The Limits of a Pay to Play Foreign Policy

The Limits of a Pay to Play Foreign Policy

WASHINGTON — Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor.

The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.

Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.

The company, which employed several Israeli former intelligence officers, specialized in collecting information and shaping opinion through social media.

Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election --- NY Times.

By J.M. Hamilton (5-28-2018)

Just when we thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, that our current administration is deep in bed w/ Russia, Russian oligarchs, and Putin... comes word from the NY Times, that Team Trump met w/ Gulf State emissaries on the eve of the 2016 election. 

Characters, such as the mercenary Erik Prince (aka Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos' brother), George Nader (representing the interests of Saudi and UAE princes), and Joe Zamel (a social media specialist, whose claim to fame appears to be manipulating voters & elections), met w/ Donald Trump Jr. w/in Trump Tower.  The story goes on to say that Donald Jr. responded "approvingly" of the plan put forth.  Moreover, Mr. Zamel was paid up to $2,000,000, post-election, by Mr. Nader (for what services are as of yet, unclear).

It goes w/out saying, it's against the law for foreign governments to involve themselves in US elections (hence the ongoing Mueller investigation).  But we would be naive - given the power of the US & how corrupt the domestic electoral process has become - to believe foreign governments aren't involved in this country's elections.  For that matter, US multinationals - many w/ balance sheets and income statements greater than that of some nation states, and w/ their own global foreign policies – have vested interests in election outcomes as well.  Needless to say, these foreign government & US multinational interests do not always align w/ the economic, fiscal, and foreign policy interests of the nation as a whole.  

The Saudis, and oil rich gulf monarchy states, profited immensely by Iraq & Iran oil sanctions, and the subsequent Iraq war... as oil production from the two sanctioned nations, for the most part, was taken off world markets.  Big Oil multinationals w/in the United States, along w/ defense contractors, and Wall Street banks also profited immensely from our continued martial involvement w/in the Middle East, the protection of Middle East oil assets, and the debt raised to support endless credit card wars.

There are limits to a "pay to play foreign policy", where US leadership (from both political parties) have allowed foreign governments to, arguably, utilize US military forces - as their proxy in the Middle East - to further their interests, as well as, enhance foreign & US multinationals’ bottom lines.

In a global economy... economic, foreign, and trade policy are inextricably linked.  Statecraft is a great deal like playing three-dimensional chess.  While the Trump Administration - which has recently shuffled its personnel, so that cabinet and staff members are more closely aligned w/ Trump’s thinking - appears to be playing a one-off game of checkers.  That is to say, everybody in this administration appears to be advancing their own private interests, at the expense of the nation, and thinking little about the consequences - intended or unintended – created by their actions.

Let's connect the dots.  Team Trump meets w/ the emissaries from some of the most horrific dictatorships on the planet on 2016 election eve (the usual suspects responsible for the spread of fundamentalist Islam & terrorism: Saudi Arabia and the UAE, w/ possible Qatar representation as well).  Shortly after the election, in his first foreign trip, Trump leads a US multinational junket to Saudi Arabia where deals & memorandums of understanding - worth hundreds of billions of dollars - are inked.  And we learn w/in the last week from Bloomberg that the President's son-in-law has an apparent conflict of interest, w/ indirect financing from Saudi Arabia/UAE, for one of Mr. Kushner's start up companies, Cadre.

And the quo for the quid…  POTUS Trump - who campaigned & promised to end Middle East involvement & failed nation building w/in the region - has kept the US military deeply imbedded in Middle East affairs (along w/ a continued role in Syria).  The administration continues to back the Saudis and their war crimes in Yemen with hardware & military support.  The President’s State Department has agreed to sell a billion in weapons systems to the Saudis.  And most recently, Mr. Trump tore up the Iranian nuclear agreement, which threatens to pull, daily, a million or more barrels of oil offline (at a time the global economy is humming and oil prices have been relatively subdued).

