STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Trump’s skepticism of US Military-Industrial Complex Is Hopeful Sign
By Daily Bell Staff - April 27, 2016

Trump’s World to watch as Trump outlines his foreign policy … Critics have accused the Republican front-runner of bigotry and posing a danger to U.S. national security.  Many foreign policy and defense advisers say his views are worrying, mingling isolationism and protectionism, with calls to force U.S. allies to pay more for their defense and proposals to impose punitive tariffs on some imported goods. – Reuters

Former Congressman Ron Paul lost the GOP presidential nomination in large part due to his stance on US military foreign involvement. Now the GOP, which is the engine of the US military-industrial complex, faces a similar challenge in the potential presidency of Donald Trump.

Trump’s stance, like Ron Paul’s before him, has been significantly skeptical of US foreign wars. Even the sprawling overseas occupation of the US military has come into question during his campaign.

Under Obama it has been business as usual for the Pentagon. But the military-industrial-intelligence cannot be happy – in aggregate – that the country’s core propaganda has now come under direct challenge in no less than three separate national elections.

It is also direct reason for the odd speculation that Hillary Clinton could attract significant GOP support from monied, insiders.

The spectacle of GOP cross-over to Clinton indicates, almost for the first time, the real fault lines of US politics.

The national priority is a continuation of military and intelligence activity aimed at a variety of internal and external targets, many of them fanciful, or worse yet, actually constructed with Western resources.

There is considerable evidence that both Al Qaeda and now ISIS were Western creations supported and directed by Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia.

More:

“Part of what I’m saying is we love our country and we love our allies, but our allies can no longer be taking advantage of this country,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday night in a speech preview.

He said he would focus on nuclear weapons as the single biggest threat in the world today. “I’m probably the last on the trigger,” Trump told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, citing his opposition to the Iraq war.

Trump’s remarks are especially timely in light of Barack Obama’s recently revealed plans to build a “missile defense shield” around North Korea.

According to ZeroHedge, “It appears that the US will set up a missile defense system to surround North Korea and shoot down any future flying nuisances.”

In the article, Obama is quoted as saying the following: “One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile defense systems … we’re setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they’re posing right now,” Obama said.

Obama has indicated that the bottom-line problem regarding Korea is its nuclear program. But as ZeroHedge points out, “[This] is surprising considering North Korea has no chance of ever launching a fully functioning ICBM, let alone one which can reach the US.”

So what is the unsaid impetus for this move? Perhaps it is simply to deploy even more ships and military equipment in the region where recent diplomatic posturing between the US and China over various contested islands in the South China Sea has been the biggest geopolitical threat in recent years.

This ZeroHedge assessment is an accurate one, in our view, though we have taken it a step further in previous articles about North Korea’s nuclear “threat.”

Here’s what we wrote early in March regarding North Korea and nukes:

For instance, North Korea claims to have a new-type “large-caliber multiple launch rocket system.” However … “experts are divided” about the country’s ability to mount warheads on “working missile delivery system.”

North Korea feeds the fear. Now it has released photos of Kim looking at a mock up of miniaturized atomic bomb — “a small, silverish globe with a ballistic missile or a model ballistic missile in the background.”

According to Reuters, South Korea disputed the North’s claim regarding miniaturized warheads. The alternative media weighed in skeptically as well.

The Daily Sheeple posted an article entitled, “Guess It’s Supposed To Be Scary, But Kim Jong-Un Just Looks Stupid Posing With This Supposed Mini Nuke.”

We also wrote, “Some of North Korea’s claims – and the hyper-nuclear claims of other states – are so exaggerated that they are difficult for anyone to believe.”

At some point, the entire 20th century (and now 21st) narrative regarding nuclear weapons is going to start to come apart. The Cold War itself was very much not what it seemed, nor it turns out was the “space race” given that the US generously provided Russia with Germany’s top aviation minds after the war.

At a time when so much in the West seems grim and wasteful, US mainstream political challenges to international security expenditures are a hopeful sign.

Stripped of titanic military and intelligence expenses, the US might even have a chance to recover from its current bankrupt condition.

Conclusion: Whatever else Trump does or doesn’t have in mind, he is doing US citizens a significant service by questioning military-industrial costs and the larger positioning of the US “empire” abroad.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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