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News & analysis from Proletarian Internationalist Notes—news, reviews and analysis from a global perspective

The desire for the United States to do something about conflicts in the world is related to U.S. wealth and power. It is a reflection of U.S. hegemony. U.S. hegemony emerged when World War II, a major reason for the decline of noninterventionist conservativism, was decades in the past and the new, Cold War/Soviet justifications for intervention were falling apart figuratively and literally.

U.S. hegemony is connected to wealth obtained by exploiting other countries through trade. This mode of international exploitation became more important after Richard Nixon visited China and with China's counterrevolution and "opening up," both of which occurred later and had multiple causes. At the same time, economic isolationism can lead to war and not just trade wars.

Yet, it is isolationists -- including one who was with Nixon in China and laments some of the developments in trade and foreign policy -- who are among those Americans prominently opposing wars today.

The fact that many of these isolationists are more racist or anti-migrant in some ways than liberal warmongers isn't an accident. It isn't just a coincidence. That is true, however, only in that liberal and conservative warmongers, with less emphasis on an anti-immigration angle and on "reverse discrimination" and cultural concerns in pandering to white workers, have been in charge of the U.S. military for so long.

With no social basis for a socialist movement to come to prominence in the parasitic United States supporting a major reduction of military spending and shrinking of the whole gigantic imperialist state bureaucracy (made possible through the exploitation of the Third World), a resurgent right-wing noninterventionism was inevitable. "Socialist," "revolutionary" Bernie Sanders talked about "waste." Sanders didn't clearly support a net decrease in military spending and didn't support cutting the military to the extent even the U.S. Green Party's Jill Stein did, who still accepted a militaristic "defense" spending level in the hundreds of billions of dollars. (Calling for that cut as a Green, Stein got only 1.5 million votes in the 2016 election, about 2% of Hillary Clinton's vote total.)

Despite being hegemonic now, the United States creates and perpetuates conflicts. It promotes instability. It makes various governments weak or dependent. This didn't stop with the election of former U.S. president Barack Obama. What was new, though, was a Democrat -- whose approval rating was highest among liberal Democrats and blacks outside prison -- presiding over large-scale wars and invasions, and US$600+ billion Pentagon budgets, continuously for eight years. It was an accomplishment not matched by Bill Clinton and even some Republican presidents in recent decades. Because of the continuing negative impact of the Obama presidency on the U.S. antiwar movement, and because of the prevalence among liberals of a false so-called anti-fascism seeking unity with jingoists for the sake of eroding Trump's already-low popularity and Trump's weak/superficial support among Republicans relative to previous Republican presidents, U.S. isolationists have emerged as a prominent voice objecting to U.S. involvement in other countries.

The United Snakes has no true proletariat, and nobody being drafted into anti-communist wars now, so there was little reason to expect a genuine leftist alternative to emerge at the country level. What there is, is liberals and so-called leftists continuing to stoke economic populism, still verging on economic isolationism (as movements related to former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders or his campaign illustrate), with more emphasis on wage and income inequality issues and divorced from the political isolationism of someone like paleoconservative American leader Patrick Buchanan. It is practically Buchanan minus the noninterventionism, with social-democratic or liberal rhetoric added. Buchanan is more vocal in opposing immigration, but the U.S. so-called left has been opposing related globalization and trade agreements for decades and paved the way for the whole Sanders-Trump phenomenon. Many of these liberals and so-called leftists talk about "white nationalism" -- which is a trendy thing to do now -- and openly question the merits of trying to appeal to white workers, but they are no better than Buchanan and are worse in some aspects.

Even among Chican@s and New Afrikans (U.S. Black nation people) outside prison, the effect of Obama's presidency has been utter devastation in terms of opposing war. U.S. left-wing politics is mired in liberalism, integrationism and wars to such an extent that in all seriousness it has be noted that some conservatives oppose wars and support independence of nations more than many Chican@s and New Afrikans with full legal rights as U.$. citizens do. This may be unfavorably reminiscent of when some New Afrikan nationalists -- who opposed both hanging-tree lynchings and less obvious informal racism of people not wearing their hoods in racially mixed settings -- found something on which they could agree with the Klan. However, so-called leftists who for many years pandered to, united with and ideologically dovetailed and overlapped with isolationists, economic nationalists, and even KKK types, are among those still competing in close proximity economically to Pat Buchanan but now from an interventionist standpoint and with the most righteous-sounding postmodernist rhetoric.

"Paleoconservatism" is a term most non-Americans may still be unfamiliar with. Some view Trump as a Pat Buchanan (who ran for president three times before George W. Bush won) with better timing, for example, but paleoconservatism isn't really in control even at the White House. Its influence in Congress is limited, with some supposed ideological kin of Buchanan supporting interventions or military spending increases. Trump admitted to being a "militarist" almost two years ago, shortly after announcing his candidacy, and then proved it in combat terms spectacularly as president. In fact, though the idea of conservative Amerikans with some socially liberal views adopting noninterventionist positions is mildly interesting and Trump in campaigning projected a vague appearance of being influenced by both liberalism and paleoconservatism, Trump reminds one of a familiar trajectory -- often discussed in the context of neoconservatism during the George W. Bush presidency -- of liberals or ex-liberals who kept some of their liberal politics but found multiple wars and insurgencies they could support. By now, non-Amerikans should already understand the neoconservatism phenomenon and its historical context of perceived Cold War threats and prioritization of those threats, which were replaced with new justifications after the Soviet Union disappeared. They should also know that U.S. isolationism predates World War II and the U.S. movement opposing entry into that war, and the reasons for isolationism's decline. They should know that U.S. noninterventionism had pro-fascist potential in the context of World War II, and at that time included supposed socialists who opposed having an international united front against fascism, thought some U.S. proletariat was about to overthrow capitalism, or were amenable to the idea of allowing Germany to defeat a supposedly degenerated Soviet Union. (Although, there may have been good reasons to oppose the Amerikans' entering the war during a certain brief interval.) The resurgence of isolationism in the wake of Obama's presidency continuing what neoconservatives were doing in many cases, though, is a new reality that must be understood. It must be examined carefully and not just as supposed evidence of the rise of fascism involving deceptive noninterventionist rhetoric or a pro-Russia alternative to the dominant NATO white internationalism.

Long-term interests, and short-term trade-offs limiting or expanding the implementation of interventionist foreign policy

Instead of sacrificing the antiwar movement for the sake of discrediting a Republican and winning elections in 2018 and 2020, isolationists are suggesting a better trade-off: tolerating an appearance of Trump success in bringing back jobs, for the sake of opposing wars that may not benefit anyone in the long term.

The impetus would be the threat of war posed by provocations and pressures on a weaker Donald Trump, whether Trump takes the initiative on some military and domestic political attacks or not. It hasn't been convincingly shown by anyone that a weaker Trump would be less likely to go to war or expand ongoing wars, and that Trump's replacement would be a dove like Obama wasn't. Lower U.S. favorability is a good thing and so is lower U.S. leader favorability internationally, but when U.S. whites or conservative and liberal warmongers are dissatisfied that isn't necessarily a good thing.

If there is some job growth, that may be enough to help Trump in popularity among many whites. Some job growth attributable to Trump -- not so much that it could be like a bribe to support war -- may be enough to satisfy isolationists if Trump doesn't start a big war. Though isolationists may find reasons to support ISIS warmongering as Buchanan has, regrettably, isolationists prioritizing avoidance of war may be satisfied even if they believe the credit given to Trump for job growth is undeserved to some extent.

Of relevance to U.S. strategic interests and the noninterventionism of an Amerikan minority worried about jobs and war is the story of the month about southern Korea, the sixth-largest U.S. trading partner. Perhaps even more significant than the predictable election of a new U.S. puppet, with a different rhetorical approach to northern Korea, is that even if Koreans in the south wanted to increase economic ties with Koreans in the north, to decrease the GDP gap and support reunification, the United States would be against it.(1) That is actually old news in the sense that the United States doesn't really support peace on the Korean Peninsula or strong relations between other countries in Asia, and has been oppressing Koreans as a whole. The disagreement between the Amerikans and many Koreans in the south has just been particularly pronounced lately due to recent U.S. rhetoric.

