Harper — Neocons Still Promote Permanent Revolution

Backgrounder on neoconservatism and its marriage of convenience with liberal internationalism (Wilsonianism).

Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea of permanent world revolution? Socialism has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on the world stage.

This prompts the question as to why Donald Trump has appointed neoconservatives like John Bolton when he is a Jacksonian nationalist and populist?

One reason could be that the deep state is populated with foreign policy idealists rather than foreign policy realists, and these types and appointments are typically made from the bench of the deep state. A reason may be to placate it, since the deep state is in a position o be disruptive enough to diminish a president's political capital, with respect to its control of the narrative through leaks and anonymous sources that feed the media. 

The deep state can also deploy more direct means, as is evident now in the lead up to the impeachment, where one of the president's "crimes" according to the deep state is highjacking US foreign policy, even though the president is actually in charge of it.

Endless war as envisioned by the promoters of permanent revolution in the cause of "spreading freedom and democracy" (read neoliberal globalism) as the "Pax Americana" fits perfectly with the warfare state the military Keynesianism that funds government expenditure through the military-industrial-governmental complex.

 Jacksonians are just as insistent on carrying a big club as Wilsonians, although they are less wont to use it through wars of choice. The president prefers to use US economic power as the first-line tool of hybrid warfare rather than relying on military force. It's still "America First" in terms of geopolitics but the strategy is different from neoconservatives and liberal interventionists.

I must confess that I was taken in by the propaganda in the lead in to Vietnam but was radicalized when I discovered the truth while I was serving a US naval officer in the Western Pacific at the time and watched things go downhill from there. Yet the US keeps coming back for more and more of the same. Why? Is it stupidity or the money and power — after all, world domination is on the table. That is hard to walk away from if one strongly believes that one pick it up with relative impunity.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

HARPER: NEOCONS STILL PROMOTE PERMANENT REVOLUTION

The Empire, Trump and Intra-Ruling Class Conflict — Gary Olson

Prof. Harry Targ, in his important piece “United States foreign policy: yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” (MR online, October 23, 2919), reminds us of the factional dispute among U.S. foreign policy elites over how to maintain the U.S. empire. On the one hand are the neoliberal global capitalists who favor military intervention, covert operations, regime change, strengthening NATO, thrusting China into the enemy vacuum and re-igniting the Cold War with Russia. All of this is concealed behind lofty rhetoric about humanitarianism, protecting human rights, promoting democracy, fighting terrorism and American exceptionalism. Their mantra is Madeleine Albright’s description of the United States as the world’s “one indispensable nation.”

On the other hand, as Targ explains, are the Trumpian, “America First” nationalist capitalists. This faction of the ruling class, while also supporting global dominance and a permanent war economy (military-related spending will consume 48 percent of the 2020 federal budget) favors trade restrictions, economic nationalism, building walls and anti-immigrant policies. Although Trump is inconsistent, bumbling and sometimes contradictory, he’s departed from the neocon’s agenda by making overtures to North Korea and Russia, voicing doubts about NATO as an expensive relic from the past that is being dangerously misused outside of Europe, not being afraid to speak bluntly to EU allies, frequently mentioning ending our “endless, ridiculous and costly wars,” asserting that the U.S. is badly overextended and saying “The job of our military is not to police the world.” I would add that Trump is also an “American exceptionalist” but ascribes a very different provincial meaning to the term, something closer to a crabbed provincialism, an insular “Shining City on a Hill,” surrounded by a moat.

This is a high stakes intra-ruling class struggle and neither side cares a fig about what’s best for the American people or those beyond our borders. At this point it’s impossible to know how it will play out but grasping the underlying dynamics explains much about current U.S. domestic and foreign policy. This understanding may, in turn, point toward how opponents of America’s oligarchic elites can most expeditiously use their time and energy....  

Dissident Voice
The Empire, Trump and Intra-Ruling Class Conflict
Gary Olson

Christopher R. Hill — Reclaiming American Internationalism

US President Donald Trump has managed to attract support for his "America First" isolationism not by dint of his own arguments, but because the US foreign-policy establishment abandoned its own values. After decades of thoughtless military interventionism, it is little wonder that Americans would seek an alternative.…

A grownup speaks on semi-official channel. The voices of the grownups have been suppressed in the corporate media and only found expression in alternative media.

