“In spring 2017, when the military contradicted his early efforts to deescalate in Syria, Trump entered his “my generals, my military” phase, saying he granted the Pentagon “total authorization” to act as it saw fit. With after-the-fact capitulations such as this, Trump has made himself a pushover for the hawks and Deep Staters who surround him.”..In any case, Trump was just a figurehead: Jared Kushner was de facto US president. The choice in Nov. 2020 was Jared or Biden.…“The White House effectively became a shell company under Kushner with Trump as its figurehead.…In early October [2020], amid tight midwestern races” Jared pulled “$2 million in ad buys in Michigan and Wisconsin, and $5 million from its projected fall TV budget in Minnesota.”…Jared ran “what may be the largest campaign finance scandal in American political history.”…1/11/21, “Grifting on a Dream,” American Greatness, Pedro Gonzalez
8/31/2020, “Voting in a de facto military state,” Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News
“Between Biden and Trump, US voters have no alternative to our anxious empire’s lawless conduct abroad.”
“What are we in for on the foreign policy side come Nov. 3? Whoever wins this election, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, the answers before us are grim. For those who vote, the choice lies between a mentally impaired restorationist and a paralyzed captive of what some of us call the Deep State.…The illiberal liberals, the only kind there are now, advertise Nov. 3 as the most decisive election in generations. This assertion is questionable even in the domestic context, but that is another conversation. As to the direction of U.S. foreign policy, there is no question: Between Biden and Trump, we are at bottom offered no alternative to our anxious empire’s conduct abroad.
Lawlessness, war and more war, destructive interventions in the name of righteous humanitarianism: We have no one but ourselves to blame for what will confront us in the four years to come. The divisive, nonsensical distractions of identity politics, “intersectionalism,” and all such narcissistic preoccupations carry a cost: No word is spoken among “progressives” about America’s imperial adventures. The lives of our countless victims abroad do not matter. The structures of power remain unchallenged.
This election is indeed of great significance, in my view. Given the absolute absence of any check on Washington’s projection of hegemonic power, known politely as “global leadership,” it will force a question upon us it is long past time to pose: Do Americans live under a de facto military government?
Tenuous Civilian Control of Pentagon
Anyone who thinks this suggestion is extreme should consider how tenuous civilian control of the Pentagon has been for many years. The defense industries bought Capitol Hill long ago–this is documented fact, however seldom acknowledged. [98% of US lawmakers insist on arming terrorists.…Their “defense” donors require constant talk of war].The military-industrial complex’s power over the executive is just as real but less defined, and it has been especially apparent since Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015.”…
[Ed. note:Trump considers US military weapons manufacturing a “jobs program." Below, in March 2018 he displays map of US weapons manufacturing sites touting “over 40,000 jobs in key states."
3/20/18, “President Donald Trump holds a chart of military hardware sales as he welcomes Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC,” Reuters…Arkansas is one of Raytheon’s Tomahawk missile manufacturing sites. What could be more patriotic than US taxpayer funded Tomahawk missiles’ unprovoked bombing of a small country thousands of miles away? “Patriotic” Raytheon gives scholarships to fellow patriots: “Raytheon Missiles and Defense Patriot Scholarship" awarded in Arkansas].
(continuing): “Foreign policy took up several important planks in Trump’s platform, readers may recall. He campaigned promising to reduce the military’s presence abroad, end our wars of adventure, ease NATO into the history books, and make a constructive relationship with Russia out of the unnecessary hostilities Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, left behind.
These positions won him votes.
They won him enemies, too. A bevy of top [so-called] national security officials and retired generals published open letters in The New York Times calling Trump a threat to national security. Michael Hayden, a retired general and former CIA director, suggested in February 2016 that the military would refuse to follow orders if Trump were elected and pursued his campaign promises.
Foiled Incumbent
Unsurprisingly, [as of 8/31/20] we have seen virtually no progress toward [2016 candidate] Trump’s [promised] objectives since he took office in January 2017. The Pentagon and the national security apparatus have ignored, circumvented, or otherwise subverted his orders to withdraw troops from foreign theaters, notably Syria and now Germany. Relations with Russia have dramatically worsened. NATO still pretends it has a function in the post–Soviet era.
These failures have three causes.
One, Trump [himself selected and therefore] is surrounded by people vigorously, ideologically opposed to [2016 candidate Trump’s] his foreign policy goals, chief among them John Bolton, briefly his national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The only way to explain these appointments is to assume [that he lied to get elected, or] they were forced upon him [in which case he was so weak that he should’ve resigned]. Trump, after all, doesn’t refer to the State Department as “the Deep State Department” for no reason. [His reason is to pander to and deceive his voters, to give them hope that he might be on their side]. He is telling us something about his circumstances.”…
[But Trump said he was the one guy who could smash “circumstances”: “The author of The Art of the Deal promised to make America great again. He never added the qualifier that he would restore the country’s greatness only if Republicans and Democrats liked him….This is in no way intended as a justification for the Republicans’ dishonesty and cowardice….My point is simply that it is Trump who made history precisely because it is Trump who styled himself “the outsider,” the businessman, who would shake up the Swamp of D.C. and reverse America’s misfortunes.”…July 30, 2020, “Why Trump (and the GOP) Must Do Better,” Jack Kerwick, American Greatness].
