Trump is going directly to the public with "Thank You" rallies at which he is promising "a new foreign policy" that "learns from the mistakes of the past" and "stops looking to topple regimes and overthrow government, folks." Trump says he is for "stability, not chaos." Here are some thoughts on this. Trump is a dove to Russia but a hawk to China (just google Trump China to see this). How come? Could it be that Trump represents a section of the upper class that has a modest disagreement with the section that has been running the show for many decades? Specifically, could this be a disagreement about whether Russia or China should be the new bogeyman enemy? The section of the upper class that has been running the show is the section represented by the Council on Foreign Relations, whose honorary chairman is David Rockefeller and whose other important members, listed here, notably includes the gamut from Condoleezza Rice to Bill Clinton--all warmongers against Russia far more than against China. David Rockefeller's chief intellectual for foreign policy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, and he argues (as I have discussed in my What's Driving the Anti-Russia Rhetoric?) that the U.S. must get Russia to be part of Europe because then it will be, like Europe now is, under U.S. hegemony. The question is, how to accomplish that. One way is to use the stick (as current CFR policy with its sanctions against top Russian individuals and warmongering threats regarding the Ukraine and Syria exemplify). But another way is to use the carrot on Russia and the stick on China, as Trump and his "friend of Putin" nominee for Secretary of State, Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson, seem to advocate. (Interestingly, the Rockefeller heirs have apparently dumped their shares in Exon Mobile.) The logic of this carrot-for-Russia-stick-for-China strategy might stem from the fact that currently Russia and China are very close allies and in an almost symbiotic relationship with each other economically. Perhaps the Trump-Tillerson strategy is to force a divorce between the happy Russia and China partners by treating Russia as a friend and China as an enemy, thereby splitting them on the question of how to respond to the U.S. Historically Russia has always considered itself part of Europe and many Russians, including Putin, want to be invited to be a full part of Europe if only the U.S. would allow that to be on terms agreeable to Russia. Trump-Tillerson will no doubt offer much better terms to Russia than the CFR camp, even if that entails angering some Western capitalists who may not like it. What both the Trump-Tillerson and CFR strategies have in common (and no doubt what makes even the less-favored one acceptable to the camp that prefers the other one) is that they both demonize a country as a bogeyman enemy, a key requirement of the upper class's Orwellian war of social control strategy. (Note that Zbigniew Brzezinski is unhappy with the War on Terror version of the Orwellian war of social control, as he states in his Washington Post article titled, "Terrorized by the 'War on Terror,'" where he says the War on Terror is in many ways harmful and far too unsophisticated ideologically to be the basis of American power in the world for the long term.) Of note, when the United States upper class demonizes a nation as the bogeyman enemy, that does not necessarily displease the rulers of the demonized nation. Orwellian wars of social control are advantageous to the rulers of BOTH sides. Soviet rulers benefited from being demonized by the U.S. during the Cold War because it increased the credibility of their claim to be protecting ordinary Soviet people from a dire enemy. Absent such a credible claim, the anti-democratic Bolshevik party would have had a much harder time remaining in power. This win-win aspect to warlike relations between nations is the reason why U.S. rulers armed the Society Union all throughout the Cold War, as I show here. Likewise, the extremely anti-democratic Chinese Communist Party would be greatly aided in its ability to dominate the Chinese people if it could claim to be protecting them from an American attack. Despite this win-win aspect of warlike relations between two nations, however, the need to make the war credible to their own population forces the rulers to act almost (but not quite!) the same way they would if they truly believed the war was only about protecting their nation's population from an enemy foreign population. In my book, The People as Enemy: The Leaders' Hidden Agenda in World War II, I show that this was the case in WWII: the Allies fought with real weapons of terrible violence (quite visible to all), but the strategy was one that (not so visibly) prioritized controlling the American and foreign working classes over defeating the Axis nations. Note further that despite the fireworks about their differences regarding Russia, Trump is not one iota less supportive of Israel's violent ethnic cleansing project than anybody in the CFR. Trump's pick for ambassador to Israel makes this pretty evident. The upper class supports Israel's ethnic cleansing because it makes the War on Terror strategy of social control more credible and hence effective, as I discuss here. It thus seems that what appears to be a HUGE disagreement between the Trump-Tillerson camp and the CFR camp may really just be a modest disagreement about how, not whether, to get hegemonic control over Russia in a way that maintains an Orwellian war of social control framework so important for maintaining elite control of the American public. |
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