Voting in a De-Facto Military State

Three, Trump is far too conscious of his image. This prompts him to cave when the Pentagon or the spooks defy or circumvent him. In spring 2017, when the military contradicted his early efforts to de-escalate in Syria, Trump entered his "my generals, my military" phase, saying he granted the Pentagon "total authorization" to act as it saw fit. With after-the-fact capitulations such as this, Trump has made himself a pushover for the hawks and Deep Staters who surround him.

There are a couple of things working in Trump's favor. He's to be credited for sticking with his original policy goals, even if they lie around him in ruins at this point. A second term might give him a chance to begin cleaning house and installing people who reflect his objectives.

In July Trump nominated Douglas MacGregor, a retired Army colonel, to replace loyalist Richard Grenell as ambassador to Berlin. MacGregor, like Grenell, is entirely on Trump's page: He favors a reduced military footprint in the Middle East, a peace deal with the North Koreans and altogether a foreign policy to replace what now amounts to a military policy. A severe critic of NATO's advance toward Russia's borders, MacGregor called the alliance a "zombie" in remarks made public last year.

But let us avoid mistaken judgments. First of all, a Situation Room stuffed to the rafters with Doug MacGregors is unlikely to bring the hamstringing of our 45th president to an end should Trump win a second term. The Deep State is also broad, and it has been both for a long time. Second, when Trump took office a few of us argued that he was a peculiar messenger but held out the promise of a renovated foreign policy. I was among the erring. After three and some years, I don't think Trump has the grounding or consistency to get any such thing done. Washington is simply too much for him.

More of the same under a second Trump term is my call a muddled White House at odds with itself, no worthwhile shift in policy permissible. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently offered a pithy take on Trump and his people, as recounted by Pepe Escobar, the peripatetic free-lancer for Asia Times: "Negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: The demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away."

I do not know the veracity of Escobar's account, but it will make four more messy, dangerous years if this is anything like what we have to look forward to should Trump carry the vote a few months from now. Through all the fog, "his generals" will remain "totally authorized."

Biden & Renewed Interventionism

There will be no such fog should Biden win in November, no ambiguity in his foreign policy plans. Biden promises a straight-ahead return to the policies that prevailed under Obama and Obama's predecessors: a reclamation of "global leadership," a renewed emphasis on interventions we justify, per usual, by casting ourselves as humanity's archangels.

The wars and occupations will grind on, the extravagant Pentagon budgets will remain, the reigning Russophobia will remain. Biden is already well on board with the emergent Sinophobia.

The thought of a Biden presidency reminds me of the succession that followed the death of Leonid Brezhnev as the Soviet leader in 1982. The befuddled Yuri Andropov, who succeeded him, was a fill-in who came straight from the taxidermist and lasted 15 months. Biden is our Andropov. The take-home here: Those around Biden are the ones to watch, as they will have disproportionate power over policy. This will be a replay of the George W. Bush administration, to strike another comparison.

Team Biden's foreign policy advisers are vast in number. Foreign Policy counts more than 2,000 of them, organized into 20 working groups covering specific issues arms control, defense, intelligence, humanitarian missions, and so on and geographies: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia. These people come from consultancies, think tanks, the State Department, academia. There is a heavy layer of Obama administration holdovers and, of course, Pentagon bureaucrats, some quite senior.

It is those to whom these groups report who count. Biden's inner circle appears to include Jake Sullivan (Obama loyalist, apostle of American exceptionalism), Antony Blinken (Obama man, Russophobe), Susan Rice (warmonger, Russophobe, liar in public), Samantha Power (the humanitarian interventionists' Joan of Arc), Nicolas Burns (State vet, "global leadership" hack), and Michele Flournoy (Pentagon careerist, hawk). These are joined, let us not forget, by the scores of anti-Trump Republican warmongers who have recently colonized the Democratic Party.

There are a threat and two certainties here. This election could end up opening the way for the U.S. eventually to become in fact what it has long been in effect a one-party state. The foreign policy consensus the Biden camp now represents could solidify to the consistency of granite. This should frighten all of us more, in the long run, than the Trump regime's evident and many ineptitudes.

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