The United States: Total war

HAVANA – The appointment of John Bolton as Donald Trump’s national security adviser has just turned U.S. foreign policy dangerous.

Considered to the right of the right and with a history of unscrupulous behavior when arguing his positions, Bolton is rejected by a good number of the most recognized Republican politicians, who in the past have prevented his access to the government, until now. His appointment, along with that of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, and others that have occurred in recent days, indicates that Trump has decided to once again ignore the establishment of his party and move towards the more fundamentalist right wing, where any type of  moderation is excluded.

His reasons deal with domestic politics. Under the harassment of investigations related to the so-called ‘Russian plot,’ the failure of some special electoral contests, as well as the scandals and the instability of his government, everything indicates that Trump has decided to take refuge in these sectors to consolidate his base of support.

If Pompeo’s designation was a gesture toward the Koch brothers, his Tea Party sponsors, Bolton’s is reinforcing the support of people like billionaire scientist Robert Mercer, owner of Cambrigde Analytica, an electronics company recently accused of manipulating private data from Facebook to influence various conservative campaigns, such as Brexit in England and the overthrow of Dilma Rouseff in Brazil.

Internally these decisions reflect an intensification of the most supremacist, xenophobic and racist currents, with the usual increase in police repression and other forms of violence. To the outside world, they reveal a political projection which creates a climate of war in many planes and scenarios:

The volatility of the situation in the Middle East, affecting so many countries that it is impossible to address it in a short summary, increases as a result of the new bellicose winds coming from the United States. It is true that there is a fear that limits the U.S. from sending large numbers of troops, but a more limited intervention is always possible, and above all, encouraging allied countries or irregular contingents sponsored by those countries, to do so, as has happened in the past.

Under these conditions the main objective is Iran. This then points to reneging on the nuclear agreements with that country, with which Bolton is one of its main proponents. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia would support an interventionist option, which would also have the backing of the Zionist right in the United States. To that end the so-called ‘disaster companies’ are ready as are war promoters everywhere, and the perfect set of officials are in place to create the excuses to make that possible.

Although the fear of a nuclear conflict reduces the military option in North Korea, maintaining the tension is a need of the United States to justify the huge investments planned by the Trump administration in this sphere, as well as blackmailing China, which is interested in avoiding a situation of this nature in its borders. It is not by chance that the movements in the cabinet occur precisely when the two Koreas advance in their negotiations, and a possible meeting of Trump with the North Korean leader is planned. In fact, one of Trump’s arguments to justify the recent changes in his cabinet was precisely to prepare for this eventual meeting.

Tariffs to Chinese products are a first step in a commercial war whose objective is to negotiate from positions of strength with the Asian giant. Such a strategy is consistent with the president’s “trade wars are good” theory, something that is happening with the implementation of protectionist policies aimed practically at the whole world, including its main allies.

Although until now the reaction of the majority has been to seek “exceptions” that Trump has distributed as if from droppers and provisionally, the Chinese side has already proposed facing the trade war with equivalent measures against the United States. The same happens with Europeans, Canadians, even Mexicans, who have declared that they are studying similar measures if an agreement is not reached, generalizing a climate of confrontation that threatens to alter the world economic order, affecting the United States itself.

Even the environment has become a war zone for the United States. Not only by rejecting the Paris agreements, but by disqualifying the scientific studies that justify this strategic concern for the world and encourage the lack of control in the practices aimed at protecting it.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the main theme is Venezuela. At this point an American military invasion in the region seems inconceivable, but those that occurred in Granada and Panama are not so distant in the past. In addition, Trump himself has already recommended doing so in the case of Venezuela.

Perhaps a direct large-scale military intervention is not necessary, a victory for the Uribistas in Colombia might be enough to promote armed groups and confrontations at the border. This would be nothing foreign to the thinking of men like Bolton and Pompeo, who now direct the foreign policy of the United States. The least that can be expected is that the sanctions and harassment that is currently being carried out against Venezuela will be increased, for which the United States has the support of the Latin American right.

Whatever happens in Venezuela will have an inevitable impact on Cuba, for which a policy of confrontation is already defined, which the United States will try to extend to the entire continent. The key to this matter is that the new appointments in the White House and the State Department put this policy back into the hands of a bureaucracy historically obsessed with the Cuba issue, where the Cuban-American extreme right has a very active presence.

The issue is to see to what extent the United States is really in a position to impose this policy on an international scale, whose consequences nobody can calculate with exactitude. One of the problems of extremists is that they generally overestimate their strength because they underestimate the others. As indicated by the polls and some recent events, many in the United States have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to stop this advance towards the precipice and perhaps the midterm elections of this November leave us breathing room.

The best hope is that the right-wing fundamentalists are so stubborn, that in their eagerness to shoot, they sometimes blow their own feet and even their heads off.