Harry Targ
Although
most progressives preferred a Hillary Clinton victory in the 2016 election,
strong reservations about her candidacy existed because of her historic
association with foreign policies promoting the globalization of violence, war, and covert
operations in countries which challenged the neoliberal policy agenda.
Candidate Trump made bold statements about avoiding escalation of United States
involvement in Syria, staying out of the perpetual tensions on the Korean
peninsula, pulling the plug on NATO, and opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership
and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Most of all Trump seemed to strike
a rational chord with his call for improving relations with Russia.
The Trump
campaign created concern among the two dominant foreign policy factions which
have dominated United States foreign policy since the Reagan period: the
neoconservatives and the humanitarian interventionists. The first group, particularly
influential in the eight years of President George Walker Bush, argued that the
United States was the world’s hegemonic power and it should use that power to
transform the globe. Militarism should be the primary instrument of foreign
policy, not diplomacy. The second group, primarily those affiliated with
Presidents Clinton and Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
advocated a more selective use of military power, promoting neoliberal
globalization through diplomacy and trade agreements, and covert interventions
to destabilize regimes hostile to the global economic agenda of capitalism.
Clearly, these two factions of the foreign policy establishment overlapped and
both sought to promote global capitalism and imperialism. But their methods
varied.
The Trump
campaign foreign policy agenda was seen by both factions as a threat to the
imperial project. It stressed economic nationalism, a more judicious
participation in international affairs, and potentially to use the old
hyperbolic label “isolationism.” Therefore, after Trump’s election, what some analysts
called “the deep state”-- foreign policy institutions such as the CIA, NSA,
DIA, FBI, leadership of both political parties, liberal and conservative think
tanks, and the mainstream media--launched a campaign to embarrass Trump,
primarily using loose charges of a Trump/Putin election season cabal. The
pressure on Trump became so strong and so single-minded in the liberal media
(particularly MSNBC) that Trump began a significant tactical shift in foreign
policy.
After weeks
of increasingly hostile rhetoric about Russia, President Trump launched a
massive missile assault on targets in Syria (which took off the front pages an
“erroneous” mass slaughter of civilians in Mosul one week earlier due to a
“mistaken” US air attack). He adopted the deep state narrative that Syria had
dropped chemical weapons on its population. He threatened more military action.
The hostility was coupled with threats and counter-threats between
representatives of the US and Russian governments. Trump escalated bombing of
targets in Yemen, giving support to the Saudi driven war there. And during the week of April 12, the United
States dropped a “mother of all bombs” on alleged enemy targets in Eastern
Afghanistan. This bomb had the largest explosive power of any bomb used since World
War II. In addition, the president and his vice president increased threats on
North Korea, pledging military action if they test-fired new missiles and/or
nuclear weapons. Trump sent an aircraft carrier group to waters adjacent to the
Korean peninsula; another act of provocation. In addition, and below the radar
screen of brutal violence, anti-government protestors in Venezuela mobilized to
challenge the government of Nicholas Maduro. These so-called “dissidents” have
among them activists on the payroll of the United States government. The
campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution is being manifested in diplomatic
and covert assaults against Bolivia and Nicaragua as well.
In sum, the
new Trump administration has embraced a foreign policy that combines the worst
aspects of the two factions of the foreign policy establishment, the deep
state. He has shifted US policy to a militarism on high alert. He has returned
to a posture that calls for the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria. He has
put war against North Korea on the table. He has continued the covert operations
in Latin America. And he has joined the neoconservatives and humanitarian
interventionists in a campaign to challenge the place of Russia in the
international system. On this last point, Russian expert Stephen Cohen, warns
that we are closer to nuclear war with Russia than at any time since the Cuban
Missile crisis. And as he and British journalist Jonathan Steele point out, the
arguments for the new militarism are based on no evidence of new danger.
The one card
that remains unclear, and perhaps the best hope for avoiding global war is the
resistance of other powers in the world. Trump’s meeting with the Chinese
leader, Xi Jinping, in Washington and China’s role in efforts to forestall war
in Korea remain unclear. Also representatives of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and South Africa) met after the recent US attack on Syria to
discuss a common response.
Without
demeaning the centrality of the climate crisis, the title of Naomi Klein’s
recent book, “This Changes Everything,” might be applied to the latest
developments in United States foreign policy. New louder voices must be raised
in the peace movement—and as part of every movement it is allied with—to Stop
the Violence, Stop the War. In addition the clear connections between the $54
billion increase in military spending and the parallel cuts in non-military
spending needs to be highlighted.
The famous
clock of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been moving toward midnight,
total darkness. The peace movement must act now.
