Tuesday, January 20, marks one year since the start of Donald Trump 2.
The year began under the specter of peace insistently promised by Trump during his electoral campaign, but a year that delivered just the opposite – zero peace in Ukraine (the deadline, of 24 hours, has already been exceeded by 364 days), a lightning invasion in Caracas, American threat of armed conflict in Greenland, against US allies in NATO, an attempt to take absolute control of the entire Western Hemisphere. Bonus: a wide and dense web of trade wars, launched by Trump from Asia to Europe, from Africa to South America.
In just 12 months with Trump at the helm, America has become a danger to the whole world and has become a more dangerous place even for Americans. US cities, the politically unfriendly ones for MAGA, have been invaded by the National Guard troops and the shock ICE troops (an entity that resembles Hitler’s militias and Putin’s hooded Chekist thugs every day).
It is symptomatic that, just 48 hours before his one-year anniversary, Donald Trump says he feels no more constraints, saying dryly: “I no longer feel obliged to think only about peace”.
As no less eloquent is the fact that he confessed this to Norway’s Prime Minister the country that hosts the Nobel Peace Prize.
The letter sent by the US President to the Norwegian Prime Minister is of real geopolitical relevance, but at the same time of real interest in the field of psychiatry – everything point to this analysis, from form to substance. You can find it in full – HERE.
A year with Trump is more than the world can bear and the bad news is that a year is just a quarter of his presidential term. There are high chances that, in retrospect, 2025 will seem, compared to those that follow, a particularly quiet one, almost to the point of being boring.
Also during these 12 months cursed by Donald Trump’s presidency we have had the opportunity to witness the hostile takeover of logic and factual reality by state fake news.
As if the Kremlin’s appetite in this direction had not been enough, the White House demonstrated a commensurate appetite, and unlike Moscow, Washington proved that it has the resources and tools to expand its reach to a global not just continental level.
In the last 12 months, we have seen numerous and episodes that cover the economic, social and diplomatic spheres. But the US military operation in Venezuela, the ongoing attempt to annex Greenland and the ongoing attempt to replace the UN with Donald Trump are probably the highlights.
Trump’s pretext for attacking Venezuela was a fight against drugs, although even a simple observer could see this was just a pretext.
It quickly turned out that the operation ordered by Trump had been linked to the seizure of oil, the takeover of the country’s leadership, possibly also to a domino effect in the region, in the sense of destabilizing other regimes to the point of a takeover by the White House in other capitals.
Trump’s pretext for annexing Greenland is to remove the Russians and Chinese from a region where Beijing and Moscow do not yet have real levers to get dangerously close; from a region that even if Xi and Putin tried to get closer, the US would still have even without annexation, levers provided 75 years ago, to totally control what could happen there.
The fact that Russia and China are a false pretext invoked by Trump is also proven by the Trump administration’s policy towards the two countries in his first year in office.
Through tariff policy, the US is forcing its European and Asian allies closer to China. And through his incredibly friendly policy towards Russia, via the war in Ukraine, Trump is actually seeking to support Moscow in its military and hybrid efforts to establish a solid foothold in Europe.
Therefore, it is light years away from the Trumpist narrative of “we are chasing the Russians and the Chinese away”, in Greenland case, to the stark reality that Trump has actually invited the Russians and the Chinese to drop their anchors in Europe (the case of Moscow), and in Europe, in Asia and even to the borders of the USA (the case of China – see the editorial with link at the end).
Finally, through his policy of denigration, political delegitimization, financial undermining, to the point of dismantling (see the case of USAID), the international organizations that had acted for decades (even imperfectly) to optimize humanitarian and political atmosphere on the global scene, Trump has made it clear to us, on the one-year anniversary of his presidency, that his objective is not simply to throw the world into chaos, but to destabilize the entire post-war architecture in order to take control of it.
The story of the Board for Peace raises some shocking questions. The Board, probably imagined by the American president’s political and social marketers, seems more like a plan to substitute Donald Trump for the United Nations.
In many ways, this Board for Peace is more like The Mar-a-Lago Club: it has steps of access to the “lounge”, “spa”, “dining”, “golf” and the patron himself, all depending on how much you agree to pay.
You pay nothing, you have the benefit of the simple act of presence, but limited membership. The clientele, regardless of whether they pay or not, are personally selected by the owner (Donald Trump decides who to send invitations to and whether they aree personalized )
And if you put money down in advance (one billion), you get exclusive access, because the time limit disappears, you have a seat at the owner’s table, socializing with His Majesty Trump in the rooms of the entire UN 2.0 resort, organized like Mar-a-Lago, you can feel at home.
The Trump administration’s concept of this Peace Board resembles, from the haze of elements we have so far, including the scheme by which Trump attracted and retained his super-gamblers from the casinos he ran in Atlantic City in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s just that now it’s about countries and their leaders.
The world has found itself trapped in the long-term madness of a single individual – it’s true, ultra-ambitious, ultra focused on himself, by a creepy boldness, by a pride to match, intellectually limited, culturally limited, but without limits in his deep contempt for everything around him and for all those who breathe the same air as him.
Former high-caliber aides of Donald Trump’s first-term, such as his former national security adviser, John Bolton, are convinced that the White House boss never had a project because he was not capable.
But in this second term, everything that happened in the first 12 months seems to refute this thesis.
The Trump Organization can no longer be reduced to just a company name or trademark. It is looming, day by day, as a global phenomenon – of geopolitical imposture, of destabilization on a planetary level, of personification of power far beyond the borders of a country itself already as big as a continent.
- PS: It is symptomatic of the fact that Donald Trump is preparing his 80th birthday, in a 2026 in which the US turns 250 years old, by organizing MMA fights at the White House. It is nothing less than a reminiscence of his business days in Atlantic City, when to attract people to his casinos he organized boxing matches (including with Mike Tyson). Boxing attracted betters, and boxing was the only sport he enjoyed (other than the golf for which he is well known today).
