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Trump’s Ties
to the Past and the Resurrection of the Left
By James Petras
‘De Omnibus Dubitandum’
Everything is to be Doubted
February 09/10,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- President Trump is deeply embedded in the politics of
the deep state structure of American imperialism.
Contrary to occasional references to non-intervention in
overseas wars, Trump has followed in the footsteps of
his predecessors.
While neoconservatives and liberals have raised a hue
and cry about Trump’s ties to Russia, his ‘heresies’
over NATO and his overtures to peace in the Middle East,
in practice, he has discarded his market humanitarian’
imperialism and engaged in the same bellicose policies
of his Democratic Party presidential rival, Hillary
Clinton.
Because he lacks the slick ‘demagogy’ of
former-President Obama, and does not slather his actions
with cheap appeals to ‘identity’ politics, Trump’s
crude, abrasive pronouncements drive young demonstrators
into the streets in mass actions. These demonstrations
are not-so-discretely supported by Trump’s major
opponents among the Wall Street bankers, speculators and
mass media moguls. In other words, President Trump is an
icon-embracer and follower, not a ‘revolutionary’ or
even ‘change agent’.
We will proceed by discussing the historical trajectory,
which gave birth to the Trump regime. We will identify
ongoing policies and commitments determining the present
and future direction of his administration.
We will conclude by identifying how current reaction can
produce future transformations. We will challenge the
current ‘catastrophic’ and apocalyptic delirium and
offer reasons for an optimistic perspective for the
future. In brief: This essay will point out how current
negatives can become realistic positives.
Historical Sequences
Over the past two decades US presidents have squandered
the financial and military resources of the country in
multiple unending, losing wars, as well as in trillion
dollar trade debts and fiscal imbalances. US leaders
have run amok provoking major global financial crises,
bankrupting the largest banks, destroying small mortgage
holders, devastating manufacturers and creating massive
unemployment followed by low-paid unstable jobs leading
to collapse in living standards for the working and
lower middle classes.
Imperial wars, trillion dollar bail-outs for the
billionaires and unopposed flight of multinational
Ccorporations abroad, have vastly deepened class
inequalities and given rise to trade agreements favoring
China, Germany and Mexico. Within the US, the major
beneficiaries of these crises have been the bankers,
high-tech billionaires, commercial importers and
agro-business exporters.
Faced with systemic crises, the ruling regimes have
responded by deepening and expanding US Presidential
powers in the form of presidential decrees. To cover-up
the decades-long series of debacles, patriotic
‘whistle-blowers’ have been jailed and police-state
style surveillance has infiltrated every sector of the
citizenry.
Presidents Bush, Clinton and Obama defined the
trajectory of imperial wars and Wall Street plunder.
State police, military and financial institutions are
firmly embedded in the matrix of power. Financial
centers, like Goldman Sachs, have repeatedly set the
agenda and controlled the US Department of Treasury and
the agencies regulating trade and banking. The
‘permanent institutions’ of the state have remained,
while Presidents, regardless of party, have been
shuffled in and out of the ‘Oval Office’.
The ‘First Black’ President Barack Obama pledged peace
and pursued seven wars. His successor, Donald Trump was
elected on promises of ‘non-intervention’ and promptly
picked up Obama’s ‘bombing baton’: tiny Yemen was
attacked by US forces, Russia’s allies in the Donbas
Region of Ukraine were savaged by Washington’s allies in
Kiev and Trump’s ‘more realist’ representative, Nikki
Haley, put on a bellicose performance at the UN in the
style of ‘Madame Humanitarian Intervention’ Samantha
Power, braying invectives at Russia.
Where is the change? Trump followed Obama by increasing
sanctions against Russia, while threatening North Korea
with nuclear annihilation in the wake of Obama’s major
military build-up in the Korean peninsula. Obama
launched a surrogate war against Syria and Trump
escalated the air war over Raqqa. Obama encircled China
with military bases, warships and warplanes and Trump
goose-stepped right in with warmongering rhetoric. Obama
expelled a record two million Mexican workers over eight
years; Trump followed by promising to deport even more.
In other words, President Trump has dutifully picked up
the march along his predecessors’ trajectory, bombing
the same targeted countries while plagiarizing their
maniacal speeches at the United Nations.
