| Midway through Donald Trump's first year in office, the world has
watched in queasy disbelief at the transformation of an anti-interventionist
American president in ways similar to how Palpatine, the idealistic leader
of a long-ago Republic and opponent of arms dealers, turned toward the
dark side to morph into Darth Sidious. Today, Donald Trump is indistinguishable
from the warmonger Hillary Clinton or the glib “lead from behind” Barack
Obama, and has proven to be just as shifty, two-tongued, and self-righteous
as his former political foes.
His fall from grace is a personal embarrassment for his electoral supporters,
many of whom still await his hour of redemption, which could or more probably
won't happen before next year’s mid-term elections. To restate that Trump
was a better choice than Hillary means nothing at this late date, especially
since even a door knob is arguably better than the mad Mrs. Clinton. Trump’s
abysmal failure--refusal--to halt military interventions abroad, his orders
for missile deployments and Tomahawk strikes, and now his open support
for atomic energy and nuclear weapons represent something worse than a
disappointment.
His broken promises remind me of Christmas long past. Every holiday season
of my childhood I wished that Santa might bring me a bicycle and every
Christmas morning turned out to be another letdown. I finally purchased
a third-hand girl’s bike for a few dollars and spent dozens of days fixing
the broken parts, but hard work did not make riding any more enjoyable
but, to the contrary, made it into a chore or the reminder of a curse.
At least I finally got a bicycle despite the dereliction of Saint Nick;
but Trump has delivered on his promises with their very opposite, with
Halloween trick instead of a Christmas treat: war, higher spending on
weapons, and death for American soldiers and the local victims of bombing
in distant lands like Syria and Yemen. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa
Claus, but not he’s not coming to our neighborhood.
Nuclear Bewitchment
As if bewitched, Trump has promoted a triple disaster on nuclear issues:
- First, with war threats and fumbling over off-and-on diplomatic talks
with Pyongyang, which are needed to craft an eventual deal to limit its
build-up of warheads in exchange for American assurances of non-intervention;
- Second, uncritical endorsement of the nuclear industry as being safe
and cheap despite the blatant releases at Hanford Nuclear Site, the WIPP
storage center in New Mexico, leakage into the Hudson River from the Indian
Point N-plant, and worst of all radioactivity contamination of the West
Coast from Fukushima; and
- Third, his administration’s boycott of the UN treaty talks toward a
worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, which put Trump at the helm of a 35-nation
rump minority versus 129 member-states that signed the historic anti-nuclear
weapons treaty on July 7.
In less than a year in office, Trump has positioned the United States
as a nuclear outlaw far more dangerous and untrustworthy than North Korea,
Pakistan, Iran or Israel. The White House refusal to at least partially
endorse the nuclear ban or comment on its moral worth puts America on
a slippery slope of hypocrisy when it comes to criticizing Pyongyang or
Tehran. As head of an pro-nuclear rogue alliance, consisting mainly of
East European countries dependent of US financial aid, the USA has completely
lost the high ground on counter-proliferation and denuclearization, and
can no longer be taken seriously as a legal or ethical authority on the
world stage.
Aircraft carriers and big rockets don’t make for a nation’s greatness,
otherwise the Soviet Union would still be a superpower. When respect is
gone, nobody’s going to believe in a single word spoken by any American
diplomat or policy expert. In just a half year, Trump’s militarist buddies
have added to the damage done by the Obama administration, reducing the
once sole superpower into a sick joke. There’s a political price to be
paid especially in the jockeying for the 2018 midterm elections to begin
soon. The populist movement that supported Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders,
the third parties and former Tea Party leaders is well aware of the backtracking
on industrial policy and the blatant reversals on foreign interventions,
legislative domination by The Swamp, and post-911 accommodation to the
Saudis. Already the clock is winding down on the Trump years or perhaps
that ticking sound is coming from a time-bomb of populist discontent.
Rump Minority of Pro-Nuke States
The North Korean nuclear issue has been used by the Trump team to deflect
public scrutiny away from Washington’s blatant insincerity on the proposed
nuclear arms ban. While castigating and threatening North Korea for its
puny nuke program and missile tests, the Trump team at the UN led by deranged
ambassador Nikki Haley has since early March boycotted the first-ever
conference for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons. In line with her predecessor
Susan Rice’s support for nuclear blackmail, Haley arm-twisted and intimidated
34 other UN member-nations, mostly in Eastern Europe, to join her ill-conceived
walkout from the opening of the treaty discussions in March.
The Trump-Haley boycott has proven to be a fool’s errand now that an overwhelming
majority of 129 member-nations signed the world’s first-ever nuclear-ban
treaty on Friday, July 7. Instead of their fanatic posturing and Dr. Stangelove
walkout of the talks, the American delegation could have abstained from
the final vote while voicing support for anti-proliferation and at least
in principle moral opposition to nuclear war. The US delegation came off
as if they actually support nuclear war, an idiotic stance that couold
also be used to justify a terrorist dirty bomb exploded in Manhattan or
on the steps of the Capitol building. Morality isn’t useless idealism,
it is a necessary guide for conduct.
