The Chaos of "Going Legitimate"
After only two weeks of Donald
Trump’s presidency, there are some bizarre and frightening contradictions
appearing in American foreign policy, as summed up by Daniel McAdams:
[There has been quite] a disappointment for those who
expected President Trump to make a clear break with the interventionist,
warmongering foreign policy of his two immediate predecessors. The Trump
Administration threatened Iran several times--including bizarrely putting the
country “on notice,” conducted more than 150 drone strikes, launched a
disastrous commando raid in Yemen that killed scores of civilians, threatened
continued sanctions on Russia over Crimea, and threatened China over the South
China Sea. Warmongers seem to be in the driving seat, driving the President
toward more, not less, American bombs overseas.[1]
With his eggshell ego, lack of
political experience, and tendency for imprecise and ill-considered utterances,
Trump may never deliver on the promise to build better relations with Russia.
His low approval ratings and his political weakness in Washington could easily derail
his foreign policy and send it in a disastrous direction.
In Trump’s recent interview on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly, the host
asked him why he wants to get along with Vladimir Putin, who, O’Reilly said,
was a “killer.” Instead of reproaching O’Reilly for the reckless allegation
that could harm relations between the two nuclear superpowers, Trump went along
with the premise and simply said that America has killers too. In a stunning
admission for a an American president, he dropped the myth of American
innocence and asked, “What, you think our country is so innocent?”
Some might call this progress, but the
statement carried with it no implication from Trump that we must renounce
violence and build an international system based on peaceful co-existence.
Instead, he simply acknowledged that the exercise of power in international
relations is just large-scale gangsterism. This was the theme that ran
throughout The Godfather when it
appeared as a novel and film in the early 1970s at the end of the Vietnam war.
A biographer of Marlon Brando explained its appeal then:
Puzo tapped the public’s appetite for rationality and
control, even at the hands of criminals. Readers [were] battered by too much
news, too much information about strife at home and abroad... It was as if they
needed to believe that violence made sense if you looked at it a certain way...
[Marlon Brando said the story] “...was about the corporate mind because the
Mafia is the best example of capitalists we have.”[2]
America seems to have lost this
healthy cynicism about politics and business, and, ironically, it is Hollywood
actors and filmmakers who seem most shocked by the rise of Donald Trump to the
presidency, even though they have made their fortunes with hundreds of films
and television dramas about the exercise of raw, unvarnished power. It is
Hollywood’s most profitable theme. At one point during the election campaign, the
actor who portrayed the young Don Corleone wanted to punch Donald Trump in the
face. Perhaps these actors always thought they were making cautionary tales,
but it turned out they were paving the way for life to imitate art.
For Trump his statement about
America’s lack of innocence is a truism that he cannot change, and probably
wouldn’t want to. What is different in politics now is that Trump is an outsider
who has penetrated the highest office of legitimate power. He is like Michael
Corleone, who always wanted to “go legitimate.” He succeeded and now it is as
if Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano is behind the desk in the Oval Office.
In The Godfather (Part 3) Michael Corleone tried to take a place in
the legitimate corporate world, but as he did so he realized he was outclassed
and outgunned by the viciousness of the Vatican, the bankers, and all other “pezzonovanti who have killed countless
millions of men in our lifetimes?”[3] Trump has attained power, and he
too is besieged by the elite insiders he has displaced and threatened. He has
always had the mentality and the speech patterns of a gangster, yet he is
speaking now from the highest office, to the alarm of the establishment society
that would not dare utter a naked truth about America not being innocent. They
are shocked that he has no filter and no restraint, no sophistication for
knowing what truths cannot be named. He just speaks as if he is Tony Soprano sitting
with his boys outside a Newark cafe. “So Putin’s a killer. Whaddayagonnado?”
Quotes from The Godfather Trilogy: “Politics
and crime, they’re the same thing”
In December 2016, when Barack Obama
erroneously said that Vladimir Putin was the former head of the Soviet KGB (not
the Russian FSB), he also stated in a context that was clearly referring to
Russia, “... when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our
elections ... we need to take action. And we will—at a time and place of our own
choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.”[4] The president was oblivious to the
danger that Russians might perceive any misfortune that might befall them as a
deliberate attack. They might, for example, think a power grid failure was
caused by computer malware inserted by an enemy.[5] Did Barack Obama not stop and
wonder if Vladimir Putin might be a superstitious man?
