John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LARISON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/how-the-pentagon-used-trumps-fixation-on-plunder-to-get-its-syria-occupation-reinstated/#disqus_thread

 

How the Pentagon Used Trump’s Fixation on Plunder to Get Its Syria Occupation Reinstated

“‘This is like feeding a baby its medicine in yogurt or applesauce’ said the official”

 

It seems to me that portraying Trump as someone who can be easily lured by Pentagon officials at the prospect of plunder to change a major decision is superficial, especially given a major decision governed completely by Trump’s political prospects and judgments.

Foreign policy as such does not really exist for Trump. The topic likely goes into the same mental trash bin as international organizations, “globalism,” and migration and refugees. Foreign affairs are just an arena for making gains in domestic political combat.

Trump’s political instincts are powerful, gut-level ones. He much resembles a high-level predator constantly sniffing the breeze for the scent of prey. Such instincts are not easily deflected or defeated.

Everything we really know about Trump – and, quite uniquely in modern history I think over so brief a time, we know an extraordinary amount of detail from many books and articles by insiders – simply does not support the idea of someone easily manipulated. Not at all.

Most insiders were baffled in their attempts to influence him, even in good ways. That includes people a good deal smarter than the average Pentagon general, but it also includes former top-level generals. Everyone agrees that he just does not listen to anyone, no matter what the person’s job title or qualifications, when what they are saying contains even a hint of anything which opposes his instincts.

While Trump is an erratic, rash, impatient, angry, and unpleasant man, he is also an unbelievably stubborn one, an almost textbook-perfect narcissist, one utterly convinced of his own rightness and remarkably proof against the ideas and arguments of others.

Trump functions at a gut level, and that’s just what the stuff about “plunder” and “feeding a baby” is intended to appeal to readers with. Yes, Trump is greedy – although I think no more so than most of the important players in Washington. But in this case, greed takes second place, at best, to political survival.

Trump is nothing less than obsessed with getting re-elected, and all of his twists and turns in Syria reflect that drive. He keeps making adjustments in what he is doing according to the political pressures he feels from different interests. Withdrawal was intended to appease the anti-war vote he desperately needs to supplement his not-quite-large-enough base. The anti-war folks made it possible for him to win in 2016.

But adjustments to the size and nature of that withdrawal reflect another important interest.

Nothing about American policy in the Middle East can be understood without taking account of Israel.

The Neocon Wars are not given that name for nothing. And efforts in Syria are just one theater in those wars, a theater where the decision was made to pursue the country’s destruction not through conventional invasion as in Iraq, something which had immense costs and many undesirable side-effects for the United States.

Israel wanted Syria toppled or broken up, but it was on the losing side in the main proxy war. It hung on to the hope of weakening Syria, as by creating a northeastern rump state for the Kurds, but that idea never was realistic given Erdogan’s attitude towards Kurds.

Trump’s original withdrawal, intended to attract anti-war voters – especially given the likelihood that the Democrats will oppose him with someone with no hint of being opposed to war, Biden or Warren – ignored what Israel wants. Trump has been reminded of what Israel wants – whether directly or by the Pentagon and CIA, both of whom have close working relationships with Israel.

So, a new scheme of occupying oil resources was hatched. This new hybrid scheme keeps an American presence in the region while allowing Syria to reclaim a considerable part of its lost territory, yet deprives Syria of a valuable natural resource, particularly critical with national reconstruction efforts ahead, efforts Trump has always been very uncooperative about, again looking to what Israel wants.

Trump does not need help, whether from the Pentagon or anyone else, in responding to what Israel wants. Such activity has been a dominant feature of his administration – as we’ve seen in everything from giving away what was not his to give in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to needlessly generating intense new hostilities against Iran and appointing people like Bolton and Pompeo to high office – Trump responds to Israel as few other presidents have.

And that responsiveness has a lot to do with his depending on some extremely wealthy American campaign contributors who help his sense of security both as to re-election and a possible impeachment. He can depend on them so long as he puts their major interest, Israel, as a top priority, and he has consistently done so.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“Trump’s Open Defiance of Washington’s Russophobia Is a Revolutionary Act”

 

This analysis is flawed.

Yes, it is good that Trump is meeting Putin and, yes, that fact flies in the face of many Washington establishment figures.

But please examine the overall record of this man, Trump.

It is loaded with contradictions and downright stupidities.

You cannot count on anything when dealing with someone like that. He is out-of-touch and uninformed on a great many matters. He often is caught making up his own version of something while he speaks or is being interviewed. He listens to almost no one, and he has little patience for most people trying to tell him anything.

He is a total living, breathing America-Firster. Actually, I believe Trump is a Donald Trump-Firster, always and in all things, and America really only comes into the picture because it provides the stage for his hammy and often-blundering acting performance. He is in many ways a rather sick and isolated man.

