Homo sapiens is estimated to have appeared some 200,000 years ago, emerging from the African savannah only about sixty thousand years ago. It wasn’t until the early twentieth century that he came to believe that he should put an end to war, but in the country most able, materially, to lead the way, those efforts appear to have lasted less than a hundred years.
When America’s forefathers landed in the New World in 1620, they did not create a democracy, but were lead by an autocratic churchman, William Bradford, under the terms of a ‘compact’ to:“remain loyal subjects to King James, despite their need for self-governance; live in accordance with the Christian faith, creating one society and work together to further it, creating and enacting laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices for the good of the colony, and to abide by those laws.”
Throwing off their king, the Pilgrims bowed only to God. Inevitably, some rose above others, however, the colonists did not begin to think in terms of democracy until one hundred and fifty years later, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. By that time, Europe having produced Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, Kant, the emphasis was on the requirement that individuals — through a democratic process — approve of the power held over them. A contemporary, Adam Smith, believed that the thriving of each would ensure the well-being of all.
In the following century, Smith’s notion having failed to be proven correct, Hegel, Feuerbach, Darwin, Marx, Engels and Nietzsche, claimed that the role of government, beyond maintaining security, was to ensure the welfare of each citizen. These conflicting certainties have become central to the modern era, including in the standoff between Sunni Arabia and Shia Iran.
Although the Soviet Union tried to ensure economic equality, it expired almost a generation ago. Mao morphed into Xi, and liberalism too, acquired a ‘new’ form, taking itself global. Mean-while, earlier concerns that humans were becoming slaves to their inventions were followed by evidence that they had become the victims of money, transformed into ever more sophisticated arms, as war became a superb money-machine — inevitably followed by the equally wealth-generating reconstruction of war-ravaged nations.
Americans are well aware that the election to the White House of a crafty businessman marked the ultimate failure of democracy, (even if they blame the Russians). But it is only a year later that a few commentators are waking up to the fact that the new president wants to substitute personal deals for war-making. An astute friend of mine said months ago that the reason why Washington cannot figure out what to do about President Trump is that it assumes he is playing football, when in reality he is playing baseball, whose rules are different. (Any two games could be mentioned, however, the irony is that football is a violent sport compared to baseball, and Trump doesn’t see the need for violence in order to make deals, even if, when taunted by Kim Jong Un, he cannot resist bragging about America’s destructive capabilities.)
With the most powerful nation ever to have existed failing to shed the foundational mistrust of everything foreign that began with the Pilgrims, breaches of the international peace became increasingly lethal, making humanity truly desperate to end wars, yet powerless to do so. Claims of Moscow’s so-called ‘bad behavior’ allow the US to brand it as an enemy, when in fact what we are witnessing is America’s determination to remain international top dog. This goal requires that communications by the President and his team with foreign countries (who, by definition can never be entirely trusted), are viewed as nothing short of treasonous.
Never mind that pre-inauguration conversations, most likely intended to reassure Russian President Vladimir Putin that the sanctions imposed by the outgoing American President, Barack Obama, would be reversed as soon as Trump moved into the White House, were not intended to be political, but rather to serve the President’s megalomaniacal need to build monuments to himself, this time by erecting a tower in Moscow.
The Beltway continues to wonder out loud why on earth President Trump would want to “be nice to Vladimir Putin”, incapable of entertaining the idea that his organization’s interactions with Russian officials, whether from show-biz or the Kremlin, starting on the sidelines of Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, were intended to further his personal goal, as was plainly spelled out by a business associate Felix Sater “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it” (the permission to build a tower)….I will get all of Putin’s team to buy into this.”
Whether or not President Putin envisaged a quid pro quo in which, in return for getting his Tower in Moscow, President Trump would steer the American ship of state away from the pursuit of Lone Ranger hegemony, the one-percent of twenty-first century Homo Sapiens Americanus have obviously trashed the goal of getting along with other nations in order to avoid terminal war. They will get rid of any leader who, by advocating for peace among nations, would derail their wet dream of permanent American rule.
Trump will not be impeached because he gives tax breaks to the one percent — or even because he winks at white supremacy, but because he prefers to build instead of blowing up or infecting with biological weapons the largest country in the world that could eventually pose a threat to our hegemony. The plan of the deep state, spelled out in the Wolfowitz Doctrine, was drafted in the nineteen nineties and has never been superseded as official America’s foreign, i.e.., military policy. And that’s why, even before being inaugurated, the current American president and his pro-Russian (and therefore pro-human survival) aides, were being investigated. Recently, Paul Manafort, who is under house arrest, was accused by the Special Counsel carrying out that task, of trying to write an oped piece that presumably would tall his side of the story, with the help of a Russian ‘deemed to have ties to Russian intelligence’.
And the worst thing that Washington can say about a Russian is that he or she has ‘ties to Russian intelligence’, in an obligatory reminder of President Putin’s first job.
Deena Stryker is an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.
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