Does Trump increase or decrease ww3 risk?

I don't think trump is interested in anything other than trump so he'll likely focus on setting up ways to profit financially in the long term and because he's a vengeful little megalomaniac he'll find ways to attack anyone in usa 'officialdom' he's decided is or was against him. He'll have it in for a lot of the media of course.

He'll also likely see if there's any way he can have the constitution amended to remove the two term limit because that man is a dictator in the making.

He won't be able to pull it off of course, but he will try because he genuinely believes he should rule America.

I've only heard that claim made by people aligned with or sympathetic to Trump. I work in this sector and have never heard it from any other types of people.

It's not at all clear that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was immediately related to the US - more to do with the Ukrainian govt than the US one, so to that extent the occupant of the White House may not have been an important factor.

Even if the invasion of Ukraine had mostly been about the US, who was president almost certainly wouldn't have mattered. Russia has been invading or otherwise interfering in other ex-Soviet states for 30 years and the US has done very little about it (Obama's Crimea-related sanctions were the most significant step any post-Cold War US president took before 2022). It seems as if they expected more of the same inaction this time, but badly miscalculated.

Lastly, the idea that Putin wouldn't have acted aggressively if Trump had been president - something Trump-aligned commentators like to claim - is not borne out by what actually happened when Trump was president. Russian activities in this period included the Salisbury poisonings, involvement in Venezuela (one of the things Putin did that Trump didn't like), military involvement in sub-Saharan Africa, escalating the pre-2022 war in Ukraine, and interfering in the 2018 and 2020 US elections. There's no evidence at all that Putin was constrained by Trump in any way.

I can't bear Trump and I hate the idea of him getting in again but I was wondering this myself.

I think even if he can't pull out of NATO he will cut aid to the Ukraine potentially allowing Russia to win and then attack a NATO country or a nearly NATO country like Sweden. And I don't think even if still in NATO Trump's America would rush to our defence. He's not interested in helping Europe. So that's bad.

But on the other hand the unpredictability might help.

The minute trump gets in he Weill dismantle the fbi, cia etc. he's threatened a massive purge. So any failsafes gone. I don't feel reassured by the congressional law re not pulling out of NATO. It also doesn't equate to providing help if it's needed

I doubt Trump has the intellect to even realise that Ukraine is a separate country from Russia 🤦🏻‍♀️

Apparently the US government passed something that says a president no longer has the power to pull the US out of NATO, so perhaps that's something.

Trump is a narcissistic, thick, arrogant crook though so anything might happen. He's the Dunning Kruger effect personified and Putin will be rolling around laughing if the US elects him again. Putin will run rings around him for sure. I feel sorry for Ukraine, the Baltics and former Soviet countries because it ain't gonna be pretty if Putin perceives that he can get away with invading eastern Europe. Saying that, he hardly has any soldiers left compared to NATO and the ones he does have are drunken ex prisoners, older people and psychopaths so 🤷🏻‍♀️

He is completely unhinged. I think the world will be far more dangerous with him back in the Whitehouse.

I guess we don’t really know. I’ve now heard several political/military experts (not just right wing ones either) saying that they don’t think Putin would have invaded if Trump had been president. They must be basing that on something.

The respect was all one way. Trump respects Putin; Putin does not respect Trump. In the current international environment, Putin can be expected to exploit Trump's multiple vulnerabilities to the maximum possible extent.

Worth remembering, too, that last time round Trump was constrained by other members of his administration, congress, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary. He's been very clear about the fact he's going to do his best to get rid of all those constraints if he gets re-elected, and he's got a lot of tame judges in place to push that through. It won't be anything like last time.

It's not really respect though is it? He wouldn't be moving heaven and earth to get a presidential candidate in because they're a worthy adversary.

He wants him in because he's uninterested in what Russia does outside of the US and he'll let putin do what he wants.

@CantDealwithChristmas Yes, that's the kind of idea they seem to have. It's wrong in every respect except WW2, but then that wing of US politics aren't known for their good grasp of history, economics, or geopolitics. Aside from the catastrophic effects of a Europe-wide war on the global economy, with the knock-on disastrous effects on the US economy, the moment the US walks away from its alliance commitments, as Trump wants to do, it loses its remaining standing in the world, which will destabilise other regions (East Asia most obviously) as other states take advantage of US weakness and further undermine US security at a point when the US would be without allies. The US can't just shift to an autarkic economy and seal themselves off from all external security threats, so they'd be screwed.

I actually think it’s less likely because Putin and Trump have a weird mutual respect for each other. I’m no Trump fan, but we survived his presidency before and I think we’ll survive another. Everyone loves to lose their shit over him but really it was fairly uneventful and arguably better than Biden’s has been!

"Trump started no wars when in power, meanwhile Biden has contributed to the wars going on with Russia/ukraine, the Middle East, the escalation in China with Taiwan all down to the incompetence/weakness of Biden!"

So just to be clear the standard for trump is starting wars, the standard for Biden is contributing to wars. Handy way to dismiss trumps expansion of the use of drone strikes and removal of reporting obligations.

Overall the change of ww3 is probably less, but not because trump is a strong man who commands respect and will stand up to anyone. He's a weak boot licker who is keen to the highest bidder or anyone who massages his ego.

I think Trump (and his supporters) would probably respond "Well, that's Europe's problem. We've been propping Europe up since 1940 (including Russia, which could not have repelled the Nazis without of $$$ of aid, money, food and LendLease tanks) and we have prevented widespread war in Europe many times since 1945. We were wealthy and our economy was growing so we were happy (sort of) to do it. Now, though, we're waning economically, and we just don't care what Europe does anymore. We're going to return to the spendid isolationism that was the norm for us prior to 1917. And ther's absolutely nothing that Europe can do about it."

Another Trump presidency would very significantly increase the risk of a wider war in Europe. It would also significantly increase the risk of a war in East Asia. So yes, in as far as either of those things would be/lead to "WW3", a Trump presidency would greatly increase that risk.

Neither Putin nor Xi see Trump as a stronger leader than Biden - that's a laughable idea. The Russians, largely correctly, see him as Putin's subordinate and the Trumpite Republicans in the House of Representatives and elsewhere as puppets of Trump (in the same way that members of the Russian parliament are Putin's puppets). There's also the issue of Trump's cognitive problems (which come on top of his pre-existing stupidity). There are bits of fluff on the Oval Office carpet that would look like a stronger leader to Putin and Xi than Trump ever will.

Decrease. The hysteria on MN of Trump possibly being re-elected is absurd. Trump started no wars when in power, meanwhile Biden has contributed to the wars going on with Russia/ukraine, the Middle East, the escalation in China with Taiwan all down to the incompetence/weakness of Biden!

I think he’s been smeared and hyped up by a corrupt media.
The US had a whole term of Trump so if the American public overwhelmingly want him back then they must think life wasn’t awful and dangerous under him.
I’d trust the people who lived through he’s administration and want to go back to that more than I’d trust the authoritarian left and their media outlets.
I don’t think Putin is interested in us, I think we’re being propagandised.

Is this a joke? Its been well established that Russia interfered with the US election to put Trump in power. Trump acts like a bully on the world stage but he publicly licked Putin’s boots throughout his time as President.

Reduce

How many wars did Trump start? And how many were other presidents responsible for?

Well, he's batcrap crazy and probably one of only a few people in the world who would be first to push the button and they all know it so they're probably less likely to start shit.

Trump cannot unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. There has been a recent law to prevent that.

Also, he would just let Putin have Ukraine, and Poland, and Germany etc etc. he doesn’t actually care about any of that unless he stands to profit personally.