The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[David Guyatt]

Trump's Foreign Policy: Retreat or Rout?
February 20, 2017

With President Trump's foreign-policy team sounding a lot like President Obama's, the new question is whether Trump has caved in to Official Washington's powers-that-be or is biding his time for a big move, asks Gilbert Doctorow.




By Gilbert Doctorow


After President Trump abruptly fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn a week ago and senior Trump officials flew to Europe to unveil a foreign-policy agenda that sounded a lot like President Obama's, even some Trump supporters wondered if Washington's "shadow government" or "deep state" had triumphed over their hero.




Retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn at a campaign rally for Donald Trump at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Oct. 29, 2016. (Flickr Gage Skidmore)
But another interpretation is possible, that Trump understands that he first must gain control of the national-security and foreign-policy bureaucracies before he can press ahead with plans for détente with Russia and downsizing America's vast web of military bases and geopolitical commitments. In other words, what we're seeing may be a tactical retreat rather than a wholesale rout.


The latest crisis to hit the young Trump administration began on Feb. 13 with Trump's firing of Flynn, a move that Trump seemed to regret almost immediately as he assessed how Flynn's ouster had been engineered.


The orchestration of Flynn's removal entailed illegal use of his wiretapped conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29 at a time when Flynn was still a private citizen and government rules require "minimization" (or redaction) of an American's intercepted communications.


Holdovers from President Obama's Justice Department then concocted a pretext for an FBI investigation based on the Logan Act, a dusty relic from 1799 that has never been used to prosecute anyone. Flynn was further tripped up because he didn't have total recall of what was said in the conversation and then details of the case were selectively leaked to the press to buttress the narrative of illicit ties between Trump and Moscow.


But what was perhaps even more remarkable about this ambush of Flynn, who had made powerful enemies as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency overseeing its criticism of Obama's Syrian war policies, was the collusion between U.S. intelligence agencies and a mainstream media intent on bringing down President Trump or at least preventing him from redirecting U.S. foreign policy away from "regime change" wars in the Middle East and toward a détente with Russia.


When Trump hastily demanded Flynn's resignation at least in part to appease Vice President Mike Pence who complained that Flynn hadn't been fully forthcoming with him a media feeding frenzy followed. Even Hillary Clinton came out of hiding to radiate pleasure at the announcement of Flynn's firing. (At the Republican National Convention, he had joined chants of "lock her up.") We heard similar delight from media standard-bearers of the "dump Trump" movement CNN and The New York Times as well as among Trump's former rivals in the Republican primaries who continue to hold key positions on Capitol Hill.


The Early Roll-Out


Next came a stunning about-face in the early roll-out of Donald Trump's new foreign policy, which looked a lot like Barack Obama's old foreign policy. We heard presidential press secretary Sean Spicer say Trump "expected the Russian government to … return Crimea" to Ukraine.




Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)
Then we heard Defense Secretary James Mattis in Brussels (NATO headquarters), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Bonn (G20 Foreign Ministers meeting) and Vice President Pence in Munich (Security Conference) collectively pledge unswerving loyalty to the NATO alliance, insist that any new talks with Russia must be conducted from "a position of strength," and vow to hold Russia accountable for the full implementation of the Minsk Accords, meaning all sanctions stay in place pending that achievement which the Ukrainian government has consistently blocked while blaming Moscow.


Amid these signals of surrender from the Trump Administration suggesting continuation of the disastrous foreign policy of the last 25 years the newly revived enemies of détente on Capitol Hill added more anti-Russian sanctions and threats. In response to alleged violations by the Kremlin of the Treaty on Intermediate and Short-range Missiles (INF) dating back to 1987, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, introduced a bill enabling the re-installation of American nuclear-tipped cruise missiles in Europe. If enacted, this would undo the main achievements of disarmament from the Reagan years and bring us back to a full-blown Cold War.