One can be for liberal internationalism but against liberal interventionism as both against international law unless mandated by the UNSC, and also as not only unproductive but also damaging, without being "unpatriotic" by opposing US foreign and military policy.

Liberal interventionism, neoconservatism, and war hawkishness have all but destroyed American soft power through reliance on hard power.

What US leaders don't seem to understand is that they are killing the goose that lays the golden egg out of lust for power and greed for global hegemony.

Actually, if America created "empire" by pursuit of liberalism through soft power, it would be win-win for all, since it would facilitate commerce and raise the level of global prosperity while also increasing the level of collective consciousness.

Empires have advantages but those advantages are lost when they get in their own way by decreasing the common good instead of increasing it through greater efficiency and lower transaction costs, while spreading positive values culturally through exchange.

Instead, the US has adopted a policy of "My way or the highway," and "If you are not with us, you are against us." The result is the winding down of the unipolar world order operative since WWII and the rise of a multipolarism that is tending toward a resumption of great power politics.

Dumb and short-sighted. It will end badly.

Project Syndicate
Reclaiming American Internationalism

Christopher R. Hill |  formerly US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009; nos Chief Advisor to the Chancellor for Global Engagement, Professor of the Practice in Diplomacy at the University of Denver, and the author of Outpost.

Also at PS

Mark Leonard makes some good points but puts the US blame on President Trump when the issues began with JFK's invasion of Cuba and Vietnam, LBJ's escalation of the war, Richard Nixon' s expansion of the war to all of Indochina, Jimmy Carter's unwise embrace of Zbigniew Brzezinski and his grand chess board policy, Ronald Reagan's jingoistic foreign adventures, G. W. H. Bush's invasion of Kuwait, Bill Clinton's invasion of Yugoslavia and advance of NATO, G. W. Bush invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Barack Obama's invasion of Libya and Syria. Donald Trump's appointment of John Bolton and Nikki Haley are continuation's of that failed approach. So Leonard's recommendation to return to it is nonsense.

Present at the DestructionMark Leonard | Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations

Caleb Maupin — Keeping The World Poor: The Monopolistic Agenda Behind “Regime Change” Chaos

The justification for these destructive “regime change” campaigns is “democracy” and “human rights.” However, it’s no secret that plenty of human rights violating, oppressive regimes are on very good terms with Wall Street and London....

The not-so-hidden agenda.

NEO
Keeping The World Poor: The Monopolistic Agenda Behind “Regime Change” Chaos

Caleb Maupin

Patrick Armstrong — Obama Marries the Liberals to the Neocons

The co-optation of the so-called US left, which is really the center in comparison to "the left" in the rest of the world.

In the Obama years the marriage of the neocons and the humanitarian interventionists was effected. The neocons, with their doctrine of American Exceptionalism are always ready for an intervention and their justification is always the same: "American moral leadership":

Our world needs a policeman. And whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.

So there was never any difficulty getting neocons and their ilk to support another bombing campaign to do a bit of "morally exceptional police work". The Obama change is that liberals, whose historic tendency is to oppose another war, are now in the War Party. And so there was hardly anyone was left to go out on protest....

I would not lay this all on Obama. Bill Clinton had a hand in it, and a big reason that Hillary lost is for supporting it. Patrick Armstrong acknowledges the Clinton connection, and points out that Barack Obama provided a rationale for it. Now the Democratic Party is saddled with it until it is repudiated. That will cost more votes than it attracts. But it is great for campaign contributions from the defense sector, a recognition that in the US, military Keynesianism rules.

Strategic Culture Foundation

Obama Marries the Liberals to the Neocons

Patrick Armstrong

Ryan Zielonka — The World According to Realism

Useful backgrounder on international relations and the different schools of thought in the US, particuarly liberal internationalism, neoconservatism and realism. 

Quillette
The World According to Realism
Ryan Zielonka is an independent consultant and incoming PhD student at the University of Washington

Richard Sakwa — Clinton and Russia: Who Is Ms Hillary?

In the normal run of affairs, scholars working on Russia and Europe, or even on international affairs in general, would not comment of domestic US politics. But it is clear that the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, alleging collusive behaviour between the eventual winner of the presidential election, Donald J. Trump, accompanied by charges of a systematic Russian attempt to help him through ‘hacking’ and media propaganda, is far from normal.

