A Sick Republic! (Yeah, dude, I’m talking about the U.S.)

While still claiming strategic superiority in global relations backed up by her unmatched military power, the US' political bankruptcy becomes ever more visible and undeniable. In terms of foreign affairs and international relations, the US, by desperately trying to keep its position as the sole superpower, devastated the world with its support of terrorists, interventions for regime change, and its irrational and unwarranted stance vis-à-vis the Russian Federation. Yet, foreign affairs blunder doesn't make for a sick republic. The sickness factor lies within. 

 

In domestic terms, the US society appears to have degenerated into what the ancients called an Ochlocracy, a mob reign, the intimidation of government and legitimate authorities by a specific group of people. Stunning in the US American case is that this authoritarian mob is not merely recruited from vulgar, lower-class people of the electorate, but recruits itself from all society's strata. It is made up and even led and represented by elected officials of the Democratic Party, supported by a significant number of neoconservatives, the central part of the mainstream media, and exponents of academia and the world of arts and culture. A clear indication that ill-education knows no bounds. And neither does lousy morality. 

 

The level of political illiteracy and moral inferiority is unparalleled in Western civilization's recent history. The leftist mob's machinations to reject and potentially overturn the recent presidential election results are unprecedented. Any healthy level of antagonism appears to have vanished that usually characterizes the political struggle in open societies. 

 

The intrinsic concept of the Political, namely to consider the opponent as a legitimate force that needs to be defeated for political gain and governing power, but not physically terminated, is in danger. When the political's essential character gets lost, it threatens social stability and may lead to violence and potentially to civil war. 

Let's identify and explain the significant determinants of this sick republic. I shall emphasize three essential subject matters and remedies described before a somewhat optimistic outlook may conclude this exposition. 

 

First: The deranged political mind! Large parts of the US society have forgotten or intentionally negate the prime feature of democracies, namely that governing regimes can change due to the people's decision in periodic elections. 

 

Significant numbers of the populace have lost any respect for governmental institutions, including and predominantly the presidency. The minimal deference to a governmental authority, necessary for a working political system, is missing, including disregarding the recent presidential elections' outcome. Their electoral loss so mortifies the US's political left that they are consumed by a sheer unlimited sense of hatred and destructiveness. 

 

Violence in the streets, open calls for assassination, utter baseness in language, and destructive facts dominate the reportage fabricated in the editorial offices of print and electronic media. For the most part, news outlets are no longer the medium to communicate factual information between government and people. Instead, in unprecedented fashion, they have turned themselves into distortion and ideological agitation instruments. 

 

Irrespective of political orientation, never before had a president spend his first few months in office to such a degree with his back to the wall, warding off most vicious attacks mostly by tweeting directly to the public, circumventing the largely hostile and dishonest reporting by the media. And never before had a president cope with such a degree of nasty obstructionism from the political opposition.

 

Most commentators consider some of Mr. Trump's tweets' aggressiveness to be irreconcilable with the office's dignity. But this judgment is clearly false and just another attempt to diminish his standing. Proportionality is a principle in self-defense. And self-defense is what the man does as he is reacting to an unparalleled onslaught of denunciation. 

 

The viciousness with which this man and the office he is holding has been and still is being attacked requires proper confrontation and resistance to a degree hitherto unknown. The wrong and evil must never be encouraged by inactivity or misguided leniency. So yes, indeed, Mr. Trump should continue to tweet and give the wrongdoers what they deserve.

  

Solution/Prediction: There is hope that Mr. Trump will prevail. Most of all, the fake media, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times – are virtually imploding. They will have to purge themselves and return to some measure of decency. The same applies to the Democratic Party. The silent majority of the party, which consists of decent citizens just led astray, will have to reign in and bring back sanity to the Senate and Congress's hysterical voices. On attempting to damage Trump, they brought devastation over their political movement. Beyond that, the progressive left, fascist in their strategies and violent in their means, cannot be reasoned. Since they have no arguments that withstand the lessons of history or common sense, they only understand the brutal fact of apparent political, economic, and societal defeat and failure, which has been presented to them and will continue to haunt them. The charlatanry of Mr. Obama, supported by the hardcore political left in this country, has already come to the fore and must be defeated. For, if not, this country will descend into societal chaos and violent civil war. 

Second! The globalism fallacy! The near existential struggle between the globalists and one-world government/open borders factions versus the traditional nation-state and My Country/MyCulture/My Religion First exponents has taken center stage within the US and the European Union but challenges the entire western civilization.

