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How Trump Rebelled Against The Generals
In early 2017, just as Trump was inaugurated, we wrote how an old power center theory that seemed to explain how Trump won the elections:
Seen from the perspective of power centers Clinton once had all the support she needed. But she then lost a decisive group due to her uncompromising neo-conned foreign policy. Here is an interesting take based on a theory from the 1950s:
[T]he power elite can be best described as a “triangle of power,” linking the corporate, executive government, and military factions: “There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to any understanding of the higher circles in America today.”
The 2016 US election, like all other US elections, featured a gallery of pre-selected candidates that represented the three factions and their interests within the power elite. The 2016 US election, however, was vastly different from previous elections. As the election dragged on the power elite became bitterly divided, with the majority supporting Hilary Clinton, the candidate pre-selected by the political and corporate factions, while the military faction rallied around their choice of Donald Trump.
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The decisive political point in this election round was the fight between neo-conservatives/liberal-interventionists and foreign policy realists. One side is represented as exemplary by the CIA with the U.S. military on the other:
A schism developed between the Defense Department and the highly politicized CIA. This schism, which can be attributed to the corporate-deep-state’s covert foreign policy, traces back to the CIA orchestrated “color revolutions” that had swept the Middle East and North Africa.
The CIA created bloodthirsty future enemies the military will later have to defeat. …
That explanation has held up well. At the beginning of his regime Trump stuffed the White House with the military faction while the executive government -the deep state- waged a war against him. The corporate side of triangle of power was quite happy with his tax policies.
But Trump soon discovered that the military faction did not concur with his 'America first' isolationist tendencies. The 'grown ups' and generals wanted to explain to Trump why they believe that the U.S. needs many allies and bases and why the many long wars the U.S. fights are sensible policy.
According to a new book, partly adapted in a Washington Post piece, that effort did not end well:
Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but [Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis, [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson, and [Director of the National Economic Council Gary] Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.
So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial.
The meeting in the Tank, a secure conference room in the Pentagon, were part of an effort to subdue Trump's insurgency against the top military's world view. and the presentation by top generals came off as a lecture which Trump immediately disliked:
An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.
“Oh, baby, this is going to be f—ing wild,” [White House chief strategist Stephen K.] Bannon thought. “If you stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international order.’ It’s just not the way he thinks.”
Bannon was right. Verbal scuffles about NATO, South Korea and U.S. bases followed. Then Trump took on the generals:
“We are owed money you haven’t been collecting!” Trump told them. “You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business.”
The discussion turned to the war on Afghanistan:
Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.
“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”
When one reads the recent Congress testimony of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan one can see that Trump has a point. The war is long lost and the military is lying about it:
“There’s an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue . . . mendacity and hubris,” John F. Sopko said in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The problem is there is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie.”
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“When we talk about mendacity, when we talk about lying, it’s not just lying about a particular program. It’s lying by omissions,” he said. “It turns out that everything that is bad news has been classified for the last few years.”
Trump's rant during the meeting with the generals continued:
Trump mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” the president said, impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.
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“I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”
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“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.
Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”
A drill sergeant act performed on recruits with four stars on their shoulders. I find that quite impressive. Those perfumed princes must have fumed.
While some will certainly say that Trump disgraced the military with his rant most of the soldiers in the field will likely agree with his opinion about their generals.
Most of the 'dopes and babies' who were in that room have since been fired or retired. Their replacements are yes-men more to Trump's liking. They did not even protest about Trump's latest blunder. He rented out scarce air defense units to Saudi Arabia and went on to murder Qassem Soleimani in Iraq while the U.S. bases there no longer had air defenses to protect them against the inevitable retaliation.
The anti-Trump leaders of the executive side of the triangle have likewise been removed and replaced with people who are unlikely to put up a fight against Trump.
The third side of the triangle, the corporate faction, is happy that Trump pressed the Fed to douse the markets with free money. Unless the inevitable stock market crash comes before the election, which is unlikely, they will stick to Trump's side.
