The Battle for the Future of Mankind Is Fully Engaged
By EIRNS
President Donald Trump continues to shock the various spokesmen for the Empire—the proponents of the “geopolitical rules of the game” which have served the British Empire on both sides of the Atlantic, and worldwide, for centuries. Such geopolitics dictates a foreign policy which is zero-sum, dog-eat-dog, divide and conquer. It fosters personalities which mirror that bestial view of mankind, an existentialist psychology of one-against-all.
Americans are instructed, daily, by the mainstream media, that we must hate the “evil dictators” in Russia and China, that we must overthrow “tyrants” across the Middle East, South America and Africa, all in the name of “freedom and democracy.” But few Americans who have lived through the past decades of economic decay, of the mass addiction of our population, of permanent warfare, are willing to continue drinking that Kool-Aid.
Look at the establishment response to Trump’s announcement to pull out of Syria. “He is turning Syria over to the tyrants in Russia and Iran,” the headlines scream. But Trump told the press on Sunday: “Iran hates ISIS more than we do, if that’s possible. Russia hates ISIS more than we do. Turkey hates ISIS, maybe not as much as we do. But these are countries that hate ISIS. And they can do a little of the fighting in their neighborhood also, because we’re fighting them in their neighborhood.”
To geopoliticians, cooperating with Russia and Iran to address a real threat to the human race is treason to the Empire.
And so also with China. While the anti-China hysteria in the U.S. and European media has reached a fever pitch, with the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs posing that it is now a showdown between the U.S. and China over “Who Will Run the World,” President Trump continues to insist that he and Xi Jinping are friends, and that we can cooperate on the basis of mutual respect for the sovereignty of the other. A large Trump Administration team is now in Beijing to negotiate an agreement to resolve the severe trade imbalance, with both sides confident of a resolution.
Organizers for the LaRouche Political Action Committee have found over the past months that the American people increasingly support Trump’s policies, but cannot understand why he is unable to fully implement them. Why, for instance, was the invitation from Trump’s NASA chief Jim Bridenstine to Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, to visit the U.S., suddenly cancelled? With America’s capacity to lift people into space destroyed over the past 40 years, we are now dependent on Russia to carry our astronauts into space, which they gladly do. And we treat them in this way?
Why, for instance, is the U.S. prohibited by our own foolish laws to cooperate with China in space? Is it not the case that China has now achieved an historic breakthrough in space exploration, by landing safely on the far side of the Moon? Why are we shooting ourselves in the foot by refusing cooperation?
Why, for instance, has it taken this long for Trump to act on his commitment to end the “regime change” wars unleashed by Bush and Obama, which was one of his campaign promises?
There are many more such quandaries. Trump somewhat instinctively knows the answer, as evidenced by the fact that he addresses the American people directly, through his mass rallies and through his Twitter account. The American people themselves must be changed. This will not happen through acts of the President alone. The citizenry must learn to think differently, to be capable of countering the psychological warfare, to be, as Schiller said, a “patriot of one’s nation and a citizen of the world.”
Percy Shelley stated that in times of great crisis, such as today, broad layers of the population are able to overcome their delusions, such that “there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature.” In such times, he went on: “The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry.”
It is in this spirit that the LaRouche Political Action Committee has launched a six-part class series, “Towards a New Bretton Woods,” available to everyone on the LaRouche PAC homepage, which is focused on LaRouche’s demonstration that the creative powers of the human mind reflect an underlying, ontological, creative principle in the universe as a whole, and that the creative process in artistic composition and scientific discovery is essentially the same, and can be mastered by every human being who is given the opportunity. The first class took place on Saturday, Jan. 5, on “The Creative Powers of the Human Mind Reflect a Principle of the Universe as a Whole.” The subsequent classes will take place on Saturdays 2:00 p.m. and will be webcast from the LaRouche PAC homepage. Have fun.
Graham Fuller Gives Strong Backing to Trump’s Rejection of U.S. Imperial Policy
Former leading CIA official Graham E. Fuller made a devastating attack on the imperial nature of the U.S. policy establishment in his blog yesterday. Fuller does not mention the British role, and refers to Trump disparagingly; nonetheless, his conclusion reads: “However feckless the Trump Administration and its style may be, perhaps we should consider carefully whether at least one of Trump’s default instincts—gradual American disengagement from myriad unending U.S. overseas military commitments—might have some merit. Foreign policy must consist of something more than perpetual identification of enemies, and perceptions of ‘threats’—long a special and costly cottage industry of Washington.”
Along the way, Fuller’s analysis, also reprinted today on leftist Jim Lobe’s blog, titled “Trump: Lurching Towards a New Foreign Policy?” correctly makes the following observations:
- The current global crisis is largely due to “the massive U.S. foreign policy blunders of the past three decades, and the brutal deprivations that these losing wars have exacted upon the American political, economic and social order—not to mention upon the overseas victims of those wars.”
