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by Charles Hugh Smith
September 25, 2016
from
CharlesHughSmith Website
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The governed are ready for a period of retrenchment, consolidation
and diplomatic solutions to unwinnable conflicts, as imperfect as
the peace might be to hawks.
Are you open to a somewhat unconventional perspective on this
election? If so, read on.
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If you're absolutely confident you know
all there is know about this election (good vs. evil, Democrat vs.
Republican, etc.), well then let's compare notes in five years and
see which context provided more insight into the future.
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In the context presented here, the
personalities of the two candidates matter less than their perceived
role in the changing of the Imperial Order.
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Let's start with a quick overview of the
relationships between each political party and the Deep State
(aka
Secret-Shadow Government) - the
unelected power centers of the central government that continue on
regardless of which person or party is in elected office.
Liberal Democrats have always been uneasy bedfellows with the
Deep State.
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Republican President Eisenhower
had the political and military gravitas to put limits on
the Military-Industrial wing of the
Deep State, so much so that Democratic candidate John F.
Kennedy claimed the U.S. had fallen behind the U.S.S.R.
militarily in the 1960 presidential election (the infamous "missile
gap").
Eisenhower was a cautious Cold War leader, wary of hot wars, wars of
conquest, and the inevitable burden of conquest, nation-building.
The military was best left sheathed in his view, and careful
diplomacy was sufficient to pursue America's interests.
Kennedy entered office as a foreign policy hawk who was going to
out-hawk the cautious Republicans.
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A brush with
C.I.A. cowboys (the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba) and a
taste of Imperial meddling in distant, poorly understood lands
(Vietnam) increased his interest in peace and reduced his enthusiasm
for foreign adventurism.
Lyndon Johnson, perhaps the most activist liberal Democrat of
the era, was not about to be out-hawked by the Republicans, and so
he followed an expansive Imperial agenda into the
10-year quagmire of Vietnam.
Since the immense global enterprise known as World War II had taken
less than four years to win, Americans had little patience for
low-intensity wars that dragged on inconclusively for years while
combat deaths mounted into the tens of thousands.
Liberal Democrats could find no easy political ground between the
pressure to out-hawk the Republicans and the demands of an expansive
Cold War Deep State. Both liberal Democratic presidents
between 1965 and 1980, Johnson and Jimmy Carter, were
one-term presidents, undermined by military/foreign entanglements.
The Republicans were given a freer hand:
Nixon unleashed the B-52s on Hanoi
in late 1972 until the North Vietnamese ran out of
Soviet-supplied SAMs (surface to air missiles).
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Given a choice between a brokered
peace or a flattened capital, they chose peace, and Nixon was
free to declare victory and pull the majority of remaining
American forces out of Southeast Asia.
The disastrous defeat in Vietnam of expansive Imperial ambitions
(nation-building, etc.) led to an era of retrenchment and
consolidation.
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Other than "splendid little wars" in
Grenada and Panama and supporting proxies such as the Contras,
the 1980s were years not of Imperial expansion but of Cold war
diplomacy.
Republican President Reagan was also given a free hand to
be a peacemaker, overseeing the fatal erosion of the U.S.S.R.
and the end of the long, costly Cold War.
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President
Bush Senior was a cautious
Cold War leader, careful not to alienate the post-U.S.S.R.
Russians and wary of over-reach and quagmires even in the new
Unipolar world of unrivaled U.S. power.
The era's one hot war,
Desert Storm, restored the
sovereignty of Kuwait but left Saddam Hussein in control
of Iraq.
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Bush and his inner circle (and the
Deep State they represented) were mindful of the lessons
of Vietnam:
Imperial over-reach led to
costly, drawn-out failures of nation-building in the name of
exporting democracy.
Though it was poorly understood by
the public, Desert Storm played to American military strengths:
a high-intensity conflict with
concentrated forces, maneuver warfare with heavy armor
protected by absolute air superiority, aided by proximity to
allied bases and aircraft carrier groups.
If you designed a war optimized to
American military strengths, it would look much like Desert
Storm.
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No wonder it was one of the most
lopsided victories in history, with most American casualties
resulting from random Scud missile strikes and accidents.
The end of the Cold War and victory in
Iraq left the Republicans without their hawkish agenda and political
raison d'�tre, and Ross Perot's third-party movement in 1992
effectively delivered the presidency to Democrat
Bill Clinton.
Clinton was blessed with a booming domestic economy and a peace
dividend from the end of the Cold war.
