Under enormous pressure from the Deep State, on his third week in office, Trump is being forced to cave on Russia in order to avoid further setbacks on domestic policies.The Duran
Although US President-elect Donald Trump has signaled willingness to establish a stable basis for US-Russian bilateral relations, the US establishment and NATO are likely to throw a wrench in the works, James W. Carden, former advisor to the US-Russia Presidential Commission at the US State Department, believes.
While observers are weighing up the possibilities of the US-Russian rapprochement under Donald Trump, James W. Carden, the executive editor for the American Committee for East-West Accord, believes that NATO is likely to come between Moscow and Washington....These people are not going to pay any attention to Donald Trump's orders and he is going to have fire some people to take charge. Even so, it is questionable as to how successful he can be. There's a lot of people on the other side — deep staters, neocons, war hawks, liberal interventionists, etc. Even if he does get the upper hand, they will be a fifth column waiting to return at the first opportunity, e.g., should Trump be a one-term president.
- GILBERT DOCTOROW Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher going back to 1965. He is a board member and European Coordinator of the American Committee for East-West Accord.
- UTE FINCKH-KRÄMER Ute Finckh-Krämer, Member of the German Bundestag, SPD, is Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairperson of the Subcommittee on Arms Control and Disarmament in the German Bundestag.
- LUDGER VOLMER Ludger Volmer was a member of the German Bundestag from 1985 to 1990 and 1994 to 2002. He was undersecretary of state from 1998 to 2002.
- ROLF EKÉUS Rolf Ekéus of Sweden was executive chairman of the UN Special Commission on Disarming Iraq from 1991 to 1997. He chaired the drafting of the principles of the Charter of Paris in 1990, a founding document of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
- NOAM CHOMSKY Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor emeritus at MIT, has written many books and articles on international affairs, in particular on Israel and Palestine. His latest book is Who Rules the World?
There are many reasons to be deeply worried about a Donald Trump presidency. But if he makes the right choices, he could fundamentally alter U.S. foreign policy for the better.
Trump campaigned against America’s powerful foreign policy community—what one of President Obama’s advisors derisively labeled “the Blob.” Its members include prominent Democrats and Republicans with similar views on foreign policy. He accused them of producing “one foreign policy disaster after another,” and promised to “develop a new foreign policy direction for our country.” This was precisely the message many voters wanted to hear, and the president-elect now has the opportunity to change how the United States deploys its power around the world....The National Interest
"These figures [necons and foreign policy idealists] all generally believe that the United States needs to take an active role in the world from the Middle East to East Asia to deter enemies and reassure allies."
In short, should this group prevail, it would be the equivalent of 4 more years of HIllary Clinton running the State Department.Trump realizes that the populist mood is America First and forget the foreign adventurism and attempts at state building — based on demonstrated results that have been clear failures.
The outsider group [Libertarians and foreign policy realists] sees things differently.
They want to revamp American foreign policy in a different direction from the last two administrations. Luckily, this particular camp is also more in line with Trump’s views questioning the value of NATO, a position that horrified many in the establishment camp....
The U.S. government, having illegally sent American troops into Syria [embedded with insurgents], is now threatening to attack the Syrian military if it endangers those troops [by defending Syrian sovereignty], an Orwellian twist that marks a dangerous escalation, explains Daniel Lazare.…
“As we’ve said in the past,” he added, “the Syrian regime would be well-advised not to interfere with coalition forces or our partners.”
Such statements are little less than Orwellian since the United States has essentially invaded Syria by inserting military forces without Syrian government permission in violation of international law. What Davis was saying, therefore, is that the U.S. will prevent Syria from protecting its own forces on its own soil, which was rather like the Wehrmacht condemning Poland for daring to defend its own territory in September 1939.…
Obama has opposed a no-fly zone because it would draw the U.S. into a direct conflict with the Assad government and likely its Russian and Iranian backers as well. But now with the U.S. promising to continue patrolling the skies over Hasakah, he finds himself backing into a no-fly zone regardless.
The confrontation begs the question of who is really calling the shots with regard to Syria, the President or well-placed hawks whose specialty is maneuvering the White House into doing their bidding.
It also raises the question of the role of the Clinton presidential campaign. The White House is obviously coordinating closely with Clinton’s campaign headquarters, and with prospects of a landslide victory that will give Democrats control of both houses of Congress plus the presidency, the stakes couldn’t be higher. But since a quick and easy victory over Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies would vindicate the neocon position, the issue is whether pro-Hillary forces are pulling strings to make events in Syria go her way as well.…
Obama’s aggressive actions in Hasakah may help Clinton against Trump but they could all too easily blow up in the administration’s face. War, indeed, packs just as many surprises as politics.As I suggested some time ago was likely to happen. I don't see this happening in spire of the president but because of the president. It shows how rogue the US has gone.
McFaul’s piece [in the Washington Post] encapsulates everything which is wrong and dangerous about US policy. As is only too obvious, in his world view and in that of the neocons Russia – and all other countries – are not entitled to their own opinions and are certainly not entitled to an independent foreign policy. The only proper and “good” course for them is to agree to whatever the US demands of them. When they behave differently by acting in their own interests they are doing something wrong and bad, become “evil” and are vilified and attacked.
This is an impossible, overweening demand the like of which has never been made by any Great Power since the Fall of the Roman Empire. There is no possibility of strong independent countries like Russia ever agreeing to it. Demanding it of them is what is driving the world towards war.The Duran
…But the neocons and the “liberal interventionists” seemed oblivious to that danger. They had their hearts set on Syrian “regime change,” so were furious when their dreams were dashed by Obama’s supposed “weakness,” i.e. his failure to do what they wanted. They also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin who brokered a compromise with Assad in which he agreed to surrender all of Syria’s chemical weapons while still denying a role in the Sarin attack.
By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia’s sphere of influence and into the West’s orbit.
So, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to sound the trumpet about Ukraine, which he called “the biggest prize.”
But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself.” In other words, the new neocon hope was for “regime change” in Kiev and Moscow.…
Beyond the recklessness of plotting to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia, the neocon strategy threatened to shake Europe’s fragile economic recovery from a painful recession, six years of jobless stress that had strained the cohesion of the European Union and the euro zone.
Across the Continent, populist parties from the Right and Left have been challenging establishment politicians over their inability to reverse the widespread unemployment and the growing poverty. Important to Europe’s economy was its relationship with Russia, a major market for agriculture and manufactured goods and a key source of natural gas to keep Europe’s industries humming and its houses warm.
The last thing Europe needed was more chaos, but that’s what the neocons do best and they were determined to punish Putin for disrupting their plans for Syrian “regime change,” an item long near the top of their agenda along with their desire to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”Consortium News
