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by
Bernhard
January 17, 2020
from
MoonOfAlabama Website
Spanish
version
Italian
version
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In early 2017, just
as
Trump was inaugurated, we wrote how an old power center theory
that seemed to explain how Trump won the elections:
Seen from the
perspective of power centers
Clinton once had all the support
she needed. But she then lost a decisive group due to her
uncompromising neo-conned foreign policy.
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Here is an interesting take based on a theory from the
1950s:
[T]he power
elite can be best described as a
"triangle of power,"
linking the corporate, executive government, and military
factions:
"There
is a political economy numerously linked with military
order and decision.
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This triangle of power is now a
structural fact, and it is the key to any understanding
of the higher circles in America today."
The 2016 US
election, like all other US elections, featured a gallery of
pre-selected candidates that represented the three factions
and their interests within the power elite.
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The 2016 US
election, however, was vastly different from previous
elections.
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As the election dragged on the power elite became
bitterly divided, with the majority supporting
Hillary Clinton, the candidate pre-selected by the political and
corporate factions, while the military faction rallied
around their choice of Donald Trump.
The decisive
political point in this election round was the fight between
neo-conservatives/liberal-interventionists and foreign policy
realists.
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One side is
represented as exemplary by
the CIA with the U.S. military on
the other:
A schism
developed between the Defense Department and the highly
politicized CIA.
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This
schism, which can be attributed to the
corporate-deep-state's covert foreign policy, traces back to
the CIA orchestrated "color revolutions" that had swept the
Middle East and North Africa.
The CIA created
bloodthirsty future enemies the military will later have to
defeat. ...
That explanation
has held up well.
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At the beginning of
his regime Trump stuffed the White House with the military faction
while the executive government -
the Deep State - waged a war against
him.
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The corporate side of triangle of power was quite happy with
his tax policies.
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But Trump soon
discovered that the military faction did not concur with his
'America first' isolationist tendencies.
The 'grown ups' and
generals wanted to explain to Trump why they believe that the U.S.
needs many allies and bases and why the many long wars the U.S.
fights are sensible policy.
According to a new
book, partly adapted in a Washington Post piece, that
effort did not end well:
Trump organized
his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of "America
First," but,
-
[Secretary of Defense Jim]
Mattis
-
[Secretary of
State Rex]
Tillerson
-
[Director of the National Economic
Council Gary]
Cohn,
...feared his proposals were rash, barely
considered, and a danger to America's superpower standing.
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They also felt
that many of Trump's impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of
familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were
located.
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To have a
useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create
a basic knowledge, a shared language.
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So on July 20,
2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson,
and Cohn, had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial.
The meeting in 'the
Tank' (a secure conference room in the Pentagon) were part of an
effort to subdue
Trump's insurgency against the top military's world view, and
the presentation by top generals came off as a lecture which Trump
immediately disliked:
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Source
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An opening line
flashed on the screen, setting the tone:
"The
post-war international rules-based order is the greatest
gift of the greatest generation."
Mattis then
gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to
stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe.
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Bannon thought
to himself,
"Not good.
Trump is not going to like that one bit."
The
internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for
Trump.
"Oh, baby,
this is going to be f---ing wild," [White House chief
strategist Stephen K.] Bannon thought.
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"If you
stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn't say
'postwar rules-based international order.' It's just not the
way he thinks."
Stephen
K. Bannon was right.
Verbal scuffles about NATO, South Korea and U.S. bases followed.
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Then Trump took on
the generals:
"We are owed
money you haven't been collecting!" Trump told them.
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"You would
totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business."
The discussion
turned to the war on Afghanistan:
Trump erupted
to revive another frequent complaint:
the war in
Afghanistan, which was now America's longest war...
He demanded an
explanation for why the United States hadn't won in Afghanistan
yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the
wake of
the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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Trump unleashed
his disdain, calling Afghanistan a,
"loser war"...
That phrase
hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at
the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along
the back wall behind their principals.
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They all were
sworn to obey their commander in chief's commands, and here he
was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war...
"You're all
losers," Trump said. "You don't know how to win anymore."
When one reads the
recent
Congress testimony of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
one can see that
Trump has a point.
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The war is long
lost and the military is lying about it:
"There's an
odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue... mendacity
and hubris," John F. Sopko said in testimony before the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.
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"The problem is
there is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We have
created an incentive to almost require people to lie."
"When we talk about mendacity, when we talk about lying, it's
not just lying about a particular program. It's lying by
omissions," he said.
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"It turns out
that everything that is bad news has been classified for the
last few years."
Trump's rant during
the meeting with the generals
continued:
Trump mused
about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in
charge of troops in Afghanistan.
"I don't
think he knows how to win," the president said, impugning
Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.
"I want to win," he said. "We don't win any wars anymore...
We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we're
not winning anymore."
"I wouldn't go to war with you people," Trump told the
assembled brass.
Addressing the
room, the commander in chief barked,
"You're a
bunch of dopes and babies."
A drill sergeant
act performed on recruits with four stars on their shoulders.
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I find that quite
impressive.
Those
perfumed princes must have fumed...!
While some will
certainly say that Trump disgraced the military with his rant most
of the soldiers in the field will likely agree with his opinion
about their generals.
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Most of the 'dopes
and babies' who were in that room have since been fired or retired.
Their replacements are yes-men more to Trump's liking.
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They did not even
protest about Trump's latest blunder.
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He rented out
scarce air defense units to Saudi Arabia and went on to murder
Qassem Soleimani in Iraq while the U.S. bases there no longer
had air defenses to protect them against the inevitable retaliation.
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The anti-Trump
leaders of the executive side of the triangle have likewise been
removed and replaced with people who are unlikely to put up a fight
against Trump.
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The third side of
the triangle, the corporate faction, is happy that Trump pressed
the
FED to douse the markets with free money.
Unless the inevitable
stock market crash comes before the election, which is unlikely,
they will stick to Trump's side...
With all three
sides of the triangle of power inclined to favor him or neutralized
Trump seems to have a good chance to win the next election.
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That is unless he
continues to follow the
advice of neocons
with a bad record and, by sheer stupidity, starts a
war against
Iran....
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