Wednesday 10 January 2018

Trump in the dump?

Back in the 1970s the first dolls that moved their limbs were made in the US. You pulled a string from the back of the doll and it jerked its arm and legs. If you were lucky it turned its head and jiggled across the carpet on its own. Then you had to rewind the doll if you wanted to repeat the exercise. This led to a joke about President Eisenhower.
'What happened when you wound up the Eisenhower doll?
Nothing!'

Its true that President Eisenhower played a lot of golf. But he was famous in the rest of the world for two big somethings in his long presidency. 1.5 million were killed in the Korean War (36,574 were American.) This is the war that created the US vassal state in South Korea and the drive to nuclearise in North Korea.

Second, he coined a haunting phrase. As Eisenhower became more and more conscious of the limits of the political power of the President and Congress, he looked elsewhere to define where this power had gone. He named it; America's 'military-industrial complex.' This is what he said in his last Presidential address to the nation in 1961.
"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."

In 1960, under Eisenhower, the US accounted for 29% of the world's total wealth. By 2011 it was 21%.

Today, President Trump inherits the US's military-industrial complex. Korea is his most important problem and his country continues its slow but relentless decline.  

Trumps's flaky, sexist political psychology has been predominant in the criticisms made by his vast range of enemies both inside and outside the US. The latest US top seller,  'Fire and Fury' by Wolff, accentuates that trend. But Trump is much more than a collection of unappetising behaviours. And while being far from his most recent self-description as a 'calm genius' he is a significant turning point in US, and to some extent, global politics and economics. He has not arrived in the Oval Office by mistake. He is an initial answer, by the most radical sectors of establishment, including the military, to the new American facts of life.

The essence of the Trump 'answer' is to massively strengthen the military-industrial complex, technically and financially, to 'resolve' Korea as either a permanent sore in the Chinese body-politic or, by military action, creating an extension of South Korea. And by these means Trump intends to reverse the decline of the US.

This will means cutting away from any US decisive role in the rest of the West (a policy already already started under President Obama.) It means a new haven for minimally taxed international Capital and investment in the US, (foreclosing the attraction of any European/Chinese ventures.) It means consolidating military and economic hegemony over East Asia.

When Trump says 'America first' he means that America dominating the West is no longer a viable basis for global leadership. 'America first', American domination over the world, now means 'America over East Asia.'

The missing part (in the popular media) of the demographic studies of US voting in the last Presidential Election is the proportional vote by the US military for Trump, estimated as 3 to 1 for Trump over Clinton. And now the most significant journal published in the US regarding world politics from a US point of view, the magazine 'Foreign Affairs', has published on the 8 January, 'It’s Time to Bomb North Korea' by Edward Luttack. The article recommends 'surgical' bombing (as with the Afghanistan raid on the I.S caves) and the use of nukes. It has been immediately countered with other arguments, but the issue is now a legitimate part of the national debate in the US.  

Trump's bloc of support in the country remains solid enough (given the deep political crises of both mainstream parties) to provide the platform he needs to take the initiatives that put 'America first.' Trump undoubtedly crawled out of a US billionaire sewer and he is surrounded by enemies, some of whom are gathering the goods to get him (eg special counsel Robert Mueller assembling the Whitehouse's Russian connections.) But as Watergate demonstrated, President Nixon was only exposed at the beginning of his second term and when he was surrounded by the growing defeat in Vietnam. Trump can yet change the world, for the worse.

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