Trump Pivots to the 'Homeland': Neocon Deathblow? Or Simply Imperialism Repackaged?
Major outlets are reporting that the US is set to shift its entire geopolitical strategy away from Eurasia and toward its own sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. This is according to “sources” briefed on a new National Defense Strategy framework whose chief architect is Elbridge Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
From the above Politico link:
Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China.
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
This is particularly interesting because, as Politico notes, Elbridge Colby has previously been a China hawk, and Trump and his policy makers have in general cited China as the US’ principle threat in the past, advocating for a quick end to the Ukrainian war for the sole purpose of being able to pivot to the so-called “Chinese threat”.
So—if these rumors are true—why the sudden about face on this critical geopolitical issue?
Bernhard at MoA seems to have nailed the most realistic explanation:
Colby wants to change U.S. defense policy from concentrating on China, as he had previously argued, to the Western Hemisphere. He may have seen new facts that have moved his opinion.
The failed attempt by the U.S. Navy to secure shipping through the Red Sea against attacks by Houthi in Yemen may have caused such rethink. As may have the loss of the US/NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Or did he compare videos of the 'woke' U.S. military parade in Washington DC (vid) earlier this year with the recent flawless one in China (vid)? The difference was indeed glaring. It demonstrated that the U.S. has no chance of winning in a war against China.
Trump seems to concede that China is winning.
B goes on to share this quite emblematic post from Trump:
Trump appears to be expressing his indifference for the Dragon-Bear-Elephant union—though it could be a kind of feigned affectation owing to a self-admitted powerlessness in the circumstances. In truth, Trump’s recent actions appear almost designed to alienate India from the US into China and Russia’s arms, as if the plan is to intentionally isolate the US in a kind of cunning 4D out-maneuvering of the embedded warhawk-MIC establishment. This drunken-master Kung Fu-style of geopolitics leaves one guessing at which positive and successful outcomes are by design, and which by sheer chaotic luck-of-the-draw, which, for now, leaves Trump as a kind of ultimate enigma as president.
In accordance with this news, FT reports that the US is set to cut key security funds for European countries bordering Russia.
The US is to phase out security assistance programmes for European armies along Russia’s border, as it pushes the continent to pay for more of its own defence.
Pentagon officials last week informed European diplomats that the US would no longer fund programmes that train and equip militaries in eastern European countries that would be on the frontline of any conflict with Russia, people familiar with the matter said.
Now Trump has launched an initiative to take crime and dysfunction-plagued US cities under military and ICE custodianship, as he has done in DC.
This has led many to naturally conclude that Trump truly is leaning into prioritizing the domestic sphere away from global and international concerns, boldly moving to unyoke the US from its disastrous neocon-led hegemonic trajectory.
But as B noted in his earlier MoA piece, there is little of actual substance yet to demonstrate that these moves will change the calculus at all:
It is difficult to believe though that the Trump administration will be able to change U.S. grand strategy. Any change will typically happen only at a snail's pace. It would need all party support over multiple administrations. The pivot to Asia was launched by the Obama administration in 2010 and has since has been followed by all later ones.
Over the last year the U.S. has urged its 'allies' to invest more in defense than previously. Moving U.S. resources away from where allies take over is not a real change of strategy.
The U.S. pulls back from Ukraine but pushes the Europeans to continue the war against Russia. The general aim of 'weakening Russia', thus stays the same.
So while U.S. military resources are shrinking or shifting to geographically more nearby issues the overarching grand strategy aim, the achievement of global U.S. primacy, may well stay the same. It is just that other are pushed to carry a bigger burden for it. Colby's pressure on Australia and Japan is pointing that way.
Recall the US even under Trump has dragged its feet for years on initiatives to pull troops from Iraq, Europe, etc. An excuse is always somehow resurrected at the last moment which buys the MIC time and keeps US occupation forces perpetually in places where their presence stirs conflict, exacerbates tensions, and unnecessarily provokes so-called “adversaries” like Russia, China, or Iran. US troops in Syria, for instance—which Trump has likewise failed to pull—have done nothing but facilitate conflict, act as JTACs for Israeli strike corridors, etc.; the claim of being some sort of ‘peacekeepers’ is a sham.
It’s no wonder that Trump proudly heralds the ‘Department of War’ while preaching feigned peace and isolationism:
But the most representative new consequence of this apparent reorientation to the Western Hemisphere is Trump’s sudden focus on Venezuela.
Under a false pretext of targeting drug cartels, Trump’s administration has ramped up threatening military pressure against Maduro’s government, proving that the so-called ‘anti-neocon’ approach may very well be just the same old ‘hegemonism’ in a different guise, as B had alluded to.
It’s been shown that comparatively few of the US’ narcotics are sourced from Venezuela, so Trump’s sudden high-octane gunboat diplomacy towards Venezuela is clearly designed to target Maduro’s unwelcome “regime”, and cleanse the US’ backyard of any adversarial—i.e. Chinese, Iranian, or Russian—presence or ‘meddling’.
It’s obvious the phony ‘drug’ pretext is meant merely to legitimize US encroachment and attacks against the duly elected Venezuelan government, which again raises the question whether Trump is really anti-war, or is simply against wars deemed unprofitable to the US.