Obama increased the annual tribute (aid) to Tel Aviv to
a whooping $3.8 billions while bleating a few pro-forma
criticisms of expanding Israeli land-grabs in Palestine;
Trump proposed to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem while
blubbering a few of his own mini-criticisms of illegal
Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinian land.
What is overwhelmingly striking is the similarity of
Obama and Trump,’s policies and strategies in foreign
policy, their means and allies. What is different is
their style and rhetoric. Both ‘Change Agent’ Presidents
immediately break the same phony pre-election promises
and function well within the boundaries of the permanent
state institutions.
Whatever differences they have are a result of
contrasting historic contexts. Obama took over the
collapse of the financial system and sought to regulate
banks in order to stabilize operations. Trump took over
after Obama’s trillion-dollar ‘stabilization’ and sought
to eliminate regulations – in the footsteps of President
Clinton! So ‘much ado’ about Trump’s ‘historic
deregulation’!
The ‘winter of discontent’ in the form of mass protests
against Trump’s ban against immigrants and visitors from
seven predominantly Muslim countries follows directly
from Obama’s ‘seven deadly wars’. The immigrants and
refugees are direct products of Obama’s invasions and
attacks on these countries leading to murder, injury,
forced displacement and misery for million of
‘predominantly’ (but not exclusively) Muslims. Obama’s
wars have created tens of thousands of ‘rebels’,
insurgents and terrorists. The refugees, fleeing for
their lives, have been largely excluded from the US
under Obama and most have sought safe havens in the
squalid camps and chaos of the EU.
As terrible and illegal as Trump’s border closure to
Muslims and as promising as the mass public protests
seem, they are all the result of the near decade long
policy of murder and mayhem under President Obama.
Following the policy trajectory – Obama shed the blood
and Trump, in his vulgar racist style is left to ‘clean
up the mess’. While Obama has been made into a ‘Nobel
Peace Prize’ peace maker, grumpy Trump is soundly
attacked for picking up the bloody mop!
Trump has chosen to tread the path of obloquy and faces
the wrath of purgatory. Meanwhile, Obama is off playing
golf, wind surfing and flashing his ‘devil may care’
smile to his adoring scribblers in the mass media.
As Trump stomps down the path laid out by Obama,
hundreds of thousands of demonstrators fill the streets
to protest the ‘fascist’, with scores of major mass
media networks, dozens of plutocrats and ‘intellectuals’
of all genders, races and creeds writhing in moral
outrage! One is left confused at the deafening silence
of these same activists and forces when Obama’s
aggressive wars and attacks led to the deaths and
displacement of millions of civilians, mostly Muslim,
and mostly women – as their homes, weddings, markets,
schools and funerals were bombed.
So much for American muddle-headedness! One should try
to understand the possibilities that arise from a
massive sector finally breaking their silence as Obama’s
glib warmongering has been transformed into Trump’s
crude march to doomsday.
Optimistic Perspectives
There are many who despair but there are more who have
become aware. We will identify the optimistic
perspectives and realistic hopes rooted in current
reality and trends. Realism means discussing
contradictory, polarizing developments and therefore we
accept no ‘inevitable’ outcomes. This means that
outcomes are ‘contested terrain’ where subjective
factors play a leading role. The interface of
conflicting forces can result in an upward or downward
spiral – toward more equality, sovereignty and
liberation or greaterconcentration of wealth, power and
privilege.
The most retrograde concentration of power and wealth is
found in the oligarchic German-dominated European Union
– a configuration which is under siege by popular
forces. The United Kingdom voters chose to exit from the
EU (Brexit). As a result, Britain faces a break-up with
Scotland and Wales and an even greater separation from
Ireland. Brexit will lead to a new polarization as
London-based bankers depart to the EU and free market
leaders confront workers, protectionists and the growing
mass of the poor. Brexit fortifies nationalist-populists
and leftist forces in France, Poland, Hungary and Serbia
and shatters the neo-liberal hegemony in Italy, Spain,
Greece, Portugal and elsewhere. The challenge to the EU
oligarchs is that popular insurgency will intensify
social polarization and can bring to the fore
progressive class movements or authoritarian nationalist
parties and movements.
Trumps ascent to power and his executive decrees have
led to highly polarize electorates, increased
politicization and direct action. The awakening of
America deepens internal fissures between small ‘d’
democrats, progressive women, trade unionists, students
and others against the big ‘D’ Democratic Party
opportunists, speculators, life-long Democratic
warmongers, bourgeois black ‘D’ Party hacks (the mis-leaders)
and a small army of corporate-funded NGO’s.
