M D Nalapat | Geopolitical Notes From India
THE Democratic Party establishment in the US worked unitedly to
ensure that the nomination for the 2016 Presidential election went to
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is the Czarina of the Washington Beltway in
much the same way as Sonia Gandhi has been of the Lutyens Zone. Both
Hillary and Sonia have spent decades cultivating officials and
politicians in their respective national capitals, for example ensuring
that “deserving” (through the accident of DNA) children of key officials
got scholarships to study in prestigious US universities or well-padded
sinecures were provided on retirement to officials who refused to
reflect even a second before obeying orders from either.
During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton worked hard to
try and finish off the political career of Narendra Modi, including by
arranging of teams to visit Gujarat to try and discover human remains
from the mass graves her supporters claimed were dotted across the
state. Finally, after much searching, a pile of buried bones were
discovered.and there was much excitement in the US embassy in Delhi as
well as the State Department in Washington. However, on examination,
these turned out to be the remains of buffalos rather than of human
beings. Hillary Clinton and her friend Sonia Gandhi were disappointed,
but refused to end their anti-Modi quest. Officials who obeyed the
commands of Hillary and Sonia found themselves promoted and their
(sometimes deliberate) errors ignored by higher authorities.
Although Barack Obama prevailed over the Clinton machine in the race for
the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination, he made up for it
after the polls by making “his” administration a collection of Clinton
associates, while Obama’s own loyalists such as David Axelrod were
pushed aside in the administration of the country’s first
African-American Head of State. Obama needed (or believed he did) the
backing of the Clinton machine during the 2012 race, and for this he was
willing to sacrifice his shot at establishing a legacy as deep as that
of Lincoln, Roosevelt or even Lyndon Johnson, the under-appreciated
architect of the Great Society and of the removal of several of the
detestable “Jim Crow” restrictions that had been placed on the country’s
vibrant African-American community in order to slow down their progress
towards material equality with the white population.
Hillary Clinton was a much weaker candidate against Donald Trump than
Bernie Sanders, who ought to have won the Democratic Party nomination
but for the unrestrained efforts of the Clinton machine to defeat him,
efforts that were partially detailed in emails leaked from (and most
likely by) Democratic Party insiders. In order to divert attention from
their own bag of tricks against the straightforward but politically
naive Senator from Vermont, the Clinton machine set in motion the
smokescreen of Russian involvement in the US Presidential election.
Certainly Russia must have been involved, but so would a dozen other
countries, each eager to ensure a favourable atmosphere for selected
policies after the polls. Russophobia suits the Atlanticist-Orientalist
lobby in the US and Europe, as it promotes the continuation of primacy
of Atlanticist policies in a world where the Indo-Pacific has emerged as
the geopolitical heartland.
The longer Washington delays in developing and implementing policies
that are based on Indo-Pacific reality rather than
Atlanticist-Orientalist romance, the worse it will be for US interests.
Coming from the hard-nosed school of the business of property
development, Donald Trump appreciates the need for such a policy change.
However,judging by the questioning on June 13 of Attorney-General Jeff
Sessions by a US Senate Committee, it is clear that the Atlanticists
continue to control the US Senate. Interestingly, both Senator Marco
Rubio and Senator John McCain tried to damage President Trump through
skillful questioning designed to further the cause of those seeking to
impeach Trump and thereby weaken the Republican Party before the next
Presidential election in 2020.
Senator Rubio clearly hopes to be the Republican candidate in that race,
and this would be facilitated were Trump to lose his job through
impeachment, the way the Clinton machine seeks to do, including with
assistance from the Bush and Romney factions of the Republican Party
that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has ensured still carries enormous
clout in the administration. Priebus is clearly a believer in quotas, as
he is trying to fit in Romney, McCain and Bush loyalists into key slots
at the expense of those who had backed Trump during the 2016 Republican
primaries. However,unlike the 44rth President Barack Obama, the 45th US
President does not seem willing to jettison his loyalists under
pressure, despite an early stumble through the removal of National
Security Advisor (NSA) Michael Flynn.
The salty-voiced general was a target of Hillary Clinton because of the
knowledge that he would use some of his vast powers as NSA to get her
prosecuted. In contrast, the new NSA, General H R McMaster, has never
taken sides in any political battle, and indeed has several friends
within the list of those who are Clinton supporters Whether Republican
or Democrat, the manner of questioning of Attorney General Sessions by
the Senators was as if the US and Russia were at war with each other.
What the Senators did was to sacrifice US interests in order to promote
those of certain European states such as France, Poland and Germany.
These want Russia to remain isolated and subject to punitive sanctions
from the NATO bloc that would make it inevitable that Moscow turn to
Beijing for succour, as indeed has been the case. Such a move is not in
the US interest, which would get boosted were Moscow and Washington to
work closer together in the Middle East and elsewhere, as sought by
Trump and Putin.
However, not if the US Senate can help it. That institution remains
committed to continuing the Cold War between the USSR and the US more
than a quarter century after the fall of that entity created the
conditions for the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as the world’s premier
zone of activity. Both the EU as well as China will be happy at the US
Senate and at the Atlanticists, including increasingly within the Trump
administration, for their refusal to follow the clear-visioned US
President in adjusting to 21st century realities, which inter alia
mandate close ties between Moscow and Washington.
No comments:
Post a Comment