With all three sides of the triangle of power inclined to favor him or neutralized Trump seems to have a good chance to win the next election.
That is unless he continues to follow the advice of neocons with a bad record and, by sheer stupidity, starts a war against Iran.
Previously, most discussions of the Trump presidency reflexively proceeded to either visceral disgust etc or accolades of some species. Trumps words and manners dominated. As things developed, and actual results were recorded, a body of more sober second thought developed. And a variation on these more experience/reality based assessments is what b has delivered above.
Some of my points that follow are repeats, some are new. On the whole I see Trump as a helpful and positive-result really bad President.
I begin with the premise that the United States is a longstanding cultural catastrophe, and is far along the way in the process of destroying itself, after having destroyed or damaged the prospects of much of the planet.
As one aspect of this cultural catastrophe, let’s refer back to the United States attack on Indochina, which accomplished millions of dead and millions of wounded people, and birth defects still in uncounted numbers as a legacy of dioxin etc laden chemical warfare. The millions of dead included some tens of thousands of American soldiers, and even more wounded physically, and even more wounded ‘mentally’.
Within the context of the attack on Indochina, on the ground and taking place within the spaces left alive after the B52 bombers et al, there was the ‘Phoenix Program’. euphemism for the CIA’s ambitious program of technocratic torture, assassination, bribery, corruption, and so on, with tens of thousands of murdered victims. And the military destroyed uncounted villages, a la My Lai.
When asked what it was all about, Kissinger lied in an inadvertently illuminating way: “basically nothing” was how he put it, if memory serves.
During and after the attack on Indochina, the US trained, aided, financed, etc active death squads in Central and South America, demonstrating that the United States was an equal opportunity death dealer.
Now this was a bit of a meander away from the Trump topic, but note that Trump came to power within the above cultural context and much more pathology besides, talking about ending the warfare state. Again, this is not an attempt to portray Trump as either sincere or insincere in that policy. In terms of ideas, it was roughly speaking a good idea.
Another main part of the Trump message was ‘let’s rebuild America’. And along with the de-militarization and national program of rejuvenation there was the ‘drain the swamp’ meme, which again resonated. And once again, I am not arguing that Trump was sincere, or for that matter insincere. That’s irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make: which could essentially by reduced to: what will be the actual meaning and potential impact of Trump?
Note then that Trump has almost patented the ‘fake news’ meme. The idea that the msm is lying about and hiding the truth, non-stop propaganda, is an idea that Trump has pushed repeatedly. Most people on the MofA etc are well aware of that. But for many ‘normies’, that’s not quite as obvious.
And yes, he himself could be described as the liar in chief. But doesn’t deflect from the great collapse in the status of the msm propaganda machine. And that propaganda machine has been very much associated with the CIA via operation Mockingbird and its generations long progeny.
So the attack on the media via fake news is a direct attack on the basic indispensable control mechanism of the deep state, and CIA.
Note too that after three Years of Trump, the long standing criminality and corruption of the FBI has never looked as obvious. Again, we don’t have to give Trump credit. But it happened on his ‘watch’.
Now the deep cultural, including political, pathology in the United States, in its many manifestations remain. We’re not talking miracle cures here. But Trump has been a kind of part deranged, part clever political monkey wrench thrown into the works. As to whether his disruptive arrival has provided openings for more sensible political and cultural innovations remains to be seen.
The frantic attempt to deflect attention from and give mainly derisive media coverage to Tulsi Gabbard is a case in point. Is she the harbinger of a growing political movement aiming to dismantle the military empire project?
Many of the internal difficulties that the US faces are distinct from militarism, but related to militarism in the sense that a police state keeping control via surveillance and bs, etc, and spending its money on empire, is not going to prioritize clear honest discourse. In the end, one overarching question for the US like the rest of us is: can we achieve honesty and common sense?
