Trump at West Point: Un-Policing the World — Binoy Kampmark

by
Mike Norman
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What, then, of the empire’s own policing capabilities overseas? Here, the Trump message is a treat of confusion. He wishes to be armed for unilateralism. No more needless policing endeavours in the international arena. No unnecessary use of US armed forces to intervene in the murky, squalid affairs of international relations.

The interventionist, policing streak in foreign policy reached its height with the 2005 declaration by President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address that it was “the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” This was ambitiously dangerous, foolhardy and a promise of a global US chokehold to be applied to any regime suspect of not sighing to the sirens of liberty. (Well, at least the US variant of it.) “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

President Barack Obama was not much of an improvement on this doctrine of permanent revolution: the US had to continue remaining the sheriff of exceptionalism, a protector of “dignity.” In a speech to West Pointers at a military academy commencement ceremony in May 2014 he acknowledged the old warning of George Washington “against foreign entanglements that do not touch directly on our security or economic wellbeing” and the interventionists’ assertion “that we ignore these conflicts at our own peril.” He preferred a middle way hardly different from his predecessors. The US could not be isolationist; history had imposed upon the Republic solemn burdens. There was “a real stake, an abiding self-interest, in making sure our children and our grandchildren grow up in a world where schoolgirls are not kidnapped and where individuals are not slaughtered because of tribe or faith or political belief.”

Trump’s language, at least on the subject of meddling in the name of liberty, or policing a form of international morality, seems unsentimental and alien to this strand of thought. On June 13, in an address to the US Military Academy at a West Point graduation ceremony, he proclaimed, or more appropriately reiterated, his task of “ending the era of endless wars.” He preferred “a renewed, clear-eyed focus on defending America’s vital interests.” The ears of traditional isolationists would have pricked up in interest: “It is not the duty of US troops to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have never heard of. We are not the policemen of the world.”

The address was filled with the usual fripperies. “To the 1,107 who today become the newest officers in the most exceptional Army ever to take the field of battle, I am here to offer America’s salute. Thank you for answering your nation’s call.” But the reining in of US military forces has not fallen well on an obese establishment with a permanent eye to larger budgets and deeper troughs. Despite that, Trump did still throw them a vast bone, speaking of “a colossal rebuilding of the American Armed Forces, a record like no other.” Over $2 trillion had been put into a program of “new ships, bombers, jet fighters, and helicopters by the hundreds; new tanks, military satellites, rockets, and missiles.” And that fabulous hypersonic missile....