 

As an inheritance from the disastrous Obama presidency, the political left and the entire Democratic Party are in the tank for a globalist utopia, pursued by progressive social and cultural policies, both domestically and internationally.

 

They found their political complement in the failing governing administrations in Germany, France, and the UK. The philosophical illiteracy resting at the bottom of all this globalist nonsense is astounding. A united world republic, a one-government global system, is forever impossible for many ontological and epistemological reasons, not to speak of religion and cultural dimensions. The critical error is confusing truly globalist developments – i.e., in the economy, trade, communication technology – with a profound alteration of the general ontological conditions of physical human coexistence. For the latter by in large remain unchanged, indifferent globalism is probably the most pernicious error in the political thinking of our day and age. 

 

The nation-state (or alliances of nation-states), characterized by separation of powers and monopolization of force, is certainly reduced in its significance and transcended by the impact of globalism. However, it will persist for generations to come as the preeminent model for how people coexist together. A more elaborate blog essay on this specific aspect alone is forthcoming.

Solution/Prediction: The significance and, indeed, indispensability of borders and clear demarcations between citizens and immigrants, in short: healthy nationalism will return to the decision-making bodies of western societies. It will take time and cost a lot of pain and a tremendous waste of resources, as it already has. Still, sanity in the arrangement of human affairs will have to return if Western civilization is supposed to survive. Mr. Trump finds allies in this endeavor within the European Union, where nations like Poland and Hungary have resisted accepting the quotas of Muslim immigration imposed by the European Commission. And they have been successful as the only countries avoiding an internal terrorism problem and a shake-up of their social stability. 

Third: The disastrous foreign affairs paradigm! As the statesman is aware, nothing is more critical for prosperity and domestic stability and security than a comprehensive and meaningful foreign affairs policy that does not exhaust itself in economic profit-making and geopolitical bullying.

 

As I have shown in several of my blog essays over the past years and, alas, have been proven right by how things unfolded, the US's foreign affairs and national security policies have been catastrophic. Aside from individual instances of failure and folly most conspicuously in the general application of a flawed national security paradigm that highly damaged international relations ever since the end of the Cold War, thus roughly in the past quarter-century. The attempted Pax Americana turned out to be an utter failure, brought destabilization and terrorism to Europe, caused endless years of bloodshed and refugee crises in the Middle East, turned established political entities into rogue states, deteriorated political conditions by instigating regime changes and supporting insurgent terrorist movements, and devastated US-Russia relations. 

Solution/Prediction: The first meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin at the G-20 Summit is only a few days away from the time I write these lines. It might turn out to be the most critical meeting of the two Heads of State of these two countries in decades. What Trump has to achieve is of a tall order. In the wake of this meeting, he will have to silence the Russophobe forces in the US government and anti-Russian hawks in the Republican Party. He will have to stop the nonsense of considering Russia an enemy rather than a geopolitical rival who has to be collaborated with as a strategic partner and ally for defeating the global challenge of Islamism and assuring Western survival civilization.

  

It will be a tough challenge, but Mr. Trump needs to overcome the pressure from Congress, Senate, and the bulk of the media and put the US's foreign policy, particularly vis-à-vis Russia, on a new footing. Most problematic in this regard and posing a hurdle hard to overcome is the near-identical stance on foreign affairs espoused by neoconservatives and neoliberals. But President Trump must not fail in this endeavor as a further deterioration of international relations to the point of configuring the stakes for a new global armed conflict would be the result. 

Overall, it is going to be a colossal task for Mr. Trump to cure this republic. 

In his goal-oriented, pragmatic, and non-ideological intuitive way, President Trump has achieved a lot in the first half-year in office. The success goes mostly unnoticed as the media is more focused on character assassination rather than reporting on his accomplishments. But it is a fact that he managed to boost business and economy by decisively reducing regulations and reversing ideologically driven impositions of the former administration. Consumer confidence is up, and unemployment is down, and so is illegal immigration. A decisive improvement of the health care system and massive tax reform is imminent. Christian values are on the rebound, and the reversal of recent years' cultural decline is at least in its initial stages. 

 

What still gives a reason for concern is the president's failure to come through on the campaign promises of correcting the United States' foreign policy – reducing its overseas engagements, ending the meddling in the Middle East and the endless wars, diminishing the imperialist posture in general. Trump's recent trip to the Middle East and the Gulf States appeared to accomplish some improvement in terms of reducing the funding of terrorism and cooperation in defeating ISIS. His upcoming meeting with relevant heads of state such as the President of China and the Prime Minister of Japan, but most of all Russian President Putin, at the G-20 Summit will hopefully bring about solutions regarding the North Korean threat and lay the foundation for a new collaboration with Russia. 

