As Donald Trump proves increasingly incapable of defending U.S. finance capital’s interests in the next global war, these main-wing bosses are intensifying their efforts to discipline the unreliable president—or, if necessary, to prepare to move him out of office.
January 5 saw the publication of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, which painted Trump as ignorant, unfocused, an “idiot,” and a “dope”—in the words of his own senior Republican advisers. The book quoted white supremacist Steven Bannon, Trump’s former top henchman, as accusing Donald Trump Jr. of “treasonous” behavior for meeting with Russians connected to Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign. Two days earlier, after Trump boasted that his “nuclear button” was larger than North Korea President Kim Jong Un’s, an NBC news reporter openly questioned Trump’s “mental fitness” (thehill.com, 1/3).
Meanwhile, former FBI chief Robert Mueller was expanding his Justice Department probe of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice. After already indicting four Trump associates, Mueller indicated he was looking to interrogate the president himself (New York Daily News, 1/10). “The end game,” according to the right-wing National Review, “is the removal of Trump, either by impeachment or by publicly discrediting him and making his reelection politically impossible” (12/2/17).
Trump: unstable imperialist
But the bosses’ real concerns about Trump’s “fitness” have little to do with West Wing gossip or Russian operative intrigues. As inter-imperialist rivalries sharpen, the rulers’ fundamental worry is that Trump is unable and willing to prepare the U.S. for an inevitable World War III. As the U.S. sinks into a state of relative decline versus an ascendant China and a belligerent Russia, the bosses fear that the U.S.-dominated liberal order, a fact of life since the end of World War II, may be on its last legs.
A leading mouthpiece for the U.S. ruling class is Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the finance capitalists’ top think tank. In a new afterword for the recently published paperback edition of his cautionary book, A World in Disarray: American Foreign
Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, Haass sums up the rulers’ anxieties in the Age of Trump:
[T]he United States is no longer taking the lead in maintaining alliances, or in building regional and global institutions that set the rules of how international relations are conducted. It is abdication from what has been a position of leadership in developing the rules and arrangements at the heart of any world order….
Trump is the first post-World War II American president to view the burdens of world leadership as outweighing the benefits. As a result, the United States has changed from the principal preserver of order to a principal disrupter.
Haass proceeds to tick off Trump’s many retreats from world leadership. The president withdrew from the Paris climate pact and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the main-wing Brookings Institute called “not just a trade agreement but also a crucial signal of U.S. commitment to the region in general” (Brookings, 9/16/17). He weakened the U.S. commitment to NATO, which represents the allies the U.S. will need in the next global war. He has threatened to pull out of the North America Free Trade Agreement and the nuclear accord with Iran while gutting of the State Department’s diplomatic corps. As the New York Times (12/28/17) put it,
Mr. Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from a reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. That is a seminal change from the role the country has played for 70 years, under presidents from both parties, and it has lasting implications for how other countries chart their futures.
Can the ruling class control Trump?
At the same time, there are signs that Trump is being brought to heel. He has stepped back from his initial attack on NATO and even convinced other NATO members to contribute more to the organization (Washington Post, 6/17/17). For all of Trump’s bluster, he has yet to actually decertify the Iran deal. Longer-term thinkers in the ruling class have successfully inserted their voices into the Trump administration. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was formerly the CEO of Exxon-Mobil, perhaps the company most reliant on U.S. imperialism’s long-term commitment to control over Middle East oil.
Capitalism offers workers war and fascism
At this point, it is hard to say for sure what will happen as the dogfight within the U.S. ruling class plays out. Trump may endure or he may be removed and replaced. The impact on the international working class is less difficult to predict, however. Whether Trump is impeached or finishes his term; whether Democrats win big in the 2018 mid-term elections or Republicans keep their majorities; whether a Democrat wins the 2020 election or Trump gets re-elected—none of these things will change the fundamental shape of the future. None will alter the racist, sexist, imperialist nature of capitalism, or the increasingly fascist conditions that workers face around the world. None will prevent the carnage of world war, where the rulers will be eager to sacrifice millions to preserve their filthy profit system.
For the workers of the world, no capitalist boss can ever be “fit” to lead society. It’s the task of Progressive Labor Party to put all of these warmongering mass murderers out of business—to turn the guns around and turn imperialist war into a war for revolutionary communism.