The Trump Administration: From “No War Hawks” to ALL War Hawks

November 13, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In the weeks leading up to the 2024 US presidential election, Americans and many around the world invested hope that former-president and now President-elect Donald Trump would grind America’s wars abroad to a halt and instead invest in the United States itself.

These hopes were based on rhetoric surrounding the Trump campaign. The candidate’s son, Donald Trump Jr., remarked publicly, “we need maximum pressure to keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration,” a reflection of candidate Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Unfortunately, just as was the case during President-elect Donald Trump’s previous term in office, this was an empty promise meant to secure the support of war-weary Americans and possibly even to throw nations abroad off balance, before filling his cabinet with the most vocal “neocons and war hawks” living and breathing in Washington D.C.

Continuity of Agenda…

During President-elect Trump’s previous administration, he lined his cabinet with hardcore neocons and war hawks like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Nikki Haley who all worked ceaselessly to continue all the wars President Trump inherited from the Obama administration and attempt to provoke additional wars US special interests have long-since sought including with China, Iran, and even Russia itself.

During the first Trump administration, the US initiated a trade war with China and other measures aimed at gutting China’s largest and most successful businesses including smartphone manufacturer Huawei, culminating in sales bans across the collective West, US-based Google cutting Huawei off from its Android operating system, and even the detainment of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou while traveling in Canada.

During the first Trump administration, the US also continued its military build-up across the Asia-Pacific as a means of encircling and containing China within its own borders, another policy inherited from the Obama administration.

In the Middle East, the Trump administration continued the illegal occupation of Syria which began under the Obama administration, continued carrying out strikes against the Syrian government and its allies, with President Trump bragging about pilfering Syrian oil. It was also during the first Trump administration that the US assassinated senior Iranian military leader General Qasem Soleimani while visiting Iraq on official business, an indisputable act of war against both Iran and Iraq. General Soleimani had until then been successfully fighting the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” across the region, including in Syria and Iraq.

And while President Trump was accused of being an agent of Russian interests, in reality his administration helped accelerate the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine by beginning to arm Ukrainian forces, almost certainly the final red line crossed convincing Moscow to launch its Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022. It was also during the first Trump administration that the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, paving the way for the subsequent Biden administration to station intermediate-range missiles in Europe pointed at Russia.

As the first Trump administration egregiously violated campaign promises of ending US involvement abroad, many Trump supporters resorted to a number of excuses including President Trump’s “inexperience,” suggesting he may not have known who Pompeo, Bolton, or Haley actually were and that during a second administration his cabinet would act upon lessons learned.

Restocking the Swamp…

Fast-forward to today, the incoming Trump administration had temporarily bolstered that hope – that these lessons were indeed learned – by announcing Bolton, Pompeo and Haley would play no role in the incoming administration.

This was short-lived, however, as it was subsequently announced that the next national security adviser would likely be Mike Waltz, the ideological twin of John Bolton. Elsie Stafanik was announced as US ambassador to the UN, the ideological twin of Nikki Haley. And both Marco Rubio and Richard Grenell are being considered as the possible incoming US Secretary of State, men whose views are indistinguishable from former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – or US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken under the Biden administration for that matter.

Israeli Strikes Demonstrates Limits of Western Military Might

November 5, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Israel’s most recent missile strikes on Iran reveal the limits to conventional Western military power in the Middle East, reflecting wider limits globally.
While Israel’s air force conducted a sophisticated, large-scale operation requiring well-trained, well-coordinated personnel as well as capable air-launched long-range precision guided missiles, a combination of Iranian defensive capabilities and constraints on Western (including Israeli) military industrial production limited results.

While Israel and its US sponsors are capable of larger-scale military operations, this would be within the context of open warfare – warfare US-Israeli forces and their combined industrial power would struggle to sustain.

Doubts may exist regarding Iranian resolve and resilience and whether it and its allies could outlast and outfight US-Israeli forces short of either or both the US and Israel resorting to nuclear weapons. Even if the US and its proxies, including Israel, were to prevail over Iran in the Middle East, it may come at the cost of forfeiting Washington’s pursuit of primacy elsewhere around the globe, including in Ukraine versus Russia and the Asia-Pacific region versus China.

Escalation Toward War

Long-standing US policy seeks to use Israel to provoke war with Iran, absolving Washington of responsibility while creating a pretext for Washington itself to wade into the conflict once it begins. Despite Israel lacking the conventional military power required to fight and win a war against Iran, Israel has conducted a long list of provocations to draw Iran into conflict, nonetheless, specifically to fulfill this US foreign policy objective.

Exchanges of missile strikes between Israel and Iran began in April 2024 when Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing military personnel and civilians. It triggered a chain-reaction of strikes, assassinations, and retaliations, documented in a timeline laid out by the New York Times.

Iran’s first retaliatory strike in April 2024 consisted of a barrage of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles two weeks after its consulate was attacked and after notifying the United States days prior, giving the US and its regional partners ample time to coordinate efforts to intercept most of the incoming weapons.

