Blowing one’s own trumpet

Donald Trump provoked laughter at the United Nations this week when he claimed that his administration had “accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country”. His rambling address to the General Assembly sought to justify his “America First” policies that threaten to plunge the world into a destructive trade war while justifying US imperialism’s support for America’s lackeys across the globe.

 Trump is by no means the worst post-war US president. He has still to plunge America into another disastrous war like his predecessors did in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Libya and Iraq. To be fair, Trump did not initiate the US intervention in Syria. That was down to Obama and the Democrats. And the maverick Republican leader did move to ease tension on the Korean peninsula with a historic summit with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore last summer.

But the new American war-lord has achieved little else over the past two years of his watch. He told the assembled leaders and diplomats at the UN that America’s “new approach is also yielding great strides and very historic change” in the Middle East. What that really means is encouraging the Saudi Arabians and the other feudal Arabs to step up their brutal intervention in Yemen and confront Iran,

At the same time the Trump administration continues to pursue its “deal of the century” on Palestine which gives Israel everything it wants. All the Palestinians are offered in some paltry blood-money which will come from Saudi coffers and from the money the Americans have saved by stopping their contributions to the UN’s Palestinian refugee relief fund. Needless to say this absurd plan, that has no takers apart from America’s Israeli and Saudi pawns, is going nowhere.

Trump, of course, is largely the prisoner of those who propelled him into the White House in the first place. He clearly does represent bourgeois American circles who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south America. But they are not the dominant force within the US ruling class and they may not even be in control of the party Trump currently heads.

The dominant force within the US ruling class still dreams of the “new world order” that the Americans proclaimed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. While their public face may have been that of the late Senator John McCain, the “deep state” that represents the most reactionary and aggressive sections of the American ruling class cuts across all parties in the United States.

  They are bitterly opposed to “America First”, They are doing their best to sabotage the current rapprochement between north and south Korea and undermine any hope of a future understanding with Russia. Shamefully, the May government is collaborating in their campaign of anti-Russian provocations that are designed to prevent Trump from reaching any meaningful agreement with the Kremlin.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are now taking the first tentative steps towards developing an independent foreign policy for Labour in government with renewed calls for global peace and justice for the Palestinians.

We are suffering unemployment and economic stagnation. We want major cuts in military expenditure including the scrapping of Trident and the withdrawal of all British troops from the Middle East, Afghanistan and northern Ireland. The money saved should be the switched to peaceful and civil purposes and creating jobs. These are the demands that must be taken up throughout the peace and labour movement today.