If you have not yet read the recent post by Charles Hugh
Smith at LRC,
I encourage you to do so (and found in its entirety here). I agree with it virtually entirely, and Smith
does a thorough job on a topic that I have written about for several years –
but instead of my writing it again, I will cite Smith. The title of his post offers a big clue: “Could
the Deep State Be Sabotaging Hillary?”
…I suspect it's overly simplistic. I suspect major power centers in the
Deep State are actively sabotaging Hillary because they've concluded she is a
poisoned chalice who would severely damage the interests of the Deep State
and the U.S.A. (Emphasis in original)
While I grant that there are powerful interests who back
Hillary (including most of the visible, and therefore less important, of the
elite), there are important elements of the elite that do not want to see Clinton
as president. Smith lists several
reasons in his post – all accurate, in my view.
The most important one in my mind has been and remains – well, I will
again cite Smith:
…Hillary as president would be an
unmitigated disaster for the elements of the Deep State that have concluded the
U.S. must move beyond the neo-con strategic failures to secure the nation's
core interests.
I will summarize my reasons as to why I have felt this way
for the last several years.
First and foremost, the elite fear nuclear war as much as
you and I do. Ever since Clinton I
(another reason they don’t want Clinton II), the US has pushed further and
further toward antagonizing the one great power that can annihilate not only
the US but the world; add to this the antagonism toward nuclear-capable China
(I recall Hillary threatening to act against China regarding the South China
Sea on more than one occasion – the South China Sea being adjacent to…China).
Was there antagonism and risk of nuclear annihilation during
the Cold War? Certainly. But there were also buffer zones between the
reach of the United States and Soviet (and now Russian) borders; there were
mechanism to avert and diffuse tension.
Today there are none – even former Soviet Republics are now within NATO.
Second: why did Hillary lose in 2008? The election was clear path for a Democrat,
after the disaster of the Bush-Cheney years.
Why was an almost unknown, completely inexperienced senator chosen in
place of her? Even McCain would
seemingly have been an acceptable candidate if the simple narrative of “the
elite” is accepted.
Was it spontaneous combustion that turned Obama into the
media favorite almost overnight?
I have long felt that Obama was chosen because he was the
relative hawk dove in the bunch. Despite the
continuation and expansion of wars throughout the Middle East, North Africa and
Central Asia, I remain of the view that the destruction would have been worse
under Clinton: Iran, Ukraine, Syria (even worse than now, with Assad destroyed)
– all leading to confrontation with Russia.
Third: significant individuals have written against the US
policies of war, expansion, and antagonism toward Russia. Here
is my write-up based on commentary from Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of
the Council on Foreign Relations (the post begins with a lamentation of Rand
Paul’s switch to neocon – a few years ago I felt Rand was the selected vessel
for this alternative-elite path, except that he couldn’t read the tea leaves at
all). A small sample, from Gelb:
Russians, Americans, Europeans, and
Ukrainians plunge on toward the all-time foreign policy record for venality,
lying, hypocrisy and self-destructive maneuvers. They show no shame and scant
regard for consequences.
Last but not least are our very own
American heroes. Hillary Clinton, of course, hit the jackpot with her
comparison of Putin to Hitler (never mind her clarification the next day).
How about John J. Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago,
writing
in Foreign Affairs, the
publication of the Council on Foreign Relations? Again, a small sample:
According to the prevailing wisdom
in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian
aggression…But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies
share most of the responsibility for the crisis.
For Putin, the illegal overthrow of
Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly
labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw.
Elites in the United States and
Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed
view of international politics.
Not a big enough name for you? What about Henry
Kissinger, listing one after another the failings of US foreign policy
since the end of the Cold War?
Libya is in civil war, fundamentalist
armies are building a self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq and
Afghanistan's young democracy is on the verge of paralysis.
To these troubles are added a
resurgence of tensions with Russia and a relationship with China divided
between pledges of cooperation and public recrimination.
Kissinger has written and spoken often on his disappointment
with the direction US foreign policy has taken with respect to Russia and China
over the last decades.
Conclusion
Hillary, like many tools, is a wind-up doll: playing the
game she was trained to play and unable to consider other issues. Unfortunately, there are many like her. This is the risk to those who have created
the monster (the US government) that they may not be able now to control.
It seems to me the "deep-state" prefers the
Kissinger / Nixon model - enough tension to keep fear in the population, but
behind the scenes (and sometimes in public view) a working relationship that
involves communication and cooperation in order to minimize the risks.
Clinton offers no hope in this regard; Trump says “Let’s
make a deal.”
There is a meaningful subset of the Anglo-elite that prefers
“Let’s make a deal.”
This is quite thoughtful. Hillary as her own Potemkin Village. The good news is that the Powers That Be are divided, stupid and incompetent. Given all the power to be wielded they misplay at every point. Both Russia and China have the measure of this and they are not divided, they have clear purpose and the means. Hilary as President can huff and puff but her country is terminally at war with itself, politically paralyzed and bankrupt. Europe is finished and facing serious civil upheaval. All these toadies cheering Hilary on right now will have a lot to answer for soon enough.
ReplyDeleteThis argument certainly cannot be dismissed out of hand, but I don't find it ultimately convincing. While it is plausible that there are (relatively) rational elements within the Deep State who recognize that things are getting out of hand, I think that if they were any more than a minority, fighting a likely futile rearguard action, they should by now have at least decisively dispatched Hillary and inflicted some meaningful damage on the war-at-any-cost neocons.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I'd argue that both Clinton and Trump play into the scheme of the Deep State to incite growing dissatisfaction with individual politicians while at the same time increasing the perception that the State has intrinsic value. That is, the more we argue that the "political system" is broken, implicitly the more we assume it can be fixed, and therefore is worth fixing. To put it another way: Ingrained in the massive unpopularity of Clinton and Trump is the thinking that "If only the right person were leading the country, then we could change things for the better." The focus is no longer on how we define "change things for the better," but is now solely focused on who "the right person" is.
ReplyDeleteThus, the more we gripe and complain about our two presidential choices, the more we quietly assent to the validity and usefulness of government and the false notion that the government is simply a neutral tool that We the People can wield to achieve a common goal.
According to Hayek, the next step to fixing a "broken political system" is to install a strongman. Whether the Deep State wants a strongman or if it's more advantageous to them to keep the two-party democratic system going indefinitely is up for debate.