What will be the foreign policy of the next US President?

by Thierry Meyssan

The two programs for the Trump and Biden candidacies are not similar to those of previous candidates. It is no longer a question of adjusting the United States to the changing world, but of defining what they will be. The question is existential, so it is quite possible that things will degenerate and end in violence. For some, the country must be a nation at the service of its citizens, for others it must restore its imperial status.

 

The U.S. 2020 presidential campaign pits two radically different visions of the United States: empire or nation?

On the one hand, Washington’s claim to dominate the world by "containment" - a strategy articulated by George Kennan in 1946 and followed by all presidents until 2016 - and on the other hand, the rejection of imperialism and the desire to facilitate the fortunes of Americans in general - a strategy articulated by President Andrew Jackson (1829-37) and taken up only by President Donald Trump (2017-20).

Each of these two camps wields rhetoric that masks its true practice. Democrats and Republicans pose as heralds of the "free world" in the face of "dictatorships", as defenders of racial, gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and as champions of the fight against "global warming". The Jacksonians, for their part, take turns denouncing the corruption, perversity and ultimately hypocrisy of their predecessors while calling to fight for their nation and not for the empire.

The two camps have in common only the same cult of force; whether it is at the service of the empire (Democrats and Republicans) or the nation (Jacksonians).

The fact that the Jacksonians unexpectedly became a majority in the country and took control of the Republican Party adds to the confusion, but should not confuse trumpism with what the Republican ideology has been since World War II.

In reality, Democrats and Republicans tend to be well-to-do people or professionals in new technologies, while Jacksonians - like the "yellow vests" in France - are rather poor and professionally tied to the land from which they cannot escape.

For the 2020 campaign, Democrats and Republicans are united behind former Vice President Jo Biden. He and his supporters are extremely voluble about their intentions: 
 “The Power of America’s Example”, by Joseph R. Biden Jr., Voltaire Network, 11 July 2019. 
 “Why America Must Lead Again. Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump”, by Joseph R. Biden Jr., Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020. 
And especially the statement by senior Republican national security officials to Democrat Biden : 
 “A Statement by Former Republican National Security Officials”, Voltaire Network, 20 August 2020. 
On the contrary, Donald Trump is evasive in writing: 
 “Donald Trump Second Term Agenda”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 24 August 2020 (foreign policy is the small paragraph at the end of the text).

In my view, the main disputes are not stated, but are constantly implied.

The Jacksonian agenda

As soon as he took office, Donald Trump questioned the Rumsfeld/Cebrowsky strategy of annihilating the state structures of all the countries of the "Broader Middle East" without exception and announced his wish to bring home the troops lost in the "war without end". This goal remains at the top of his priorities in 2020 ("Stop Endless Wars and Bring Our Troops Home").

As a result, he excluded the Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from regular meetings of the National Security Council. In so doing, he deprived the supporters of imperialism of their main tool of conquest.

See: 

- “Presidential Memorandum: Organization of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 28 January 2017. And “Donald Trump winds up “the” organization of US imperialism”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 31 January 2017.

There followed a battle for the presidency of this council with the indictment of General Michael T. Flynn, then his replacement by General H. R. McMaster, the exceptionalist John R. Bolton, and finally Robert C. O’Brien.

In May 2017, Donald Trump called on U.S. allies to immediately cease their support for jihadists charged with implementing the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy. This was the Riyadh speech to the Sunni heads of state and then to NATO heads of state and government. President Trump had declared NATO obsolete before changing his mind. However, he obtained not the abandonment of Russia’s policy of containment, but the halving of the credits used for this purpose and the allocation of the funds thus preserved to the fight against jihadism. In doing so, it partially stopped making NATO an instrument of imperialism and turned it into a defensive alliance. It has therefore demanded that its members contribute to its budget. Support for jihadism, however, was pursued by the supporters of imperialism with private means, notably the KKR Fund.

See: 

- “Presidential Memorandum: Plan to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 28 January 2017. 

- “Donald Trump’s Speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 21 May 2017. 