At this greatest international treaty signing during his term of office,
Trump was a no-show and instead hid in a closet of denial. The United
States of America is disgraced by such gutless stage fright. The majority
turnout for treaty approval shows that the world does not want, need or
cling to any offer of a nuclear umbrella from nuclear superpowers United
States or Russia. This planet would be a safer place without such “protection”
rackets. In any case, nuclear powers like the US and Russia are killing
their own societies and environments with radioactive contamination. Save
your pity for the deserving.
His Profitable Korea Connection
Trump’s flaws, as his critics content and his advisers understand, arise
from sins of venality. “Trump is a businessman”, they say, and we are
supposed to be assured that he’s just an innocent in quest of a (financial)
killing and not a pathological killer. If so, his hysterics over North
Korea are just a business ploy. There’s a basis of fact there.
His business motive on the Korean Peninsula came as an unexpected surprise
to me on a recent visit to South Korea for a first-hand report on the
THAAD rocket deployment. On the outskirts of an otherwise beautiful capital
stood the brute towers of Trump World I, II and III Seoul. These grim
developments were built by Daewoo, the corporate giant and military contractor.
Daewoo assembles Dolphin-class submarines for the South Korean Navy, and
its contractor for on-board electronics is Raytheon, which also produces
the THAAD and Patriot missile interceptors stationed in South Korea. Trump’s
real-estate interests are partnered with the war industry and thereby
connected with Raytheon and its THAAD partner Lockheed Martin. No wonder
Donald Trump is so worried about the “Korean crisis”: He needs to protect
his real estate investments by helping his hidden partners in the war
industry.
Daewoo Engineering also built the Trump Towers in Manhattan, which accounts
for the dark militarist style of the Trump Group’s real estate. On a trip
to Korea in the 1990s, Trump once joked that he planned to order a Korean-built
destroyer for his luxury yacht. (Daewoo Corporation was scuttled by the
1997-98 Asian financial crisis, but its conglomerate members Daewoo Englneering
and Construction survives on a major international builder in partnership
with Asiana Airlines, and also Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering
went on to become South Korea's biggest producer of submarines, but is
being investigated for fraud and bribery on a massive scale.) I can envision
his yacht entering New York Harbor: The SS Death Star captained by Imperial
Cmdr. Don Sidious. Clearly, the populist Trump is bipolar, with a mean-tempered
opposite alter-ego who likes nothing better than to shout: “You’re fired!”
At the personal level, this is a black comedy, but for a nation as proud
as the United States, it’s a grand tragedy.
A Measure of Failure
In the footsteps of his foundering predecessors Jimmy Carter (nuclear
artillery on the Peninsula) and Gerald Ford (capture of the spy ship USS
Pueblo), Trump has grabbed onto the so-called crisis on the Korean Peninsula
and is predictably tolling the alarm, if for no other reason than to ensure
profits for his pals in the war industry at Raytheon and Daewoo. Despite
repeated predictions of imminent doom from North Korean belligerence from
successive U.S. presidents, there has not been a single serious battle
on the peninsula on the scale of events in Iraq or Afghanistan in more
than six decades since the signing of the Korean Armistice on July 27,
1953. Both Koreas, more than less, have maintained the peace; and whatever
skirmishes have erupted in the interval, none have required American military
intervention.
As for the “threat” of a North Korean nuclear strike against the Lower
48 plus 2, a quick look at the strategic match-up, with data from the
Arms Control Association, is enlightening: North Korea now possesses 10
small devices versus the 6,800 much more powerful nuclear warheads deployed
by the USA. North Korea would not now have that small arsenal if any previous
American president had the moral courage to seriously negotiate
a peace treaty with Pyongyang instead of dragging on economic sanctions
indefinitely, the political coward’s way out of historic decision.
By now, this recurrent failure of U.S. foreign policy means that North
Korea will maintain a tiny nuclear deterrence capability against overwhelming
American genocidal power. At this moment, a cap on nuclear development
by Pyongyang is the best deal that can be achieved, given the failures
of past U.S. administrations, which flubbed the many opportunities to
ensure a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula. The nuclear problem in North Korea
is not Trump’s fault; he inherited it and therefore should have the sense
not to inflame the situation but deal with it quietly through diplomatic
channels and incentives for Pyongyang, for example, inviting the Kim family
to Disneyland, a bedazzling experience and gesture of friendship that
should thwart any desire to nuke Anaheim or Orlando.
The Thud of THAAD
Trump’s fall from grace is becoming a major burden for American taxpayers
with his new-found toy of rocket firings, now about to happen on an even
larger scale with the expensive but ineffectual THAAD ballistic-missile
interceptor system (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), which is slated
to be re-tested in Alaska and eventually South Korea and possibly Japan.
