Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Las Vegas, 2015. John Locher / Press Association. All rights reserved.In a recent letter, 50 Republican
national security experts lambast Donald Trump, saying he "would be the
most reckless president" in US history. Given his latest statement on the
“Second
Amendment people” and their right to change the government by force it
seems hard to disagree. Yet the question of whether reckless and even
unacceptable rhetoric in a modern ‘civilized society’ necessarily translates
into political action – be it the revolutionary upheaval of the masses or bold,
path breaking politics of the elites – remains.
The presidential candidate’s reminder of
the American people’s right to hold the government accountable by force if
necessary must surely apply to Trump himself. And, at the end of the day, one
train of thought that Mr Trump’s outrageous remark might provoke is, how did it
come to this that the democratically elected president, regardless of name,
race or gender, once elected, appears truly accountable only to the top echelon
of the ruling capitalist class.
The only real choice that the American
people face in these elections is, what section of the ruling capitalist class
will rule them and how the victorious section of the ruling capitalist class
will be making its money to continue its domination.
It will be a stretch of imagination, when
speakers for the ‘civilized society’ establishment in the US present Hillary
Clinton as “the
lesser evil, by a large margin,” to think that their first thoughts are
about the plight of the poor, minorities, or women. What they truly mean is,
how dangerous this or that candidate might be for the financial interests of
that section of the ruling capitalist class with which these pundits associate
themselves.
Hillary Clinton has the endorsement of the
globalizing, liberal-interventionist, imperialist segment of the elites: the
blowers of the bubbles that, when they erupt, plunge the world into one financial
crisis after another. These same elites are also those who sent American
soldiers to die in far-away lands, so that the world would become more open for
business. Meaning, the American financial elites’ business.
Donald Trump, behind his boorishness,
bravado, gaffes and plain insults hurled at the opponents, seems to be
championing the interests of the domestic developers and investors that do not
profit that much from an expansionist foreign policy. This segment of the elite
is more concerned with the overall health of the American economy, since most
of their money is made domestically. The inward-looking section of the ruling
class does not support the outward-looking globalizers in their relentless
drive to suck more profits overseas, even at a cost of near-full disintegration
of domestic manufacturing capacity and the continued recession back home.
Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for adventurous
politics overseas is what makes him dangerous for the American imperialist
elites. In contradistinction, Clinton’s foreign policy hawkishness is precisely
what endears her to the neocons who feel threatened by Trump’s promise to focus
on domestic issues while abandoning costly engagements abroad.
Perhaps outwardly more moderate,
thoughtful, responsible and experienced than Trump, Clinton has never hid her
militaristic and interventionist inclinations. Both as a Senator and as a
Secretary of State, Clinton supported practically all and sundry US military
interventions abroad. Without a doubt, she is the mouthpiece and the chosen candidate
of the military-industrial complex. She supported bombing of Belgrade, the
Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the Libyan war and the regime change in Syria.
She threatened to “totally
obliterate” Iran. She pushed for Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO membership and
provoked a new cold war with Russia. She compared Putin with Hitler and
promised to oppose Russia’s plans to create a trade bloc with its neighbours as
“a move to re-Sovietize the region.” She employed the neocon standard-bearer Robert
Kagan as her foreign policy advisor and appointed his wife and ideological double
Victoria Nuland spokesperson for the Department of State. Few months later,
Nuland became Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
and did her best to destabilize Ukraine and antagonize Russia. Should Clinton
become President, Nuland may emerge the Secretary of State or the national
security adviser.
There is little wonder that Robert Kagan
and other neocons are now backing
Clinton. President Hillary Clinton, flanked by supporting hawks and warmongers
like Nuland, will no doubt go further in inflicting more pain on Russia. She may not stop at the use of economic sanctions
alone. On numerous occasions, Clinton said Putin was a “bully” who must be
contained. The “containment” theme harkens straight back to the idea of
mutually assured destruction – the once-infamous MAD, which kept the cold war
cold and the relationship between superpowers relatively stable in a mutual
balance of terror. No wonder Hillary Clinton is also a staunch advocate of the
further expansion of NATO and the provision of more substantial military
assistance to Ukraine – assistance, which, as more than one observer
noted, will then be used to kill more of Ukraine’s own civilian population
in Donbas, while lying to the American taxpayers that it is used to repel the
Russian aggression against Ukraine.
By contrast, Donald Trump says that NATO is
obsolete. He says that the US should cooperate with Russia in solving common
global problems, like the scourge of terrorist jihadism and the threat of the
Islamic State’s creeping encroachment on lands not so long ago “liberated” by
the US military machine from their rulers unsympathetic to the US leaders. He
argues that American interests should come first, and to reclaim its global
role, that the United States should stop wasting its blood and treasure on
toppling the governments that do not bow to the US supremacy every step of the way.
These ideas are called “reckless” by
security gurus of the establishment. They say Donald Trump "lacks the
character, values and experience" to be Commander-in-Chief. What they mean
is, he is not enough of a warmonger. His values extend beyond war profiteering
at someone else’s expense. He realizes that the profits of the US
military-industrial complex would be paid for by further decline of the rest of
the US economy, further demoralization of the middle class, further slide to
poverty of the working masses, more body bags sent back home to America from
some distant lands of no use or concern to the vast majority of the American
population. He lacks experience of voting for or authorizing America-led wars
in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or Ukraine.
Donald Trump is a boorish populist, but the
lack of political correctness is not what makes him so hated by the
establishment. Rather, it is his views on foreign policy. He is dangerously
close to isolationism – a neo-Jeffersonian
alternative to the so-called liberal interventionism shared by the
Clintonians and neocons alike. Because this semi-isolationist alternative, the
“America first” course in foreign policy, is the US’ only hope to rebuild its
global power while addressing burning problems at home, Trump has been
supported by unprecedented numbers of rank-and-file Americans for a political
outsider.
In equal measure, because this course, if
implemented, will likely cut into the cash flow of America’s numerous war
profiteers and block the career advancement of the even more numerous
apologists of US global interventionism, Trump becomes a target of a concerted
choir of condemnation by people who are invested into the interventionist,
imperialist status-quo.
In the end, Trump’s appeal to the ‘Second
Amendment people’ is detestable precisely because it is nothing more than empty
rhetoric, one more act of hooliganism from a person who stands no chance to
become a genuine revolutionary leader or even a radical reformer. Whether
Clinton or Trump is elected, in America the establishment always wins.