- “Remarks by Donald Trump at NATO Unveiling of the Article 5 and Berlin Wall Memorials”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 25 May 2017.

Hence his watchwords: "Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans" and "Get Allies to Pay their Fair Share.

Like the Democrats and Republicans, the Jacksonian Donald Trump is committed to restoring the capabilities of his armies ("Maintain and Expand America’s Unrivaled Military Strength"). Unlike his predecessors, he did not seek to transform the Pentagon’s delusional management by privatizing one department at a time, but rather developed a plan to recruit researchers to compete technologically once again with the Russian and Chinese armies.

See: 

- “National Security Strategy of the United States of America”, December 2017. And “Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 26 December 2017.

Only Donald Trump’s desire to regain primacy in missile matters is supported by Democrats and Republicans, although they do not agree on how to achieve it ("Build a Great Cybersecurity Defense System and Missile Defense System") : the tenant of the White House wants the USA to equip itself alone with these weapons that it can eventually deploy on the territory of its allies, while its opponents want to involve the allies in order to maintain their hold on them. From the point of view of the Democrats and Republicans, the problem is obviously not withdrawing from the Cold War disarmament treaties to build a new arsenal, but the loss of means of diplomatic pressure on Russia.

A professional politician, Joe Biden hopes to restore the imperial status of the former First World Power.

The program of Democrats and non-party Republicans

Joe Biden proposes to focus on three objectives: (1) reinvigorate democracy (2) train the middle class to cope with globalization (3) regain global leadership.

- Reinvigorate democracy: in his words, this means basing public action on the "informed consent" of Americans. In doing so, he used Walter Lipmann’s 1922 terminology, according to which democracy presupposes "manufacturing consent". This theory was discussed at length by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1988. It obviously has nothing to do with the definition formulated by President Abraham Lincoln: "Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people".

Joe Biden believes he is achieving his goal by restoring the morality of public action through the practice of "political correctness". For example, he condemns "the horrible practice [of President Trump] of separating families and placing the children of immigrants in private prisons," without saying that President Trump was merely applying a democratic law to show its futility. Or he announces that he wants to reaffirm the condemnation of torture that President Trump justified, without saying that the latter, like President Obama, has already banned the practice while maintaining life imprisonment without trial in Guantánamo.

He announced his intention to convene a Summit for Democracy to fight against corruption, to defend the "Free World" against authoritarian regimes, and to advance human rights. In view of his definition of democracy, it is a question of uniting allied states by denouncing scapegoats for what is wrong (the "corrupt") and promoting human rights in the Anglo-Saxon sense and especially not in the French sense. That is to say, to stop police violence and not to help citizens to participate in decision-making. This summit will launch an appeal to the private sector so that new technologies cannot be used by authoritarian states to monitor their citizens (but the USA and its NSA can always use them in the interest of the "Free World").

Finally, Joe Biden concludes this chapter by highlighting his role in the Transatlantic Commission for Electoral Integrity alongside his friends, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who overthrew the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Michael Chertoff, former US Secretary of Homeland Security, who put all US citizens under surveillance. Not forgetting John Negroponte who organized the Contras in Nicaragua and Daesh in Iraq.

- Educating the middle class to cope with globalization. Joe Biden believes that the politics that have been pursued since the dissolution of the USSR have led to the rapid disappearance of the middle class, and that training the remaining middle class in the use of new technologies will prevent the relocation of their jobs.

- Renewing U.S. leadership. In the name of democracy, this means stopping the rise of "populists, nationalists and demagogues. This formulation helps us understand that democracy, according to Joe Biden, is not only the fabrication of consent, but also the eradication of the popular will. If demagogues pervert democratic institutions, populists serve the popular will and nationalists serve the community.

Joe Biden then specifies that he will stop wars "forever"; a formulation that seems to support the same goal as the Jacksonians, but differs in terminology. It is in fact a question of validating the current adaptation of the system to the limits imposed by President Trump: why make US soldiers die abroad when one can pursue the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy with jihadists at a lower cost? All the more so since when he was only an opposition senator, Joe Biden gave his name to the plan to partition Iraq that the Pentagon was trying to impose.