The Congress, per the usual, abdicates its responsibility to declare and govern war, and continues to allow Trump to conduct the aforementioned military operations under the auspices of the 9-11 AUMF.  Nearly two decades, post 9-11, the US is still running around the world fighting the same war, ostensibly a war on terror (with the terrorists, often, financed & funded by our so-called allies, the oil rich gulf monarchies). 

And, per the NY Times, a representative of the greatest sponsors of radical Islamic terror met in Trump Tower, with Donald Jr. - leading up to the 2016 election - to offer up their support. 

How very kind.

As for the intended consequences of POTUS' action - in tearing up the Iranian deal - well the price of oil predictably spiked.  This made Mr. Trump's oil monarchy benefactors, and US Big Oil concerns, very happy.  MIC stock too, received a boost on word of the announcement.  Wall St. banks had little to say, knowing that they would continue to cash-in on the prospects of additional debt issued to finance yet another possible war/regime change in the Middle East.

But someone appears to have forgotten to tell the POTUS of the unintended consequences of his actions. 

Namely:

Nearly every US recession - from the 70s forward - was proceeded by, or accompanied by, an oil price shock; many of these recessions were also accompanied by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates - after a period of accommodative monetary policy; the increase in the price of oil, per an economist writing in Project Syndicate, has already eliminated the paltry benefits of the Trump tax cuts for many Americans; the country's public and private sectors are up to their eyeballs in debt (as are many nations around the globe) – therefore, a recession would not be a good thing for the ability to service catastrophic debt loads; as reported in Bloomberg last week, derivative products - such as CLOs - are all the rage again (these derivative instruments were among the factors that set off the 2008 Financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession); and finally, a recession before the 2018 midterms, or 2020 general election, would greatly diminish POTUS Trump's chances at reelection (not to mention possibly throw the House to the Dems, some of whom want to nail the President over the aforementioned election interference allegations).

Which might explain why the POTUS has told his friends at OPEC (the Saudis, et al.) to ramp up production.

  

Unfortunately, US foreign policy has been conducted with myopic thinking for many years, largely driven by powerful multinational commercial interests.  The results are credit card wars that have bankrupted the nation, failed nation building, global instability, and failed nation states.  Many Middle East citizens hate the United States, not due to religion, but because - hypocritically - we continue to back some of the nastiest dictatorships on the planet, who simply crush and oppress their citizenry.  These are the limits of a US foreign policy conducted on a pay to play basis, on a transactional basis.  A US foreign policy conducted w/out morals - or any historical perspective, or desire to clean up and address real problems - will continue to yield these results.

What did Saudi Arabia do in the face of Western condemnation over beheadings, jailing human rights protestors w/out due process, beatings, and treating women like chattel?  Despite the MBS world tour touting reforms, the Saudi regime didn't clean up its act, but instead - as reported by Amnesty International - they hired a public relations firm.  

A PR firm - plus assorted K Street lobbyist - and suddenly Washington leadership averts its eyes, and its business as usual.

On this Memorial Day weekend, perhaps the most repulsive thing of all - w/in the sea of sordidness we call US foreign policy - is the lip service US political leadership gives our fighting women & men.  Yet, despite campaign promises to bring our soldiers home, the wars continue unabated.  The US, and the West, continues to back and support terrorist states & dictatorships - whose hands are stained w/ the blood of our American heroes.  And the United States still continues to conduct pay to play foreign policy that places our fighting women and men in harms way for no good reason.  

Instead of real FP reforms, the US is treated to the spectacle of the NFL banning the First Amendment on the football field, as players take a knee to peacefully protest the killing of innocent blacks (NFL ownership action is at the instigation of a POTUS, who sadly, has manipulated silent black protest into a lack of support for US troops).  Arguably, the plight of minorities in this country, and the misuse of our fighting women & men, are the opposite sides of the same coin: a predatory elite abusing & dividing US citizenry for personal gain.

