Since the 2016 elections, the Democratic Party has been calling out President Trump for his alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even after the investigation of Trump for “collusion” has been concluded, new hearings regarding Trump’s dealing with Ukraine have been turned into a festival of anti-Russian phrase mongering.
Meanwhile, Trump is waging a trade war with China. The White House Trade Council includes Peter Navarro, an economic flimflam man whose entire career has consisted of blaming China for all of America’s woes. While Republicans love “law and order” at home, they seem to line up behind the Hong Kong protesters without question as they light people on fire and attack police officers.
Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York City Mayor who recently announced a Presidential run as a centrist Democrat, speaks positively of Xi Jinping. Furthermore, despite it not showing up in his policies, Trump has made positive statements about the Russian President and expressed a desire to improve US-Russia relations.
So, what is going on here? It’s actually quite easy to understand. All it takes is an understanding of the Russian and Chinese economies, the US Deep State apparatus, and the different interests among the circles of American power.
The Eurasian Alternative – Two Economic Giants, Different Markets
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia and China were both deeply poor countries. Their economies were largely agrarian. The people were mostly illiterate and routinely died of starvation. Russia and China were both more or less dominated by western capitalist nations. This changed due to one thing: socialism.
Following the 1917 revolution, and most specifically following the 1928 implementation of “Socialism in One Country” and 5-year economic plans, Russia became an industrial superpower. By the mid-1930s, Russia had huge state run industries, the country had been electrified, and the world was marveling at what was being accomplished while the west experienced the “great depression.”
In the 1990s, after the defeat of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced huge economic catastrophe. Mass unemployment, drug addiction, suicide, human trafficking, what US economist Andre Gunder Frank called “economic genocide.” Free market policies implemented under the advice of Jeffrey Sachs led to the country being looted by figures like Bill Browder, BP, Hermitage Capital Management, and British Petroleum.
However, at the dawn of the 21st Century, Russia restructured itself with Putin’s economic re-orientation. As President, Putin put his academic thesis into practice and made Gazprom and Rosneft into gigantic state controlled mega corporations. The result was an economic reboot that raised wages, reduced poverty, and restored the industrial output to pre-1991 levels.
Russia’s economy is now centered around state control of oil and gas. Russia exports huge amounts of energy, and the proceeds are utilized in order to keep the economy churning along.
China’s 1949 revolution also resulted in the building up of state-run industries. With 5 year economic plans, Mao Zedong led China to build its first steel mills, new power plants, and basic industrialization. The 1961 Sino-Soviet split was a significant setback, and after a more than a decade of attempting to build an ultra-egalitarian and “pure” version of socialism with the Cultural Revolution, China began reorienting toward “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and a large market sector.
Like Russia, China has an economy centered around huge, state controlled mega corporations. However, unlike Russia, these are not energy exporting companies, but manufacturers. No telecommunications manufacturer on earth is larger that Huawei technologies. The Chinese State Controlled steel industry produces over 50% of the steel on earth. China leads the world in the production of electric cars, smart phones, and computers.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Russia and China were captive markets, dependent on the western countries and dominated by Wall Street and London’s corporate monopolies. Today, Russia and China are competitors with the western capitalists. Across the world, as the Eurasian Economic Union and the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank expand, many developing countries are choosing to sign on with Russia and China. Russia and China are cutting into the economic hegemony of western corporations. This is the basis of the hostility to them from both Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats – Big Oil & Intel Agencies
The Rockefeller oil dynasty were known as Republicans during the early Cold War, but the far-right of the GOP always held them with suspicion. It was the Rockefeller Family, owners of Exxon-Mobile, the modern day incarnation of John D. Rockfeller’s Standard Oil, that created the sexual revolution. The Rockefellers funded the sex research of Alfred Kinsey, arguing that homosexuality and promiscuity was more prevalent and normal, and urging the lifting of traditional constraints on behavior. Prior to that the Rockefeller family had bankrolled Margaret Sanger creation of the “Birth Control League,” today known as Planned Parenthood.
The Rockefeller family has long been obsessed with sexual libertarianism. Their position in the Republican Party was based on a love affair with free markets and a hostility to labor unions. However, as the Democratic Party moved in a free market direction during the late 1980s, with Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council, the Rockefeller increasingly found the USA oldest major party to be less odious.
During the Obama years, the big four super majors, Exxon-Mobile, BP, Shell, and Chevron pretty clearly lined up behind Obama, while their primary opponent, the fracking corporations, lined up behind the Republicans. The “Fracking Cowboys” and the Koch Brothers continue to throw their money into Republican causes like PragerU, Turning Points USA, etc. Meanwhile, Rockefeller linked foundations and institutions such as the Ford Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Open Society Institute, tend to put out a socially liberal message critical of Trump.
This divide with big oil (the 4 super majors) behind the democrats and little oil (frackers and drillers) behind Republicans, lines up pretty well in recent years. However, it also points to factions within the US state apparatus.
Not only do Rockefeller linked think-tanks and institutions push a liberal message, but they are also heavily involved in the covert efforts of US intelligence agencies. George Soros efforts to topple socialist governments, the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the soft-power apparatus through which the US government peddles influence and destabilizes anti-imperialist countries, has money from big oil all over it.
