First, no foreign-policy initiative undertaken by President Trump, however wise it may be in regard to US national interests, will be accepted by that establishment. Any prominent political figure who does so will promptly and falsely be branded, in the malign spirit of Russiagate, as “pro-Putin,” or, as was Senator Rand Paul, arguably the only foreign-policy statesman in the senate today, “an isolationist.” This is unprecedented in modern American history. Not even Richard Nixon was subject to such establishment constraints on his ability to conduct national-security policy during the Watergate scandals.

Second, not surprisingly, the condemnations of Trump’s decision are infused with escalating, but still unproven, Russiagate allegations of the president’s “collusion” with the Kremlin. Thus, equally predictably, the Times finds a Moscow source to say, of the withdrawals, “Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving” to Putin. (In fact, it is not clear that the Kremlin is eager to see the United States withdraw from either Syria or Afghanistan, as this would leave Russia alone with what it regards as common terrorist enemies.) Closer to home, there is the newly reelected Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who, when asked about Trump’s policies and Russian President Putin, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “I think that the president’s relationship with thugs all over the world is appalling. Vladimir Putin, really? Really? I think it’s dangerous.”

[But Russian Pres. Yeltsin wasn’t a “thug” or “Hitler?” In October 1993 “Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks and airborne troops to shell and storm the…Russian Parliament (Supreme Soviet) building, to suppress the opposition trying to remove him….U.S. Praised Yeltsin’s “Superb Handling””…Scores were killed, hundreds wounded, Bill Clinton said, “President Yeltsin had no other alternative but to try to restore order.”…CBS News Roger Mudd @5:40 says that Bill Clinton downplayed “the crisis,” and later phoned Yeltsin to express his support. VP Al Gore @5:55 says US supports Yeltsin and his efforts at democracy and a “free market economy….We feel Boris Yeltsin is the best hope for democracy in Russia.”…“President Boris Yeltsin moved swiftly last night to stamp his absolute power on Russia by suspending a range of political movements and closing opposition newspapers“]

(continuing, The Nation): “By this “leadership” reasoning, Trump should be the first US president since FDR to have no “relationship” whatsoever with a Kremlin leader. And to the extent that Pelosi speaks for the Democratic Party, it can no longer be considered a party of American national security.“…

[Ed. note: Obama didn’t waste time on so-called “thugs,” rather he “wasted two and a half years” cozying up to dictators said Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “an informal adviser to Obama administration officials, his friends Michael McFaul and Samantha Power, scholars who serve on the National Security Council staff. But he [Ibrahim] doesn’t mince words about Mr. Obama’s record so far. The president “wasted two and a half years” cozying up to dictators and abandoning dissidents, he says.”…2/26/2011, Wall St. Journal]

(continuing): “But, third, something larger than even anti-Trumpism plays a major role in condemnations of the president’s withdrawal decisions: imperial thinking about America’s rightful role in the world.

Euphemisms abound, but, if not an entreaty to American empire, what else could the New York Times’ David Sanger mean when he writes of a “world order that the United States has led for the 79 years since World War II,” and complains that Trump is reducing “the global footprint needed to keep that order together”? Or when President Obama’s national-security adviser Susan Rice bemoans Trump’s failures in “preserving American global leadership,” which a Times lead editorial insists is an “imperative”? Or when General James Mattis in his letter of resignation echoes President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeline Albright—and Obama himself—in asserting that “the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world”? 

We cannot be surprised. Such “global” imperial thinking has informed US foreign-policy decision-making for decades—it’s taught in our schools of international relations—and particularly the many disastrous, anti-“order” wars it has produced. [No single nation’s taxpayers can bear the burden of “leading the world” nor should they. “Indispensable” in this instance is a way of  telling US taxpayers they should feel "good" about their enslavement, ie, “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming.”] 

Fourth, and characteristic of empires and imperial thinking, there is the valorization of generals. Perhaps the most widespread and revealing criticism of Trump’s withdrawal decisions is that he did not heed the advice of his generals, the undistinguished, uninspired Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis in particular. [“After leaving the Army, Mattis was paid $242,000 and up to $500,000 in vested stock options by the company General Dynamics, which builds tanks submarines and munitions. He also received a $20,000 speaking fee from defense giant Northrop Grumman.] The pseudo-martyrdom and heroizing of Mattis, especially by the Democratic Party and its media, remind us that the party had earlier, in its Russiagate allegations, valorized US intelligence agencies, and, having taken control of the House, evidently intends to continue to do so. Anti-Trumpism is creating political cults of US intelligence and military institutions. What does this tell us about today’s Democratic Party? More profoundly, what does this tell us about an American Republic purportedly based on civilian rule?

Finally, and potentially tragically, Trump’s announcement of the Syrian withdrawal was the moment for a discussion of the long imperative US alliance with Russia against international terrorism, a Russia whose intelligence capabilities are unmatched in this regard. (Recall, for example, Moscow’s disregarded warnings about one of the brothers who set off bombs during the Boston Marathon.) Such an alliance has been on offer by Putin since 9/11. President George W. Bush completely disregarded it. Obama flirted with the offer but backed (or was pushed) away. Trump opened the door for such a discussion, as indeed he has since his presidential candidacy, but now again, at this most opportune moment, there has not been a hint of it in our political-media establishment. Instead, a national security imperative has been treated as “treacherous.”

In this context, there is Trump’s remarkable, but little-noted or forgotten, tweet of December 3 calling on the presidents of Russia and China to join him in “talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race.” If Trump acts on this essential overture, as we must hope he will, will it too be traduced as “treacherous”—also for the first time in American history? If so, it will again confirm my often-expressed thesis that powerful forces in America would prefer trying to impeach the president to avoiding a military catastrophe. And that those forces, not President Trump or Putin, are now the gravest threat to American national security.”
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“(This commentary is based on the most recent of Cohen’s weekly discussions with John Batchelor on the new US-Russian Cold War. The podcast is here. Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.)