A frisson of fear swept across the corridors of power in London and the European Union on the publication of Donald Trump’s national security strategy last week.
It admits that “after the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests. Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex”.
But as the Chatham House imperialist think-tank put it “saving the harshest critiques for Europe’s current trajectory, the 33-page grand strategy pushes commercial ties, strategic stability with Russia, and a strong US hand in Latin America”.
The “Prince of Peace” as Trump styles himself these days tells us that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”. His strategy upholds the concept of “America First” defining the national interest solely as the interest of the ruling class. And while it rejects the old theories of global domination
it declares that the main priority of the United States is to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere” – which in Trump-speak means the entire Americas from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
The Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals. Gone are the days of the “special relationship”, the “new world order” and the “project for the new American century”. British and Franco-German imperialism believed that accepting American leadership would give them a share of the spoils. But they didn’t get much out of the fall of the Soviet Union or the forever wars that followed in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Arab world. Now they’re going to get nothing.
This is what American “isolationism” means. It’s the other side of the reactionary coin – the thinking of those sections of the American ruling class that realise that world domination is beyond their grasp and so seek to restore their hegemony in the Americas and much of the Global Southwhile maintaining their control of the global oil and energy market.
Whether Trump’s national security strategy becomes the programme for the rest of his term of office remains to be seen. In Washington the isolationists now have the upper hand. The deep state war-mongers are down – but they are definitely not out...
It admits that “after the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests. Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex”.
But as the Chatham House imperialist think-tank put it “saving the harshest critiques for Europe’s current trajectory, the 33-page grand strategy pushes commercial ties, strategic stability with Russia, and a strong US hand in Latin America”.
The “Prince of Peace” as Trump styles himself these days tells us that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”. His strategy upholds the concept of “America First” defining the national interest solely as the interest of the ruling class. And while it rejects the old theories of global domination
it declares that the main priority of the United States is to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere” – which in Trump-speak means the entire Americas from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
The Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals. Gone are the days of the “special relationship”, the “new world order” and the “project for the new American century”. British and Franco-German imperialism believed that accepting American leadership would give them a share of the spoils. But they didn’t get much out of the fall of the Soviet Union or the forever wars that followed in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Arab world. Now they’re going to get nothing.
This is what American “isolationism” means. It’s the other side of the reactionary coin – the thinking of those sections of the American ruling class that realise that world domination is beyond their grasp and so seek to restore their hegemony in the Americas and much of the Global Southwhile maintaining their control of the global oil and energy market.
Whether Trump’s national security strategy becomes the programme for the rest of his term of office remains to be seen. In Washington the isolationists now have the upper hand. The deep state war-mongers are down – but they are definitely not out...
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