Not only is the US sending warships to the region, but deploying F-35s under the guise of fighting ‘drug cartels’—a laughable cover:
America positions fighters closer to Venezuela.
The US has ordered 10 F-35 fighters to be stationed at an airfield in Puerto Rico for operations "against drug cartels". This is reported by Reuters. The aircraft are expected to arrive by the end of next week.
Additionally, marine landing exercises are currently taking place here, organized by the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.
The US does not notice drug trafficking from other countries, such as Colombia, because why would they - Colombia sends militants to Ukraine, and Venezuela has a leader they dislike. Especially since this country also produces oil.
Because the world’s most advanced fifth generation stealth fighters, which cost $50,000 per flight hour to operate, are a necessity against unarmed sea-skiffs piloted by “Venezuelan” villagers.
Now US Marines are even practicing amphibious assault landings via hovercraft in the nearby southern Caribbean:
WATCH: The U.S. military is carrying out amphibious landing exercises on Puerto Rico, specifically on the southern beaches which closely resemble the coast of Venezuela
Trump hints he may attack the “drug cartels” inside Venezuela itself—but not inside Colombia, naturally:
Attacking Venezuela with warships and F-35s to take out “drug cartels” is as plausible a justification as hitting Palestinian hospitals to root out “Hamas”.
In truth, the abruptness of this pivot reeks strongly of a desperate ploy for another quick ‘victory’ for Trump after a string of disappointing failures and humiliations in attempts to economically browbeat India, cow Russia into surrender, put a dent in the lackluster economic figures, etc., and perhaps even as distraction from the growing Epstein scandal. Trump is determined to get his victory somewhere, somehow, so he doesn’t run out of shining accolades to parade during heated press exchanges.
Now Venezuela is said to be deploying anti-ship missile-armed, Iranian-made gunboats as precaution:
Venezuela deploys new Iranian-made attack boats
Armed with CM-90 anti-ship cruise missiles - designed to hit larger warships
And Trump has also given his generals permission to shoot down Venezuelan aircraft that ‘threaten’ the US warships assembling near Venezuelan waters.
Few would disagree that it would be a small and worthy price to pay if Trump’s Monroe Doctrine revival actually meant the US leaving the rest of the world alone; after all, the avoidance of WWIII against a superpower like China is preferable to almost any other option. Though it obviously would still represent an imperialistic injustice to beleaguer Venezuela, at the least it could be faintly justified by the ‘realist’ position that great powers are owed their spheres of influence. But of course, this goes out the window when the US continues cultivating policies of arrant hypocrisy by continually interfering in Russian, Chinese, and Indian affairs, amongst many others.
And it should also be mentioned, that Trump’s dishonorable geopolitical skullduggery was again highlighted in conjunction with the above Venezuelan reports, when news broke that in 2019 Trump had approved of a secret Navy SEAL sabotage mission against North Korea which resulted in the cold-blooded murder of DPRK civilian fishermen.
The most egregious aspect of the story, which demonstrates Trump’s now-famous two-faced insincerity—witnessed recently in his negotiations with Iran—has it that Trump activated this mission virtually while mugging for cameras and shaking hands with Kim Jong Un in the DMZ-bridging photo-op, which sought to portray Trump as some grand uniter and generational mediator of peace.
Granted, we must be somewhat wary of the story given its timing, and the usual ‘anonymous’ sources shtick. But NYT does claim to have spoken to several dozen people involved, which seems hard to fake. More likely, they sat on a real story to release at a politically opportune time to undermine Trump, which is usually how such things work. This doesn’t exactly exonerate Trump, but rather indicts both him and the MSM as two sides of the same lusterless coin.
Either way, it demonstrates the low-trust, mercenary nature of the US political class which makes it impossible for developing nations of the Global South to take seriously any overtures of claimed concord or amity. This should further contextualize the so-called ‘pivot’ to the Western Hemisphere being sold by Politico: the US is agreement-incapable after years of cultivated political exceptionalism which has spawned a political class of shamelessly immoral cretins to whom accountability and ethics are merely ‘optional’ bargaining chips or expedient bromides to be discarded at will.
It seems in its imperialistic death throes, the US as a political entity no longer remembers how to function without violence, aggression, domination, etc. It’s like attempting to domesticate a feral animal that has spent its entire life tearing living flesh with its teeth, soaking its fur in blood, reacting with killer intent to every odd murmur in the dead of night. The US has lost all ability to function as a normal, coequal state in the newly burgeoning world for which such modes of existence are viewed as increasingly barbaric and antediluvian.
Perhaps in some backwards, counterintuitive way, Trump will surprise us by representing a last-gasp attempt to correct course. Perhaps this “pivot” really is a genuine attempt at regaining the wheel of this swerving eighteen-wheeler, choosing lesser evils to slowly ween the US warmachine off its fatal gluttony for world domination. It’s true, things must sometimes be taken in small measure, as going cold-turkey could have devastating consequences of its own.
But one certainly can’t judge those who’ve lost their appetites for flimsy hopes and ‘4D’ dreams.
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