Don Corleone: But let me say this. I
am a superstitious man, a ridiculous failing but I must confess it here. And so
if some unlucky accident should befall my youngest son, if some police officer
should accidentally shoot him, if he should hang himself while in his jail
cell, if new witnesses appear to testify to his guilt, my superstition will
make me feel that it was the result of the ill will still borne me by some
people here. Let me go further. If my son is struck by a bolt of lightning I
will blame some of the people here. If his plane should fall into the sea or
his ship sink beneath the waves of the ocean, if he should catch a mortal
fever, if his automobile should be struck by a train, such is my superstition
that I would blame the ill will felt by people here. Gentlemen, that ill will,
that bad luck, I could never forgive. But aside from that let me swear by the
souls of my grandchildren that I will never break the peace we have made. After
all, are we or are we not better men than those pezzonovanti who have killed countless millions of men in our
lifetimes?
Michael Corleone: My father is no different
than any other powerful man, any man who is responsible for other people, like
a senator or a president.
Kay: How naive you sound!
Michael: Why?
Kay: Senators and presidents don’t
have men killed.
Michael: Oh? Who’s being naive, Kay?
In five years the Corleone family is going to be completely legitimate.
Italian politics have had these men [bankers
and Vatican priests] for centuries... They are the true Mafia... They have no
honor... Politics and crime, they’re the same thing.
_____
Now Putin is insulted and demanding
an apology from O’Reilly, and not, for the time being, from Trump for agreeing
with the premise that he is a killer. It doesn’t require much imagination to
see how quickly the plan to get along with Russia could turn south in a very
bad way. Warmongers in the American establishment, led by the likes of John
McCain, the raving mad senator from Arizona, are pushing for war with Iran,
Russia and China—all at the same time! McCain was in Ukraine recently giving
the green light to a restoration of hostilities in Donbass, which began on
schedule shortly after he left.[6] In years past, it would have been
an outrage to see such disregard from a congressman for the right of the
incoming president to set the direction of foreign policy. But at present the
American government is in an unprecedented state of chaos, with reckless, contradictory
policies bleeding from every orifice of the body politic.
These warmongers must be mad, but
for some reason the psychology profession in America is not tying itself in
knots over the agonizing question of whether they should break their ethical
code and offer a diagnosis of John McCain and other similarly deranged people
in positions of power, as they have done only for President Trump.[7]
Leaving aside the moral and legal
questions about the madness of threatening war, we can focus on how the these
threats of war endanger Americans, since this might be the only way to get
their attention.
It would be reckless for any
American to assume that all nuclear-armed nations would refrain from using
nuclear weapons unless they were first attacked by nuclear weapons. It is a
common belief that no nation would be foolish enough to abandon the “no first
use” doctrine, but if this were true, it would make no sense for nations,
especially weaker ones, to even have a nuclear deterrent. They want to deter a
conventional military attack, not just a nuclear attack, and for that
deterrence to be credible they have to remain ambiguous about the situations in
which they would use nuclear weapons. Even France, not a weak military power,
states in its doctrine that nuclear weapons would be used if the nation faced
an existential threat of any kind. In other words, if it were the last option
for avoiding complete defeat, they would use a nuclear weapon even if none had
been used against them.[8] If this is true of France, it must
be true of the other nuclear powers, especially those that could never defeat
the vastly superior conventional forces of America.
As a war with Iran could draw China
and Russia into the conflict, an American threat against any of these three
creates a possibility that these militarily weaker countries could be backed
into a situation in which they feel an existential threat, forcing them to
defend themselves with nuclear missiles. There is no telling what nuclear-armed
Israel would do if it were struck with an Iranian missile.
As for China, Trump’s consigliere
Steve Bannon stated in 2016, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five
to ten years.”[9] Although that was just opinion he
expressed before he was in a position of power, it is doubtful his view has
changed. The only bright spot in that utterance is that the word “war” is used
so casually in America where there is a war on drugs, a war on poverty, a war
on crime, and a culture war, among others. It could be that Bannon meant only
that there will be some disagreements. But if he means war, he too has lost his
mind.