The system’s midair “kinetic” strike method, or head-on collision with
the incoming ballistic missile, is as futile as swinging a baseball bat
to stop a bullet (except for the fact that an incoming ballistic missile
moves at least 6 times faster than any bullet).
The Raytheon-Lockheed alphabet soup for this phony interceptor system
is AN/TPY-2 (A for aircraft, N for reflective radar, TP terminal phase
meaning “during descent”, and Y standing for prototype). So the THAAD
batteries in Japan, South Korea and Alaska are second-round prototypes
with zero proven defense value. The first models of Y-1 were tested in
Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific region’s Marshall Islands. Those
test firings from Vandenberg AFB were rigged with the unarmed warheads
carrying a transponder guided by a radar beam from the atoll. Both the
incoming rocket and the THAAD were guided along the same narrow radar
pulse. This is not rocket science, it’s cheating.
The fraudulent interception results were sufficient to convince Congress
to approve more THAAD missile purchases, especially when Raytheon spends
more than $2 million a year in campaign contributions to 94 senators and
congressmen including John McCain and Mac Thornberry, the chairmen respectively
of the Senate and House armed services committees. In the 2016 presidential
campaign, the missile company made hefty donations to Hillary Clinton,
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. As for the hopelessly naive American
left, a vote for Sanders also would have meant a ballot for Raytheon.
The cost of a THAAD rocket is more than $1 million apiece, with the entire
unit, including X-band phased-array radar, costing upwards of $1 billion,
plus annual payment for support services from Chenega, a Native Alaskan
minority business that serves as the front for Academi, formerly known
as Blackwater.
On a visit to Seongju, the golf course in the southeastern tip of the
Korean Peninsula where THAAD has been deployed over the past year, I learned
that its firing tubes do not contain any rockets. The truck-mounted launcher
is put there on a private golf coure that’s been illegally converted into
a military base to provide cover for the actual mission, which is powerful
radar spying on China’s airspace over a thousand-mile distance inland.
This whole exercise is a deceit, involving massive corruption at the highest
levels of the US government, which also entangles Donald Trump whose campaign
received a hefty donation from Raytheon. His family reportedly owns a
swath of shares in that incompetent rocket company.
The only road into the golf course is now sealed off by the police due
to a road block of boulders set up by villagers angered by the strange
hum of microwaves from the X-band radar, which is also killing the bees
needed to pollinate local orchards. On top of the THAAD deception, the
US Army secretly helicoptered in a Patriot launcher to protect US aircraft
carriers operating along the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.
Plunge into the Dark Side
Remember how Trump once criticized Lockheed and Boeing for cost overruns?
Those days seem like an eon past, but it was less a year ago. Breaking
with his campaign pledges against foreign intervention, Trump dumped 59
Raytheon-built Tomahawk missiles into the environs of an Syrian air base
as a warning against President Bashir al-Assad’s supposed airstrikes against
a jihadist hospital. Most of those sea-borne missiles, however, landed
off-target, destroying only a couple of warplanes among the dozens more
deployed there. That pathetic exercise in overkill failed utterly, politically
and militarily, and we’ve yet to hear Trump apologize for the botched
performance, which however did earn Raytheon substantial revenues for
replacement rockets at taxpayer expense. Yes, Trump is a businessman.
The spike in Raytheon’s share value spurred the talented Mr. Trump forward
in his apprenticeship as a Merchant of Death. On his recent to Warsaw,
Trump sold Patriot missile-interceptor systems to the Polish military.
Weapons sales to Poland, a vociferous geopolitical foe of Russia, puts
Trump on the same page as the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, along with the
spymaster’s daughter Mika. Never mind the sideshow of tweets about MSNBC
Morning Joe, Mika and Don will be seated next to each other at the Raytheon
shareholders meeting waving little NATO flags and cheering on eastward
expansion onto Moscow.
A plunge into the dark abyss of warmongering is irredeemable, meaning
it’s high time to seek (once again) a presidential candidate with integrity
of character, but this time around one who’s not secretly on the payroll
of Raytheon, Lockheed, General Dynamics or other war profiteers. Belief
in the machines of war is based on emotional insecurity. As in the case
of bombastic men who doubt their own virility, Trump suffers a deficit
of the quiet courage required to convince sworn foes to trust the truce
and to act honorably out of respect. It is so much easier to equate mass
murder with masculinity than it is to suffer the frustrations of a healer
and a peacemaker trying to save humanity from self-destruction. Then again,
what’s it profit a man . . . .?
His supporters should not feel shocked if Trump soon tumbles headlong
into the gaping jaws of that special depth of Dante’s hell reserved for
politicians like the Clintons, Obama, McCain and the rest of the warmongering
fools. Americans must continue their quest for an honest champion of peace
and architect of genuine prosperity, even though a person of such moral
caliber may be as rare as a noble reindeer in a rat-infested swamp.
Yoichi Shimatsu is a science journalist who recently produced a video
report on the THAAD rocket scandal in South Korea.
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