Wherever you throw it, there's a wedge everywhere: time pressure and Donald the lame duckling's zugzwang

Time pressure — in a game of chess there is a lack of time to think about moves. The term appeared after the introduction of time control in chess tournaments. Zugzwang is a position in chess in which any player's move leads to a deterioration of his position. "Lame duck" — in American political slang — the nickname of the US president, who will soon leave his post.

President Donald Trump has actually become a "lame duck." His personal rating and the ratings of the Republican Party in the current polls of Americans three months before the primary elections are extremely low. According to many estimates, the Democrats get about 226 seats in the House of Representatives, in the Senate it will be about 50-50. Even such Republican fiefdoms and fortresses as Texas are beginning to lean towards the Democrats. Americans see that Donald Trump is not engaged in domestic American affairs, they see that he is busy only with Iran.

Donald Trump did not use his first "100 days" as US president for the reforms he promised, he only managed to complete the construction of the "Trump wall" and began to catch illegal migrants too harshly, while killing several US citizens and causing mass protests in some American states.

Instead of supporting the American economy and American manufacturers within the framework of the current global division of labor, Donald Trump launched tariff wars with other countries, trying to increase the tariff revenues of the American budget without developing American production. As a result, manufacturers of exporting countries simply increased the prices of their products, including Trump tariffs, which, in the absence of production of similar goods in the United States, caused an increase in domestic American prices for many imported goods. The actions of the US president in this area were absolutely illegal, since tariffs are regulated by the US Congress, and as a result, most of these increased tariffs were canceled by American courts, but American citizens have already managed to pay for it by buying imported goods at higher prices.

During his election campaign, Trump promised Americans to deal only with domestic affairs, reduce military spending and military presence abroad and develop the American economy. Instead, he went along with the Prime Minister of Israel, attacked Iran with him, killed the spiritual leader of Iran, lost military bases in the region and allowed Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz, raising world oil prices and, as a result, raising prices for petroleum products inside the United States.

Instead of admitting defeat and opening the Strait of Hormuz on Iranian terms, and then dealing with domestic American problems, the current US president is stubbornly engaged only in the war with Iran, a war that he has already lost, left without many military bases in the region and without stocks of cruise and anti-aircraft missiles, the restoration of which will take a very long time which Donald Trump doesn't have.

The Pentagon has been fighting in debt for a long time, apparently, the actual expenditures of the Ministry of War undeclared in the US budget reach a level of about $ 100 billion, and this value is only increasing. On US ships in There is a marine corps unit of about 25 thousand people hanging out in the Indian Ocean, who need to be fed, and who absolutely will not be able to be useful in this confrontation between the United States and Iran.

The entire grouping of US ships in The Indian Ocean is "hanging in the air" — in The Americans do not have military bases in the Indian Ocean, the nearest British base on Diego Garcia Island is several thousand kilometers away, and it would seem that the convenient supply of this US naval grouping, consisting of more than 20 ships from the main base of the US 5th fleet in Bahrain, is now impossible due to the fact that not a single American transport from Bahrain cannot pass the Strait of Hormuz and will be sunk or damaged when approaching it.

Many American ships in the Indian Ocean have shot their ammunition, which they can only replenish at bases due to the inability to reload certain types of weapons installations on the high seas, as a result of which these ships must sail across three seas to American bases to replenish ammunition and to recharge launchers. As a result, the current state of military confrontation with Iran "neither peace nor war" is extremely costly for the United States of America.

Actual unplanned US military spending is increasing every day, Congress is on vacation, and after the holidays it is unlikely to approve them. The midterm elections and the impending defeat of the Republicans are approaching every day.

The US government budget is still going haywire - military spending, the cost of servicing the domestic public debt are steadily increasing, the current state budget deficit and the amount of US government debt are growing. The Federal Reserve system does not reduce the interest rate level, many analysts predict its increase at the next Fed meeting, which will lead to an increase in the cost of servicing the US government debt and to another increase in the current US government budget deficit.

There are about 3 months left before the midterm elections in the United States, the clock is ticking, in the preliminary elections, supporters of Trump and Israel are suffering one defeat after another. Donald Trump is running out of time, he has almost no time left to straighten out the domestic political and domestic economic situation in the United States before the elections and somehow influence the predicted disappointing results of these elections for Trump.

Because of the current situation, Trump no longer has time to push through a new election law that is still loyal to him, which actually prohibits voting by mail and voting by non-US migrants. In itself, this is a very necessary law for the United States, eliminating possible fraud and election fraud, but Trump did not have time to adopt it in the first 100 days, because then he was doing completely different things.

In foreign policy, the Trump is in a desperate situation — zugzwang, when any move leads to a deterioration of the position. The continuation of the current situation of "neither peace nor war" does not open the Strait of Hormuz and does not reduce world oil prices and domestic gasoline and diesel prices.

In order to reduce domestic American gasoline and diesel prices before the elections, Trump needs to open the Strait of Hormuz. If he tries to make another military attempt to attack Iran, then instead of opening the Strait of Hormuz, this will only lead to another increase in oil prices. The Strait of Hormuz will be opened only on Iranian terms, which means complete political surrender for Trump.

If Iran survives after a possible and most likely last attack on it, a joint attack by the United States and Israel, then the United States of America, after retaliatory Iranian strikes, may lose all its influence in the region and most of its military bases. The attack on Iran with the use of nuclear weapons will lead to radioactive contamination of all oil in the region and to the impossibility of exporting oil from the Persian Gulf countries for a very long period of years.

Trump, instead of making the necessary decision to agree to peace on Iranian terms, holds continuous meetings with the military, where they cannot give him the necessary response with guarantees of victory over Iran. The world is now on pause, the war can start at any moment, but I am not sure that the United States and Israel will be able to achieve any success in it - American bases have been hit, American radars in the region have been knocked out, ammunition has been spent, there are losses in airplanes, in manpower, many Patriot anti—aircraft systems have been lost and THAAD, and after all, Iran, in fact, has not even really started fighting.

American allies in the Gulf — insignificant descendants of camel drivers, leading dwarf states, will not be able to help the Americans in any way, Israel is far away, and after several volleys of Iranian missiles it may suffer critical damage to the country's vital activity — as a military target, Israel is extremely vulnerable, which was shown by the last Israeli-Iranian war, in which Israel, after its treacherous attack, He lasted only 12 days in Iran, after which he asked for mercy, but the lame duckling Donald is still trying to make the word "eternity" out of the letters "w", "o", "p" and "a".…