As some southern Koreans are saying, having to host U.S. troops, weapon systems and bases and then not being allowed to have normal capitalist relationships with millions of people in their own nation is in fact colonialism bordering on old-type colonialism. That is true even if southern-Korean and international economic ties with the DPRK would make the DPRK more open to neocolonial exploitation, which would inevitably occur in international trade with or without foreign investment. Most U.S. isolationists don't claim to oppose colonialism as socialists. But putting weapon systems in a country that doesn't want them, to defend allies either supposedly or actually, and risking war and blowback by doing so, shouldn't concern socialists and left-wing "anti-imperialists" only. It is a typical example of the kind of action that isolationists oppose.

The United States has economic and strategic military reasons to maintain countries' conflicts with the DPRK and the lack of reunification. Similarly, it has economic and strategic reasons to maintain the conflict in Palestine though there is no real question of uniting with the relatively rich people there, the Israelis, except maybe against corruptive Amerikan influence and U.S. interference with trade and other relations with other countries. Hamas recently started supporting a two-state outcome officially, while reserving the right to liberate the rest of the Palestinian nation's territory.(2) The context of this decision has been discussed on this website extensively. The United States promotes Fatah-Hamas conflict in various ways and supports the two-state solution less than even Hamas and Iran support it.

There are situations in which peace and stability can have a reactionary meaning, true. There should be pressure on governments that collaborate with the Amerikans, and nobody should support the status quo of U.S. hegemony. Letting the Amerikans in to deal with that cancer, ISIS (which, like phony-Marxists, vainly prioritizes the overthrow of local governments and wickedly collaborates with the satanic Amerikans), is unwise. But when the United States hampers peace processes to this extent, promotes instability to this extent, and opposes unity within oppressed nations to such a degree, there is less reason for Palestinians and Koreans to oppose peace and stability. A focus on working with various countries to oppose U.S. hegemony, not supporting fake revolutions against local or regional governments, becomes necessary. It is possible precisely because the disappearance of inter-imperialist conflict is a myth, and because people who are or were in power in oppressed countries years after U.S. invasions can start challenging or questioning the status quo at least as much as people in second-rate imperialist countries do. Even neocolonial governments in the Third World have some autonomy, so overthrowing them and replacing them with other governments that will inexorably develop their own problems as long as U.S. hegemony exists may be unwise. The governments may need to be redirected (to abandon an alliance with the United States or oppose the United States more firmly), but working with the neoconservatives and liberal militarists and warmongers that U.S. isolationists claim to oppose should be unthinkable.

There can be and are international united fronts against the United States. The strong ones that are necessary are still developing, but there is no real leftist movement in the United States that can replace international anti-Amerikanism. Even the U.S. liberal antiwar movement has been utterly ruined, thanks to eight years of Obama war presidency. So, the United States does have durable interests holding back progress in the Middle East and East Asia, and there isn't much opposing that internally.

However, Trump has more leeway to avoid attacking Korea than some are suggesting.

Economist Kenneth Rogoff wrote, in an article published two months ago by the Guardian, that "the globalisation train has long since left the station, and the idea that one can turn it back is utterly naive."(3) Rogoff was saying Trump didn't have the ability to deliver on protectionist promises without ruining Amerikans' living standards. Trump, Rogoff said, could still offer China "a more open trade policy" as an incentive to cooperate on Korea, instead of threatening to start a trade war. In other words, Trump may not have been able to rock the boat too much with China in the first place, in economic relations.

Fast-forward to Trump at the end of April seemingly claiming implicitly that he had converted his "currency manipulator" rhetoric against China into effective pressure on China in another area, even if he might have done nothing that ended China's alleged currency manipulation.(4) "I mean, they were absolute currency manipulators before. But somebody said, "Oh, you didn't call him a currency manipulator." Now, you and I are just talking about how he's working -- I believe that President Xi is working to try and resolve a very big problem, for China also." "I think that, frankly, North Korea is maybe more important than trade. Trade is very important. But massive warfare with millions, potentially millions of people being killed? That, as we would say, trumps trade." "Okay? You understand what I'm saying." To some isolationists, avoiding war is more important than trade and jobs, but of course that isn't what Trump was really supporting. It was just a U.S. president again justifying aggression and bullying in terms of avoiding a more deadly outcome.

