It was a rare farewell speech, but one that still resonates 55 years after it was delivered on January 17, 1961, when the then president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned the American people of the military–industrial complex. The informal alliance between the military and America’s defence industry, he hammered, was not in the best interests of democratisation as it threatened to polarise the nation.
Half a century later, the surprising election that ushered in Donald Trump, highlighted what Time magazine underscored when it chose the next head-of-state for its ‘Person of the Year’, as the ‘President of the Divided States of America’. The epithet underscored corruption and charlatanism though, far more seriously, what truly shocked were Trump’s selections to fill key senior positions.
A few days ago, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, mockingly referred to the latest appointments as the “three ‘G’ Cabinet: Goldman, generals and gazillionaires”, which was close to the truth even if it hid something far more sinister.
In fact, Trump’s selections, some of whom have worked at the Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs — Steve Bannon as senior White House strategist, Steve Mnuchin as treasury secretary, Wilbur Ross as commerce secretary, Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts as deputy commerce secretary, Betsy DeVos as education secretary, Linda McMahon, a former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, as head of the Small Business Administration — pale in comparison with other senior choices.
The latest is apparently Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO, for the critical secretary of state post. Naturally, the Tillerson nomination will dishearten puritans who believe that American foreign policy is principled and not motivated by core business interests, including with Russia that, truth be told, is part of the West.
Lest we forget, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship in 2013 and, of course, Trump declared his positions vis-a-vis Moscow on several occasions, including his call for more cooperation with Putin. A tireless Tillerson campaigned to remove Russian sanctions — still in place — and Trump disputed the conclusion in an unpublished CIA report that Russia tried to intervene in the presidential elections with an emphatic “I think it’s ridiculous”. He added: “I don’t believe it”, though the Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain disagreed. “It’s clear the Russians interfered”, he maintained, and called for a select congressional committee to investigate putative Russian activities.
Of course, the individuals who were slated to make national security decisions were the military officers appointed by Trump, including three key men in top positions who will form an unprecedented troika: Retired Marine Corps General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as secretary of defence, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly as secretary of homeland security, and retired Army General Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Flynn, who will not require Senate confirmation, sat just a few seats away from Putin during a 2015 paid appearance in Moscow for RT [Russia Today], a TV network that promotes Kremlin views. His chief argument hovers around the notion that Washington and Moscow need to work closely together to fight Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and find an end to the Syrian Civil War.
In 2015, Flynn told RT that the two countries ought to end the “bully game against each other”, because that achieved nothing, which reflected Putin’s views in full. In fact, what the next director of the National Security Council (NSC) parroted was a negation of Obama’s March 2014 identification of Russia as a mere “regional power”, which Putin never forgave since his principal political objective concentrated on gaining respect. It remained to be determined whether Flynn concurred with Putin that he, Putin, could not agree with the assertion of US President Barack Obama that America was an “exceptional” country.
Flynn’s designated deputy at the NSC, Kathleen T. McFarland, was similarily inclined. McFarland, who has served in three Republican White Houses and, most recently, as a Fox News commentator, ridiculed the Norwegian committee for choosing Obama for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, saying that “Vladimir Putin is the one who really deserves” it.
Time will tell whether President Trump will kowtow to Moscow, which will now ride an unprecedented wave of pro-Russian goodwill around the world, including in such sensitive places as Ukraine and Syria. But what is also clear is that Trump will confront an existential dilemma with a counterpart who is an avowed ideologue.
By handing the US to the “three ‘Gs’, the American people have weakened their institutions and jeopardised the country’s place in the world. The icing on the cake was the expected Trump nomination of John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, for deputy secretary of state.
As a close associate of the military–industrial complex, Bolton — a renowned neoconservative hawk who has called for regime change in Iran, Libya, and Syria — is bound to clash with many, both within the administration as well as with his counterparts around the world. He and many others will now help “Make America Great Again”, perhaps by starting a new war, precisely as anticipated by those who back the military–industrial complex.
— Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of the just-published From Alliance to Union: Challenges Facing Gulf Cooperation Council States in the Twenty-First Century (Sussex: 2016).
