Use No Army Now

The wall falls back into the moat.
Use no army now.
Make your commands known within your own town.
Perseverance brings humiliation.
The I Ching, 11. T'ai / Peace

What is Trump's foreign policy? As always we need to look at the staging, policy as performance. There is little appetite in his audience for the wars at the edges of the American empire. He played to this as part of his dismissal of his primary opponents, conventional imperialists to a man. In the election and still today a part of his support comes from distrust of the hawks of both parties.

If, however, you are among the faithful at his rallies it is not because you are taking a principled stand against imperialism. Nationalism does not contradict imperialism. It stands always ready to be of service to it so long as it gets its cut.

In the crowds on both sides of the partisan divide in America there is war weariness. There is understanding that the ability to obliterate does not bring security and does not bring prosperity. But the ebb tide of the empire is viewed by Trump's audience through the same inversion which encloses them in service to the class which collects the benefits that still accrue to the masters of war.

The reversals of fortune suffered by the American empire in recent decades are not seen as occurring in an economic system that has aged beyond its utility to the world's people. One that specializes in destruction when the world requires, instead, advances in cooperation.

Trump is a poor cousin in the global ruling class and it gnaws at him. In revenge he has taken up the mantle of those who are excluded by their betters but would bargain for a bigger slice of the pie by savaging workers who have not, like themselves, given up their political program in deference to capital.

While the manifesto of the rally is above all directed at domestic enemies it leaves a window through which to view a foreign policy. The elaborate and careful plans of the empire and, in particular, its requirements for vast treasure go unchallenged. But patience for the status quo, or for an orderly withdrawal, or for strategies of slow encirclement, whatever the councils of state have made solemn agreement upon is swept aside when a crisis is unveiled to the masses and, therefore, to Trump.

Since capital cannot be faulted its previous executives must bear the blame. The country is exhausted and warped by the “unending wars”, by the efforts that are demanded by the guardians of empire in order to maintain a status quo that has long been no more than a slow failure. The working class, global and socialist, knows there is no resolution to the crisis without peace. Even Trump’s audience cheers to bring the troops home, not to feed them to the flames.

But in this dead end imperialism takes refuge in the psychotic, suicidal break that it always prefers to any future without the limitless accumulation of wealth in the hands of its patrons. From Roy Cohn Trump learned to never admit defeat. He has reached the point in his presidency where he can no longer evade the glaring limitations of American power. He would stand defeated before his adoring public by admitting that he has no more up his sleeve than did Obama, or Bush, or any president in recent memory. That he will never wade ashore like Douglas MacArthur.

Bush Jr. was similarly cornered and was persuaded that the destruction of Iraq would solve the puzzle. It didn’t. And now many of the same advisers and certainly the same delusion has found an ear with his idiot successor. The world revolted against Bush’s war but was unable to prevent it. Has enough been learned in the last 17 years for there to be a different outcome this time?

Then again, in the polysemantic universe of Trump discourse, the biggest snares to war may arise from within the palace itself. There, imperial expertise has no stability and the pronouncements from the throne refer to nothing outside the moment. But beyond performance there is reality. And it has brought us all to a point where the world caves in, or Trump collapses, or both.