Posted by: Robert Snefjella | Jan 17 2020 23:50 utc | 64
Iran has long been viewed as central for securing US hegemony over Eurasia and the US/UK have not recovered from the 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran has: 1) large reserves of oil and natural gas, 2) key Geo-strategic position- near the convergence of three continents, straddling the Middle East and Central Asia, and abutting the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, a strategic “choke point” through which circa 25% of the world’s energy transits. As summarized by Dan Glazebrook- “The reason for this obsession with destroying Iran – shared by all factions of the Western ruling class, despite their differences over means – is obvious: Iran’s very existence as an independent state threatens imperial control of the region – which in turn underpins both US military power and the global role of the dollar.”
During the 2016 campaign, then candidate Trump constantly railed against the JCPOA (‘Iran nuclear deal’), as the ‘worst’ treaty the US ever signed. After becoming President, Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and immediately imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran, vowing to reduce energy exports to zero, effectively declaring economic war on Iran. I suspect Trump represents a faction in the US ruling establishment committed to regime change in Iran. Trump may have believed that Iran would buckle under the weight of US economic sanctions and capitulate to US demands. These include instillation of a US- friendly government that will: 1) stop supporting Hezbollah, Bashar Assad in Syria and the Houthi-Ansarullah movement in Yemen, and 2) allow US energy firms to loot Iran’s energy reserves. As this approach has not worked, Trump is now aggressively pursuing the military arm of this policy.
The New Year started with a proverbial ‘bang’ with Trump giving the go ahead for the targeted assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi General Abu Madhi al-Muhandis, which had been long in planning. As pointed out by Pepe Escobar- ‘It does not matter where the green light for the assassination…. came from….This is an act of war. Unilateral, unprovoked and illegal.’ Not surprisingly, Trump’s actions have been generally well received by Congress and corporate media. We are now seeing US vassals- UK, France and Germany line up behind Trump to enact the dispute resolution mechanism (DRM) and sanctions snapback provision, resulting in the re-imposition of UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Apparently, this action was prodded by Trump’s threats to apply 25% tariffs to EU auto exports to the US.
It appears Pentagon war plans for Iran are being put in place. As per a recent piece by William Arkin in Newsweek- prior to Trump’s inauguration, the US military carried out an exercise “Global Thunder 17”, simulating a nuclear response against Iran in retaliation for the sinking of an American aircraft carrier and use of chemical weapons against US troops. This war scenario was chosen because it “allowed the greatest integration of nuclear weapons, conventional military, missile defense, cyber, and space into what nuclear strategists call ‘21st Century deterrence.’” The Pentagon now has a ‘low yield’ nuclear warhead- W76–2, apparently developed for an Iran-type of scenario. These weapons are deliverable by submarine-launched Trident II missiles.
So where do we stand?
It is doubtful that Trump will be convicted by the Republican- controlled Senate. This will only embolden him more. US vassals- UK, France and Germany are lining up behind Trump to enact the dispute resolution mechanism (DRM) and sanctions snapback provision, resulting in the re-imposition of UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Apparently, this action was prodded by Trump’s threats to apply 25% tariffs to EU auto exports to the US. Canada, Australia and New Zealand have also expressed support for Trump’s position. France is deploying her only aircraft carrier to the ME to ‘fight ISIS’.
Corporate media is largely on board with Trump’s plan.
Over the last two decades, the US has expended (squandered) astronomical sums of taxpayer money (>$6 Trillion) and lives of thousands of troops on ME wars. After committing such large amounts of financial and human capital, the Pentagon has no intention of admitting their mistakes or changing their behavior. Doing so is an acknowledgement of failure and by extension military weakness. Further, the strength and stability of the dollar and more broadly US global power, is contingent on maintaining control of ME energy reserves. The financial elite/directors of US foreign policy are well aware of continuing US economic decline and looming strategic debacles confronting the Pentagon in Afghanistan (longest war in US history), Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Logic dictates that the US cannot ‘win’ a war with Iran, but this assumes one is dealing with rational thinking. By exiting the JCPOA, Trump put the US on a collision course with Iran. Alea iacta est (l. ‘The die is cast’). Links of potential interest follow.
