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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Trump: An Assessment
Trump: An Assessment
Trump the Great?
Paul Craig Roberts
I supported Trump for president for three reasons:
Trump was the only candidate who recognized the need to normalize relations with Russia and bring a halt to the reckless orchestration of conflict with a major nuclear power.
Trump was the only candidate who recognized the need to restore high productivity, high value added jobs to the American workforce.
Trump was the only candidate who spoke to the American people instead of to the organized interest groups of the ruling elite.
My concern was that Trump did not know Washington and did not know who to appoint to help him achieve these goals.
Trump was unaware of the extent of the threat that his agenda posed to the military/security complex, US global corporations, and the ruling oligarchy. Normalizing relations with Russia would put in question the $1,000 billion annual budget, and the power that goes with it, of the military/security complex. Bringing home the offshored jobs would raise the labor cost of US global corporations and cut the “performance bonuses” of the executive class. Speaking directly to the American people raised the specter of a populist revolt against the ruling oligarchy. These are too many enemies for a president who did not know how to staff his administration, and Trump has paid the price.
The fake charges that comprise “Russiagate,” orchestrated by CIA director John Brennan, implemented by highly partisan Democratic operatives in the FBI and by Trump’s own Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and ridden hard by the Democrats and the presstitutes, prevented Trump from normalizing relations with Russia.
Bad economic advice, whether innocent or intentional, misfocused Trump’s attention from the problem of jobs offshoring to tarrifs, with the consequence that he has a trade war and rising prices for Americans in place of the return of their jobs.
The ruling oligarchs have decided to make an example of Trump so that no future presidential candidate makes the mistake of speaking directly to the American people.
Trump was our last chance, and it appears that he is going down.
Trump’s Middle Eastern policy is in the hands of Trump’s Zionist son-in-law and Netanyahu. The result is escalated tensions with Russia, with Israel causing the destruction of a Russian Air Force crew and plane, with the Trump regime threatening Syrian and Russian forces with attack if any attempt is made to liberate Syria’s last province occupied by Washington’s army of terrorists, with Trump unilaterally pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Treaty, with Trump abandoning his intent to remove US forces from the Middle East, with Trump’s crazed neoconservative National Security Adviser John Bolton issuing audacious threats to Iran and to Russia, with Trump moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and with Trump cutting off all aid to the Palestinians who are in front of our eyes experiencing genocide at the hands of US-supported Israel.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
The Trump regime is either so incompetent or so intent on war that it does not understand that Russia cannot permit the US/Israeli destabilization of Iran any more than Russia can permit the US/Israeli destabilization of Syria. The crazed Bolton’s threats against Iran are direct threats to Russia’s national interests. The president who was going to improve relations with Russia has worsened them beyond the capability of Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Victoria Nuland.
Now I will be my own devil’s advocate. When Trump saw how boxed in he was by the material interests of the ruling oligarchy, he decided to finish off Washington’s already diminishing influence. He appointed Nikki Haley as US ambassador to the UN, where she has done a supurb job of alienating every country in the world. Trump has infuriated Europe with tariffs, sanction threats, and orders to Germany not to go forward with the Russian/German natural gas pipeline. Trump followed up by treating the UN Security Council on September 26 as Washington’s footstool. Trump with threats and sanctions is driving Turkey, Iran, India, China, and North Korea into Russia’s arms, and he is driving Europe into independence. In a stroke of genius, Trump, despite his thoroughly neoconservative regime, is destroying Washington’s hegemony.
We might never know whether this result is an unintended consequence of arrogance and hubris or whether it is a clever strategy. But if it turns out the way it seems to be heading, Trump will go down in history as Trump the Great, the man who saved the world by dismantling American hegemony.