Why I’m not taking Trump's deal
Elon is wrong: We won’t get to Mars by launching from the ruins of the free world
By Robert Zubrin
For the past third of a century I have been among the foremost advocates in the world for human exploration and settlement of Mars. In 1990, I set forth the Mars Direct plan, which revolutionized thinking about how to do human Mars missions. I publicized it widely in a series of papers leading up to the publication of my 1996 bestseller, The Case for Mars. That book inspired untold myriads of people internationally, including Elon Musk, to make the human settlement of Mars their cause and their passion. I am the founder and president of the Mars Society.
Now, bought (or more likely rented) by the very substantial financial support Elon Musk has provided his campaign, Donald Trump is offering to make my lifelong dream a reality.
I’m not taking the deal.
Here is why.
It is questionable whether Trump would keep his word to Musk and actually launch such an initiative once he achieves election. It is even more doubtful that a United States wildly fractionalized by Trump could sustain a Mars program conceived as his pet project, as with such odiferous partisan branding it would surely face cancellation as soon as the opposition party took either the House or the Senate. But let’s leave those matters aside. Let’s stipulate that, for once in his life, Trump keeps his word, maintains focus, and honestly tries his level best to deliver to his donor.
For those of us who want to see a multiplanetary future for humanity, wouldn’t it be worth it for us to look away from Trump’s imperfections and get with the program?
No, it would not. Matters are far too serious for that.
As I write these lines, thousands of Georgians are rallying in the central square of Tbilisi, protesting the takeover of their country by Kremlin puppets who are using vote fraud to place their nation under Putin’s iron heel. Events in Moldova are following the same script. Ukraine has been invaded outright, and with inadequate but nevertheless critical support from a shaky coalition of the US and its NATO partners is desperately holding the line.
Rather than criticize the Biden administration for its weakness in defending the walls of world freedom, Trump and Vance are calling for deserting them entirely, starting with cutting off all arms aid to Ukraine. This would cause a human catastrophe, with hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered, and a strategic disaster. With Ukraine’s million-man army deleted from the West’s order of battle, there would be absolutely nothing to stop Putin from seizing the Baltic states. (That these are NATO nations would be no deterrent to invasion. On the contrary, with Ukraine gone, NATO would have no counter move, making the seizure of the Baltics and the concomitant terminal humiliation of the Western alliance all the more enticing.)
That’s just for starters, because the massacres that Russian occupiers would commit in Ukraine and the Baltics would send millions of refugees into western Europe, bringing to power anti-immigrant parties sponsored by the Kremlin.
That is the game plan, and Trump is clearly part of it. To replace its defunct network of communist parties, guided by the thinking of its chief ideologist Aleksandr Dugin, the Kremlin has created a new Comintern of AltRight parties, including the AfD in Germany, the National Rally in France, similar movements in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, the Netherlands, and the Trumpist MAGA movement itself. They all follow the same template, combining extreme xenophobia with fealty to Moscow.
If Trump is elected, we are looking at the pending dissolution of not just “the rules-based international order”— which is an abstraction—but the free world itself.
For the past eighty years we have not had a general war. This is because of the deterrent effect of the free world’s policy of collective security. That will end, and with it will end the golden age of the Pax Americana we have enjoyed, if not properly appreciated, since 1945.
Trump claims that his desertion of the cause of world freedom is necessary appease Putin and avoid war. On the contrary, as it did in the 1930s, the abandonment of collective security to appease aggressors is guaranteed to unleash war.
Then there is the little matter of what Trump proposes to do inside the United States. Virtually every person who worked closely with Trump in his last administration has denounced him for his dictatorial ambitions and his refusal to accept the rule of law. In his last administration, he was restrained by traditional Republicans. Now he has a Supreme Court ruling saying that he does not need to obey the law, a Republican party purged of those loyal to the Constitution, and a vast mob of supporters, liberated from the burden of regarding reality as relevant, who will enable him to do whatever he wants— especially during the emergencies that would probably be unleashed by a trade war and a world war.
Under these conditions, his appointment of anti-vaccine kook RFK Jr. to take charge of American medicine and other lurid examples of reason-free governance are likely to be the least of our problems.