Trumps embrace of the Obama-Clinton military and Wall
Street agenda will lead to a financial bubble, bloated
military spending and more costly wars. These will
divide the regime from its trade union and working class
supporters now that Trump’s cabinet is composed entirely
of billionaires, ideologues, rabid zionists and
militarists (as opposed to his promise to appoint
‘hard-nosed’ deal-making businessmen and realists). This
could create a rich opportunity for movements to arise
which reject the truly ugly face of Trump’s reactionary
regime.
Trump’s animosity to NAFTA, and advocacy of
protectionism and financial and resource exploitation
will undermine the corrupt, murderous, narco-neoliberal
regimes which have ruled Mexico for the past 30 years
since the days of Salinas. Trump’s anti-immigration
policy will lead to Mexicans choosing to ‘fight over
flight’ in confronting the social chaos created by the
narco-gangs and gangster police. It will force the
development of Mexico’s domestic markets and industry.
Mass domestic consumption and ownership will embrace
national-popular movements. The drug cartel and their
political sponsors will lose the US markets and face
domestic opposition.
Trump’s protectionism will limit the illegal flow of
capital from Mexico, which amounted to $48.3 billion in
2016 or 55% of Mexico’s debt. Mexico’s transition from
dependency and neo-colonialism will deeply polarize the
state and society; the outcome will be determined by
class forces.
Trump’s economic and military threats against Iran will
strengthen nationalist, populist and collectivist forces
over the neo-liberal ‘reformist’ and pro-Western
politicians. Iran’s anti-imperialist alliance with
Yemen, Syria and Lebanon will solidify against the
US-led quartet of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Britain and the
US.
Trump’s support for Israel’s massive seizure of
Palestinian land and its ‘Jews-only’ ban against Muslims
and Christians will lead to the ‘shaking off’ of the
multi-millionaire Palestinian Authority quislings and
the rise of many more uprisings and intifadas.
The defeat of ISIS will strengthen independent
governmental forces in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, weaken
US imperial leverage and open the door to popular
democratic secular struggles.
China’s President Xi Jinping’s large-scale, long-term
anti-corruption campaign has led to the arrest and
removal of over a quarter-million officials and
businesspeople, including billionaires and top Party
leaders. The arrests, prosecution and jailing has
reduced the abuse of privilege, but more important, it
has improves the prospects for a movement to challenge
vast social inequalities. What began from ‘above’ can
provoke movements from ‘below’. The resurrection of a
movement toward socialist values can have a major impact
on US vassal states in Asia.
Russia’s support for democratic rights in Eastern
Ukraine and the re-incorporation of Crimea via
referendum can limit US puppet regimes on Russia’s
southern flank and reduce US intervention. Russia can
develop peaceful ties with independent European states
with the break-up of the EU and the Trump electoral
victory over the Obama-Clinton regime’s threat of
nuclear war.
The world-wide movement against imperialist globalism
isolates the US-backed right-wing power grab in South
America. Brazil, Argentina and Chile’s pursuit of
neo-liberal trade pacts are on the defensive. Their
economies, especially in Argentina and Brazil, have seen
a three-fold increase in unemployment, four-fold rise in
foreign debt, stagnant to negative growth and now face
mass-supported general strikes. Neo-liberal ‘toadyism’
is provoking class struggle. This can overturn the post-Obama
order in Latin America.
Conclusion
Across the world and within the most important
countries, the ultra-neoliberal order of the past
quarter century is disintegrating. There is a massive
upsurge of movements from above and below, from
democratic leftists to nationalists, from independent
populists to the right-wing reactionary ‘old guard’: A
new polarized, fragmented political universe has
emerged. The beginning of the end of the current
imperial-globalist order is creating opportunities for a
new dynamic democratic collectivist order. The oligarchs
and ‘security’ elites will not easily give way to
popular demands or step down. Knives will be sharpened,
executive decrees will issue forth, and electoral coups
will be staged to attempt to seize power. The emerging
popular democratic movements need to overcome identity
fragmentation and establish unified, egalitarian leaders
who can act decisively and independently away from the
existing political leaders who make dramatic, but phony,
progressive gestures while seeking a return to the
stench and squalor of the recent past.
James Petras is a
Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
