Guess Who's Back
And Europe trembles at Donald Trump's second coming
The Relevant Reads Episode #2
Firstly, I would love to begin by extending my apologies to you, my loyal subscribers and readers for missing the last two Relevant Information newsletters. I was indisposed healthwise and had to deal with that situation. I am grateful for your support and appreciate that you have stuck around despite my short absence. Thank you so much.
And now back to regularly scheduled programming
Donald Trump is all but certain to be reelected president in the United States, as at the time I am writing this edition of The Relevant Reads, he has blown current vice president, Kamala Harris, out of the water holding 266 Electoral College votes to her 188, and needing just four more to officially cement his victory.
The GOP now has 51 Senate seats, compared to the Democrats’ 41, beating the 50 seats threshold to own their majority. Of course, JD Vance becoming Vice President of the United States, would ensure that in case where there is a tie on legislative votes, Trump’s VP would be able to use his vote as President of the Senate to break the tie into a majority for his agenda.
The House of Representatives is not yet solidly determined, and might not be determined for a week more, but the GOP have 201 seats as at time of writing, needing 17 more seats to gain control of the House. The Democratic Party on the other hand currently holds 173 seats, needing 45 more seats to gain the 218 slim majority threshold. Increasingly it looks like the GOP could for the first time in quite a while, take full control of all three branches of the United States Government.
With a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, a Republican Senate, a Republican Presidency, and what looks like it could end up being a Republican House too, total lock on the Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative branches. A United States of Nigeria if you will, where one party has a lock on everything.
And predictably, quite a number of people are already beginning to freak out, even though the Donald is not yet in office.
First on my list of freaked-outers are the folks from the Trans-Atlantic alliance defence and security communities, who are realising that their predictions of a Trump defeat and a Harris landslide, were nothing but fanciful dreams.
Trump’s victory has forced the conversation within the Trans-Atlantic security and defence communities about European strategic autonomy, and Europe’s ability to defend itself in the absence of NATO, back to the forefront.
Phillips O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at University of St. Andrews in Scotland, on his Substack delves into what Trump’s victory will mean for Tran-Atlantic Alliance Europe, and advocates that Europe must prepare itself for the probability of American commitment to European security weakening under the Trump administration. You should read his highly informative piece below.
On his Twitter handle, Mr O’Brien re-upped a piece he had written earlier for Foreign Affairs, titled “Planning For A Post-American NATO”, which I read and found educating and would recommend you guys check out. You can find it HERE.
Investor and driving force behind the Magnistky Sanctions, Sir William Felix Browder, KCMG, tweeted the below tweet, linking to a report by Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA):
The article was written by Edward Lucas, a former senior editor at the Economist, and longtime foreign correspondent in Russia, Germany and the Baltic states, who is now a senior advisor at CEPA. It was written in January and in it Mr Lucas argues for more than $300bn in Russian financial assets abroad to be seized and used to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion. You can read it HERE.
Edward Lucas also has a new piece out posted on CEPA’s website today November 6, 2024, titled Trump Cards: A Survival Kit (How Europe Should Prepare for Four Bumpy Years). It’s a relatively concise article, that raises some interesting points, I will point out that personally I disagree with its framing of Europe’s challenger - Russia - from the perspective of nominal GDP , and with its profered solution being European countries increasing their defence budgets to 5% of their GDP.
Europe’s problem is not that there’s not enough money, rather it is a crushing lack of capacity. Germany’s defence budget was miles above Ukraine’s in 2014 and also in 2022, but a stunning lack of actual capacity means that if it had been the Germans getting the short end of the Russian stick in 2022, they would have been pounded to dust. Anyways, you can read Mr Lucas’ arguments HERE
Gen Mick Ryan, has a feature on the website of the Lowy Institute, and Australian think tank, titled “Trump May Surprise Us On Ukraine”, and I cannot recommend it enough. You can find it HERE.
Finally on the security and defence community’s fears of what Trump 2.0 means for European security, I present you a policy memo by Matthew Burrows on the Stimson Center’s website, titled “Could Trump Be Good For Europe?”. Mr Burrows argues that there’s a possibility that Trump could be the trigger that sparks a renew desire in the European part of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance, to renew itself and rebuild its capacity.
You can find Mr Burrows policy memo HERE.
Back home in Nigeria, Bloomberg has a good report that vaguely shines a light on export of refined petroleum products from the Dangote Refinery.
Despite multiple attempts by Aliko Dangote to get local authorities and fuel distribution cartels to purchase refined petroleum products from his refinery, the refinery’s sales graph remains flatlined, as his target market silently boycotts and undercuts him with imports of allegedly substandard gasoline and diesels.
However international trading companies such as Trafigura, are loading refined petroleum products from Dangote’s refinery in this interesting twist that Bloomberg reported on, which you can read HERE.
This week, African social media was on fire with reports, videos and explicit images of Baltasar Ebang Engonga, the head of Equatorial Guinea’s anticorruption and financial intelligence agency, engaged in sexual gymnastics with various women. The women have largely been identified as wives, daughters and sisters of many Equatoguinean ministers, generals, and other prominent figures.
A nephew of the Equatorial Guinea’s longserving president, he was rumoured to have fallen out with his cousin the Vice President (who is also son of the president), which led to him being investigated on charges of corruption and embezzlement and his collection of over 400 consensually shot sextapes being discovered and leaked.
The African Report has a great backgrounder on him which you can read HERE.
Finally, to wrap up this edition of The Relevant Reads, I leave you with this piece from Drop Site News (you absolutely should subscribe to their incredible reporting), which argues that railing-at-the-sky old man and current genocide excuser, Bernie Sanders could have won if he and his ideas had been allowed to run in 2016 or 2020 or even today in 2024.
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