- The crisis traces back “at least to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the so-called ‘unipolar moment’ when the U.S. embraced the idea that it was now the world’s sole superpower, capable of establishing long-term unchallenged global hegemony. Remember how this was to herald the coming ‘American Century?’ Most of the U.S. foreign policy elite still embodies these notions. They perceive U.S. hegemony as the natural state of affairs, perhaps even God-given; any views that work against that belief are alien, naive about the nature of the world, ideologically unacceptable, or even treasonous.”
- This is evident, Fuller writes, in the media and policy establishment attacks on Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un, with the reaction to his decision to pull out of Syria, and with his “efforts to overcome the truly dangerous deterioration of U.S. relations with Moscow—in which Washington finds it inconceivable that any element of its own policies could have any kind of causal effect on such deterioration.”
- “Some will take issue with my views here,” Fuller writes. “They believe the U.S., as an ‘exceptional nation,’ has the right, nay the duty, to serve, indefinitely and unchallenged, as policeman to the world…. Does the global order really require the permanent presence of some kind of a policeman? … Or should there be a global policeman at all?”
- Fuller maintains that the cost of trillions spent on military adventures “robs money that should go to decaying U.S. infrastructure, public transportation, sustainable income distribution, … failing health care, the building of civilian sciences, free higher education, and fostering social harmony. It seems like China itself is investing heavily in many of these socially productive spheres even as the U.S. prefers to put its money into building geopolitical alliances and preparing for conflict.”
Democrats Were Ready To Give $25 Billion for Border Security in 2018, But Zero Now
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, conceded that the $5 billion that President Donald Trump has requested for a border wall is a pittance relative to the federal budget, the Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported Jan. 5.
Representative Yarmuth told Hill TV’s host Buck Sexton that at “one point, Democrats were willing to give $25 billion for border security just a year ago, in exchange for a deal on DACA” (Deferred Action on Child Arrivals), reported Saavedra.
“Yarmuth struggled to explain why Democrats now oppose securing the U.S. border—a position they have traditionally supported.
“Sexton asked Yarmuth, ‘So why do we keep hearing members of the Democratic Congress come forward saying that it wouldn’t work and it’s stupid, when not only do we have the people who are actually in charge of border security saying it would work and it’s not stupid, we can see that it already does work in places where there is a wall?’
“‘That’s exactly right,’ Yarmuth responded.
“In 2013, all 54 Senate Democrats voted to pass a bill that gave $46 billion for border security, which included building an additional 700 miles of border fencing.”
President Trump reaffirmed yesterday that he will not “cave in” to the shutdown fight with the Democrats, with media widely quoting him as saying, “I may declare a national emergency, dependent on what’s going to happen over the next few days.”
Trump’s Syria Withdrawal Was No Surprise, but Had Been His Plan Since March 2018
President Trump’s “surprise” withdrawal from Syria is no such thing—he began ordering preparations for pulling out troops in March 2018, Mark Perry wrote in Foreign Policy Jan. 4.
Talk of a U.S. withdrawal from Syria resulted from a White House directive passed down by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said that the President had given him and then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis until September 2018 to announce withdrawal.
The fact that the withdrawal announcement was not made until the third week of December 2018 does not discredit this timeline, writes Perry in his article, “The Blob Is Lying about Trump’s Sudden Syria Withdrawal.”
A senior State Department official confirmed for Perry in late December, that discussion about a withdrawal had been going on since last March. “ ‘They [Pompeo and Mattis] hoped they could talk him [Trump] out of it.’ Despite this hope, both Pompeo and Mattis began to comply with Trump’s wishes. Beginning last April, Mattis and Pompeo operated on two different tracks—with Mattis scaling back anti-Islamic State military operations in the region and Pompeo working to shape a diplomatic offensive that would give the United States a voice in Syria once the civil war ended.”
Mattis wanted all major ground combat in Iraq and Syria over by April’s end, and even admitted privately there wasn’t much left of ISIS to fight, Perry reports the official telling him. The Pentagon began talking of the “enduring defeat” of ISIS. By September, there were a few small pockets of ISIS remnants. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commanders were told the U.S. would withdraw its troops by year’s end.
Meanwhile, beginning in April 2018, Pompeo tasked State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to oversee a number of linked initiatives: 1) begin telling SDF leaders that the U.S. would withdraw its troops imminently, which warnings were passed through the military, commander to commander. “To claim the Kurds were taken by surprise is just not true. They were briefed,” Perry’s State official told him.
The second initiative was a plan to persuade Persian Gulf countries to provide fighters to reinforce the Kurds once the U.S. had left, the State official said. The Saudis said yes, but didn’t like the idea. In the end, the Kurds vetoed the idea, not wanting to be reinforced by Arabs. Putting Saudis on the ground to rub shoulders with the Turks—who consider the SDF militia a branch of Turkey’s separatist Kurds at war with Ankara—could never work, writes Perry.
