{"id":118877,"date":"2018-09-24T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=118877"},"modified":"2018-09-19T15:52:37","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T14:52:37","slug":"the-empire-lovers-strike-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/09\/the-empire-lovers-strike-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The Empire-Lovers Strike Back!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump, Putin, and the Anti-Russian Coalition in the U.S.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Q<\/strong>: What do the following wildly diverse people and institutions have in common: MSNBC<\/em>\u2019s Rachel Maddow and Fox News<\/em>\u2019 Shepard Smith, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, The New York Times<\/em> and The Weekly Standard<\/em>, The National Review<\/em> and the Daily Kos<\/em>?<\/p>\n

A<\/strong>: All agree that Donald Trump\u2019s alleged \u201csoftness\u201d toward Russia must be unequivocally condemned.\u00a0 Trump\u2019s meeting and press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last July were, in the late Senator John McCain\u2019s words, \u201ca tragic mistake<\/em>,\u201d if not \u201ctreasonous<\/em>\u201d (the term used by former CIA director John Brennan).\u00a0 According to McCain, \u201cthe damage inflicted by President Trump\u2019s naivety, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Partly in response to this criticism, the Trump administration has intensified economic sanctions against Russia, but this does not satisfy the anti-Russian chorus that now ranges from liberal columnists to unrepentant neo-cons and pretty much every former head of the CIA, DIA, and NSA still alive.\u00a0 A remarkable amalgam of left- and right-leaning pols and pundits, whose unity, however temporary, demands explanation.<\/p>\n

On the surface, what accounts for the wide-ranging opposition to Trump\u2019s Russian policy is a combination of contempt for the presidential Orange-utan and old-fashioned patriotism.\u00a0 The President demonstrated once again in Helsinki that he is poorly prepared, egomaniacal, impetuous and overly trusting of fellow authoritarians.\u00a0 And, as Brennan and others opined, he appeared to be \u201cin Putin\u2019s pocket<\/em>,\u201d either because he owes his office to Russian electoral meddling or because the GRU may have tapes of him cavorting with Russian working girls.\u00a0 Even before Helsinki, Trump displayed a notable aversion to criticizing Russian military interventions. Moreover, he did not seem unduly upset by their electoral shenanigans in the U.S. and Europe or thuggery toward Putin\u2019s opponents.<\/p>\n

Why, then, would a coalition of leftish and right-wing patriots not<\/em> join in denouncing a leader who seemed to put Russia\u2019s interests ahead of those of his own country?\u00a0 Sorry to say, things are not so simple.<\/p>\n

Looking a bit more closely at what holds the anti-Trump foreign policy coalition together, one discovers a missing reality that virtually no one will acknowledge directly: the existence of a beleaguered but still potent American Empire whose junior partner is Europe.\u00a0 What motivates a broad range of the President\u2019s opponents is not so much the fear that he is anti-American as the suspicion that he is anti-Empire.<\/p>\n

Of course, neither liberals nor conservatives dare to utter the \u201cE-word.\u201d\u00a0 Rather, they argue in virtually identical terms that Trump\u2019s foreign and trade policies are threatening the pillars of world order: NATO, the Group of Seven, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the OSCE, and so forth.\u00a0 These institutions, they claim, along with American military power and a willingness to use it when necessary, are primarily responsible for the peaceful, prosperous, free, and democratic world that we have all been privileged to inhabit since the Axis powers surrendered to the victorious Allies in 1945.<\/p>\n