It is unfortunate Trump said that right before the April U.S. jobs report was released, though Trump did celebrate when the report came out. Of course, liberals supposedly critical of "America First" wanted to give Obama the credit. After all, "Buy American" Obama also supported protectionism to an extent and violated the trade agreements that Trump openly opposed. Like flip-flopper Trump has, Obama opposed NAFTA when he was running for president in 2008 and criticized alleged flip-flopper Hillary Clinton on that issue. Pat Buchanan and the left wing of white nationalism and U.S. international economic parasitism share responsibility for this trend, but it is possible for unemployment to decrease without drastic protectionist action. There may be implications for avoiding some military attacks.

Rasmussen Reports is saying in an article published today that Trump's approval index is at -19.(5) It hasn't been that low since April 10 and has never been lower. Yet, the percentage of Amerikans who know somebody "out of work and looking for a job" is reportedly at the lowest its been at since March 2010.

It is possible to ruin economic relations and increase the risk of war incrementally. And it is possible to claim some small successes, that become fodder for ridicule, with jobs at individual companies. Trump continues to be criticized for his claims of achievement in keeping and creating jobs. A dramatic change within a matter of a few months is more difficult. Since Trump may not have been really able to do much on trade other than be more "globalist" than predecessors and lose the support of his base while gaining supporters in other groups, a question arises as to whether there has actually been a trade-off from the point of view of people opposed to protectionism. It may be that cooperating with the United States on Korea may not be necessary to avoid protectionism. That would be important to know if that is in fact the case. People could be foolish for tolerating U.S. bullying or aggression to avoid an all-out trade war that won't happen anyway.

Also, exaggerating Trump's flexibility on trade -- even discussing whether Trump should offer China a more open trade policy benefiting Amerikans, to secure China's cooperation on U.S. Korea policy -- may make Trump look like he has less freedom of action on Korea than he actually does. Trump has more flexibility on Korea than it may appear. Again, there could be mistakes if one doesn't understand this. Nobody should be arrogantly telling DPRK leader Kim Jong-un to back down and treating northern Koreans as if they were more responsible than Amerikans for the situation, if the Amerikans could save face without attacking Korea. Trump could use the excuse that the south now has a new leader who wants to try an economic approach. Nobody should be pressuring Trump to do something about Korea or to not let Koreans do something.

Pat Buchanan was saying a few weeks ago that there was actually a trade-off, at least a latent one, and that Trump was abandoning "America First."(6) As a result, according to Buchanan, "[e]ither [Kim Jong-un] backs away from building atomic bombs and long-range missiles or Trump and his generals must make good on their warnings."

Various commentators have said the same thing about the escalation of rhetoric. One difference is that while some support violent so-called world revolution as a matter of principle and try to pass off their warmongering as a kind of lofty internationalist duty, Buchanan said, "Why, 64 years after the Korean War, a quarter-century after the Cold War, are we still obliged to go to war to defend South Korea from a North with one-half the South's population and 3 percent of its gross domestic product?" Buchanan called Kim Jong-un a "militarist dictator," but Buchanan at least verbally rejects U.S. wars and interventions in most cases. Buchanan's isolationism is commendable in this context. Unfortunately, various liberals and so-called leftists in the United States have (of course while managing to say some obligatory words critical of U.S. foreign policy) not only maligned Third World country governments to an extreme degree and publicized and justified violent insurrections against them in front of Amerikans itching to unload on someone, but also shamelessly welcomed U.S. missile attacks in the Middle East as an opening for progress. They easily become involved in neoconservative and liberal war projects though there is no fascist danger that could conceivably justify that notwithstanding various Amerikans' attempts to invent an imaginary "Islamic" one.

Buchanan may be wrong about Trump's sacrificing "America First" to achieve undesirable interventionist goals. And, with some Amerikans, there is a fine line between disapproving of interventions generally and being disinterested in world affairs in a way that can lead to going along with wars. But if white trash ideologues like Buchanan believe there is a trade-off and that there is insufficient reason to meddle in the affairs of other countries -- affairs that supposedly have nothing to do with the United States -- nobody should disabuse them of the notion.