Americans and the media outlets
loyal to government may cheerlead for this warmongering, regardless of the
cruelty, illegality and immorality of threatening to make war using the largest
military force that has ever existed. But they seem to have forgotten one
thing. A few enemy missiles will always get through. September 11, 2001 taught
Americans about the horror of mass, instantaneous murder of civilians, and
taught them that they are vulnerable to a world where they have sown much
hatred. But for the most part, their military interventions, especially since
the late 1980s, have had no consequences on the “homeland.” They have suffered
no invasions or pre-emptive drone attacks on the family gatherings of senators conspiring
to make war. Americans feel invulnerable, and so they have been able to live
unaware of the risk that they could provoke a nuclear attack, and of the fact
that nothing can defend them from a nuclear attack. The ABM shield might stop a
few. Others might miss their targets. But a few missiles will always get
through.
The
purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
- Albert Camus
For the sake of reminding Americans
of the danger they are flirting with by allowing warmongering congressmen to
speak for them, I cite a few passages from Nagasaki:
Life after Nuclear War, Susan Southard’s collection of oral histories of
surviving victims of the nuclear attack of August 9, 1945. Many people would
like to avoid an encounter with such descriptions of an unimaginable horror. We
would rather not think about it and instead hope that the same could not befall
us, but it might be a good thing if everyone forced themselves into a ritual
remembrance occasionally. We have to revisit Hiroshima and Nagasaki occasionally
in order to remain vigilant.
Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War
(Penguin Random House, 2015)
The air smelled of smoke and death.
As Yoshida had seen farther north, here, too, the riverbanks were piled high
with dead bodies. Corpses floated just below the surface of the river, “like
potatoes in a tub,” one survivor remembered, some facedown and others sinking
headfirst so only their feet were visible. When Nagano and her father
approached the Yanagawa Bridge, they halted at the sight of a dead horse
standing on all four legs, totally blackened, its head stretched upward. Nagano
clung to her father’s arm as they walked past it and crossed the bridge to get
closer to their house—but fires continued to block every entrance to their
neighborhood. (Page 59)
Family members poured into and
through the city from every direction and searched for anything, near or far,
that could orient them in the atomic plain. Two men argued loudly over a
woman’s scorched body found between their houses, each claiming that she was
his wife. Another man pulled his still-breathing pregnant wife from under the
ruins of their house but she died as he placed her on a wooden plank. (Page 69)
A charred mother and infant lay dead
next to each other on a damaged streetcar platform. Inside mangled streetcars,
scorched bodies of passengers were seated as they had been at the moment of the
blast. Men, women, children still trapped beneath buildings or lying injured in
the ruins moaned, wailed and whimpered for help and water. (Page 71)
A man whose flesh had been burned
off his feet was running through the ruins. A bewildered woman carried a bucket
holding the severed head of her young daughter... When the men reached
Michino-o Station, hundreds of people sat or lay on the ground, waiting to be
loaded onto trains that would transport them to relief stations and hospitals
outside the city. As each train departed, a chorus of agonizing moans echoed in
its wake.
And so on...
Notes
[1] Daniel McAdams, “Is
Trump’s Foreign Policy Just More Bush And Obama?” Anti-war.com, February 7, 2017.
[2] Stefan Kanfer, Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando
(Faber and Faber, 2004), 234.
[3] The quote comes from a famous scene
in The Godfather Part 1 in which Don
Corleone repeats a theme that is expressed throughout the series: that the
mafia is more honorable and less violent than the politicians and assorted big
shots (pezzonovanti) who had
inflicted two world wars on humanity.
[4] “Obama
On Russian Hacking: ‘We Need To Take Action. And We Will.’” NPR (National Public Radio), December
15, 2016.
[5] James Bamford, “Commentary:
Don’t be so sure Russia hacked the Clinton emails,” Reuters,”
November 2, 2016. The author noted that “a public warning about a secret attack
makes little sense. If a major cyber crisis happens in Russia sometime in the
future, such as a deadly power outage in frigid winter, the United States could
be blamed even if it had nothing to do with it.”
[6] Daniel McAdams, “New
UN Ambassador Threatens Russia Over Ukraine Violence, Demands ‘Return of Crimea,’”
Anti-war.com, February 2, 2017.
[7] Sara Durbin and Vaneeta Sandhu, “Stop
Calling Trump ‘Crazy’: It’s Stigmatizing and Oppressive,” Medium.com, January 30, 2017.
[8] “La
dissuasion c’est moi dit l’inconnu de province,” Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire,
March 23, 2016.
[9] Benjamin Haas, “Steve
Bannon: ‘We’re going to war in the South China Sea ... no doubt,’” The Guardian, February 2, 2017.
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