Donald Trump, Alone Against All

For President Trump, the impeachment proceedings brought by the House of Representatives are an attempt at a coup d’état.

Donald Trump’s main campaign commitment to end the offensive Rumsfeld/Cebrowski military strategy and replace it with a policy of Jacksonian cooperation is met with strong internal US and external opposition from US allies. More than ever, the President appears alone, absolutely alone, in the face of the transatlantic political class.

It was all a foregone conclusion

As with his predecessor, Barack Obama, everything seemed to be a set up. Upon his election in 2009, Obama was hailed as the “first black president of the United States” and then proved unable to solve the problems of this community, leaving police violence against them to reach new heights. In the early days of his term, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Peace Prize for his efforts “for a world without nuclear weapons”; a subject he immediately stopped addressing. Although his record is the exact opposite of his campaign promises, he is still popular around the world. It does not matter if jobs are relocated to China, Guantánamo continues, thousands of targeted killings are carried out, or Libya is destroyed.

Conversely, as soon as he was elected and even before the transfer of power in 2017, Donald Trump was presented as a manic-depressive narcissist, a weak and authoritarian personality, a crypto-fascist. As soon as he joined the White House, the press called for his physical murder and the Democratic Party accused him of being a Russian spy. It obtained that an investigation be opened against him and his team with a view to his dismissal. His chief advisor, General Michael Flynn, was forced to resign 24 days after his appointment and then arrested. When Donald Trump lost the mid-term (November 2018) elections to the House of Representatives, he was forced to negotiate with some of his opponents. He reached an agreement with the Pentagon, allowing certain military actions as long as they did not involve the country in a spiral, and in exchange obtained the closure of the Russian investigation. For eight months, he tried to force march to stop the annihilation of the Great Middle East and preparations for the destruction of the Caribbean Basin. He hoped to be able to announce the realization of peace at the United Nations General Assembly. Crash! The same day, the USIP (alter ego of the NED, but for the Department of Defense), submitted its report on Syria, advising to relaunch the war. And, again on the same day, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, announced the opening of impeachment proceedings against him, this time in connection with his fight with the Ukrainian authorities against the corruption of the Clinton clan.

It is therefore unlikely that Donald Trump will be able to carry out his program before the end of his mandate as the election campaign for his possible re-election begins. However, his supporters point out that he is never as good as when he is cornered.

Few media have explained Jacksonism, an ideology that no one has promoted since the Civil War. Almost all of them claimed for two years that Donald Trump was incoherent and unpredictable, before admitting that he acted according to a given worldview.

In any case, he has already managed to repatriate many offshore jobs and put an end to the massive support of the Departments of State and Defense for the jihadist armies, although there are still some ongoing programs.

No matter what Barack Obama and Donald Trump did as presidents, we will only remember how the media presented them on the day of their induction.

The role of the deep state

It is now clear that opposition to Donald Trump is not only constituted by the bulk of the American political class, but also by most foreign leaders of countries allied to the United States. This may seem strange to the latter, who would have everything to gain from its success. But that is not how politics works. One after the other, these leaders became convinced that no one could change US policy. The interest of their states in the face of the powerful USA was therefore not to sink with a Donald Trump isolated in his country, but to remain faithful to the destructive policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

It remains to be seen who among the tens of thousands of civil servants is pulling the strings and why they are opposed to Trump’s project. The “deep state” whose president cannot influence politics may only be a sociological phenomenon as it can represent structured interests. President Trump believed he had neutralized the opposition of the committees responsible for implementing the more or less secret treaties of the United States with its allies. He believed he had negotiated with the alternative government constituted as a preventive measure in the event of a nuclear war. He was obviously wrong.

The lessons of this story

Two lessons can be drawn from this history. First, all historians agree that George W. Bush did not really hold the presidency, but aligned himself with his entourage, first with his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. It is also clear that Barack Obama had very little power other than targeted assassinations. It now appears that Donald Trump is not in a position to change US policy. It must be said that, since 11 September 2001, the office of President of the United States has been almost exclusively in the media. And, if the president does not make policy, those who do so in the shadows are not elected.

Secondly, the United States’ allies do not obey the US President, but its deep state. They are the toys of an invisible actor. Only Russia and China are truly independent. Russia is the only one of these three states whose president is democratically elected and who exercises power on behalf of its people. China is a transparent system, but only members of the single party participate in its political life. The United States system is perfectly opaque.