Trump is withdrawing American forces from Syria. He is withdrawing thousands of American forces from Afghanistan too, and he is talking to the Taliban. Trump has stopped refueling Saudi airplanes against Yemen. Trump is negotiating with North Korea. We can only applaud these moves and support them heartily. We can only hope that he does not by his own choice or pressures upon him reverse these measures or expand American operations elsewhere.
We can be quite sure that Trump is now delivering actions that oppose what Hillary Clinton would have done had she been elected president.
At the same time, Trump has increased the American force applied in Somalia and Yemen via drone strikes. He maintains the active U.S. interest in Africa begun by Obama, both military and economic, one sign being a new $60 billion International Development Finance Corporation.
On Ukraine, Trump is holding back from supplying advanced arms. Despite pressures, he is not ratcheting up tensions over the Kerch Strait matter. Trump met with Putin at the G20 meeting. Anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine political elements had tried to torpedo this meeting with phony reports of a Trump threat not to meet Putin unless he backed down over the Kerch Strait. These attempts failed.
Trump has had great difficulty filling top posts without appointing people from the “swamp” and people opposed to him personally and his basic policy of placing American interests first. It appears that the task he took upon himself to shrink the empire was more than he realized; and he under-estimated the bitter hatred of the pro-empire interests against him and his policy. Whatever his miscalculations, he is holding out and delivering some anti-empire results.
The hostility toward Trump from an odd but united front of disparate elements has been enormous and unrelenting. These elements include liberal media, right-wing and Rockefeller Republicans, left-wing and centrist Democrats, evangelicals, neocons, pro-empire corporate interests, Deep Statists, anti-Russia antagonists, foreign policy and humanitarian moralists, political correctness crusaders, and globalists of all stripes including social media.
Trump’s anti-globalism is an anti-empire attitude, not against world relations per se. He therefore is battling ways of thought, interests and institutions of empire that go back to 1789. He has to be given a lot of credit for out-maneuvering his domestic opponents and enemies. Trump has to be given credit for wisely biding his time until he could make the moves he is making. Just before Christmas is an excellent time to announce troop reductions.
America used to greet bringing the boys home from foreign wars with applause. Now there is immense criticism from all components of the pro-empire contingent, who act as if the empire and Washington will crumble because 2,000 American soldiers are leaving Syria.
The empire and its proponents have weakened America and subjected it to numerous harmful influences and forces. What rankles Trump is the globalism associated with the U.S. empire. At root, Trump disputes the immoral moralism by which the U.S. attempts to become the dominant world moral force. For an explanation of the relation between the empire and immoral moralism, see here.
Making America Great Again is the opposite of a moralistic approach that seeks to make other countries over in the American image. But because immoral moralism is a deeply-embedded American philosophy, Trump is engaged in a very uphill battle. This is a battle likewise faced by libertarians.
9:17 am on December 21, 2018
