And then, out of left field, when no one saw him coming, he reappeared, trumping it all.
Internal geopolitics was key – as in the Trump campaign rust belt strategy mastering geography, demography and the rudiments of class struggle to effectively shatter the much-vaunted Democrat blue wall.
For all the requiems — “American tragedy” downwards – there won’t be armed revolution in the US. There won’t be civil war. The “deplorables” may have given a collective finger to the liquid modernity elites – but there will be no vengeful victory laps.
And geopolitically – and that’s what matters to the whole world — there will be no Warmonger-in-Chief.
Heart of Glass
Donald Trump – populist or not, a conduit to a mass revolt of the excluded and downgraded – managed to destroy the self-propelled myth of US institutional stability/predictability/credibility because these were already hollow qualities, vaunted by a bunch of vainglorious functionaries of Empire (“hollow men, stupid men, heads filled with straw”, to quote T.S.Eliot).
No wonder the beggars banquet clearly saw through the looking glass; and by not buying the myth of a “seasoned”, “capable”, “progressive pragmatist”, they engineered her rebound on the glass ceiling.
There may be reasons to doubt what certain dodgy Trumpsters such as Newt Gingrich or Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn could concoct as possible cabinet members. What’s certain is priorities will deviate from regime change in Russia and containment of China, pivot to Asia-style (after all, Hillary was the pivot’s Mother).
The Global Times, reflecting what the Chinese leadership really thinks, got the basics right; “He did not only beat Hillary Clinton, but also the traditional elite politics’ convictions and authority [that] she stands for.” What’s left unsaid is that this is a man Beijing can do business with.
The true test starts of course next January. One cannot forget that Russia and China, in that order, remain the Pentagon’s top two “existential threats” to the US.
Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, US Army deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and training, only recently stressed the US faces existential threats from “modern nation-states acting aggressively in militarized competition.” And Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley stressed a war, against one of those threats or both, is "almost guaranteed."
It will be up to President Trump to defuse this madness. Unlike Hillary, who is a true believer in the doctrinal “first-strike” nuclear policy, Trump at least promised, in one of the debates, he would not start WWIII.
In parallel, there won’t be neocon/neoliberalcons around to advocate a “muscular”, “interventionist” policy, from the Russian borderlands to the South China Sea all the way to an al-Qaeda Air Force-style “no-fly zone” Syria. Trump does not seem inclined to build “order” in the chaos the Empire fomented – from “Syraq” to Libya, Yemen and Somalia. He has only pledged to bomb ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to smithereens.
The desperate plea by former vassal NATO secretary-general Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen — "We need America as the world's policeman” – will not be heeded.
Iran though will remain a flashpoint. Flynn, not free from neocon indoctrination, is a certified Iranophobe. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani already pre-empted him, stating the Iran nuclear deal cannot be reversed (and he’s lawfully correct).
Trump the Eurasian?
As usual, the buck always stops with China. At the recent Valdai discussion group, Fu Ying, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People's Congress, went straight to the point; "China views the US-dominated world order as a mess and this is why it does not want to take over. Why should China repeat the mistakes which the US did?"
The same could apply to Cold War 2.0 hysteria. It’s not far-fetched to see Trump accepting Crimea as part of the new status quo; a real Minsk II in Ukraine; and respecting Russia’s spheres of influence. In a flash, Cold War 2.0 will be gone. Talk about a real reset – not Hillary’s, which featured a handicapped State Dept. which could not even properly write “reset” in Russian.
And what about TPP and TTIP? Considering Trump’s aversion to NAFTA, it’s improbable this Obama administration twin obsession – geoeconomic and geostrategic – will prosper. Hillary was mesmerized by the US-EU as “the greatest strategic objective” of our “transatlantic alliance” – meaning NATO. Trump is not exactly ecstatic about NATO – unless everyone is religiously paying their 2% of GDP into it. Don’t count on Trump being seduced by an “economic NATO”.
What this would all mean, in the long run, is something quite extraordinary; the progressive dissolution of the US-EU politico/economic/military bloc, in parallel to the inexorable ascension of Eurasian integration – ranging from the China-Russia strategic partnership to the interlinking with the SCO and the BRICS.
Imagine Trump turning Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski upside down: “To respond effectively in both the western and eastern parts of Eurasia, the world's central and most critical continent, the United States must play a dual role. It must be the promoter and guarantor of greater and broader unity in the West, and it must be the balancer and conciliator between the major powers in the East.”
The US is in no position anymore to be promoter, guarantor, balancer and conciliator of whatever there is – starting with itself. Now imagine Donald Trump ultimately revealing himself – by proxy — as a Eurasian at heart; that would be the ultimate Trumpquake.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