These developments have unnerved even Trump's long-time loyalists. Some friendly pundits have claimed that Flynn was the sole adviser to Donald Trump urging accommodation with the Russians and that his departure dealt a fatal blow to détente. Others have urged the President to reconsider what they see as a collapse of will under intense pressure from the powerful neoconservatives and their liberal-hawk allies. Trump's backers reminded him of the disasters that the policies of American global hegemony have created in the Middle East and elsewhere.


Implicit in this well-meaning and sometimes condescending advice is a failure to understand the political acumen of Donald Trump and his entourage. He did not win the election on Nov. 8 by chance. It was the fruit of a more sophisticated calculation of voter support and Electoral College arithmetic than anyone else could muster. Trump also did not get his most contentious cabinet appointments Rex Tillerson at State, Betsy DeVos at Education and Jeff Sessions as Attorney General through the Senate confirmation hearings by luck. It was the fruit of hard work and brains in striking "deals" with political friends and foes.


No White Flag


Consequently, I view the present backtracking on Russia and retreat on a new foreign policy as a tactical repositioning, not the waving of a white flag. It is obvious that no progress on Trump's less-interventionist foreign policy is possible until the subversive plotters in the State Department, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI are sent packing. Arguably, some who broke the law in their haste to hobble Trump's presidency should be held legally accountable. Only if and when his back is secure can Trump begin changing policy.




President Barack Obama at the White House with National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Samantha Power (right), his U.N. ambassador. (Photo credit: Pete Souza)
With the end of the Obama presidency on Jan. 20, there was what might be called addition by subtraction at the State Department with the departures of political appointees who favored the neoconservative/liberal-hawk agenda, people such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a key architect of the Ukraine crisis, and Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, a chief advocate for the "regime change" war in Syria.


During Secretary Tillerson's maiden diplomatic voyage to Europe, more pink slips have been passed out to high-level officials on the State Department's "seventh floor," home to the post-9/11 "shadow government" first put in place by Vice President Dick Cheney and then more deeply entrenched during Hillary Clinton's stint as Secretary of State. On a related front, The New York Times has reported that Trump plans to appoint businessman Stephen Feinberg to evaluate and recommend reorganization of the intelligence agencies, viewed as a shake-up to restore order and loyalty to the Chief Executive.


At the same time, we may expect President Trump to rally public opinion around his administration and its policies, both domestic and foreign. His appearance at the Melbourne, Florida airport this weekend where thousands gathered to hear Trump is surely only the first of many such public demonstrations by his supporters.


Donald Trump remains in close contact with his supporter base across the country not only via social media but using weekly, at times daily questionnaires delivered by email and asking the respondents to prioritize his next possible moves. Surely, this grassroots support gives him the confidence to wage battles against the Establishment in a bold manner.


It also must be emphasized that Trump's pre-electoral and post-electoral commitment to détente is not an aberration in his political thinking. What so many people, including supporters, fail to understand is that detente is as essential to Trump for the sake of his domestic programs as detente was critical for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to implement his new thinking domestically in the 1980s.


Only via détente meaning an end to the permanent wars abroad with their heavy operational costs and the dismantling of the vast global network of U.S. military bases can Trump free up budgetary resources to finance his plans for massive U.S. infrastructure investments, modernizing the military, and addressing the needs of veterans. The sums involved are on the order of $600 billion annually which presently go to maintain some 800 military bases in 70 countries, bases which generate much anti-Americanism and entangle the U.S. in regional conflicts.


Gorbachev ultimately failed, squeezed between Moscow's own "deep state" resisting change and a "new order" of greedy opportunists who saw a chance to plunder Russia's riches. For Trump to succeed, he must not only overcome Washington's "deep state" with its vested interests in protecting the status quo but he must enlist the capitalist world's best minds to rebuild America's infrastructure and restore a more broad-based prosperity.


Whether Trump can accomplish such a daunting task is debatable, but he has shown over a long business career the ability to attract and motivate a small team of not more than a dozen devoted assistants to run a multi-billion-dollar real estate empire. Obviously running an enterprise as large and complex as the U.S. government and its interconnections with the domestic and global economies is far more difficult. But if he is to succeed, Trump will have to press ahead with his earlier plans for a new and less costly foreign and defense policy.

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