A verse follows on the enlargement of NATO to include Latin American, African and Pacific allies. Far from being obsolete, the Alliance will once again become the heart of U.S. imperialism.

Finally, Joe Biden pleads for the renewal of the 5+1 agreement with Iran and disarmament treaties with Russia. The agreement with President Hassan Rohani aims to classically divide Muslim countries into Sunni and Shia, while the disarmament treaties aim to confirm that the Biden administration would not envisage a global confrontation, but the continued containment of its competitor.

The program of the Democratic Party candidate and non-party Republicans concludes with the assurance of joining the Paris Accord and taking leadership in the fight against global warming. Joe Biden specifies that he will not give gifts to China, which is relocating its most polluting industries along the Silk Road. On the other hand, he omits to say that his friend, Barack Obama, before entering politics, was the drafter of the statutes of the Chicago Carbon Emissions Trading Exchange. The fight against global warming is not so much an ecological issue as a matter for bankers.

Conclusion

It must be said that everything is opposed to a clarification. Four years of upheavals by President Trump have only succeeded in replacing the "endless wars" with a low-intensity private war. There are certainly far fewer deaths, but it is still war.

The elites who enjoy imperialism are not ready to give up their privileges.

So it is to be feared that the U.S. will be forced to go through an internal conflict, a civil war, and break up like the Soviet Union once did.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 

Roger Lagassé

 

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article210762.html

 

President Donald Trump is running out the clock on his own reelection campaign.

For much of the Trump presidency, days and controversies have run together until they’ve become an indistinguishable blur: a bombshell revelation from a former aide, or a self-sabotaging news conference, canceling out the last one. Time has seemed to pass quickly or not at all, as the constant churn of scandals, resignations, tell-all books and racist or sexist tweets has created its own political ecosystem.

At times, the constant noise has helped Trump, who thrives on chaos and wants the spotlight always on himself, and he believes he has faced few consequences for it.

But with less than eight weeks left until the election, and with early voting beginning in some states this month, the number of days Trump can afford to burn is dwindling. He is trailing his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in most national and battleground state polls, and is facing a potential cash crunch, leaving him with less to invest in television ads after aggressive spending over the last three years.

Nevertheless, Trump has spent the last week playing defense, first in the wake of a report that he referred to Americans who died in combat as “suckers” and “losers”, and then doing damage control after the release of excerpts from veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage.

“Even though the calendar says 54 days, it’s really more like 40 days,” Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist and former adviser to Jeb Bush, said Thursday, with a nod to the early voting. “And so every day, Trump is burning the one thing he can’t create more of, which is time – which is a disaster for him.”

The race is not over, strategists in both parties warn: Biden is prone to verbal slips his own supporters have winced at, external events can still affect the campaign, and it’s difficult to predict what voter turnout will look like amid the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/us-news/trump-news/2020/09/11/donald-trump-us-election-polls/

 

 

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In open defiance of state regulations and his own administration’s pandemic health guidelines, President Donald Trump on Sunday hosted his first indoor rally since June, telling a packed, nearly mask-less Nevada crowd that the nation was making the last turn in defeating the virus.

Eager to project a sense of normalcy in imagery, Trump soaked up the raucous cheers inside the warehouse venue. Relatively few in the crowd wore masks, with one clear exception: those in the stands directly behind Trump, whose images would end up on TV, were mandated to wear face coverings.

Not since a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that was blamed for a surge of coronavirus infections has he gathered supporters indoors. There was no early mention from the president that the pandemic had killed nearly 200,000 Americans and was still claiming 1,000 lives a day.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/trumps-first-indoor-rall...

 

Meanwhile, Biden holds a rally of one in his bunker...?

As Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a ‘Climate Arsonist’

The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. “I don’t think science knows” what is happening, he said.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/trump-biden-climate-change-fires.html

 

Red from top.

 

The trick was used by Uncle Rupe in Australia and the dumb anti-climate science politicians got re-elected... Now you know.

On Monday, climate change took centre stage in the US presidential campaign - and the contrast between the two candidates couldn't have been more stark.

