By Quest Riggs
In late 2017 and early 2018 the Trump administration released two documents that most workers have never seen. First, the State Department released its periodical National Security Strategy (NSS) in December, and then the Department of Defense released its annual National Defense Strategy (NDS) report in January. They officially explained their worldview and strategy for maintaining and expanding the US capitalist empire.
The major issue in the reports is the confrontational position that they take towards Russia and China. With the Democratic Party practically calling for the invasion of Russia and claiming Trump is only its puppet, this may surprise some.
During Obama’s presidency the U.S. military buildup along the borders of the Russian Federation and the Peoples Republic of China kicked into overdrive. There were countless aggressive political and military acts such as the US-led coup installing a Nazi regime in Ukraine and provocative war-games in the South China Sea. And there was also no shortage of anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda campaigns directed at the people here and the rest of the world, so that our minds are already conditioned to view the “Russian Bear” and “Red China” as hostile, subversive and out to rule the world.
Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, “Our military is still strong, yet our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare — air, land, sea, space and cyberspace — and it continues to erode.” And the document itself says “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security… long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department.”
U.S. foreign policy is no different than when the capitalist Henry Ford said: “Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist, and you will sweep war from the earth.”
In March the Senate, Democrats together with Republicans, almost unanimously granted Trump the largest military budget in history for 2019, of $719 billion of our taxes. On top of this, Trump is spending billions of our tax dollars to build up a nuclear stockpile- with hellish intentions to rain fire on people in the name of U.S. imperialism. The military budget of the United States is more than China and Russia combined, as well as the next 10 industrialized countries together. The U.S. nuclear arsenal is massive already.
Trump, on behalf of Wall Street, has declared economic warfare on the world, which will create misery for millions globally and at home. But economic warfare can only be sustained by military force. The U.S. capitalist competition is the sole and only reason and has nothing to do with saving jobs, security or defense.
Trump’s National Security Strategy also took an aggressive pro-war stance in relation to smaller independent countries like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. The people of these nations are already in direct danger of invasion by the imperialist war-machine. They are already living with the daily realities of economic warfare that keeps their economies underdeveloped. These are the people who are in the cross-hairs of Trump’s nuclear weapons systems.
Terrorism is the genocidal war that the U.S. is waging on the people of Yemen, with their royal partners the Saudi Kingdom starving and causing the deaths of millions of Yemenis.
Throughout the decades, despite changes in which party holds office, the war machine has steadily gotten bigger and more aggressive. Trump and his gang of war-hungry generals, bankers and oil executives have kicked this into overdrive. We must recognize that when they say “national security” or “national defense” they are only talking about themselves and their blood money.
They don’t care about us any more than they care about the workers in the countries that they bomb or starve. We workers, united and organized, are the only ones who can defend us. Security, for us and the people of the world, will only exist when this empire is overthrown.
“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all… The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”
―Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller