Does Trump really want to end American interventionism?

Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by Lucas Leiroz, research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro… 

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has achieved a position of global hegemony, acting as a kind of world police. Washington has constructed a new world order and its militaries travel the world in wars and operations to inspect the “correct” functioning of this order and its conformity with American interests. This has been, for decades, the basic guideline of American foreign policy, which has generated constant conflicts involving the US armed forces, with great financial costs and great material wear and tear of the troops, in addition to several constant social damages, mainly of psychological order, with thousands of American families affected by the wars around the world where Washington interferes.

Recently, in a speech at the West Point Military Academy officers’ graduation ceremony, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that the era of endless wars is over and that the American armed forces will no longer be the police of the world. According to Trump, the US is at a crucial moment in its history, after which the government’s attitude must change drastically, no longer adopting the global interventionist policy previously implemented, but avoiding participation in continuous wars and building a new path for the country’s foreign policy.

Trump’s words are truly impressive and reveal both a strategic and humanitarian side of the American president. This same speech had already been part of his several election promises during his campaign for president in 2016. Many critics of the president therefore claim that the Republican is only trying to recover his broken promises to secure a re-election, which is likely. However, the decision to impose a definitive end to American interventionist policy is also quite strategic at the present time, since these guidelines are no longer adequate to the dynamics of the contemporary world, with a strong rise of emerging powers and geopolitical multipolarization.

However, even though Trump, international society and the American people want the end of the interventions, this is not the interest of an even deeper group of American politics: the Deep State. The secret networks of businessmen, bankers, military and intelligence agents, who really govern the U.S., will not allow Trump, in his last months in office, to make such bold decisions and will certainly act strongly to contain him. The American Deep State has an interest in maintaining operations because it is the members of these groups who are the real economically benefited by these interventions, unlike the American people.

In fact, we can even speculate whether Donald Trump’s intentions were not already known to the Deep State before they went public in his address to the military, given that in recent weeks the country has sunk into a wave of violent protests and rebellions, which, while apparently fighting against racism and discrimination, in practice promote widespread attacks against the people and the Trump administration, generating suspicions of being organized demonstrations with much deeper purposes than fighting racism and remembering the memory of George Floyd.

If Trump continues with his plan to end interventionism, the next country to undergo intervention will be the United States, where the “riots” will reach ever greater levels of violence and the country will be on the verge of a racial war. The U.S. will then undergo a colorful internal revolution, organized by the Deep State. Day after day, anti-Trump discourse is gaining more and more aggressive tone by the opposition. Last week, the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, considered the possibility of military intervention against the American president.

On the other hand, if Trump renounces his goals and capitulates to the power of the Deep State, his image will be discredited and the victory of his enemies will be an even closer scenario. Indeed, tensions only tend to increase in the United States, which, amid more than 100,000 killed by the new coronavirus pandemic, has to deal with a major political disruption, causing even more instability, chaos and fear about the uncertain future.

Several points have yet to be verified. What will be, from now on, Trump’s stance on the issue of Venezuela and the legitimate government and Nicolás Maduro? What will Trump do to withdraw his troops from across the Middle East? What will he do to Iran? What will he do to China? Perhaps not even Trump is sure what to do, but just because he proposes to think of something to ease world tensions, the president is already worthy of attention.

Yet, is this also Biden’s wish? The presidential candidate and opponent of Trump seems, on the contrary, much more willing to maintain the interventionism and practice of the world police, which will cause much more world wars and tensions. Perhaps, for the first time in recent history, an American president and Deep State are really facing off.