The final initiative was a “diplomatic surge,” which by April had 20 diplomats working on Syria, monitored by Pompeo, himself. Pompeo appointed James Jeffrey as special representative for Syrian engagement to find a way to get the U.S. back into the Syria deal-making, which included talking to the Russians and Turkey about an agreement that would push back against Assad, protect the Kurds, and accelerate a political solution, involving both the Geneva and “Astana Process” negotiations. On Dec. 3, 2018, just weeks before Trump’s withdrawal announcement, Jeffrey made it clear that the U.S. had “one mission in Syria,” which was the “enduring defeat of ISIS/Daesh.” But then, as Perry describes, Jeffrey “got off script,” including “by insisting that the United States would disengage only when all of its conditions were met … [which] involved the United States in a rhetorical slippery slope, pushing for outcomes that not only had never been mentioned by Trump, but that were also impossible to obtain.”
He quotes Middle East analyst Geoffrey Aronson, that: “From 2011 and for the seven years that followed, the experts have been telling us that Assad’s days were numbered, that he was finished, even when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen; it was a fairytale…. Listen, there are lots of reasons to not like Trump, but this was the right policy move to make. Our agreement with the Kurds was always temporary, and they knew it. So now they will do what they’ve been quietly talking about for the last two years: They’ll seek an accommodation with Damascus.”
As former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford has said, “Trump’s announcement has actually smoothed ‘the way for a deal between the SDF and Damascus that would allow Syrian troops to return to eastern Syria in a manner that meets Turkish security concerns and gives no new space to the Islamic State.’ More simply, the U.S. withdrawal of its forces from Syria will nudge the Kurdish-led SDF down the road to Damascus—which is where they were going anyway.”
Mark Perry concludes: “There’s no question that Trump’s withdrawal decision has roiled official Washington, spurring the resignations of Mattis and McGurk, but the end-of-the-world scenario painted by Trump’s chorus of critics—that the Mattis resignation would be followed by many others, for example—has not happened. The reason might well be that there are many more officials in the foreign-policy establishment who agree with what Trump has done—and that, perhaps, the job of ‘restraining some of Trump’s worst instincts’ shouldn’t be left in the hands of America’s generals.”
U.S. Navy Provokes Both China and Russia
The U.S. Navy, whether intended or not, is carrying out actions which, at the same time, provoked both China and Russia. The guided missile destroyer USS McCampbell carried out a “freedom of navigation” operation, sailing within 12 nautical miles of the Paracel Island chain in the South China Sea, “to challenge excessive maritime claims,” Pacific Fleet spokeswoman Rachel McMarr said in a statement. Reuters observes correctly that the U.S. provocation came amid U.S.-China trade talks underway in Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that the conduct of the U.S. ship had violated China’s sovereignty and international law, and China had lodged “stern representations.” “We urge the United States to immediately cease this kind of provocation,” he said, and that China had sent military ships and aircraft to identify and warn off the ship. Asked about the timing of the operation during trade talks, Lu replied that resolving issues would benefit the two countries and the world. “Both sides have the responsibility to create the necessary positive atmosphere for this,” he said.
At the same time, about 5,000 miles to the west, the USS Fort McHenry, a dock landing ship, entered the Black Sea and sailed to the Romanian port of Constanta.
“We routinely operate in the Black Sea consistent with international law and the Montreux Convention and will continue to do so,” said Cmdr. Kyle Raines, 6th Fleet spokesman, reports Stars & Stripes. “We also continue our call for Ukraine and Russia to seek a diplomatic resolution to their dispute.” This is the first time a U.S. ship has been in the Black Sea since the Nov. 25 Kerch Strait incident.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced this morning: “Patrol ship Pytlivy of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is performing a complex of activities to control the actions of amphibious transport dock … USS Fort McHenry,” reported Sputnik. RT notes that Kurt Volker, the U.S. envoy for Ukraine, had recently urged the U.S. to “increase presence in the Black Sea” in cooperation with Turkey or the EU.
New York Times Lies that Bolton Has Reversed Trump’s Policy To Pull Out from Syria
The corporate news media, led by the New York Times, has been busily spinning National Advisor John Bolton’s public statements in Jerusalem, saying yesterday that he has reversed President Donald Trump’s orders to withdraw the U.S. military from Syria. The Times, in particular, claimed that Bolton “rolled back … Mr. Trump’s decision to rapidly withdraw from Syria.”
Trump did not agree. He tweeted in reply, “The Failing New York Times has knowingly written a very inaccurate story on my intentions on Syria. No different from my original statements, we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!”
The Official Syrian Opposition Has No Power
Nasr al-Hariri, the Secretary-General of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the official Syrian opposition, claimed yesterday that he was “surprised” that a number of Arab countries are re-establishing ties with Damascus, but admitted that he’s powerless to stop it.
“We do not have the power to stop this reconciliation,” he told reporters in Riyadh, reports Reuters. “We still hope there is a possibility for [these countries] to revisit their decisions and realize that the real and solid relation should be with their brothers of the Syrian people, not with the regime that has committed all these crimes,” he said. “Bashar al-Assad will remain a war criminal even if thousands of leaders had a handshake with him.”
Hariri also expressed opposition to Syria’s re-admission to the Arab League: “We do not think it would be a sound step to readmit Syria into the Arab League. We think this is a decision that won’t be in the interest of the political process,” he said.
Regardless of Hariri’s pronouncements, the momentum in Syria has long been against the Saudi-sponsored opposition.
