A response to Hillary's foreign policy

Empress Trudy

I believe that progressive's dire threats that Hillary is a secret war hawk are nonsense.

First - that's a political statement to set progressives apart. Second - there's little history to suggest this is true. The US has been very reluctant to do more than window dressing foreign policy-wise. Oh they talk shit but it's 10x louder than a real effect. And yes there's 6,000 or so troops in Iraq and Syria (but don't mention that, that's a big secret!) as well as helicopters and strike drones and the random air strike but in the context of the whole region the US presence in the Mideast and North and Sub Saharan Africa is about the size of France's involvement.

The Hillary regime will be no less neo-isolationist than Obama. We're in a new era - an era of proxies with new customers and their new enemies. Western leaders of France, the UK and the US see their foreign policy role as arms dealers to local presidents, generals, wazirs, republican guards, rebel armies and the like. President Dear Leader Queen Hillary the Even Greater the Second will sell gear to them before she sends our people in droves. After all, that would require her to put women in harms' way under the new rules of the DoD which opened almost all combat jobs to women. No one seriously believed they'd be called on to follow through on that.

Moreover, Hillary's mutterings about overall budgets and funding puts the US on a path to have the smallest armed forces since the late 1920's-early 1930's. And ALL the western states are on the same path - Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and the minor NATO states. Even Turkey with its purges has no choice but to shrink its overall posture.

But leaving that aside, we're left with 'soft power'. That is, the power of transnational bodies like the UN, EU, NGO’s, ‘foundations’, unapproved treaties, international law and such. The people extolling the greatness of that plan are the same people who are relying on them. That's not a reliable or accurate point of view to have. Maybe it’s effective but it’s probably not very effective for the same reason any cartel isn’t effective. Everyone makes grand pronouncements then violates their own deals and cuts secret side deals on their own.

The real charm, the real appeal of forking over your nation's law making to international and transnational bodies, is in fact a domestic political issue entirely. It's meant to override the Constitution, checks and balances and rule of law for our country not some ally or foreign foe. And while the US waves a Sword of Damocles in the UNSC over the Jews as a credible threat it's increasingly not a POTENT one. What, after all, are the real consequences of the UNSC decreeing where they shall suffer the Jews to live? I suspect it’s more hot air than cold pragmatism, like every Arab state who promises to shovel billions and billions of dollars to the poor peaceful peace loving ‘palestinians’ of peace and never do it.

No I suspect that progressive democrat Frankenhillary’s foreign policy will resemble the most freewheeling unhindered robber baron limitless mercantile capitalism that puts everything in the country up for sale to the highest bidder. Everything that’s not nailed down and some of which that is, is all going out the door at fire sale prices. This plays directly to the liberal progressive ethos of the emergency of shortages. You can’t have have a liberal progressive nanny state w/o rationing and shortages and the overall belief that however much you have of anything, today, is as much as it will ever be. The role of government in that space is to micromanage that dwindling quantity in carefully controlled portions until nothing’s left. What better way to set the stage than to sell off everything in the country until there are shortages.

Yesterday in the last debate Hillary ranted about Chinese steel that ‘Donald’ buys. She left out that WE in THIS country make almost NO steel at all. The few companies that do, like Arcelor, are Indian firms operating in the US in the specialty steel and steel recycling business. If anyone wants to use steel in the US in large quantities they HAVE to buy it from overseas. I really can't see Hillary bringing the steel business back to the US. What’s in it for the American government and her administration to do so?

But I diverge. Foreign policy. The question is, what IS foreign policy – what purpose does it serve? Which strategic national interests does it answer to? What are those strategic interests in the first place? Obama is slowly turning over the Persian Gulf to Iran through which 40% of the world’s crude oil moves. He’s turning over the South China Sea to China, through which big gobs of world trade move. He’s watched as Russia takes over Crimea with one hand while it chokes Europe with the power of being able to provide half their energy with the other. If all of that is in our interest then there’s little for Hillary to change or do. Just do that more. And by that, I mean ‘nothing’. If Hillary has a different portfolio of national imperatives informed by foreign policy she has yet to articulate it. Green energy? Where are all the solar panels coming from? China. Nothing else we’ve heard so far involves making anything – just entitlements, empowerment and social welfare programs that ‘the rich’ are going to pay for. ISIS? The supernal voodoo evil that’s a great punching bag and fear monger. We can’t even call it what it is we’re not shaping a foreign policy against it.

That leaves our parochial interest in Israel. The land based aircraft carrier formerly known as America’s proxy spear against Soviet incursion in the Mideast. Problem is that the US switched sides and isn’t worried about the Russians, the Iranians or the Arabs anymore. It’s Jews who are on the outs, they’re dead men walking. Hillary’s foreign policy will resemble that of Obama’s so lets encapsulate that. Obama loathes Israel and likely is an antisemite. But Obama is also passive and a narcissist. He never takes direct action AT anything. He stands aside and lets others do it or better yet waits for the target of his hatred to lash out at him first. He wants Israel and all the Jews in it to vanish but he’s perfectly willing to let others take the lead on that. So drip by drip he cuts them out, cuts them down, gives more to their enemies. The goal is the slow erosion of the Jewish state much like Arafats’s as constructed by his KGB handlers in the 1960’s. This strategy has a fatal flaw though. It relies on Israel playing along. If Israel were to disengage at the same rate the US is disengaging, since hostility is the same thing as disengagement, Obama’s plan falls apart. Importantly, there’s no evidence that shows us that Hillary’s stratagem will be any different. How many cards does the US have to play? Just one, the ‘unbreakable relationship’ card. That is a weak card to play for a couple of reasons. 1) there’s little in the way of technology and money the Israelis can't do without if the costs gets very high. 2) the threat of withdrawing that support has never been tested and so the outcome is very unpredictable. 3) the aid package just floated only restricts those dollars and no others. Since there’s a worry that the aid must eventually be spent 100% in the US, spend other money on indigenous and other efforts.

The Obama/Hillary foreign policy vis a vis the Mideast is one of resignation, confusion, chaos, withdraw. After a half century they have little to show for it other than a teetering relationship with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the GCC compounded by utter cluelessness about Syria and Iraq compounded by a toxic bizarre love affair with Iran. An Iran who’s firing land based Chinese cruise missiles at the US Navy today. And finally a diplomatic quagmire with Turkey, NATO’s second largest partner and openly militarily hostile to US interests. And lest we forget the Obama/Hillary foreign policy actively interfered with the elections in Israel and Egypt in an attempt to topple both governments.

The conclusion I draw is that Hillary’s foreign policy will be hollow – a loud resonating chamber of noise from them about them for the benefit of the cheap seats in the domestic media. Obama frittered away almost all respect others have for the US and the Presidency as if almost intentionally. Hillary is even less credible and less serious. Her administration will be a RICO crime not a statement about world affairs.