Are Neo-cons Capturing President Trump?

One of the reasons I supported President Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 is that he was the peace candidate.  He promised he would not get us into any more wars, and in his first term he kept that promise.  But is he going to keep it in his current term?  Some of his recent actions must raise doubt.

First, he initiated ongoing attacks against the Houthis, a tribe (4GW alert: a tribe is beating us at sea) in Yemen that, in support of the people of Gaza, has attacked ships in the Red Sea, effectively closing the Suez Canal.  Why has he done this?  As Vice President Vance said on the famous Signal call, only 4% of American trade goes through the Suez Canal; for Europe, it is about 40%.  What led President Trump to break his promise of no more war?

In Ukraine, the President is attempting to broker a cease-fire, which is good.  But the only solution to the Ukraine war is for Russia and America to draw up a full peace agreement, then impose it on the Europeans and Ukraine.  If they reject it, we pull out of Ukraine entirely and leave Europe to carry on the war on its own (it can’t).  If that pushes Europe into a direct conflict with Russia, we will not come in on Europe’s side.  Europe can afford to defend itself; it has the French nuclear umbrella, and it is time we kicked our 70+ year old lout of a child out of the house and told him to get his own place.

In the Persian Gulf, we are threatening airstrikes on Iran over its nuclear program.  Again, that contravenes President Trump’s promise of no more wars.  Iran cannot effectively attack the U.S. or Israel, but it can clobber Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, sending the price of oil soaring.  Is the President going to give his voters both another war and 5$ a gallon gas?

Most dangerously, the Trump administration is cozying up to Taiwan.  For China, Taiwan is an existential issue.  Throughout China’s history, its greatest danger has been internal break-up into warring states.  That has occurred over and over.  If one province, Taiwan, can become independent, so can others.  China will go to the mat over Taiwan if it has to, which means nuclear war.

A clue to why this is happening comes from an article in the March 31 Wall Street Journal.  The Journal wrote,”the State Department edited its website to remove the phrase, ‘we do not support Taiwan independence’ from a page on U.S. Taiwan relations.”  Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a neo-con.  Are the neo-cons going through him to take control of President Trump?

The neo-cons are not conservatives at all.  They are still Trotskyites, believers in world revolution, who have replaced Marxism with “democratic capitalism” (really oligarchic state capitalism) as their ideology.  They want the U.S. to dictate to every people on earth how they must live their lives, and sic the U.S. military on them if they do not obey.  That means the neo-cons want war all the time, everywhere, something not consistent with President Trump’s having run as the peace candidate.

So why are the neo-cons influential in an administration that wants peace?  Three reasons: Secretary Rubio, the neo-con’s close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the fact that the neo-cons control a vast amount of money.

President Trump’s first new war, that with the Houthis, was almost certainly coordinated with Israel.  Israel let us know it was about to break the cease-fire in Gaza.  That meant the Houthis would again fire missiles and drones at Israel.  So, before Israel attacked in Gaza, the U.S. started bombing the Houthis to knock out those missiles and drones.  As usual, air power failed; the Houthis are still shooting at both Israel and ships in the red sea.  Also as usual, President Trump will have to learn from bitter experience about the limits of air power.  He might want to dial up President Lyndon Johnso on that subject (“Bomb, bomb, bomb, that’s all my generals know how to do.”).

The neo-cons hate Russia, so they do not want the U.S. to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.  Their hope is that the war will weaken Russia to the point where the Russian Federation breaks up, creating another stateless region like the ones the neo-cons and their Democratic Party equivalents, the neo-libs, created in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc.  The fact that a stateless Russia would have loose nukes seems not to trouble them. 

Why do the neo-cons want war with China?  Because China defies their “democratic capitalism.”  It represents a different politics and a different and very successful culture, not the culture of Marxism but Confucian culture.  Only two world cultures have succeeded over time, Western and Chinese.  The neo-cons want to take out Chinese culture, not because they love Western culture but because they think they can control the West, as they did control Washington up to President Trump’s first term.

Is President Trump now going to prove the neo-cons right and yield American foreign policy to them again?  If so, the President will alienate a large portion of his base.  The young men who die in the neo-cons’ war come from that base.  The neo-cons and neo-libs killed thousands of them in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His base voted for Mr. Trump to stop such wars, not start new ones.  Someone close to the President needs to remind him of that.