Important days and weeks are lying ahead. We soon should find out if the long-overdue alterations in the United States' foreign affairs posture will occur and whether or not the sick republic has put itself on the road to recovery.

Russophobia - Achilles’ Heel of US-Russia Relations

The demonizing of Russia and specifically of Vladimir Putin has been profoundly regretful and damaging to global affairs in recent years. It appears the U.S. could not rise above the old animosity vis-à-vis the follower nation to the Soviet Union that dominated bi-polar relations during the Cold War. In the quarter-century since, the United States, in its leading role in NATO and cooperation with the European Union, has pursued interventionist policies. Those aimed at global predominance and strengthening its position as the sole remaining superpower.

The U.S. and its partners wasted the opportunities to establish a righteous new world order the post-Cold War security environment offered. As I've made clear in my blog entries over the past years, geopolitical misconceptions paired with strategic hubris and ideological delusions as rampant in the White House and the State Department regimes led to utterly folly in foreign affairs international relations. Besides the undermining and destruction of nation-state structures in the Middle East and the intentional armed support of extremists and insurgents, color revolutions have been backed by the U.S. and E.U., for example, in Georgia and Ukraine. Central to the failed policies was the stunning neglect of legitimate national and strategic interests of other players in international relations.

The latter fact became painfully visible in the wake of the regime change in Ukraine. Every reasonably informed scholar of strategic and security studies could have foreseen the control of Crimea and eastern Ukraine's support by Russia. The installation of a puppet regime in Kiev by Washington and Berlin was unacceptable to Russia after the U.S. had pushed toward her borders through aggressive NATO expansion. To drive Russia out of its Black Sea ports and potentially prepare full-fledged membership of Ukraine, as the geostrategic 'Near Abroad,' in NATO would be intolerable for Russia. The blatant disregard of legitimate Russian interests went along with the infamy of blaming Russia for imperialism that had been clearly and unashamedly pushed by the U.S. and the transatlantic alliance.

It is impossible to accurately verify the degree to which strategic ignorance, national hubris, indifferent imperialism, pseudo-democratic universalism, or apparent economic interest and pressure from the military-industrial complex have led to the failed policy design. Yet, the miserable Pax Americana attempted in the last quarter-century was certainly a conglomerate of all these and probably more factors. In conjunction with Putin's demonization and the artificial preservation of Russia as the primary geopolitical enemy, western powers set the course for missing out on establishing a functioning global post-Cold War world order, including meaningful collaboration for containment of radical Islam. The outrageous claim of the Democratic Party that Russian hacking and cyber intervention lost the election for Hillary Clinton –probably one of the biggest scams in politics ever suggested– further exacerbated the relations with Russia. Mr. Obama's decision to expatriate Russian diplomats and impose additional sanctions under the pretense of Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. presidential elections will rank prominently among the many political follies this man has perpetrated.

The new administration under President Donald Trump, which alone gave hope to conquer the old resentments toward Russia and alleviate the damage the previous administration had caused, appears to be succumbing to the Russophobe and Putin-hating pressure forces in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Congress, and the media. The new U.S. Ambassador's aggressive speech to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, and the ousting of security advisor General Flynn based on informal conversations with the Russian ambassador provides sad testimony to that assessment.  

Overcoming the hysteria vis-à-vis Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin has to be considered the number one priority in U.S. foreign affairs. Maintaining Russia artificially as an enemy image for a new Cold War and conventional arms race must be ended. A mindful and critical, yet simultaneously constructive and respectful relationship with Russia from the part of the United States is long overdue, for whose materialization the numerous challenges to international relations and global security offer ample opportunity. Russia has to be part of fighting the Islamic State and radical Islamism worldwide and has to play a role in stabilizing the Middle East. While mutually respecting legitimate national interests, a balance of power should result in the pursuance of common objectives and joint ends in global affairs.

But this might require prominent representatives of society and state in the U.S. to stop calling Mr. Putin a murderer, abandoning the sanctions regime, and acknowledging Russia's legitimate strategic and economic interests concerning the Caucasus, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. It will also necessitate the easing up of U.S. and NATO forces' aggressive posture in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

The new administration must not continue the insanity of the Obama years. The step from considering Russia as a geopolitical enemy toward Russia as a geostrategic counterpart and potential collaborator in global affairs must take place now. In light of Western Christian societies' Islamic subversion, this appears to be a strategic necessity and social obligation.