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A victory for the Deep State

Key words

Trump, deep state, global
hegemony, realism,
exceptionalism, duopoly, media

Author

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic teaches
international relations at the
Faculty of Political Sciences of
the University of Banja Luka.

Correspondence

[email protected]

Field

International relations

DOI

10.5937/pol1713028T

UDC

327(73)"2017/..."

Paper received on

19.05.2017.

Paper accepted for publishing
on

28.06.2017.

Summary

Donald Trump, an outsider who won the Presidency against
all odds and predictions, came to the White House apparently
determined to chart a new strategic course in foreign affairs. His
opponent, Hillary Clinton, was committed to a hegemonistic
vision and to specific policies based on the decades-old globalist-
liberal orthodoxy. As this paper points out, Trump’s “America
First” approach in essence rejected the doctrine of America as a
proposition nation, criticized its global engagement, questioned
NATO’s utility and core mission, advocated rapprochement
with Russia, and condemned the regime-change focus of earlier
administrations. It further emphasizes that Trump explicitly
sought to reaffirm the raison d’état as the guiding principle of
foreign policymaking. His biggest problem all along was that the
American “deep state” – key components of the national
security apparat, the military-industrial complex, and the
bipartisan political duopoly in Washington – rejected any
realist criteria in their definition of “interests” and “threats.”
They were intent on the maintenance of American global
primacy, and they proved effective in imposing agenda contrary
to Trump’s stated positions on all key global issues. At the same
time, as this paper documents, Trump himself has been stepping
ever farther away from his campaign pledges. It would be
incorrect to say that the permanent state has successfully
subverted and undermined the chief executive. It would be more
accurate, we conclude, to recognize that a mutinous president
has tried, and failed, to alter the long-charted global course of
the permanent state.

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Over the years, American “realists” – who
accept that the world is imperfect, that
violence is immanent to man, and that human
nature is immutable – have often lamented the
absence of grand-strategic thinking within the
U.S. foreign-policy establishment.

For the past

quarter-century at least, successive admi-
nistrations have displayed a chronic inability
to deploy America’s political, military,
economic, and moral resources in a balanced
and proportionate manner, in order to protect
and enhance the country’s rationally defined
security and economic interests.

Washi-

ngton’s bipartisan, ideologically-driven obse-
ssion with global primacy (aka “full-spectrum-
dominance”) has resulted in a series of
diplomatic, military and moral failures, costly
in blood and treasure, and detrimental to the
American interest.

In November 2016 it appeared that Donald
Trump, an outsider victorious against all odds
and predictions, had a historic opportunity to
make a fresh start. The moment was somewhat
comparable to Ronald Reagan’s first victory in
1980. Reagan used grandiloquent phrases at
times (notably the

“Evil Empire”), but in

practice he acted as an instinctive foreign poli-
cy realist. Likewise, Trump’s “America First”
was a call for the return to realism based on
the awareness that the United States needs to
rediscover the value of

transactional diplomacy

aimed at promoting America’s security,

See e.g. Јohn Ј. Mearsheimer,

The Tragedy of

Great Power Politics.

New York: Norton, 2001.

Cf. Srdja Trifkovic, “Geopolitics Redeemed:

Enhancing the Realist Discourse.”

Defence Review:

The Central Journal of the Hungarian Defence
Forces

. Vol. 144 (2016/I).

Cf. F. William Engdahl,

Full Spectrum Dominance:

Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Edition Engdahl, 2009.

prosperity, and cohesion in a Hobbesian
world.
Some resistance from the upholders of
hegemonistic orthodoxy was to be expected, as
witnessed even before Trump’s inauguration
by the outgoing administration’s frantic
attempts to poison the well on every front
possible. Giving up the imagined capacity to
dominate the world, and recognizing that it
cannot be shaped in line with the elite class
“values,” was never acceptable to the contro-
llers of the mainstream media discourse and to
the government-subsidized think-tank nome-
nklatura. More seriously, some key compone-
nts of the intelligence, national-security and
military-industrial complex proved effective in
resisting Trump’s attempt to introduce
transactional criteria in defining “interests”
and “threats.”

The 2016 Presidential Election: Strategic
Crossroads –

The aftermath of the Cold War

has seen the emergence of what Robert Kagan
and William Kristol have called “benevolent
global hegemony” of the United States.

Throughout this period, the leaders of both
major parties have asserted that America’s
unchallengeable military might was essential
to the maintenance of global order. This period
of “primacy” was marked by military
interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, and less overtly in Syria. The
exercise of hegemony was validated by the
rhetoric of “promoting democracy,” “protect-
ing human rights,” “confronting aggression,”
and by the invocation of American excep-
tionalism: in world affairs the United States
was supposedly motivated by values, rather
than interests.

Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “Towards a

Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.”

Foreign Affairs

, 75

(4), July-August 1996.

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dogma of American exceptionalism.

She

provided the blueprint for never-ending wars
and crises wholly unrelated to any rational
understanding of the country’s national
interest.
“The United States is an exceptional
nation,” she told the Legion, and is still the
last, best hope of Earth; “And part of what
makes America an exceptional nation, is that
we are also an indispensable nation. In fact, we
are

the

indispensable nation. People all over

the world look to us and follow our lead.” She
aserted that “we recognize America’s unique
and unparalleled ability to be a force for peace
and progress, a champion for freedom and
opportunity” and that U.S. power comes with a
responsibility to lead, “with a fierce commi-
tment to our values… [W]hen America fails to
lead, we leave a vacuum that either causes
chaos or other countries or networks rush in to
fill the void.”
Clinton’s

triumphalist

global

vision

reflected the post-Cold War consensus, to
which both ends of the Beltway Duopoly –
neoconservatives and neoliberals – subscribed
with equal zeal. Its key tenet was that
America’s unchallengeable military might is
essential to the maintenance of a global order
in which the U.S. government treats every spot
on the globe as an area of vital American
interest, resists any change of regional power
balances, and promotes regime changes. The
resulting military interventions would
continue to be validated by the rhetoric of
“peace and progress,” “freedom and
opportunity,” “justice and human dignity,”

“Read Hillary Clinton’s Speech Touting ‘American

Exceptionalism,’”

Time

, August 31, 2016.

<http://time.com/4474619/read-hillary-clinton-
american-legion-speech> (retrieved September 1,
2017).

and by the invocation of self-awarded
exceptionalism and indispensability.
Bipartisan consensus which Mrs. Clinton
embodied (and which prompted many establi-
shment Republicans to support her) has been
long codified in official strategic doctrine.
Clinton’s strategic vision was clear: an abiding
commitment to ideological fixations unrelated
to any pragmatic notion of U.S. interests. The
continuity of duopolistic key assumptions, and
the escalation of risks and tensions resulting
from their application, was clearly predictable.

Donald’s Vision

– Trump’s strategic

concepts seemed less ideologically coherent
than Clinton’s, but he was more rational in
espousing his stated guiding principles and
more “realist” in policy detail. In the early days
of his candidacy he repeatedly asked why must
the United States be engaged everywhere in the
world and play the global policeman. He raised
the issue of NATO’s utility and core mission, a
quarter-century after the demise of the USSR
which it was created to contain. In the course
of the campaign he suggested readjustment or
creation of a new coalition in order to put
America’s resources to better use, especially in
the fight against terrorism.

He repeatedly

advocated rapprochement with Russia. He
criticized the regime-change mania of earlier
administrations, pointing out the “disastrous”
consequences of toppling Saddam Hussein in
Iraq. He said that he would leave Syria’s
Bashar al-Assad well alone and focus on
degrading the Islamic State.
Trump’s 2016 global vision was somewhat
fragmentary, but voters knew that many of his
positions ran counter to the duopolistic
consensus. They

did not know

if he would be

consistent, as President, in devising a new
grand strategy and related specific policies.
Such uncertainty was perhaps inevitable in
view of Trump’s temperament, but the

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possibility

of a paradigmatic shift towards a

national-interest-based approach apparently
did exist. It was conceivable that he would
effect a strategic pause in order to take stock of
the global map, reconsider priorities, and
devise policies on the basis of their likely costs
and benefits.
On April 27, 2016, Donald Trump gave a
long speech on foreign policy.

It was his first

attempt to present his views on world affairs in
detail. It contained no standard duopoly
references to promoting freedom, democracy
and human rights around the world;
confronting tyranny and evil; or making the
world a better place in the image of the
exceptional nation. Trump’s team of advisors
prepared a coherent case for “offensive
realism” instead: Nation-states are the princi-
pal actors in the international system; they
pursue self-interest in what is still a Hobbesian
world; America is not and should not be an
exception to that old principle.

This was

anathema to the elite. The tone of media
reaction was set by the

New York Times

Trump’s “strange worldview… did not exhibit

“Transcript: Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy

Speech.”

The New York Times

, April 27, 2016.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/
transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html?mcubz=0>
(retrieved September 1, 2017).

