Quote:As regards domestic developments in the USA over the second half of the 20th century, one can detect the exponential growth of the "military-industrial complex", whose interests are well served by legislators and officials at the different levels of government. Which as President Eisenhower warned in his farewell speech in 1961 might pose a big threat to the people, put in jeopardy the true national interest. In parallel, intelligence agencies gain prominence (and a much larger tranche of the national budget!) with the founding of the CIA in 1947, giving continuity to the tasks assigned to the Office of Strategic Services set up in 1942. Now, we have in place two of the pillars of a parallel, shadowy or invisible' government, that we will soon see pulling the strings and doggedly moulding the decision making process of the visible' legitimate government (Engelhardt, 2014). A parallel government, unelected and unaccountable to the people, that will not stop at anything in pursuing their hidden agendas, as it is demonstrated by the conspiracy to get rid of President John F Kennedy, and other key public figures and government officials after him, his brother Robert included (Douglass, 2008).

Quote:What we may be seeing in US policy is competing agendas. The diplomatic track appears to be favored by the White House and State Department as a more efficacious way of achieving regime change against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. But the Pentagon, and specifically the CIA, has its own militarist schemes, even if that means providing weapons to terror groups with much greater fire power and risking a proxy war with Russia.

The upshot is that US foreign policy is dangerously all over the place because of competing power players within Washington. The disturbing conclusion is that the American president and his State Department are simply not in control. It's like watching a driver of an articulated truck whose grip on the wheel has no steering.

A deep, darker state within the official state is by no means a new concept to describe American government and its foreign policy. More than 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was so perplexed by CIA covert operations undermining him on Cuba and Vietnam that he declared he would "smash it into a thousand pieces." That intention probably cost Kennedy his life at the hands of the deep state and its military-industrial complex.

Today, it is very doubtful that any American politician would have the courage or conviction to pull rank on the military-industrial complex. The latter appears to be more assertive and belligerent than ever, as can be seen from the seemingly irrational contradictions of US foreign policy on Russia and Syria. And that unaccountable power-play makes for a highly dangerous dynamic.

Washington often proclaims that it is "protecting the world". The truth is that the world needs protecting from the US whose foreign policies are increasingly reckless and beyond any democratic control.