John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GILBERT DOCTOROW IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Trump Is Using Turkey and Iran to Undermine NATO and the EU”
"(Trumps's) logic is to dynamite the whole international order of military alliances which constrain the United States, embroil it in regional conflicts where it has no national interest, and drain away more than half of its defense budget"
"... he knows who are his friends and who are his natural enemies. ... it is comforting to know that this car has a driver with a mission that, in the end, spells peace."
Huh?
It sure ain't NATO embroiling the United States in conflicts.
It actually goes the other way around, the US drags NATO into conflicts where the Europeans have little interest.
That is just one of the values of NATO to the US today. It doesn't have to go it alone in all those wars and conflicts it starts for its own imperial reasons. It has the NATO name to make its operations seem to have international support.
And the US doesn't really have a "defense budget," although it uses that term. Russia has a defense budget. So does China. And India. And most of the countries of Europe. A defense budget is something adequate to your defense against reasonably possible threats.
But over $700 billion a year ain't about defense, especially when you consider that there's no country attacking or threatening the US.
And the budget is actually larger than that when you throw in all the "black" projects and include another vast amount spent on CIA and NSA to support the Pentagon's ugly work.
No, this is the budget of a massively aggressive imperial power whose leadership is hellbent on global dominance. Full-spectrum dominance, everywhere.
And Trump is only a portion of that leadership because in America power is divided. In some matters the Senate is more powerful than the President.
And, furthermore, what we see from Trump is still more of the same old, same old.
A new Space Force branch of the armed services? Missile strikes in Syria on the flimsiest excuse? Tearing-up an international treaty with Iran? Uttering regular threats against Iran? Openly speaking about maybe invading Venezuela? Insulting China? Hugely increasing military budgets? Doing things guaranteed to generate anger and instability, like putting the embassy in Jerusalem? New military bases? Ships sent to the Black Sea? Supplying and encouraging Saudi Arabia in its terrible war? New sanctions?
Why even the man’s everyday speech is packed with name-calling, insults to others, and unbelievable glimpses of hostility and ignorance. And of course, his behavior in international trade is beginning to border on a form of war.
I don't understand how anyone sees a peaceful leader in almost any of his acts. I see a form of chaos, the result of his trying to look like a very active leader combined with relatively little knowledge about the world’s affairs and possessing a reality-distorting ego plus making efforts to please the many American establishment people who simply loathe him.
Having a summit with Putin is good, very good, but that is only what two nuclear superpowers should do regularly, but the evidence suggests that the efforts at the summit are going nowhere.
I wish that were not true, but I'm pretty sure that it is.
And I sometimes suspect and fear Trump’s whole impulse towards Russia reflects nothing more than the advice of that old war criminal himself, Henry Kissinger. That advice is not good for the world’s affairs, including, I very much believe, Russia’s affairs. It is innately full of hostility towards China. And its real purpose is just to help along the effort for American global dominance. Russia, flattered by American attentions, would serve as a temporary crutch towards putting down China.
Trump has no clout in Washington and, therefore, little ability to do anything really important. But even if he did, we have no evidence whatsoever that he would do something good.
And every time he deals with Putin – again, as an American President should – he only becomes more isolated in Washington. Washington’s establishment is not going to stop playing its ugly games, and I think it best for everyone – Russia, Europe, and others – to understand that and prepare for it.
Trump’s answer to his isolation and threats against him, such as the Special Prosecutor, are to give the establishment even more of what it wants, “Yes, Sir, yes, Sir, three bags full!”
You know, American Right-wingers and the Alt-right like to make fun of ”liberals” and pretend that the bizarre man in the White House actually has a plan and that some of it at least is good. But I have never believed in fairy tales.
Both parts of that set of assumptions are confused. There are no liberals in America’s power structure, and Trump’s only plan is to survive in office and make lots of ego-satisfying noise.
