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Biden’s administration is going after Russian energy. On Wednesday, in the last days of Joe Biden’s presidency, the US Treasury Department, by means of an executive order, has imposed new sanctions on almost 100 targets, which include Russian companies and banks that are related to the energy sector. In addition, the State Department is also reportedly sanctioning over 150 individuals and entities.

The measures have been described as “Trump-proof” sanctions because they give power to the Congress in that regard. This should not be a huge challenge for president-elect Donald Trump, though, considering the fact that he can boast of a “supermajority” in both Houses and the Supreme Court—plus is on a declared war against the so-called “deep state” to increase his own presidential powers.

It remains to be seen how effective such sanctions will turn out to be, from an American perspective, considering how divided American lawmakers are on the matter. Besides, most of the anti-Russian sanctions since 2022 thus far have even backfired, for a number of reasons, by boosting Eurasian integration, among other things. In any case, the timing of the latest sanctions, and their obvious “Trump-proof” nature is quite telling and is yet another sign of the current political climate in the US.

There is a growing perception that Trump, even before taking the oath, is already calling the shots. And there is some degree of truth to that. The Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreed to this week clearly exemplifies this: when asked by a reporter whether Trump should get credit for the deal, the incumbent President Joe Biden replied, dryly: “is that a joke?” It is no joke: such a development can in fact be largely credited to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, who will assume office on January 20.

Journalist Guga Chacra, an expert on Palestine, has even described Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “irrelevant” by now. This is not limited to a particularly tense presidential transition. The feeling of a house divided or the perception that it is rather unclear who is actually making decisions has in fact accompanied American politics for a while by now, and I’ve commented before on how the American democracy is clearly in crisis.

One may recall that Biden’s own presidential transition (November 2020-January 2021) was not quite normal: for one thing it was shorter than usual because at the time Trump refused to concede Biden presumptive victory and thus the chief executive of the General Services Administration (the agency tasked with such matters) did not sign the documents which would authorize Biden’s transition team to have access to transition funds and to federal agencies. Trump eventually conceded, recognizing Biden’s victory on November 23, 2021.

The US voting system is complex enough and, with Trump’s accusations of fraud, things got tense. As I wrote before, even a 2021 Time magazine’s article admitted that “in a way, Trump was right” because “there was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes” to stop the Republican’s victory, involving “an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.” Biden’s inauguration was not business as usual in any way, as any photographs of that event reveal: Washington DC remained on high alert and the Pentagon even authorized 25,000 National Guard members to support it. It did not begin quite normally and the same can be said of its end.

In fact, four years later, with Trump now being back, the whole transition period thus far has been far from tedious. Biden has not questioned Trump’s victory but nonetheless things have not been “normal” in the US even before that: for one thing, there was the scandal of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the way his inner circle covered it up, to the point, as I wrote elsewhere, that one cannot be really sure about who has actually been governing the US for the last month or even longer. An American political crisis has been going on since at least early 2024, with questions about Biden’s mental health and the Texas border deadlock before the presidential primaries.

Image: An assassination attempt on Donald Trump during his 2024 campaign rally (Source)

More recently, for one thing, during the presidential campaign there were no less than three attempts against Trump’s life, with suspicions abounding about the Secret Service. One of the attempts involved someone (Ryan Routh) involved in recruiting for Ukraine—another tale that so far has not been fully explained.

More recently, there was a New Year’s terrorist bombing outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, and the perpetrator, an active duty Green Beret (formerly involved in Special Operations), is believed to have involvement with, once again, recruiting ex-soldiers to fight for Ukraine as mercenaries and with pro-Ukraine activism.

On top of all of that, the country faces a bizarre drone crisis out of control that also involves unidentified flying objects, with wild discourses about aliens going mainstream. Military bases and airports have been temporarily closed over the matter, and lawmakers arecalling for a state of emergency while counties have already declared one and so on.

What some of those events (out of control aerial technology events, would-be assassins with special operations and/or Ukraine recruiting background) strongly suggest is, as I’ve argued, a “deep state” divided or out of control. Far from being a topic for conspiracy theories, “war” between intelligence agencies is a common theme in American history—suffice it to mention, for instance, Mark Riebeling’s 1994 book called “Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA.” There is an ongoing political crisis of authority and legitimacy in the US, with a sitting President who has been considered too senile to run for reelection, and an elected President who has declared war on the “deep state” – or part of it.

It is true that, contrary to what NATO hardliners and the Democrat Party’s propaganda states Trump is no “ally” of Russia (as Democrats denounce) or a “peacemaker”, as some hope. His plans to buy Greenland, for example, are serious, and they can be seen as also part of a long American goal to dominate the Arctic and thus further “encircle” Russia.

Be it as it may, with regards to the issue of Ukraine specifically (a conflict that has been largely fueled by the US), Trump does seem bent to have talks with Moscow and work towards a peace plan. This could be enough to stir panic among factions of the “deep state” (or the “secret government” as scholar Michael J. Glennon calls it) and their associates in the defense industry—one should remember that the US government has been described as a “revolving door”: just consider America’s “private armies” and the revolving door involving Armed Forces officials and such companies.

To sum it up, this is arguably the wildest presidential transition in the history of the US. Trump will take the oath on November 20th and who knows what developments may take place by then. The latest round of sanctions against Russia is just another example of a series of desperate-looking last-minute decisions.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo, PhD, is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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