Either Trump is erratic, or he isn't. Either Trump is a singular narcissist, or he isn't. If Trump is as erratic and narcissistic as many say he is, it is possible Trump may avoid attacking Korea if there is another way to boost approval ratings. If Trump wants to take credit for recent employment and market performance reports(7), people should let it be.

At least with Buchanan there is some consistency on certain kinds of wars and Buchanan may not particularly care about any country's total income as long white workers have jobs. Democrats tend to want to have things both ways. They won't let Trump take credit for stock market gains supposedly representing exploitation of U.$. workers, but they will demand a $15 minimum wage for the white workers -- more than Buchanan does. They call for that on the basis that U.$. workers should have more of the fantastic national wealth they are supposedly producing. Democrats want to be known as being more skeptical than conservatives about war, but want to be considered superior to isolationist conservatives in war competencies. When it comes to the politics of pro-war liberals supporting a $15 minimum wage for all Amerikkkans, and the politics of Buchanan-style racists opposing interventionism, there is a difference there.

It doesn't mean the privileged labor aristocracy of U.$. workers is other than a reactionary class with a tendency to support both wars and fascism. The grassroots success of so-called traditionalist conservatism is a symptom of an Amerikan search for alternatives, leading to worse and worse outcomes in the absence of structures for long-term progress in either foreign or domestic policy. There is just the ascension of some groups into ultimately unsustainable exploiter and oppressor privilege. Internationally, the United States has a long way to fall economically and politically. It has a lot of wealth to waste on policy experiments that may increase the risk of war, and no real domestic proletariat producing that wealth. There are many more crises and conflicts coming for Amerikans to react to in stupid, adventurous and reactionary ways. But, with politics generally headed in a fascist direction in the United States, and with long-term problems in trying to restore a liberal antiwar movement of questionable effectiveness even in the George W. Bush years, certain differences become more important.

Since Amerikans are generally reactionary and elected Democrats and Republicans may be getting worse and worse in certain respects, it is increasingly mistaken to assume Democrats and liberals are better than those conservatives who are traditionally against large bureaucracies and international entanglements. Left-wing pro-war, pro-large-public-sector populism is in fact one of the worst tendencies, and it easily unites with right-wing pro-war movements with less emphasis on mandatory wage increases and arguably more priority given to interventions than to rolling back the policy victories of liberals who work with them.

In terms of promises and trade-offs: Trump never promised to enrich mutual fund managers in particular. He did promise to give Amerikans jobs. Because of the nature of what is promised and the possibility of debating the causes of job growth, it is possible for Trump to appear accomplished in this area without doing much. With a Republican-controlled Congress, Trump couldn't deliver expanded abortion rights or increased gun control even if he wanted to -- either as a tangible bribe to support war for those who didn't already support it, or to gain approval -- but Trump can appear to deliver on jobs to a variety of Amerikans. Some Trump supporters won't care if Trump attacks or expands involvement in another country, which has already happened repeatedly, but employment gains may satisfy many Amerikans whether they support war or not. Anyone in the media who is really against war should be able to tolerate an increase in Trump popularity related to job growth, especially if Trump doesn't ruin trade with other countries.

The trade-offs where people embrace dangerous warmongering and nauseating provocations and headlines, for the sake of keeping Obamacare etc. or winning an election, are horrible, and some of the goals are unworthy in the first place. Many are seemingly like brainless social media bots, still stuck in campaign mode or not caring about the effect their words and actions are having in the new environment. There is no such thing as anti-fascism that competes to be more pro-war than the U.S. president or an alleged fascist, and now-president Trump has already proved willing to attack countries to gain approval and change headlines. Instead of encouraging U.S. workers to prioritize and be patient about job growth and oppose war, and trying to get liberals to pay more attention to the potential environmental consequences of anti-Russia jingoism (leading to war against either Russia or countries other than Russia), phony "anti-fascists" are busy trying to include everyone from Hillary Clinton followers to Lindsey Graham in the "Resistance" while stoking the flames of economic agitation more than even isolationist white nationalist Buchanan is. These so-pure, so-not-hypocritical, so-anti-fascist upstanding people accuse right-wing noninterventionists -- not the various anti-Trump warmongers -- of being opportunist, as if opposing war for any reason were some great crime and unpatriotic treason.

