Trump Attacks Military Industrial Complex and Calls for Infrastructure Investments in the Middle East

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation:

For the first time in over half a century, an American President has actually come out attacking the Military Industrial Complex. Of course, everyone knows of President Dwight D. Eisenhauer’s famous outgoing 1961 speechwarning the world (and the incoming President Kennedy) what sort of monster had arisen at the heart of America’s defense institutions. Very little on the matter was said on the frightening topic by decades of political leaders who rose to prominence in the shadow of JFK’s corpse. Instead, the beast grew like a malignant cancer over the ensuing years as a major branch of the British-run deep state that carried out a coup with Sir Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1946 and the MI6-directed re-organization of American intelligence with the creation of the CIA in 1947.

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, networks of neoconservative contaminated all branches of government in both parties bringing the USA into a frenzied military doctrine centered on regime change wars, oil-centered geopolitics and unipolarism totally uncharacteristic with the better constitutional traditions of the nation. This geopolitical doctrine nearly drove the west into a full military confrontation with Russia and China in recent years.

The Tide Begins to Turn

On May 20 speaking to Fox News, President Trump echoed Eisenhauer’s warnings. Under a coterie of Trump’s war-mongering advisors such as John Bolton, Gina Haspel, Terrence O’Shaughnessy and Mike Pompeo, America has recently been brought to the brink of war with Iran. While Trump has too often accommodated this hive of neocons, his recent statements and repeated calls for cooperation with Russia and China demonstrate a sound push back which should be taken very seriously. In that Fox interview Trump said:

“With all of everything that’s going on, and I’m not one that believes—you know, I’m not somebody that wants to go in to war, because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly—by far most importantly.”

You know, in Syria, with the caliphate, so I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have these crazy people who run around blowing up stores and blowing up things—these are seriously ill people. I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, they’re wiped,’ you know, ISIS. But, I wiped out 100 percent of the caliphate. I say, ‘I want to bring our troops back home.’ The place went crazy. You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave.”

‘You know what I’ll do, I’ll leave a couple hundred soldiers behind,’ but if it was up to them, they’d bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday people will explain it, but you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight.”

Trump continued to explain his preference for economic over military solutions which is certainly in alignment with the Russia and Chinese approach in the Middle East. Both great Eurasian powers have repeatedly stated that the only hope for the Middle East and Africa involves:

1) The cessation of support of said organizations by western geopoliticians and their allies.

2) Programs for long term infrastructure investment to stabilize the conflict torn regions while provide a dynamic of long term thinking emerge. While Putin has come out most forcefully on the former, China has brought its grand Belt and Road infrastructure design to Arab nations with extremely positive results. Over 17 Arab nations have signed cooperation agreements on BRI-connected projects worth $190 billion dollars and Syria’s leadership has explicitly embraced this pathway as the only hope for the future.

Trump’s Surprising Call for Infrastructure in the Middle East

The day before Trump’s “military industrial complex” interview, Jared Kushner (senior White House Advisor) made headlines by announcing a Middle East infrastructure investment conference in Manama Bahrain on June 25-26 which will bring together finance ministers, and business leaders from around the world to discuss a new doctrine for the middle east. The purpose of the summit will be to by-pass the unresolvable obstacles which decades of obsession on “political solutions” without economic development has created.

Trying to attain a political remedy to the injustices accrued in the Middle East is impossible without economic development programs first transforming the entire physical economic (and thus socio-cultural) potentials of all participants. As long as stagnancy and scarcity dominate a region suffering water, energy and education shortages, the spiritual environment of hope and security needed for trust and dialogue is politically impossible.

Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin understood this fact when he shook Yasser Arafat’s hand in Oslo and said “the courage belongs to those who have the courage to change their axioms”. Arafat and Rabin understood that their entente would only succeed if it was driven by much needed energy, water and transportation infrastructure benefiting both Israelis and Palestinians alike. Technocrats running the World Bank also understood this when nearly $2 billion of loans to invest in said projects were blocked and the plan sabotaged before his 1995 London-directed assassination.

Discussing the renewed plan for economic development, a White House official told CNN on May 19th “that you can’t have peace without economic stability and opportunity, but you also can’t have economic opportunity and stability without peace and free of terror and resolving some of these core issues”. The official also said “If there’s peace, it will touch on not only the West Bank and Gaza but also Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. The economies will become integrated. Think about how much money is spent on bullets right now. If it could be spent on infrastructure and human capital, think about how much better the region could be”

Kushner’s conference reflects a second chance at that sabotaged opportunity and again brings American modes of conduct into harmony with the Chinese philosophy for Middle East stabilization. Kushner told CNN that “people are letting their grandfathers’ conflict destroy their children’s futures. This will present an exciting, realistic and viable pathway forward that does not currently exist”. The plan is driven by low interest loans, grant money and private investment.

The Military Industrial Complex and the broader deep state controlled from British Intelligence is certainly not happy with this turn of events.

Thus far, no words have yet been said on US-Russia-China cooperation on this program, but as we move into the upcoming G20 Summit in Japan and Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping have announced meetings at that venue, there are positive grounds for cautious optimism.

BIO: Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He is an author with The Duran, Strategic Culture Foundation, Fort Russ. His works have been published in Zero Hedge, Executive Intelligence Review, Global Times, Asia Times, L.A. Review of Books, and Sott.net. Matthew has also published the book “The Time has Come for Canada to Join the New Silk Road” and three volumes of the Untold History of Canada (available on untoldhistory.canadianpatriot.org). He can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com