US Government Behind Campaign Violating North Korean Airspace

October 23, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - North Korea has recently warned against the use of drones over its sovereign airspace to spread subversive propaganda.

CNN in its October 11, 2024 article, “North Korea accuses South of flying drones over Pyongyang,” reported, “North Korea accused South Korea of flying propaganda-filled drones over Pyongyang and threatened “retaliation,” state media reported.”

The same article admits that “South Korean activists and North Korean defectors have sent balloons to the North, loaded with propaganda material criticizing leader Kim Jong Un, along with USB sticks filled with K-pop songs and South Korean television shows.”

What the article omitted is that this campaign is not an organic activity carried out by independent activists, but a campaign of subversion organized and funded by the US government.

A US State Department Provocation…

As early as 2014, the Western media promoted what was called, “Thumb Drives for Democracy,” a campaign organized by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF).

The Atlantic published an article in early 2014 titled, “We Hacked North Korea With Balloons and USB Drives,” by HRF founder Thor Halvorssen, which admits its balloons carry “subversive information” meant to undermine the North Korean government. It also admits that before HRF began its campaign, “the U.S. government provided support for these groups through the National Endowment for Democracy* and the State Department’s DRL [The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs] programs.”

The balloons were just one part of a much wider campaign of subversion and ultimately regime change.

HRF also organizes the annual “Oslo Freedom Forum” (OFF) funded in part by the Freedom Fund, which includes the US State Department as a “key investor.” The OFF is a continuation of US State Department-funded training programs gathering agitators from around the globe, training, funding, and equipping them to then return to their respective nations and attempt to overthrow them.

The New York Times in its 2011 article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” admits the US government prepared years ahead of the so-called “Arab Spring,” backing the core organizations that ultimately carried it out across the Middle East and North Africa. The article explicitly states:

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

Clearly, HRF serves as an intermediary continuing US government-funded sedition around the globe in a way more difficult to trace directly back to the US government itself. Its objectives nonetheless remain to undermine, divide, destabilize, and overthrow nations targeted by the US State Department for regime change, including North Korea.

More Than Just Balloons…

Considering the aftermath of the admittedly US-engineered “Arab Spring” which included the full-scale destruction of Libya, a deeply divided Egypt, and a nearly destroyed Syria, North Korea’s concerns regarding similar US government-sponsored activities being aimed at it falls far short of an overreaction.

US-Israel Inch Toward Wider, More Dangerous War

October 14, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Beginning in October 2023 a renewed cycle of violence began destabilizing the Middle East. Hamas’ October 7, 2023 military operation into Israeli-held territory served as a pretext for Israel, not to dismantle Hamas itself, but to conduct an indiscriminate punitive military operation against all of Gaza.

 
Israel all but admitted as much, with Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari admitting “thousands of tonnes of munitions had already been dropped on the tiny strip” by October 10, 2023 and that, “right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage.”

While the Western media repeatedly refers to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack as “Iranian-backed,” the West itself has admitted that Iran had no knowledge of the impending operation, let alone any role in it. This resembles deliberate attempts by the US to infer Iraqi culpability regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, despite officially admitting Iraq played no role, all to serve as a partial pretext for the eventual US invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 onward.

Omitted from deliberately deceptive narratives trying to link Iran to Hamas is the fact that Hamas has a long-standing history of serving as an extension of US aggression in the region, rather than serving as a bulwark against it. In 2012, Hamas publicly announced it would mobilize against the Syrian government on the side of US-backed and armed militants. For years, Hamas fighters would play a role in fighting the Syrian government and its Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah allies.

For years, Hamas has worked in tandem with Israel itself to frustrate efforts to establish a two-state solution, perpetuating hostilities, and serving as a continuous pretext for continued Israeli aggression.

Creating an Impossible Dilemma for Iran

The ultimate goal of Israel’s punitive operation against Gaza is to create an impossible dilemma for Iran and its allies and, eventually, a permissive environment for wider conflict across the region.

While Iran does not support Hamas, it supports the Palestinian people and their right to resist what the UN recognizes under international law as illegal Israeli occupation. Iran and its allies, including Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Yemen-based Ansar Allah (referred to across the Western media as “Houthis”) were compelled to assist the Palestinians.

Hezbollah has since exchanged fire with Israeli military targets along the Israeli-Lebanese border, while Ansar Allah has conducted interdiction operations against Israeli-bound shipping through the Red Sea.

Israel has used this as a pretext to escalate further, striking Iran’s consulate in Syria on April 1, 2024, and a series of terrorist attacks and targeted assassinations against Hezbollah culminating in the death of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

Both escalations were met by Iranian retaliation. Iran conducted a large-scale attack on Israel using stand-off weapons including drones, cruise missiles, and long-range ballistic missiles in mid-April and a larger ballistic missile strike in early October.