Men are driven by “a perpetual and restless desire

of power” for as long as they live. (

Leviathan

XI-2)

Hobbes’ grim dictum that states “enlarge their
dominions upon all pretences of danger and fear of
invasion or assistance that may be given to
invaders” (XIX-4) accurately reflects the

spiral

model

(“security dilemma”) of international

relations throughout recorded history.

much grasp of the complexity of the world.”

But to those who did not subscribe to the
Beltway

Weltanschauung,

Trump gave a

summary of what had gone wrong with
America’s role in the world, and a viable new
approach.
“My  foreign  policy  will  always  put  the
interests of the American people and
American security above all else,” Trump
declared at the outset of his address. “America
First will be the major and overriding theme of
my administration.” This was a commonsense
summary which could have been objectionable
only to the proponents of the doctrine of
America as a proposition nation, which has
created endless problems for both America
and the rest of the world at least since
Woodrow Wilson’s time.
Trump  correctly  noted  that  after  the  Cold
War the U.S. foreign policy “veered badly off
course,” and he named Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and
Syria as examples of flawed interventions that
had spread chaos in the region and helped the
rise of ISIS. His diagnosis – that the U.S.
foreign policy “is a complete and total disaster”
devoid of vision, purpose, direction, and
strategy – was reasonable; so was his warning
that America’s resources were overextended.
Trump promised to look for new advisors in
the field of foreign policy, and to shun the
establishment responsible “for a long history
of failed policies and continued losses at
war.”

“Donald Trump’s Strange Worldview,” by the

Editorial Board.

The New York Times

, April 28,

2016.<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/opini
on/donald-trump-to-world-im-willing-to-
walk.html?mcubz=0> (retrieved September 1,
2017).

In addition, Trump lamented America’s failure to

protect Middle Eastern Christians, who he said
were “subject to intense persecution and even
genocide.” He noted that “we’re in a war against

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Trump to “reconsider” using the phrase.

According to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt,
the America First movement was characterized
by “the undercurrents of anti-semitism and
bigotry.” The claim was incongruous.
Explicitly putting their nation first is the

sine

qua non

of political leaders everywhere outside

America. The real objective of the campaign
was to suggest that having the audacity to put
one’s own country’s interests first, ahead of the
globalist one-world agenda, was reactionary
and indicative of toxic, bigoted, intolerant
“U.S. nationalism.”
The corporate media machine in the United
States is controlled by members of an elite
class which promotes cultural Marxism
manifested in a corrupt mass culture,
multiculturalist indoctrination, and mass
immigration; and which opposes any sense of
historical and cultural identity. From the very
moment he entered the presidential race,
Trump encountered intense media hostility.
His media detractors have been almost
invariably globalists who believe that people
should not feel a special bond for any
particular country or nation, but should
transfer their loyalties to an imaginary global
community.

“ADL Urges Donald Trump to Reconsider

‘America First’ in Foreign Policy Approach,” April
26, 2016. <https://www.adl.org/news/press-
releases/adl-urges-donald-trump-to-reconsider-
america-first-in-foreign-policy-approach>
(retrieved September 1, 2017). The “America first”
artificial controversy was an early example of the
establishment’s reductive propaganda against
Trump, based on the logical fallacy of false
equivalence. Along those same lines, since the

Deutschlandlied

– proudly proclaiming that

Germany stands “above all else” – is Germany’s
national anthem today, just as it was during the
Nazi era (1933-1945), Angela Merkel’s Federal
Republic equals the Third Reich.

Since the final decade of the twentieth
century, such notions have been internalized
by the American elite class and by the
establishment of both major parties. Back in
2001, then-Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott felt ready to declare that the United
States may not exist “in its current form” in
the 21st century, because the very concept of
nationhood – in America and throughout the
world – will have been rendered obsolete.

“All countries are basically social arrange-
ments, accommodations to changing circu-
mstances,” he wrote. “No matter how perma-
nent and even sacred they may seem at any
one time, in fact they are all artificial and
temporary.” Those who objected to “America
First” agreed: since nations are transient,
virtual-reality entities, owing emotional
allegiance to any one of them is irrational;
promoting its interests in preference to those
of others is suspect, or outright “fascist.”

Transnational Trumpophobia –

One

month after Trump’s foreign policy speech, at
a press conference at the G-7 summit in Japan
(May 26, 2016), President Barack Obama
declared that world leaders were “rattled” by
Trump, “because a lot of the proposals that
he’s made display either ignorance of world
affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in
getting tweets and headlines instead of actually

Strobe Talbott, “America Abroad.”

Time

, June 24,

2001.
<http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,
9171,160112,00.html> (retrieved September 1,
2017).