Here is the thing. I really want humans to go to Mars. But the reason why humans should go to Mars is not—contra Musk—to have survivors elsewhere when the Earth is destroyed. No, the reason humans should to go to Mars is to establish new, creative branches of human civilization, composed of free people who, pitting their ingenuity against the challenge of the Martian frontier, will add their inventions and tales to the human story.
Such brave new societies cannot be launched by a nation of slaves. We cannot build a better new world on the ruins of the old. For Mars to be free, Earth must be free.
So I’m saying no to Trump.
Dr. Robert Zubrin is president of the Mars Society. He is the author of The Case for Mars and, most recently, The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet
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“Let’s stipulate that, for once in his life, Trump keeps his word, maintains focus, and honestly tries his level best to deliver to his donor.” (Robert Zubrin)
Whatever his shortfalls, Trump has a history of keeping his promises that's far better than most traditional politicians. Zubrin’s suggestion that if Trump truly empowers Musk to supercharge his Mars efforts it will anomaly is simply laughable.
Every presidential candidate since Bill Clinton promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Trump did too. He did it; the others lied.
Trump promised to build a border wall; he tried but only succeeded partially because the Democrats in Congress refused to fund the effort. Harris amongst others called Trump’s plan racist. Now she's for building a wall on the border. Who's the liar; the guy who tried and failed or the repugnant politician who was against the border wall when she thought it was politically expedient and turned on a dime when she thought it would help her campaign?
Trump’s mantra during both of his political campaigns was “drill baby drill. When he was President the search for and extraction of hydrocarbons reached a fever pitch. Harris, on the other hand, made clear that she was diametrically opposed to fracking. Now that she needs to win in Pennsylvania, she's a fracking enthusiast. Who's the liar; Harris or Trump?
The list goes on and on. Trump promised to cut the corporate tax (which was amongst the highest in the developed world); he did it. Trump promised to keep us out of meaningless wars that sapped American strength while resulting in one ignominious American defeat after another; he kept his promise.
Who's the liar, Mr Zubrin, Trump or Harris and her uniparty brethren?
As for Georgia and Moldova, here’s the take-home message Mr. Zubrin; nobody in America cares with the exception of the neoconservative crowd. You know who I mean; its the uniparty crowd who never met a war they couldn't bungle us into or a conflict we couldn't lose. Lets wish the Moldovans and Georgians well, but whether they live under democratic regimes or dictatorial regimes simply isn't our problem. The neoconservative obsession with democracy promotion has made the United States weaker and its made NATO weaker. How many hundreds of billions of dollars need to be flushed down the drain and how many working class American kids need to come home in body bags or sans arms and legs before you will be satisfied Mr. Zubrin?
As for Ukraine, its just another in a long line of American and NATO failures delivered up by the neoconservatives. Joe Biden did everything he could to instigate Putin to invade. Why did Biden and his fellow uniparty monsters do this? He was determined to prove that after Trump, America was back as the leader of the free world. That's why Biden, with a helping hand from Victoria Nuland, sabotaged the efforts of Erdogan, Macron and Naftali Bennett to negotiate a compromise.
Whats the end result? Ukraine lies in ruins. Its citizens face a winter without heat and electricity. Its economy is ravaged. Its losing the war, Mr. Zubrin, and its not hard to understand who to blame. Chalk it up to just one more in a long line of uniparty failures.
Trump wanted a detente with Russia in much the same way that Nixon wanted a detente with the Soviet Union. Neoconservatives would have none of it. They spun Trump’s desire for a peaceful, productive relationship with Russia into a now disproved Russian collusion fairytale.
You're a Mars expert, Mr. Zubrin so let me ask you two questions. Is there anyone more likely to chart a realistic course to a Mars landing than Elon Musk? Who is more likely to work with Musk to achieve that goal, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris?
"If Trump is elected, we are looking at the pending dissolution of not just “the rules-based international order”— which is an abstraction—but the free world itself."
Um...no. Trump is bad for America and the world. Harris is as bad, and for different reasons. Neither being president will bring about the end of the free world itself.