In ignoring voters and fueling war, Trump and Harris share the same ticket
While both sides play up their differences, Republicans and Democrats are unified in fueling a 'planet of war.'
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[A note to readers: I am now being censored by Facebook/Meta, which has deleted posts that share my articles on the grounds that they violate unspecified “Community Standards” — which means, in the real world, challenging US-Israeli state narratives. I am working to address this.]
In a rambling acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump attempted to draw a contrast with his Democratic rivals.
“Our opponents inherited a world at peace and turned it into a planet of war,” Trump said. “...War is now raging in Europe and the Middle East, a growing specter of conflict hangs over Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, and all of Asia, and our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III.”
In the view of veteran New York Times correspondent David E. Sanger, Trump made a “disingenuous argument at best.” After all, “[t]here was a low-level war bubbling in Ukraine throughout Mr. Trump’s term; he simply chose to pay little attention.” Yet Sanger conceded that Trump was not entirely off the mark. Ahead of the November election, he wrote, “the Democratic nominee will have to explain how [they] will manage a world that is clearly far more dangerous today than four years ago.” Come January, the next president “will inherit confrontations with America’s nuclear rivals China and Russia, cold wars that are one mistake away from turning hot.”
Trump was indeed being disingenuous, but not for the reason that Sanger identified. When it comes to making the world more dangerous, Trump and his Democratic successors have pursued converging and in some cases identical policies – a point of unity that neither side ever acknowledges.
When it comes to the dangerous conflict in Ukraine, it is widely taken as an article of faith that Trump, if elected, “would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy,” as the Washington Post put it earlier this year. But in office, Trump in fact pursued the same policy. Trump authorized US weapons shipments to Ukraine that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had deemed to be too provocative toward Moscow. At the behest of his National Security Advisor John Bolton, Trump then dismantled vital arms control agreements with Russia, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. A signature achievement of Ronald Reagan and Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev, the INF eliminated an entire class of nuclear and conventional weapons with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
Rather than restore the INF treaty, Biden extended the Trump policy of burying it. At the recent NATO summit in Washington, the US announced that it will deploy new long-range missiles, including Tomahawk cruise missiles and “developmental hypersonic weapons”, in Germany starting in 2026. These missiles, the Biden administration bragged, “have significantly longer range” than current US weapons systems in Europe. On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that Moscow will pursue “mirror measures” in response, including abandoning its unilateral moratorium on missile deployments.
In the weeks leading up to its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia attempted to reduce the threat of long-range missiles in Europe by proposing a new security treaty with the US and NATO, and then by engaging in direct talks with the White House. But the Biden team, consumed by its stated goal of “weakening” Russia via a proxy war in Ukraine, refused to seriously engage.
After continuing Trump’s policies in Ukraine, Biden even received a direct assist from his Republican rival in prolonging the war that both presidents helped provoke.
Before Congress finally approved an additional $60 billion for the Ukraine proxy war in April, Biden and establishment media outlets directly blamed Trump for the funding logjam, a narrative that played well to the former president’s self-styled image as an anti-interventionist foe of the “Deep State.” In reality, Trump had never clearly opposed the Ukraine funding, limiting criticism of Biden to his belief that NATO allies weren’t footing enough of the bill, and that he could end the war within 24 hours through a plan known only to him.
Having never opposed the Ukraine measure to begin with, Trump became instrumental to its passage. Right before the Ukraine vote, Trump hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson at his Mar-a-Lago estate and gave his blessing. Although Biden declined to give Trump any credit, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced his appreciation. “I thought it was significant that President Trump met with the speaker and basically backed him up,” McConnell said.
McConnell was most appreciative of Johnson and other Republican lawmakers for being able to “stand up to their own voters,” the Wall Street Journal reported. According to polls, a majority of Republicans opposed funneling tens of billions of additional dollars into a disastrous proxy war. But as McConnell explained, their opinions do not matter in Washington: “More members, I think, were willing to tell their constituents, ‘By the way, what you think is not correct.’”
When it comes to the world’s other dangerous region, the Middle East, the Trump and Biden administrations are equally in sync in ignoring the “not correct” populace footing the bill.
After taking office, the Biden White House confirmed that it would continue the Trump policy of recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967. Biden also endorsed Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there by proceeding with construction plans on stolen Palestinian land. Biden also attempted to build on Trump’s Abraham Accords, designed to normalize ties between Israel and the Gulf monarchies while sidelining Palestinian rights. Biden even refused to restore the Trump-abrogated Iran nuclear deal, a signature achievement of the Obama administration that he had served in.
The Trump-Biden commitment to Israeli aggression is now risking a new catastrophe in Lebanon, with fear of a major Israeli assault following a strike that killed 12 people in Majdal Shams, an Israeli-occupied town in the Golan Heights. (None of the victims were Israeli civilians, but Syrian Druze who refused Israeli citizenship). Israel has blamed Hezbollah for the attack, which Hezbollah denies. The White House, which has been notably unwilling to attribute countless atrocities in Gaza to Israel, immediately endorsed Israeli claims of Hezbollah culpability.
The replacement of Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee has sparked hope of a tougher US approach to Israel. Yet despite giving Benjamin Netanyahu a tepid welcome in Washington last week, Harris has signaled no change in policy. To illustrate, her national security advisor, Phil Gordon, endorsed Israel’s annexation of the Golan on Sunday by referring to it as “northern Israel” and vowing “ironclad” support for the Israeli government.
When it comes to Israel, Harris’ convergence with her rival Trump dates back to the Obama administration. In December 2016, Obama decided to abstain on a United Nations Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlement expansion rather than wield a reflexive US veto. The following month, Harris co-sponsored a Senate measure that rebuked Obama’s symbolic gesture. In chiding Obama, Harris was siding with Trump, whose transition team was at that very moment working with Netanyahu to undermine the UN vote – an act of “collusion” that drew a collective yawn from Russiagate-crazed Democrats and their media allies.
Just as Trump and the Republicans defied their constituents in supporting Ukraine proxy war funding, Harris and the Democrats have done the same with their own base, which is overwhelmingly critical of unfettered US support to Israel.
While Trump cannot claim a meaningful difference with Democrats when it comes to fueling war, he cannot even do so when it comes to his signature issue of the migrant crisis. Ahead of Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration ignored multiple warnings that its crippling sanctions and regime change campaign in Venezuela would fuel a massive wave of migration. John Bolton, who helped oversee the attempted coup effort against President Nicolas Maduro, admitted that he was well aware that it would crater Venezuela’s economy and force millions into exile. “There was no doubt the sanctions, along with the general economic deterioration before we imposed them, was driving a lot of people out of the country,” Bolton said. “ … That, to me, was a way to put pressure on the country.”
Rather than oppose this conscious effort to plunge a country into deprivation and install a pliant leader, Democrats applauded the Trump regime change effort. Upon taking the office, Biden continued the Trump sanctions. In a bid to keep energy prices low while trying to crush Russia’s vital oil market, Biden reluctantly eased the Venezuela sanctions earlier this year, only to reinstate oil sector sanctions in April. Now that the disobedient Maduro has claimed victory in Sunday’s vote, Biden will unlikely change course from the Trump policy that he has largely extended.
For all of their differences, therefore, Trump and his Democratic rivals can claim unity one at least one critical issue. When it comes to safeguarding US hegemony, both camps are ironclad in their commitment to standing up to voters and making the world far more dangerous for everyone else.