The fear expressed plainly by The New York Times<\/em>\u2019 David Leonhardt, a self-described \u201cleft-liberal,\u201d is that \u201cTrump wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Seven months earlier, this same fear motivated the arch-conservative National Review<\/em> to editorialize that,<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder Trump, America has retreated from its global and moral leadership roles, alienated its democratic allies, and abandoned the bipartisan defense of liberal ideals that led to more than 70 years of security and prosperity.<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All these critics would agree with Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference, who recently stated,<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s face it.\u00a0 Mr. Trump\u2019s core beliefs conflict with the foundations of Western grand strategy since the mid-1940\u2019s.<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWestern grand strategy,\u201d of course, is a euphemism for U.S. global hegemony \u2013 world domination, to put it plainly.\u00a0 In addition to peace and prosperity (mainly for privileged groups in privileged nations), this is the same strategy which since 1945 has given the world the Cold War, the specter of a nuclear holocaust, and proxy wars consuming between 10 and 20 million lives in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.\u00a0 Its direct effects include the overthrow of elected governments in Brazil, Guatemala, Iran, Lebanon, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Granada, Ukraine, et al.; the bribery of public officials and impoverishment and injury of workers and farmers worldwide as a result of exploitation and predatory \u201cdevelopment\u201d by Western governments and mega-corporations; the destruction of natural environments and exacerbation of global climate change by these same governments and corporations; and the increasing likelihood of new imperialist wars caused by the determination of elites to maintain America\u2019s global supremacy at all costs.<\/p>\n

It is interesting that most defenders of the Western Alliance (and its Pacific equivalent: the more loosely organized anti-Chinese alliance of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea) virtually never talk about American hegemony or the gigantic military apparatus (with more than 800 U.S. bases in 60 or so nations and a military-industrial complex worth trillions) that supports it.\u00a0 Nor is the subject of empire high on Mr. Trump\u2019s list of approved twitter topics, even when he desecrates NATO and other sacred cows of the Alliance.\u00a0 There are several reasons for this silence but the most important, perhaps, is the need to maintain the pretense of American moral superiority: the so-called \u201cexceptionalist\u201d position that inspires McCain to attack Trump for \u201cfalse equivalency\u201d (the President\u2019s statement in Helsinki that both Russia and the U.S. have made mistakes), and that leads pundits left and right to argue that America is not an old-style empire seeking to dominate, but a new-style democracy seeking to liberate.<\/p>\n

The narrative one hears repeated ad nauseam<\/em> at both ends of the liberal\/conservative spectrum tells how the Yankees, who won WW II with a little help from the Russians and other allies, and who then thoroughly dominated the world both economically and militarily, could <\/em>have behaved like vengeful conquerors, but instead devoted their resources and energies to spreading democracy, freedom, and the blessings of capitalism around the world.\u00a0 Gag me with a Tomahawk cruise missile!\u00a0 What is strange about this narrative is that it \u201cdisappears\u201d not only the millions of victims of America\u2019s wars but the very military forces that nationalists like Trump claim deserve to be worshipfully honored.\u00a0 Eight hundred bases?\u00a0 A million and a half troops on active duty?\u00a0 Total air and sea domination?\u00a0 I\u2019m shocked . . . shocked!<\/p>\n

In fact, there are two sorts of blindness operative in the current U.S. political environment.\u00a0 The Democratic Party Establishment, now swollen to include a wide variety of Russia-haters, globalizing capitalists and militarists is blind (or pretends to be) to the connection between the \u201cWestern Alliance\u201d and the American Empire. \u00a0The Trump Party (which I expect one of these days to shed the outworn Republican label in favor of something more Berlusconi-like, say, the American Greatness Party) is blind \u2013 or pretends to be \u2013 to the contradiction between its professed \u201cFortress America\u201d nationalism and the reality of a global U.S. imperium. <\/em><\/p>\n

This last point is worth emphasizing. \u00a0<\/em>In a recent article in The Nation<\/em>, Michael Klare, a writer I generally admire, claims to have discovered that there is really a method to Trump\u2019s foreign policy madness, i.e., the President favors the sort of \u201cmulti-polar\u201d world, with Russia and China occupying the two other poles that Putin and Xi Jinping have long advocated.\u00a0 Two factors make this article odd as well as interesting.<\/p>\n

First, the author argues that multi-polarity is a bad idea, because<\/p>\n

\u201csmaller, weaker states and minority peoples everywhere will be given even shorter shrift than at present when caught in any competitive jousting for influence among the three main competitors (and their proxies).<\/em>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What?\u00a0 Even shorter shrift than under unipolarity?\u00a0 I think not, especially considering that adding new poles (why just three by the way? What about India and Brazil?) gives smaller states and minority peoples many more bargaining options in the power game.<\/p>\n