Their economic demands on behalf of U.$. workers are arguably more important to them, relative to opposing war, than jobs are important to Buchanan. Buchanan is capable of writing articles that emphasize the political (as to opposed to economic) aspect of his isolationism and oppose wars without supporting class warfare of privileged reactionary U.$. workers against Amerikan exporters. Those who say war isn't the only issue, as if there were already a strong liberal antiwar movement, and then robotically repeat rhetoric against "the 99%," while calling or all but calling for populist militarist Trump to launch more cruise missiles, are utterly worthless and don't deserve to win elections. The isolationists saying it's either "jobs" or "World War III" may be underestimating future job growth from various causes, but they are doing better than the liberals and so-called leftists who are silent about U.S. aggression or repeat State Department/White House justifications for it.

Two weeks ago, Buchanan went so far as to say Iran's foreign minister had a point in saying, "Breaking: Our Navy operates in — yes, correct — the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico. Question is what US Navy doing 7,500 miles from home."(8) When motherfucking Pat Buchanan is quoting Iranian officials favorably while "anti-racist" liberals are favoring -- blatantly in some cases -- military action or State Department/Treasury Department gangsterism against a real or perceived Iranian-Russian axis, you know things are fucked up. But not unpredictably so, because it was always conceivable that socially conservative Amerikans with respect for monotheistic religious devotion could end up opposing racism against Muslim countries in practice more than some activist-atheist liberals do. The liberals and fake Marxists still in 2017 welcoming U.S. destroyers in the Persian Gulf as a supposed way of bringing wimmin's rights and socialism to the region are pieces of shit in comparison to bigot Pat Buchanan. The demonization of Putin may not lead to nuclear war with Russia, but it is leading to war with other countries.

Pieces are in place. Preparations have already been made. Trump has pointed to job gains as supposed evidence of "making America great again" and sought ways to gain approval without another high-profile missile or bomb attack, but opportunists refuse to let Trump have some easy points and seem committed to precipitating an apocalypse and taking advantage on the way there for dubious purposes.

Buchanan supported Bush's reelection in 2004, saying that John Kerry was no better on any question. Arguably, Buchanan didn't have to endorse anyone. And Buchanan supported Trump despite Trump's militaristic spending proposals and rhetoric against the Iran nuclear deal. There are other reasons to be skeptical about paleoconservatism, such as an inclination of some to view Amerika's allies and partners as manipulating U.S. leaders and foreign policy. Buchanan's decision about Democrats in 2004, though, almost seems prescient given what happened during Kerry's time as Secretary of State under Obama and during Hillary Clinton's tenure in the same position, and given the ensuing consequences for the antiwar movement.

With a Republican as the president now, liberals in the United States have a chance to start opposing war again. They aren't taking the opportunity. Instead, even the so-called leftists are behaving as though the United States weren't already hegemonic and the Soviet Union still existed as a social-fascist danger, and that leftists and liberals had to unite with the contemporary equivalent of 1960s anti-communists and bigots to fight a war that even anti-communist, bigoted isolationists opposed. These "leftists" helping to manufacture fantastic threats to mobilize the Amerikkkan population are worse than even the U.S. noninterventionists were who quickly lost the argument after the Pearl Harbor attack, because even in the context of World War II one can criticize only to a certain extent the Amerikans opposing the militarists of their own imperialist country.

Globally, the number-one threat in the world today -- whether it is already fascist or not, or will or won't be fascist in the near future -- is clearly the United States, not some Muslim, Arab or Eurasian bogeyman. And, contrary to fanciful and fearful thinking, U.S. hegemony is nowhere near being gone yet. The more progress the world makes toward ending U.S. hegemony, the more frenziedly Amerikans will deny the realities of Amerikan hegemony, support siding with the United States and its collaborators, and come up with reasons to support U.S. attacks and abhorrent trade-offs. U.S. liberals, and pseudo-leftists with rhetoric against capitalism and imperialism, will play a particular role in opposing noninterventionism including right-wing noninterventionism. ◊