As far as many international observers are concerned, Trump basically had one good idea, that it made sense to ‘get along’ with Russia, but the Russiagate scandal was designed to prevent him achieving this goal, and in general to constrain his international behaviour and possibly to lead to his impeachment and expulsion from office.

If that was the goal of those advancing the thesis of Russian ‘hacking’ of the election, then it has succeeded admirably. US foreign policy has to a degree been ‘normalised’, with the commitment to NATO restored, foreign activism and militarism lauded by liberals and neo-conservatives alike, and military figures installed in many of the key offices of state.

There are many reasons to criticise Trump, but the use of Russia as the cudgel with which to beat him is both dangerous and counter-productive. It is the outcome of the effective convergence of Clintonite liberal internationalists and neo-con global interventionists...

Valdai 2017
Clinton and Russia: Who Is Ms Hillary?

Richard Sakwa | Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent

telesur — US Vice President Meets Venezuelan Opposition and Promises More Sanctions

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has been in Florida to meet Venezuelan opposition leaders, capping off his tour of Latin America last week where he sought support against the government of President Nicolas Maduro....

Pence, for his part, continued to repeat the White House position that the democratically-elected government in Caracas resembled a “dictatorship,” and that there was “more to come” in terms of sanctions.

Soon after visiting the house of worship, Pence also made his presence felt at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, which is located in Doral as well.

The US interpretation of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs.

telesur
US Vice President Meets Venezuelan Opposition and Promises More Sanctions

Graham E. Fuller — Global Disorder- What Are the Options?

Global disorder is on the rise. What can the US do about it? There are two fundamentally different approaches one can take—it all depends on your philosophy of how the world works.

The first school thinks primarily in terms of law, order and authority: it accepts the need for a global policeman. The second school is more willing to let regional nations take the initiative to eventually work things out among themselves. Both schools possess advantages and disadvantages. Something called Balance of Power politics lies halfway between the two....

Graham E. Fuller
Global Disorder- What Are the Options?
Graham E. Fuller | adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University, formerly vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, and a former senior political scientist at RAND

Also

With words unprecedented for a US president, Trump called out Pakistan for harboring and supporting terrorist groups that target and kill US citizens and said there would be a radical change in policy toward the South Asian nation. Trump indicated the US would work to increase ties with India, Pakistan's neighbor and greatest enemy, a move sure to both enrage as well as frighten Pakistani elites.…

Trump said the US will work to increase ties with India, Pakistan’s neighbor and greatest enemy, as part of the “change in approach in how to deal with Pakistan.”

Pushing Pakistan into China's arms.

In what must have sent shockwaves all the way to Islamabad and Rawalpindi – the home of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service – Trump followed up his harsh words for Pakistan with a call for greater American cooperation with India.

Trump said the US will seek to “develop its strategic partnership with India” and described the country as “a key security and economic harbor of the United States.” He called for India to play a greater role in Afghanistan “especially in the area of economic assistance and development.”….

FDD's Long War Journal

Trump takes hard line on Pakistan for supporting terrorist groups
Bill Roggio | Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal

Also

RussiaFeed
Russian expert says Trump’s new Afghanistan policy aimed at China`

UPDATE

The Duran
China tells Trump not to allow India to interfere in regional interests
Adam Garrie

Robert W. Merry — Stop poking the Russian bear

New sanctions are coming, whether he wants them or not. NATO expansion and the West’s Ukraine meddling will continue. Encirclement is firmly in place.

It’s difficult to envision where this could lead, short of actual hostilities. Russia’s fundamental national interests, the ones Trump was prepared to accept, will almost certainly render such hostilities inevitable.

The National Interest
Stop poking the Russian bear
Robert W. Merry | Editor of the American Conservative

Pepe Escobar — Imperial Folly Brings Russia and Germany Together

Add China to that toxic mix for US hegemony and global "leadership."

This is strategic folly beyond estimation.

Trump will be required to justify to Congress, in writing, any initiative to ease sanctions on Russia. And Congress is entitled to launch an automatic review of any such initiative.

Translation; the death knell of any possibility for the White House to reset relations with Russia. Congress in fact is just ratifying the ongoing Russia demonization campaign orchestrated by the neocon and neoliberalcon deep state/War Party establishment.