As a result of our pay to play foreign policy, some children will never know their mothers or fathers, who paid the ultimate price... so that Lockheed Martin can receive a bump in their stock price, or so that the Saudis can keep their terror kingdom afloat for another year (by selling an energy product that is both deadly and obsolete).

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018

A Coup of Hypocrisy & Lies

A Coup of Hypocrisy & Lies

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

- George F. Will, Trump is no longer the worst person in government

By JM Hamilton (5-13-2018)

Who knew the GOP could stack it so high?  

Then again, the Party of Trump gave up any pretense of ethics & morality a long time ago; and per columnist George Will, at the Post, the Grand Old Party has turned into the Party of Lackeys (arguably, for the billionaire/multinational set).

Just when we thought the swamp couldn't grow more fetid, comes news from the same Washington Post that Trump has lied, or spread misinformation, 3,001 times in the first 466 days of his Presidency.  

Perhaps a record? 

As with all things Trump, excess is best... so why not take falsehood & fabrication to whole new level.  Trump said during his campaign he loved the uneducated and now we know why.  If your base consists of those with little interest in learning, or keeping up on world events (or sadly, don't have the means or time), than there is no one to discern truth from lies.  

And so, the exploited continue to be abused and misled.

Now we know why the GOP has zero appreciation for teachers, higher education, and want to turn science out of government. 

Lies - from elected leaders - are horrible things.  Deception destroys the credibility of our democratic government and society, and makes a perfidious hash out of the rule of law.  Then again, perhaps Trump is little more than the vanguard of America's fate: A dystopian future where the swamp grows beyond DC's borders and spreads from sea to shining sea.

One thing is for certain, if the Trump Administration is the equivalent to an EPA Superfund site, than education, the fourth estate, and sunlight are the cure.  If some European countries can afford to freely offer a college education to their citizens, than surely the richest nation on the planet can do same.

If an avalanche of lies is detrimental to the country, equally repugnant is the shear hypocrisy with which the minions of the billionaire class parrot the same old defeated & tired arguments, over and over again.  All too often the charlatans fail to recognize the moral failing, or allegations, they cite as applying to others, also applies equally - if not more so - to them and their party.  

Let's examine some examples:

The Communists are coming, the Communists are coming!  No Ed.  They're already here, and they put you and your lobbying firm on retainer.  Ed Rogers, (chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group, which he founded with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour), Mr. Swamp, recently wrote a column lamenting the leftward turn of the Democratic Party, and specifically cites Senator Sanders plan to guarantee a job for every American.  Mr. Rogers says he's worried about creeping socialism and, gasp, communism; but then fails to recognize that the biggest swine at the government trough are the very clients he - and assorted K Street lobbyist - all too often represent.  And who fosters and redistributes government largess to the kleptocracy - well both political parties do actually - but the GOP has turned communism, for the elite, into an art form.  

Nobody redistributes wealth from the middle class & the poor to the wealthy, like the GOP.  Fiscal, monetary, judiciary, and trade policy capture.... the GOP - and their oligarch overlords - own the practice, and have weaponized same.

Trump is going win a Nobel for bringing peace to the Korean peninsula, while unleashing Armageddon in the Middle East by tearing up the Iran deal?  Think again.  If we are honest w/ ourselves, we have to give Trump some credit where credit is due.  And one area where Trump may, ultimately, deserve some credit - the verdict is still out - is on foreign policy.  North Korea appears to be making overture after overture towards peace, perhaps in response to Trump's unstable/tough guy shtick (then again, perhaps under orders from China, at a time Sino-US trade negotiations are heating up).  Historically, North Korea has, in no few instances, turned to extortion... often brandishing instability & nukes, in return for payments from the US to quiet down and behave.  

And there's a whole history of N. Korean leaders going Soprano on US administrations, so don't release the doves just yet.  

