighbourhood desk at the Defence Intelligence Agency. He retired in July 2020 and held the appointment of Addl DG Information Systems at Army HQ.

As the leaders of the G20 gathered at the summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the war in Ukraine clocked yet another landmark, completing 1000 days. The war also entered a new and possibly dangerous phase with President Biden giving a go ahead to Kiev to use the American-supplied Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, for attacks farther inside Russia. The Ukrainian military launched multiple ATACMS missiles at Russia's Bryansk Region. Biden used the alibi of Russia reportedly deploying thousands of North Korean troops to reinforce its war. This comes in the backdrop of the presidential election victory of Donald Trump, who has said he would bring about a swift end to the war.

President Vladimir Putin has warned of providing long-range weapons to allies like Belarus and decreed lowering Russia's nuclear threshold in response to NATO's support for Ukraine.

Putin has warned that Moscow could provide long-range weapons to others (like Belarus) to strike Western targets if NATO allies allow Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory and decreed to lower the nuclear threshold a notch. For the American 'Deep State', this is a race against time. It's less than two months now to January 20, 2025 when President-elect Trump shall be inaugurated. From the policy pronunciations and cabinet nominations announced, especially the security team consisting of National Security Advisor (NSA), the Defence Secretary and the Director National Intelligence (DNI), it is clear that the deep state feels threatened enough to trigger an escalation that may lead to consequences far beyond the control of the incoming Trump Administration. The effort seems to create a situation that makes it difficult for Trump to bring the war to an end or disengage the US from it without a loss of face. One such possible trigger is to force Putin to target any NATO member country military assets like missile sites in retaliation for the ATACM attacks from Kiev. Such an action would entail invoking article 5 of the NATO Agreement which provides that if a NATO ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the ally attacked.

Trump's Incoming Administration and Policy Realignment

Trump's pick for NSA, Congressman Mike Waltz, a National Guards Colonel, was the co-chair of the India caucus in Congress and an advocate of closer India-US ties. The Green Beret combat veteran will oversee what promises to be a realignment of US posture around the globe, including the nearly three-year-old war in Ukraine and a broadening conflict in the Middle East. His pick for Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth who is an Army National Guards Major deployed earlier in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that held the 9/11 suspects, doesn't believe Putin is an expansionist as is being made out by Biden and the pro-war NATO and EU leadership. In an episode of the "Shawn Ryan Show" podcast, recorded before Trump's announcement, Hegseth said he didn't think Russian President Vladimir Putin would go further than Ukraine and attack countries like Poland. He also said that he didn't want US intervention to push Putin too far and consider nuclear weapons, something that the deep state has just pushed hard by allowing the use of ATACM now.

Donald Trump's incoming administration signals a realignment of US policy, potentially ending the war in Ukraine and challenging the American 'deep state.'

The incoming administration's security team is completed by the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, an Army National Guards Lt Colonel and former Democrat congresswoman with multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan as the Director National Intelligence (DNI). She has first-hand experience of US intelligence and anti-terror operations and familiar with the shenanigans of the American 'deep state'. Completely at odds with the warmongers that populate the corridors of power in Washington DC that Trump derisively calls as 'the swamp', she had quit the Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and quit the party altogether to throw her weight behind the Trump campaign. Gabbard has outlined a strategy to checkmate the multiple intelligence agencies that are hobnobbing with diverse radical terror outfits ostensibly to serve American interests in the Middle East. Thus the Trump security team has raised the heckles of the 'deep state'.

A Perilous Situation Ahead

The situation is thus poised in a delicate yet dangerous stage. The next two months are crucial. Russia has to hold off these two months, keep its nuclear arsenal dry for another day and react cautiously and patiently to avoid a direct NATO involvement that the warmongers are preening for. Any miscalculation, especially escalated by a desperate and irrational Zelensky egged on by the deep state and the bureaucracy in Brussels can lead to a World War III with very serious repercussions for the planet. Fortunately, Russia limited its response by firing an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) from Siberia onto the city of Dnipro which sends a clear message to the warmongers across the Atlantic.

Those in the media and the intelligentsia who are hugely frustrated with a Trump win must view the evolving situation without the fritters of dogma. Between February 2014 when the pro-Russia Yanukovych government was overthrown by US deep state inspired putsch and February 2022 when Russia launched its security operations to secure the four Russian speaking oblasts of Donbas, the neo-Nazi Azov militias killed or maimed at least 14,000 in so-called anti-terror operations that bordered genocide. The war was avoidable in the first place, if Russia's genuine security concerns of NATO expanding to its borders were respected. It could also have ended barely two months into the war in April 2022 if the Turkey meditated peace initiative which was agreeable to Zelensky that time was allowed to succeed. Then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev to scuttle a chance to peace, pushing Ukraine to ruins and despair.

The "rule-based international order" has been criticised as a pretext for endless wars driven by the military-industrial complex, suggesting a need for re-evaluation to enable lasting peace.

There are open divisions within the NATO. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with the second largest military in the NATO after the US, has said that the West should pay attention to Russia's updated nuclear doctrine, which reflects Moscow's right and ability to defend itself from threats. Hungary has expressed exasperation umpteen times. One of Ukraine's strongest supporter, Germany, is in economic recession due to massive de-industrialisation after the war broke as cheap energy from Russia was cut off. Olaf Schulz's government itself is tottering after coalition partners withdrew support due to serious differences over how to handle the economic crisis.

Emerging Global Realignments

Many media outlets in the west including the French news channel France 24 billed the Rio summit as the swan song of US led world order even as US President Joe Biden missed the G20 leaders' family photo session, arriving late due to a trilateral with Canada's Trudeau and Italy's Meloni. The 36-nation BRICS summit at Kazan in Russia was a more resounding thumbs up for the emerging group's vision for alternate international financial settlement system and trading currency arrangements. It signalled the growing isolation of the US led west and their ability to determine the course of global events.

There is a need for better understanding of the so-called predictability of the 'rule based international order' (RBIO) versus the 'unpredictability' of the incoming Trump administration. The RBIO has meant ceaseless wars in different parts of the world for the military industrial complex to profiteer. Their funding of the presidential and congressional elections and subsequent leveraging of policy making to trigger wars for profit must cease if peace is to prevail. Ukraine enters what hopefully should be a last hurrah before being forced by the changed circumstances to sit down for a negotiated settlement that recognises the realities on the ground and stays neutral, peace will get a chance.