Economic war has been declared against Russia for at least three years now. The difference is this latest package also declares economic war against Europe, especially Germany.…

Make no mistake; the EU leadership will counterpunch. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (EC), put it mildly when he said, "America first cannot mean that Europe's interests come last."

Pepe Escobar spells out the hidden agenda. As always, follow the money.

Escobar is always a good read. This one is exceptional. Zbig must rolling over in his grave as his worst nightmares begin to unfold.

Best line among many good ones:

According to the business/political source, "… No one trusts this US Congress; it is considered a lunatic asylum." … 

The source adds, half in zest, "we think that Brzezinski died under the pressure of the realization that this was coming and that all his hatred of Russia and his life work to destroy them was becoming utterly undone."

Sputnik International
Imperial Folly Brings Russia and Germany Together

Pepe Escobar

Wayne Madsen — The End of the ‘New American Century’ Pronounced by the Pentagon

Is the US military quietly signaling a historical turn of events comparable to Britain's decision to abandon empire? One item doesn't tell the whole story but it is indicative that it is being discussed at high levels.

Strategic Culture Foundation
The End of the ‘New American Century’ Pronounced by the Pentagon

Wayne Madsen

Andrew J. Bacevich — The ‘Global Order’ Myth

A good article but Col. Bacevich focuses on the liberal interventionist view of the global order in terns of US interests in terms of the current controversy over the presidency of Donald Trump.

Liberal interventionism and the imposition of a global order under liberalism is Wilsonianism, whose history goes back to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and the the post WWI era. It crystallized post WWII when the US emerged as one of the two superpowers, contending the USSR.

Subsequent to the collapse of the USSR, the US leadership proclaimed victory and the right to permanent global hegemony under the liberal order, along with the right to impose this order on others as the US say fit.

Col. Bacevich, a historian, calls BS on this attempt to portray the pursuit of US interests as "spreading freedom and democracy" and preserving the liberal order and liberal globalization. This is just a euphemism for putting America first through foreign adventurism and nation building that has led to endless war.

The American Conservative
The ‘Global Order’ Myth

Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, US Army (ret.) | Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, and writer-at-large at The American Conservative

Tom Palley — Trump and the Neocons: Doing the Unilateralist Waltz

The neocon goal is unchallenged U.S. supremacy. If that goal frames U.S. foreign policy, international economic policy must conform with it.

In the Cold War era, the currency of power was provision of weapons and ideology. In the new era of globalization, commerce has become a major new currency of power, making international economic policy a key concern.

Consequently, under Trump, neocon unilateralism is now spreading into international economic relations....

Tom Palley hits one out of the park, connecting neoliberalism (economic) and neoconservatism (political) with globalization and US global hegemony.

The Globalist
Trump and the Neocons: Doing the Unilateralist WaltzTom Palley

The Saker — The history of the Neocon takeover of the USA (a 4 part analysis)

If you didn't catch this as it was published serially, the Saker posts all four parts.

Foreword by the Saker: the four articles below, combined into one, are an exception to the normal rule which is that this blog doe not republish articles already published in the past. In this case, at the request of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, I decided to make an exception due to the importance and interest of the topic: the origins of the Neocon movement. I am particularly grateful to Paul and Elizabeth who have agreed to my request to remove the original copyright restrictions on this material for publication on the Saker blog. The analysis they wrote offers a very valuable insight into the roots and history of the Neocon phenomenon.

The Vineyard of the Saker
The history of the Neocon takeover of the USA (a 4 part analysis)
The Saker

Richard N. Haass — World Order 2.0 — The Case for Sovereign Obligation

Contra "America First," CFR president Richard Haass makes a case for neoliberalism an liberal internationalism as the foundation for globalization, including liberal interventionism, R2P, and neoconservatism as foundational to American "Trotskyism" as a matter of noblesse oblige aka paternalism.

Council on Foreign Relations
World Order 2.0 — The Case for Sovereign Obligation

Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations

Matthew Allen — Declassified CIA Memo Shows How US Has Been Plotting Syrian Regime Change For Decades

It's public knowledge that Washington has been plotting against Syria since the days of Eisenhower.

But thanks to a newly declassified CIA memo, we can now read Washington's heavily-redacted strategy for creating "favorable conditions" in Syria.