Notes
1. With a New Weapon in Donald Trump’s Hands, the Iran Crisis Risks Going NuclearBy William Arkin Jan 13, 2020; Link: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-iran-new-nuclear-weapon-increases-risk-crisis-nuclear-1481752
2. Washington continues war buildup against Iran By Bill Van Auken Jan 17, 2020; Link: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/17/iran-j17.html
Posted by: Paul | Jan 18 2020 0:29 utc | 74
I think the “triangle of power” theory walks towards the truth, but is not the truth.
For starters, the USA is a very large and complex society. There are a lot of classes and a lot of groups which clash and prop up each other all the time. The only consensus is that it is and must remain a capitalist society, i.e. that capitalism must be preserved at any cost.
That said, I see many interests involved, but a hierarchy, in layered form. Here’s my opinion on the state of the art of the USA right now:
1) at the highest level, there’s the division between the most powerful members of the capitalist class between what should be the American foreign policy strategy for the rest of this century. It is divided between two different ideologies: russophobes (i.e. the “establishment”) and the believers of the “clash of civilizations” (i.e. the far-right, sinophobes). The only thing that unites both groups is the conviction Eurasia should remain divided, i.e. that Russia and China should not consolidate their newborn alliance. If that alliance consolidates a century from now, then this contradiction will disappear, but America’s new enemy will be stronger than ever – possibly more powerful than the USA.
2) at the lower level, there’s the division of the American people about how the spoils that come from the imperial conquests should be better shared. This division manifests itself in the battle between social-democracy and fascism. Neoliberalism is basically a rotten corpse after 2008, but it is important to state it is not an ideology per se, but a political doctrine, from which both American social-democracy and American fascism lend some aspects.
3) at the vestigial level, you have many micro battles which shock with each other. For example, the good part of the American middle class imploded Elizabeth Warren’s support for universal healthcare because they wanted to keep their class distinction as the class which has access to healthcare through expensive health insurances (which are often directly linked to distinct jobs they probably have) – but they still will vote Democrat, and probably will support Warren as long as she’s viable. In the far-right camp, there are those who want to emphasize the fight against China must happen because China represents modern socialism, while another part wants to fight China for the simple fact they want some jobs back. In the deep state, there’s the usual Pentagon vs CIA clash of philosophies about how to better operate overseas. In the lobby industry, each one is fending for themselves.
In conclusion, my take is all of these conflicts have one ultimate cause: the exhaustion of the American imperial system installed in 1945. Capitalism doesn’t know national barriers; in 1945, the USA was both the industrial and financial superpower, but capital must spread and expand or it dies. The Marshall Plan soon begun and, in two decades, Germany and Japan – both spawns of the American post-war doctrine – directly threatened the USA as the industrial superpower. It still managed to fend off these two nations with the Plaza Accord (1985), but at a huge cost: outsourcing its own industrial capacity to China. In 2011, China definitely overcame the USA and now holds the belt of the industrial superpower. It is now trying to be also the financial superpower, with the “opening up” reforms.
This generated a structural contradiction: the loss of the industrial superpower title left the USA only with the financial superpower title. But the financial superpower title can only be maintained, in a nation-State architecture, with increased submission of the rest of the world – naturally, through violent means and financial sanctions. However, that was not the way the USA was able to build its overwhelming post-war alliance: it did so with nation building, i.e. the proverbial “carrot”, the massive investments in infrastructure and better living standards for Western Europe, Japan, Asian Tigers and Australia. But without the industrial superpower title, the USA cannot maintain its “alliance” (i.e. the empire), which reinforces its condition as the financial superpower – which, in turn, increases its necessity to maintain the alliance (empire) which, in turn, weakens more and more said alliance, which, in turn, increases even more its necessity to maintain said alliance, and so on, in a downward spiral movement. The result of this dialetical contradiction is that the USA will, over time, resort to ever more violent methods to keep the corners of its empire whole, which will drive it ever closer to an epic war against its ultimate enemy: socialism (China/Eurasia).
Posted by: vk | Jan 18 2020 2:37 utc | 90
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