…within a larger problem. In the WSJ‘s Tuesday house editorial regarding President Donald Trump’s (R) quest for a grand bargain creating a global triumvirate (the editors’ term, but it’s apt), the editors had this characterization of Trump’s “Yalta 2” goal:

The Yalta analogy isn’t entirely apt since Stalin and Churchill were US allies in 1945.

That’s only half right, and that’s my small quibble. Stalin was by no means a US ally in 1945 or at any other time. The US and the USSR were on the same side in that war; the USSR was a co-belligerent of convenience, only for the duration.

The larger problem is that Trump wants to divvy up the world with our two most dangerous enemies, one of which badly regrets as a global catastrophe the collapse of the USSR late last century and is currently pushing at gunpoint his western border further into Europe while expanding his “gray zone”—a very dark shade of gray—conflict with the rest of Europe even as he kidnaps journalists that write things he doesn’t like, and the other of which has publicly and repeatedly stated its overriding goal of replacing us as a serious player around the world (which is tantamount to saying take functional control of our foreign policy and of our economy) and has a long-standing law requiring each business domiciled within it to conduct any espionage its intelligence community requires of it.

This is a meeting that should never take place. As the editors put it,

A new triumvirate that divided the world into spheres of influence would blow up America’s global credibility as a reliable ally.

Worse than that, it would badly weaken the US itself, making us vulnerable to defeat politically, even kinetically, in any conflict with either of these two nuclear powers, one of which is extremely powerful cybernetically, already holds the trump cards in rare earths, and currently has a first strike capability.