US
President Donald J. Trump spent the last week or so churning out initiatives
that seemed deliberately calculated to set his critics’ hair on fire:
- He
met as an equal with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un – who is a very bad man!
- He
stated again his willingness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin
– an even worse man!
- He
mocked and threatened our trading partners – and slapped tariffs on them!
- He
suggested that an impenitent Russia (a very bad country!) should be let
back into the genteel company of the Group of Seven!
- He
topped everything off by suggesting that Russian-speaking Crimea should be
part of – Russia!
As summed
up by vulgar Republican,
Never-Trump apparatchik Rick Wilson:
‘After the
last week, Trump is clearly a man who puts the dick in dictator. He’s a fanboy
of Putin, Kim, Duterte, and a dog’s breakfast of the worst examples of
oppression, thuggery, and anti-Western values the globe has to offer. [ . . . ]
‘[T]his
week, Trump's love of authoritarians, dictatorships and his actions and words
came together. Donald Trump first went to the G-7 to wreck the
proceedings with a combination of insult-comic schtick, diplomatic demolition
derby, Putin cheerleading, and giant-toddler petulance.
‘He
followed that with the Singapore Shitshow. It was a monstrous reality TV event,
as was intended. But it left our putative allies wondering at
the new Axis of Assholes Trump has joined—the CRANK: China, Russia, America and
North Korea. By the end, it didn’t feel like he was after denuclearization but
management tips from the portly little thug Kim.
‘For the
American president to normalize, excuse, and ally himself with the worst of the
world's bad actors while insulting, degrading, and destroying our
allies and alliances would be appalling in any circumstance. The fact
that Trump acts like a bumbling, eager fraternity pledge, desperate to join Phi
Sigma Dictator makes it all the worse.’
For the
moment, let’s put aside Trump’s alleged sympathy for
authoritarianism and focus on the accusation that Trump is
“insulting, degrading, and destroying our allies and alliances,” a view held
across the Establishment spectrum, from neoconservatives like Max Boot to far-Left Democratic California
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (famed for her concern about Russian aggression in nonexistent
Limpopo). How dare Trump threaten such valuable relationships!
Except
these so-called ‘allies and alliances’ aren’t valuable to the United States.
They’re a positive danger and a detriment.
Let’s get
one thing straight: the United States has no real allies. There
are countries we dominate and control, more properly termed client
states or even satellites. (True, given Israel’s and Saudi
Arabia’s lock-stock-and-barrel ownership of the American political class, it
seems rather that we are their clients, not the other way around...)
Conversely, on an almost one-to-one correspondence, countries that are not
satellites are our enemies, either currently (Russia, North Korea, Iran,
Syria) or prospectively (China).
But do we
have any actual allies – that is, countries that provide mutual
security for the United States, and whose contributions actually make
us Americans safer and more secure in our own country?
Try to name
one.
Let’s start
with the granddaddy of our alliances, NATO. How does having a mutual defense
pact with, say, virulently anti-Russian Poland and
the Baltic States make America more secure? How does, say, tiny corrupt Montenegro,
contribute to US security? Are these countries going to defend America in any
conceivable way? Even if they wanted to, how could they possibly?
For that
matter, against what ‘threat’ would they defend us? Is Latvia going to help
build Trump’s Wall on the Mexican border?
‘Our
NATO allies help out in Afghanistan,’ we are told. NATO-Schmato – it’s
Americans who do almost all the fighting and dying. It’s our treasure being
wasted there. Maybe without the fig leaf of an alliance mission, we might long
since have reevaluated what we still are doing there after
17 years.
But comes
the answer, ‘Russia!’ Except that Russia isn’t a threat to the
United States. Despite their hype even the most antagonistic Russophobic
countries in NATO themselves don’t really believe they’re about to be invaded.
And even if they were, that still doesn’t make Russia a threat to us – or
wouldn’t except for the very existence of NATO and a forward American presence
on Russia’s borders and in the Black and Baltic seas littorals. How does
gratuitously risking conflict with the one
country on the planet whose strategic arsenal can annihilate us
make Americans safer?
As
Professor Richard Sakwa has observed,
‘NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.’
Let’s look
at other supposedly valuable alliances.
Why do we
need South Korea and Japan? ‘China!’ But except for a nuclear
stockpile much smaller than our intercontinental deterrent China doesn’t
present a military threat to us. ‘Yes, but Beijing poses a danger to
South Korea and Japan.’ Maybe, maybe not. But even if that is so why
is it our problem?
Why do we
need Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and bunch of other Middle Eastern countries? We
aren’t dependent on energy from the region as we arguably were when Jimmy
Carter proclaimed a vital national interest there four decades ago. ‘Well
then, Iran!’ But the Iranians can’t do anything to us. ‘Yes,
but they hate Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.’ Again, what’s that got
to do with us?
In each
case the argument of a US interest is a tautology. The US ‘needs’ allies for
the sole purpose of defense against purported threats not to us but to those
very same allies. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone.
It would be
bad enough if these faux alliance relationships were only
detrimental in terms of getting embroiled in quarrels in which we have no
interest, wasting money and manpower in areas of the world where our security
is not at stake. But there’s also a direct economic cost right here at home.
Based on
the claimed need for “allies” US trade policy since World War II could almost
have been designed to undermine the economic interests of American workers and
American producers. Starting with Germany and Japan, our defeated enemies, we
offered them virtually tariff-free, nonreciprocal access to
our huge domestic market to assist with their economies’ recovery from wartime
destruction; in return, we would take their sovereignty: control of their
foreign and security policies, as well as their military and intelligence
establishments, plus permanent bases on their territory.
This
arrangement became the standard with other countries in non-communist Europe,
as well as some in the Far East, notably South Korea. As much or more than
puffed-up claims of military threats (and companies that benefit from inflated
military spending) lopsided trade is the glue that keeps the satellites in
place. In effect, our “allies” cede geostrategic control of their own countries
and are rewarded at the expense of domestic American economic interests.
Already of questionable value in its heyday, this pattern not only survived the
end of Cold War 1 but continued to grow, contributing to the rise of Cold War
2.
Put into
that context, this is where Trump’s tariffs dovetail with his other
blasphemies, like expecting the deadbeats to pony up for their own defense. He
challenges them to reduce tariffs and barriers to zero on
a reciprocal bilateral basis – knowing full well they won’t do so because it
would spoil their cozy arrangement at the expense of American workers. He
threatens the sanctity of the North Atlantic Treaty’s vaunted Article 5 obligation of mutual
defense on whether countries meet a two percent of GDP level of military
spending – knowing that few of them will since they don’t in
fact face any external military threat and would rather keep the money.
In his own
unvarnished, zigzaggy way, Trump is doing what he said he would: putting
America and Americans first. As he has said, that does not mean hostility
towards other countries, whose leaders have aduty to put their countries and
peoples first as well. It means both stopping our allies’
sandbagging us, while restoring to them their unsought-for – and for many of
them, undesirable – sovereignty and independence.
In the
final analysis, what the likes of Rick Wilson are really afraid of is
disruption of a decades-old, crooked racket that has been so lucrative for
countless hangers-on and profiteers. As James P. Pinkerton,
former aide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, describes it: ‘[T]he basic
geopolitical foundations of the last seven decades are being challenged and
shifted – or, as critics would prefer to say, being subverted and betrayed. Yet
in the meantime, even as his myriad foes prepare their next political, legal,
and punditical attacks, Trump is the man astride the world stage, smiling,
shaking hands, signing deals – and unmistakably remaking the old order.’
Let’s get
on with it.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/16/its-time-for-america-cut-loose-our-useless-so-called-allies.html