Simultaneously, our highly transactional POTUS has torn up the Iran deal - a deal that both Israeli and US generals (by the dozens) acknowledge is good for Middle East stability, if not the world. However, the deal is not so good for principal GOP constituents & stakeholders, namely the usual suspects:  Big Oil, OPEC, the Saudi Terror regime (all of which want Iranian oil offline and out of world markets, so they can cash in); the military industrial complex (which is always looking for the next war in the Middle East, to goose quarterly profits); and Trump's Evangelical base (some of whom are literally praying for Armageddon in the Middle East, because they believe it will bring about the second coming).

How does one square the hubris and hypocrisy surrounding the tearing up of a functioning Iran deal, which has forestalled the additional production of nukes in the Middle East (purely to appease & profit the aforementioned GOP donors), with the idea that Trump is suddenly going to turn into the Prince of Peace, when dealing w/ a rogue totalitarian - North Korean - regime?  The country above the 38^th parallel is one of the nastiest, and most oppressive, on the planet, that has time and time again exhibited pathological and sociopathic tendencies in extremis.

Evangelicals... quick to anger, quick to judge others (slow to understand), unless the sinner resides in the White House and can stack the Supreme Court, so an Evangelical theocracy - complete w/ puritanical law - can be established w/in the United States.  Wait.  Who am I kidding, the US - thanks to fundamentalist Christians - has been living under Sharia law since the nation's founding.  The hypocrisy surrounding Evangelical church leadership is a sore point for many Americans.  Here's a group of Protestants that take tremendous pride in their devoutness to Christian scripture and feigned piety.  However, instead of embracing Christ's story of redemption and salvation, they are quick to go Old Testament - that is to say, fire & brimstone - on anybody outside, or within, the church that steps out of line, even in the slightest of degrees.

In short, per Evangelicals, almost everyone is going to hell but them.

So how can any of these folks support a President, who lies as if it’s an involuntary bodily function, like breathing?  

And that's the just the tip of the iceberg or Stormy.  To be sure, there are many Evangelicals, who wouldn't be caught dead voting for Trump.  But there are far too many, particularly among church leadership, who are completely in bed w/ this president.  This Faustian alliance is, likely, to cost them dearly in terms of the loss of credibility, and demonstrates that even Evangelicals can adopt a Machiavellian strategy (POTUS Trump) to achieve their ends (a stacked Supreme Court filled w/ right-wing ideologues).

In all fairness, both US political parties have been captured by the wealthy, so that - as I have often argued, at least on economic & foreign policy matters - we essentially live in a one party state.  Both political parties have made promises, backpedaled, lied, and engaged in hypocrisy.  

To such an extent that some have argued the US has been taken over in a silent coup.

The people clearly are not in charge of their own government.  Caught in a deluge of cover-ups, talking points, hypocrisy & lies.... we are led to believe that there is a choice between the two political parties.  The choice, however, has already been made for Americans, before they even arrive at the voting booth.  The country has moved so far right, that former President Bush (HW) voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election.  

And thanks to Clintonian policies of the 90s, continued mostly under POTUS Obama, the Democratic Party has moved in lockstep  ----  on mass incarceration, law & order politics, an adventurist foreign policy, defense spending, the police/surveillance state, and the billionaire/multinational capture of the government & tax law ---- w/ the GOP.

The progressives give many hope.  And thanks to a younger generation - and proof from the oligarchy, and Wall Street banks, that redistributive policies work exceptionally well (particularly for the uber wealthy) - JMH believes the Democratic Party has the potential to bring the pendulum back to the center: economically, geopolitically, morally, and socially.  That is to say, produce a mixed economy that embraces some forms of socialism, for the people instead of the elite, while breaking up cartels and monopolies to reinvigorate all that is best in capitalism.

If a mix of capitalism & socialism works exceeding well in Canada and Northern Europe, than surely the US can master same.

(If the Dems fail to reform and take advantage of a blue wave this November, it’s almost a certainty that the nation’s women & youth will reach out for an alternative or form a new party.)

But for that to happen, this country needs to recognize that the antidote for the GOP’s campaign of nescience is education, and engage in extensive investigative coverage of a government that is opaque and completely captured by a coup of hypocrisy & lies.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018