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Though Clinton reportedly hankered for a
great crisis he could exploit to burnish his place in the history
books, alas none arose, and the 20th century ended with a decided
absence of existential threats to the U.S. or even U.S. interests.
The incredible success of Desert Storm and the temptations of
Unipolar Power birthed an expansionist, activist Imperial
doctrine (neoconservatism) and a Deep State enthusiasm for
flexing America's unrivaled power.
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What better place to put these doctrines
into practice than Iraq, a thorn in the Imperial side since Desert
Storm in 1991.
Alas,
Bush Junior and his
clique of doctrinaire neoconservatives had little grasp of the
limits and trade-offs of military tactics and strategies, and they
confused the optimization of Desert Storm with universal
superiority in any and all conflicts.
But as veterans of Vietnam knew, low-intensity war with diffused,
irregular combatants is quite a different situation.
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Add in the shifting politics of Sunni
and Shia, tribal allegiances, failed states and a post-colonial pot
of simmering resentments and rivalries, and
you get Iraq and Afghanistan, two
quagmires that have already exceeded the cost and duration of the
Vietnam quagmire.
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A decade after the collapse of the
U.S.S.R. and 25 years after Vietnam, the Deep State was once
again enamored of expansion, hot wars, conquest and nation-building.
Fifteen years on, despite endless neocon PR and saber-rattling, the
smarter and more adept elements of the Deep State have given
up on expansion, hot wars, conquest and nation-building.
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Even empires eventually taste the ashes of defeat when expansion and
hubris-soaked ambitions lead to over-reach, over-extended military
forces, and enemies who are not just undeterred but much stronger
than when the over-confident expansion began.
In my view, the
current era of U.S. history shares
parallels with the Roman era of A.D. 9 and beyond, when a planned
expansionist invasion of the Danube region in central Europe led to
military defeats and insurgencies that took years of patient
war-fighting and diplomacy to quell.
Which brings us to
Hillary Clinton
and Donald Trump.
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Barack Obama, nominally a liberal Democrat,
has pursued an extension of the neocon Bush expansionism, with the
key difference being Obama has relied more on proxies and drone
strikes than on "boots on the ground."
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But the quagmires in Iraq and
Afghanistan have not only persisted, they have
expanded under Obama's watch into Syria and Libya.
War by drone and proxy is even more tempting than outright invasion,
as American casualties are modest and the responsibilities for
failure are (it is fervently hoped) easily sidestepped.
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Alas, fulfilling Imperial ambitions
via proxies has its own set of limits and trade-offs; proxy wars
only get the desired results in very specific circumstances.
The Democrats have out-hawked the Republicans for eight years, and
the Deep State is in disarray. I have been writing about this
for several years now:
Is the Deep State Fracturing into Disunity?
- (March 14, 2014)
When we speak of the Deep State,
this ruling Elite is generally assumed to be monolithic:
of one mind, so to speak, unified in
worldview, strategy and goals.
In my view, this is an
over-simplification of a constantly shifting
battleground of paradigms and political power between a number of
factions and alliances within the Deep State.
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Disagreements are not publicized, of
course, but they become apparent years after the conflict was
resolved, usually by one faction winning the hearts and minds of
decision-makers or consolidating the Deep State's group-think
around their worldview and strategy.
Even the Deep State only rules with the consent of the
governed.
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The wiser elements of the Deep State
recall how the Vietnam War split the nation in two and exacerbated
social upheaval. These elements recognize America is tired of
Imperial expansion, quagmires, proxy wars and doomed
nation-building.
This exhaustion with over-reach shares many parallels with 1968
America.
In this long view of Imperial expansion, defeat and retrenchment,
Hillary is holding down the status quo fort of failed expansionism
and proxy wars.
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Her ability to out-hawk the Republicans
is unquestioned, and that is one of her problems:
Could the Deep State Be Sabotaging Hillary?
- (August 8, 2016)
When the governed get tired of Imperial
over-reach and expansion, they are willing to take chances just to
get rid of the expansionist status quo.
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In this point in history,
Hillary Clinton embodies the
status quo. The differences in
policy between her and the Obama administration are paper-thin: she
is the status quo.
The governed are ready for a period of retrenchment, consolidation
and diplomatic solutions to unwinnable conflicts, as imperfect as
the peace might be to hawks.
For these reasons, the more adept elements of the Deep State
have no choice but to dump Hillary. Empires fall not just from
defeat in war with external enemies, but from the abandonment of
expansionist Imperial burdens by the domestic populace.
Put another way: drones and proxies don't pay taxes...
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