Even back in the 1980s, it was clear that provoking a Sunni insurgency fueled by ethnic and religious hatred was the easiest way to topple the government.
As the memo notes:

Sunnis make up 60 percent of the Syrian officer corps but are concentrated in junior officer ranks; enlisted men are predominantly Sunni conscripts. We believe that a renewal of communal violence between Alawis and Sunnis could inspire Sunnis in the military to turn against the regime.

The ultimate goal? Creating a new, "moderate" Sunni regime that would serve U.S. business interests. (Surprise!)….

Russia Insider
Declassified CIA Memo Shows How US Has Been Plotting Syrian Regime Change For Decades
Matthew Allen

Ivan Eland — America’s Lost Tradition on Non-Intervention

By implicitly criticizing U.S. interventionism, President Trump’s inaugural speech drew denunciations from the Washington establishment as a dangerous deviation, but his message actually fit with U.S. traditions, says Ivan Eland.

Which are the "real" American values? Had the US lost the plot under the neocons and liberal interventionists?

Consortium News
America’s Lost Tradition on Non-Intervention

Ivan Eland | Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute and formerly an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office

Akhilesh Pillalamarri — Does Promoting American Values Make the World Safer?

Fool's errand.

The gist of this vision is that American values and security can be preserved only so long as the United States promotes democracy and liberalism throughout the world; otherwise, “authoritarianism and illiberalism” will spread, according to Clinton, who worried that “democracy, freedom, and the rule of law are under attack around the world.” Clinton argued that the “mission” of the United States is to “lead the world with strength, smarts, and confidence in our values.”...

The problem with this worldview is that nation-building is a difficult task, and using it as an opportunity to promote a specific set of American values and institutions often makes states (such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Iraq) even more unstable and open to threats from other states or from terrorists and militants. Dysfunctional states, not authoritarianism, are the biggest threat to peace.

Stability is built on historic roots specific to individual cultures and political orders, and the institutions and practices that eventually allow for freedom and liberalism take a while to grow, if they grow at all. As President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan argued in a co-authored book, Fixing Failed States, peace—the absence of endemic violence—is the first prerequisite for any state to function. This often requires the triumph of a strongman or a group that can impose peace; it does not spontaneously emerge from democratic decisions in most societies. From peace comes law and eventually institutions, and only then can democratic or liberal practices emerge.

It is folly to try to achieve this process backwards: from democracy, to institutions, to peace. That more often than not leads to conflict. The United States needs to appreciate this in order to remain secure.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink." The horse has to be thirsty. Otherwise the American assumption that "the world is just dying for freedom and democracy" will likely turn out to be literally true rather than figuratively if American tries to impose liberalism. That is a paradox of liberalism — imposing it is illiberal.

The American Conservative
Does Promoting American Values Make the World Safer?

Akhilesh Pillalamarri, editorial assistant at The American Conservative and contributor to The National Interest and The Diplomat

The Saker — The Neocon’s declaration of war against Trump

First, and this is the really crucial part, there is more than enough here to impeach Trump on numerous grounds both political and legal. Let me repeat again – this is an attempt at removing Donald Trump from the White House. This is a political coup d’etat.…

All of the above further confirms to me what I have been saying over the past weeks: if Trump ever makes it into the White House (I write ‘if’ because I think that the Neocons are perfectly capable of assassinating him), his first priority should be to ruthlessly crack down as hard as he legally can against those in the US “deep state” (which very much includes the media) who have now declared war on him. I am sorry to say that, but it will be either him or them – one of the parties here will be crushed.

This is how US intelligence services manufacture regime change abroad and now they are up to the same thing at home. Meanwhile, in his farewell address President Obama calls on Americans not to give up on democracy.

I am willing to be that the documents in question as well as much of the "information" on which US intelligence has been dependent since the US manufactured coup in Ukraine is from Ukrainian sources, some of which are already known (Chalupa family) and identified as working close to Hillary Clinton.

I sure hope that I am wrong and that this latest attack against Trump is the Neocon’s last “hurray” before they finally give up and leave. I hope that all of the above is my paranoia speaking. But, as they say, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not after you“.

So please tell me I am wrong!

I'll second that, but I was saying this for some time before The Saker. Even if it is not true, it has all the earmarks of a US deep state operation.

The Vineyard of the Saker
The Neocon’s declaration of war against Trump
The Saker