(continuing): “Two, Trump has proven [seemingly] impossibly erratic, saying one thing and doing another or doing one thing and later on saying another. [First, as you point out, Trump was “frozen,” powerless. Second, Jared was de facto president].
Three, Trump is far too conscious of his image. This prompts him to cave when the Pentagon or the spooks defy or circumvent him. [Yes, but he would cave anyway. As you’ve said, he’s frozen.]
In spring 2017, when the military contradicted his early efforts to deescalate in Syria, Trump entered his “my generals, my military” phase, saying he
granted the Pentagon “total authorization” to act as it saw fit.
With after-the-fact capitulations such as this, Trump has made himself a pushover for the hawks and Deep Staters who surround him….
Second, when Trump took office a few of us argued that he was a peculiar messenger but held out the promise of a renovated foreign policy. I was among the erring. After three and some years, I don’t think Trump has the grounding or consistency to get any such thing done. Washington is simply too much for him.
More of the same under a second Trump term is my call—a muddled White House at odds with itself, no worthwhile shift in policy permissible….Through all the fog, “his generals” will remain “totally authorized.”
Biden and Renewed Interventionism
There will be no such fog should Biden win in November, no ambiguity in his foreign policy plans. Biden promises a straight-ahead return to the policies that prevailed under Obama and Obama’s predecessors: a reclamation of “global leadership,” a renewed emphasis on interventions we justify, per usual, by casting ourselves as humanity’s archangels.
The wars and occupations will grind on, the extravagant Pentagon budgets will remain, the reigning Russophobia will remain. Biden is already well on board with the emergent Sinophobia….
Those around Biden are the ones to watch, as they will have disproportionate power over policy. This will be a replay of the George W. Bush administration, to strike another comparison.
Team Biden’s foreign policy advisers are vast in number. Foreign Policy counts more than 2,000 of them, organized into 20 working groups covering specific issues — arms control, defense, intelligence, humanitarian missions, and so on —and geographies: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia. These people come from consultancies, think tanks, the State Department, academia. There is a heavy layer of Obama administration holdovers and, of course, Pentagon bureaucrats, some quite senior.
It is those to whom these groups report who count. Biden’s inner circle appears to include Jake Sullivan (Obama loyalist, apostle of American exceptionalism), Antony Blinken (Obama man, Russophobe), Susan Rice (warmonger, Russophobe, liar in public), Samantha Power (the humanitarian interventionists’ Joan of Arc), Nicolas Burns (State vet, “global leadership” hack), and Michele Flournoy (Pentagon careerist, hawk). These are joined, let us not forget, by the scores of anti–Trump Republican warmongers who have recently colonized the Democratic Party.
There are a threat and two certainties here. This election could end up opening the way for the U.S. eventually to become in fact what it has long been in effect — a one-party state. The foreign policy consensus the Biden camp now represents could solidify to the consistency of granite….
As to certainties, a Biden regime would force us back to an interim that began in response to the 2001 attacks and now ranks among the most disastrous foreign policy failures of the past 70 years, up there with the Vietnam War years. In addition, this will be an administration more thoroughly wedded to the military than Trump’s first term has proven. At least with Trump there was contention, bureaucratic warfare, infighting, objection. There will be none between the Biden White House and the Pentagon.
Is there somebody to vote for on Nov. 3? Is any vote a vote for generals?”
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“Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist.His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.”
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Among comments to 8/31/2020 Patrick Lawrence article:
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“AnneR, September 1, 2020 at 10:18
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Susan’s comment: It should be illegal for an elected person to do the opposite of what he promised as a candidate. Further, I don’t understand how Trump ever sold so much as a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. He’s all talk, crumbles like a 5 year old girl…. “Trump Almost Always Folds,” The Atlantic, May 23, 2018, David A. Graham…“From trade deals to gun control and immigration to military deployments, the president has a consistent pattern: Talk a big game, then back down.”
Thank you, Patrick, for this – highly depressing, of course – overview of our so-called “choices” for Nov. 3. Enough to make one scream…
Nothing will change, whether Biden or the Strumpet are in the WH and not just because of the Deep State. Both fundamentally believe or go along with the notion that the US – by right of might – determines the world’s direction, political, economic (the latter being all that matters, it would seem). And should, as is highly likely, Harris assumes the Pres spot, even less will change for the better for us and definitely not for the rest of the world.”…