But he does have a fairly powerful political base, which feeds on the raw meat of xenophobia and fear of migrants and Islamophobia and love of walls, and he uses that base to push back in Washington. He has to push, even his own party, because most of its establishment truly dislike Trump. He’s treated like an unwelcome dinner-party guest who somehow got a genuine invitation by mistake.

With Trump, there’s no substance of which to get hold, just a lot of noise and a massive ego. He betrays friends, insults allies as well as enemies, and is totally for himself and is highly protective of his hermetically-sealed mindset about the world and its people.

This trip for Trump serves another purpose, too, having nothing to do with geo-politics. He is effectively telling the Washington establishment off about Russia because he fears some of the efforts underway by the Special Prosecutor are leading to serious trouble.

Whether the material the Special Prosecutor is gathering from past Trump associates – and several are cooperating – is damning enough ultimately to remove him from office is, in the end, up to the court of public opinion.

Evidence in any legal case of any nature can be interpreted in different ways. And we often end up with either convictions or exonerations which don’t reflect the underlying hard facts.

Humans are fallible and the legal systems they create are fallible. Often, the truth, the kind of truth you would believe if you actually sorted through all the evidence carefully and without partiality, gets tossed into the garbage.

We’ve seen it happen many times – from the phony case made against Lee Oswald in the Kennedy assassination or the manufactured investigation into the downing of TWA Flight 800 to the phony “not guilty” verdict in the O J Simpson murder case. Truth simply does not prevail in an atmosphere thick with interests and influence.

Trump has reason to fear because there’s no denying it, Washington is just totally in the grasp of the Russia-Fear-and-Loathing Crowd. Not just the Democratic Party, but the security services, the Pentagon, and some of the most powerful lobbies, such as the one for Israel.

Yes, Russia maintains pretty good relations with Israel – one of Putin’s great strengths is maintaining good relations with many differing interests – but Israel’s rulers’ deepest feelings are undoubtedly that Russia is intrinsically a barrier.

You see, Israel and its lobby in Washington very much like a hyper-aggressive United States, the kind of United States which has rampaged through the Middle East. They see that kind of United States as a guarantee of Israel’s future. Israel’s position in the Middle East is inherently weak and always has been, but its de facto role as an American colony in the region gives it strength it wouldn’t have on its own as a truly independent nation state, something it emphatically is not.

And no group is more influential in Washington than the Israel Lobby, owing to the sheer fact that it represents so many very successful and influential American businessmen, including those who own or manage all of the high-end national press and broadcasting. Trump has bent over backward trying to please them with stuff like the illegal recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel and his total ignoring of Israel’s murderous activity against the people of Gaza, who want nothing but their rights.

He also has his big plan brewing for an “historic final settlement” between Israel and the Palestinians, which is in the hands of his son-in-law, a good friend of Netanyahu, and, by all accounts leaking out, is so biased against Palestinian interests, it is sure to fail, however that does not mean that the effort won’t please members of the Lobby.

The CIA and Pentagon tend to be on side with the Israel Lobby because they see Israel as a strategic asset in the Middle East, and they just basically loathe the only country on earth, Russia, which is capable of destroying the United States. The Democrats are “on side” because they are political opponents of Trump and because they are loyal servants of American imperial interests and because they have pretty much all been politically bought-and-paid-for over many years by the Israel Lobby. But then, so has the Republican Party whose biggest big-shots do not really like Trump.

I do not see any powerful interest group in Washington right now which wants or demands better relations with Russia. It’s a good cause that completely lacks a base of support, because nothing in Washington is decided on the basis of merit. Matters are decided by politics and by imperial geo-politics.

Those groups – Democrats, Republicans, CIA, Pentagon, and powerful lobbies – are all married to the concept of America re-asserting itself in the world through a new kind of multi-faceted and hybrid aggression on almost every front.

They are not satisfied to accept the relative economic decline underway for “the indispensable nation” as states who were not competitors in the past become competitors. They want to push and bully their way into as many advantages in the world as they possibly can. It really is a Mafia-like business model for the country. And that is just what has been happening, with or without Trump, for some years now. Obama, for example, worked full-time towards the goal although you never heard him make speeches about it.

There’s only Trump in Washington saying America needs better relations with Russia – and, of course, he is right, but being right in Washington won’t get you so much as a cup of coffee. There is also the fact, not appreciated by many people abroad, that, in terms of the American Constitution, the President just isn’t all that powerful inside the United States. His only unquestioned power comes in time of war when he is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In other matters, it is a constant struggle with other elements of a divided government, one divided by its very design in the American Constitution.

Putin understands this all clearly, I’m sure, and I believe he is using Trump to drive a wedge into the heart of the powerful and dominant anti-Russia coalition in Washington. I don’t think he necessarily sees Trump as Russia’s friend – and, let’s be honest, with an erratic man like Trump, what kind of dependable friendship does he offer to anybody? – but Putin very much sees Trump as a tool to use in a very dark and dangerous game being played inside the United States. This is the way high-level power-politics is played, and Putin is a master at it.