While touring fire-ravaged California, Donald Trump downplayed the role a warming planet could have in the devastation, suggesting temperatures will "start getting cooler" and that the recent conflagrations was a lack of proper forest management.

"I don't think science knows actually," he said when told that science didn't agree with his conclusions

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Joe Biden went on the attack, accusing Trump of ignoring a "central crisis" facing the nation.

"If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?" he asked. "If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?"

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54156598

 

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It will take a few more years to have "more of America under water". It would be better for Joe Biden to be a bit more honest about the sciences of global warming which are accurate, while Donald is an ignoramus of giant proportion on this issue... But like In Australia, this is second fiddle to other issues and in America, issue numero uno in the atmosphere is ABORTION...

"The Democratic Party Opened the Way for Trump"

 

 

Critics of U.S. President Donald Trump claim he has brought ruin to the United States. For Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, that charge is too easy. He argues that liberal hubris has also played a significant role in the decay of American society.

His tone is perpetually friendly and he has the charisma of a reserved gentleman. At the same time, he has that presence that is typical of American stars, regardless whether they’re in Hollywood, politics or at a university. His arguments are razor sharp and often accusatory in nature.

Michael Sandel, 67, is a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Millions have viewed his popular Ted Talks online.

The release date for his latest book, "The Tyranny of Merit,” has deliberately been pegged to the final weeks of the presidential election campaign in the United States. Fittingly, the book is about U.S. President Donald Trump, his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump’s challenger in the last election, Hillary Clinton, and her husband Bill, the former president.

In the book, Sandel seeks to identify the culprits behind the division of American society and that of so many countries, including Germany. He is critical of Donald Trump, but his indictment also targets the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the left-leaning social democrats in Europe.

 

DER SPIEGEL: Professor Sandel, readers are getting used to the publication of books in rapid succession that always seem to have the same tone: Trump is dangerous, Trump is stupid, Trump is to blame for everything. But in your latest book, "The Tyranny of Merit," you focus on his opponents, the Democrats, and blame them for the plight of American society. That's a bit surprising.

Sandel: To make one thing clear: My book in no way excuses Donald Trump for the damage he has done to American politics and society. He has inflamed racial tensions and he has inflamed all of the divisions that already existed in American society before he entered into office. He has made them worse. But the book also tries to show how the Democratic Party - with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – opened the way for Trump.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/harvard-philosopher-michael-sandel-on-the-trump-phenomenon-a-1c97a86a-0e55-484f-ac39-90ec55ff39f8

 

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Trump is bad...

…

And if he is defeated in the election, might he move to disallow “invalid” votes in the Electoral College to keep himself on the throne? Or would he unleash armed and lawless protesters, as he encouraged those who menacingly entered Michigan’s state parliament in late April, describing them as “very good people”?

Certainly, such manoeuvres would be entirely consistent with, if not exemplify, some of the core traits of the emperor complex we have now deciphered in Donald J Trump: delusional, omnipotent, narcissistic, arrogant, lawless and distrustful. Juvenile. Tyrannical, resentful, unhinged, misogynist and, perhaps most worrying of all, Putinesque.

Read more:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/09/25/donald-trump-psychological-profile/

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In this long tirade of about 6,262 words that explains how idiotic, lunatic, demented, crappy Donald Trump is — which we have known for a long time, even before he was Trump-the-Apprentice — why finish this great work by comparing him to Putin…  Putin may be a megalomaniac, but he is far more intelligent than Trump who has never learnt to speak any other language than baby talk…

Trump is all feathers and no meat. Should he loose these elections, he will go without fuss, even if there has been some obvious meddling in the votes. We just imagine he won’t go because this suit our dislike of him and he plays a defiant game to suit his admirers… But unlike Putin who placed himself in a position where he can leave out of his own choosing, while still controlling/garnering more than 70 per cent of the votes, Trump will give up sooner than many people think. He knows that should he not leave by the rules of the game, he will be shot. And this would not turn him into a martyr... If he does not know this, he is dumber that a packet of cornflakes… We suspect his intelligence is slightly above this, in the vicinity of a hamburger.


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