More importantly, however, Trump\u2019s multi-polar\/nationalist ideals are clearly contradicted<\/em> by his determination to make American world domination even more overwhelming by vastly increasing the size of the U.S. military establishment.\u00a0 Klare notes, correctly, that the President has denounced the Iraq War, criticized American \u201coverextension\u201d abroad, talked about ending the Afghan War, and declared that the U.S. should not be \u201cthe world\u2019s policeman.\u201d\u00a0 But if he wants America to become a mere Great Power in a world of Great Powers, Trump will clearly have to do more than talk about it.\u00a0 He will have to cut the military budget, abandon military bases, negotiate arms control agreements, convert military-industrial spending to peaceful uses, and do all sorts of other things he clearly has no intention of doing.\u00a0 Ever.<\/p>\n

No \u2013 if the Western Alliance, democratic values, and WTO trade rules provide ideological cover and junior partners for American global hegemony, \u201cgo-it-alone\u201d nationalism, multi-polarity, and Nobel Peace Prize diplomatic efforts provide ideological cover for . . . American global hegemony!\u00a0 This can be seen most clearly in the case of Iran, against whom Trump has virtually declared war.\u00a0 He would like to avoid direct military involvement there, of course, but he is banking on threats of irresistible \u201cfire and fury\u201d to bring the Iranians to heel.\u00a0 And if these threats are unavailing?\u00a0 Then \u2013 count on it! \u2013 the Empire will act like an empire, and we will have open war.<\/p>\n

In fact, Trump and his most vociferous critics and supporters are unknowingly playing the same game.\u00a0 John Brennan, meet Steve Bannon!\u00a0 You preach very different sermons, but you\u2019re working for the same god.\u00a0 That deity\u2019s name changes over the centuries, but Americans worship him every time they venerate symbols of military might at sports events, pay taxes to support U.S. military supremacy, or pledge allegiance to a flag.\u00a0 The name unutterable by both Trump and his enemies is Empire.<\/p>\n

What do we do with the knowledge that both the Tweeter King and the treason-baiting coalition opposing him are imperialists under the skin?\u00a0 Two positions, I think, have to be rejected.\u00a0 One is the Lyndon Johnson rationale: since Johnson was progressive on domestic issues, including civil rights and poverty, which made him preferable to the Republicans even though he gave us the quasi-genocidal war in Indochina.\u00a0 The other position is the diametric opposite: since Trump is less blatantly imperialistic than most Democratic Party leaders, we ought to favor him, despite his billionaire-loving, immigrant-hating, racist and misogynist domestic policies.\u00a0 Merely to state this is to refute it.<\/p>\n

My own view is that anti-imperialists ought to decline to choose between these alternatives.\u00a0 We ought to name<\/em> the imperial god that both Trump and his critics worship and demand that the party that we work and vote for renounce the pursuit of U.S. global hegemony.\u00a0 Immediately, this means letting self-proclaimed progressives or libertarians in both major parties know that avoiding new hot and cold wars, eliminating nuclear weapons and other WMD, slashing military spending, and converting war production to peaceful uses are top priorities that must be honored if they are to get our support.\u00a0 No political party can deliver peace and social justice and maintain the Empire at the same time.\u00a0 If neither Republicans nor Democrats are capable of facing this reality, we will have to create a new party that can.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Richard E. Rubenstein is<\/em> a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and a professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University<\/em> in Virginia.<\/em>\u00a0 His recent book,<\/em> Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed was published by Routledge in 2017<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump, Putin, and the Anti-Russian Coalition in the U.S. – Looking a bit more closely at what holds the anti-Trump foreign policy coalition together, one discovers a missing reality that virtually no one will acknowledge directly: the existence of a beleaguered but still potent American Empire whose junior partner is Europe. What motivates a broad range of the President\u2019s opponents is not so much the fear that he is anti-American as the suspicion that he is anti-Empire. Of course, neither liberals nor conservatives dare to utter the \u201cE-word.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}