The Democratic Party as it exists in 2019, as the party of sexual liberation, environmental regulations to restrict the activities of frackers and maintain big oil’s monopoly, is very much an expression of big oil. Big oil sees Russia, a major oil and gas exporter, as a competitor. They aim to push Russia off the market, along with the fracking cowboys, in order to maintain “energy dominance” for the big 4 supermajors.
The Democratic Party is also the party of the intelligence agencies, setting up NGOs, promoting destabilization in the name of “human rights,” and hoping to “win without war.” The intel agencies have long pushed a strategy of utilizing proxy forces and avoiding full on invasions and bombings in order to preserve the image of the United States.
The Democratic Party seems to favor maintaining a covert US alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Jazeera, the voice of the Qatar monarchy, seems to push a pro-democratic party message. The Obama Presidency, in which an African-American man with a Muslim name “reset” relations with the Middle East, and played the role of “good cop” attempting to heal the discord of the Bush years, fit the CIA playbook completely. The Intel Agencies favor a Mr. Nice Guy, racially inclusive, apologetic, and friendly face for US foreign policy.
Republicans – Manufacturers & the Military Industrial Complex
The Pentagon’s approach toward foreign policy is the exact opposite of the intel agencies. The Pentagon contractors push “peace through strength.” Their bread is buttered with big bombs and cruise missiles, huge research budgets to develop new weapons systems, and most especially through the sale of military hardware to US-aligned countries.
This of course, leads to an alliance between the US military and American manufacturers. The term “military industrial complex” was made famous by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the post-World War 2 years, it seemed the USA was adopting the economic theories not just of John Maynard Keynes but also of Nazi economist Hjalamar Schatch. Huge amounts of military spending stimulate the US economy and keep dollars flowing to Wall Street as the US public gets poorer.
One of the primary founders of Republican Party activism in the United States is Bernie Marcus. Marcus is the owner of Home Depot, an American hardware store chain that has replaced the small local businesses across the United States. Go into the shelves of Bernie Marcus’s big box tool sheds and it is hard to find a single product that isn’t manufactured by a Pentagon contractor such as Caterpillar or General Electric. The DeVos Foundation, another founder of Republican Party linked voices, is owned by the family of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who herself is heavily tied in with military contractors. Her brother is none other than Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater (Academi).
American manufacturers are closely tied in with the military industrial complex and the Republican party, and their focus is not on the energy markets. The fact that China operates as a huge state controlled booming center of production makes it the primary threat to the American manufacturers. The military industrial complex also sees lot of money to be made in selling weapons all over Asia in a “build-up” against China.
In the tech world, many have been surprised to see that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has sparked up an unlikely friendship with Donald Trump. Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies seem very hostile to Republicans, and Apple seems to present itself as a liberal corporation. So, what has sparked this new friendship?
The answer is simple. Trump is waging an all-out war on Apple’s primary competitor, Huawei.
As Trump works to crush Huawei technologies, Apple is benefiting. Google, Twitter, and Facebook see China has a vast untapped market. They seek to improve US-China relations, in the hopes that the 1 billion people living in China can go online and start making revenue for the tech giants. Apple, on the other hand, sees China a market rival, manufacturing higher quality phones and threatening their monopoly.
Globalist Imperialism vs. The Eurasian Alternative
While Republicans emphasize opposition to China, and Democrats emphasize opposition to Russia, both parties oppose both countries, and echo the same opposition to multipolarity. The US economy functions as part of an economic order described in Lenin’s book “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.”
It is an economic order in which major banks and monopolies in western countries reap “super profits” by “super exploiting” the rest of the world. Countries are kept poor, so these huge multinational corporations can stay rich. The world is carved up by different corporations into “spheres of influence” and captive markets. Impoverished countries are prevented from developing their own manufacturing, energy production, and independent economies. Impoverished countries remain as “client states” purchasing from western countries, and doing business from a place of weakness and dependency.
Russia and China have broken out of this economic prison. By seizing control of their industries and natural resources, and utilizing the government to plan production, they have been able to experience un-precedented economic growth and poverty alleviation. An economic miracle is currently happening across the Eurasian subcontinent. Places like Central Asia, the Russian Far East, Tibet and Xinjiang are being lit up with electricity. Modern housing, manufacturing jobs, railway, and other modernizations are being brought to millions of people.
The economic relationship that Russia and China have with developing countries in places like Africa and South America is quite different than the relationships of western countries. “Win-Win cooperation” seems to define the activities of the One Belt, One Road initiate of China and the Eurasian Economic Union led by Russia. Russia and China become wealthier at the same time that the countries they trade with become wealthier.
Instead of reducing countries to weak captive markets, Russia and China build infrastructure in order to stimulate the domestic economies. Bolivia, through doing business with Russia and China, had the highest rate of GDP growth of any country in South America in 2018. While Honduras and Guatemala flounder as US client states, socialist Nicaragua, trading with Russia and China, has had huge achievements in reducing poverty and building up the domestic economy.
Russia and China are a threat to the entire system of western capitalism. They discredit mythology of western economists like Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan by proving that state-planned, growth based economies are preferable to “greed is good” “laissez-faire” free trade.
Despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans have a different target in the short term, in the long term, they oppose both Russia and China, as well as any other country that dares pose a challenge to Wall Street and London monopolists.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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