Both strikes were conducted with considerable restraint.

The mid-April strike was preceded by Iranian warnings, providing the US and Israel days to prepare. The second strike, although conducted on short notice and involving a larger number of ballistic missiles, was designed to demonstrate Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses rather than to maximize damage.

Western Media Urges Public: Believe Our Lies, Not Your Own Eyes

October 2, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In a recent London Telegraph article titled, “The British travel bloggers ‘sugarcoating’ China’s Uyghur problem to the delight of Beijing,” readers are told that “more than one million Uyghurs are believed to be detained in re-education camps,” in Xinjiang and that Western tourists traveling to the region and seeing no evidence at all of this or other claims made by the Western media for years, are simply toeing the line of the Chinese government for clicks and cash.

The article claims that the Chinese government has “given them a helping hand” by providing visas enabling easier access to China, including the western region of Xinjiang, trying to make efforts by Beijing to counter baseless Western propaganda with transparency appear sinister.

To refute what tourists have seen with their own eyes and relayed through their travel vlogs, the Telegraph quotes Daria Impiombato, “a cyber analyst” at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) who claimed, “vloggers with large platforms had a responsibility to inform themselves and to be sceptical.”

By “inform themselves,” the ASPI analyst almost certainly means toeing the line of the US government ASPI itself helps define because unlike the tourists the Telegraph obliquely smears throughout its article but ultimately admits, “there is no suggestion any of the vloggers are acting at the behest of the Chinese government or receiving its money,” ASPI receives the bulk of its funds (PDF) from the US government, other Western governments, and Western arms manufacturers (PDF) like Lockheed Martin, Thales, Saab, and Boeing.

China Responded to Very Real, Very Extensive Terrorism…

For years, the US government, mainstream Western media outlets, and a large network of US government-funded organizations – including ASPI – have attempted to perpetuate the myth of a “Uyghur genocide” taking place in China’s western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This followed years of US government-sponsored separatism and terrorism that shook the region, spread across both China and the rest of Asia, before spanning half the globe and reaching battlefields in Syria.

In 2014, the BBC would report on the vicious terrorism plaguing China:

In June 2012, six Uighurs reportedly tried to hijack a plane from Hotan to Urumqi before they were overpowered by passengers and crew.

There was bloodshed in April 2013 and in June that year, 27 people died in Shanshan county after police opened fire on what state media described as a mob armed with knives attacking local government buildings.

At least 31 people were killed and more than 90 suffered injuries in May 2014 when two cars crashed through an Urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. China called it a “violent terrorist incident”.

It followed a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi’s south railway station in April, which killed three and injured 79 others.

In July, authorities reported an attack on government offices in Yarkant, leaving 96 dead. The imam of China’s largest mosque, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death days later.

In September, about 50 died in blasts in Luntai county outside police stations, a market and a shop. Details of both incidents are unclear, and activists have contested some accounts of incidents in state media.

Some violence has also spilled out of Xinjiang. A March stabbing spree in Kunming in Yunnan province that killed 29 people was blamed on Xinjiang separatists, as was an October 2013 incident where a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The BBC also noted:

China has often blamed ETIM – the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – or people inspired by ETIM for violent incidents both in Xinjiang and beyond the region’s borders.

ETIM is said to want to establish an independent East Turkestan in China. The US State Department in 2006 said ETIM is “the most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups”.

“East Turkestan” (sometimes spelled East Turkistan) refers to a proposed independent region separatists seek to carve Xinjiang off from China to create.

The US government, through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds a multitude of organizations who officially pursue independence, referring to Xinjiang as “East Turkistan” and as being “occupied” by the Chinese government. This includes the World Uyghur Congress, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Campaign for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project.

The World Uyghur Congress on its website, for example, claims it declares an “opposition movement against Chinese occupation of East Turkistan.” Despite openly pursuing separatism in China, it is listed as a grantee of US NED money.

In response to US-sponsored separatism and the brutal terrorism used to achieve it, China initiated sweeping security measures, infrastructure projects, education and training initiatives, and job placement programs to root out extremism and the poverty in the remote region that made many among the population susceptible to extremism to begin with.

In turn, the US government has used claims of “genocide” and “forced labor” as a pretext to level sanctions against China and in particular businesses across China hiring Uyghurs from Xinjiang. In addition to hurting China’s economy overall, the objective is to reintroduce the socio-economic conditions across Xinjiang amid which extremism, terrorism, and instability can once again flourish.

Two Different Approaches to Terrorism

Despite the Western media having openly and eagerly reported on rampant violence consuming Xinjiang a decade ago, it now attempts to depict any mention of terrorism and the need to address it as Chinese propaganda. The Telegraph article at one point questions claims by British tourists traveling in Xinjiang who concluded security measures were for everyone’s safety by claiming it, “rams home the government line that enhanced security in Xinjiang “is not an overreaction” due to the threat of terrorism from religious extremists and ethnic separatists.”