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Grand Strategy for a Divided America

Journeyman said:
Quote from: Thucydides on Today at 01:13:36
We don’t have an Ike in the White House now, and we won’t in 2017.

Regardless of the vote.  :(

And, with all possible respect for those who are partisans of US political parties, there hasn't been one since Ike. From Kennedy right through to Obama it has been a parade of (relatively) weak sisters, some (Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton) perhaps a bit less weak (OK, Nixon was morally weak) than others.

There is a reason no president has held anything like Ex SOLARIUM: none had Ike's breadth of strategic vision nor his depth of knowledge of the strategic resources available and how they all fit together. He didn't have to situate the appreciation and the record suggests he didn't try ... but Kennan's team gave him the answer he was after: one which allowed him to play to America's strengths and NSC 162/2 which served as a guide to containing the USSR for successive presidents through to Bill Clinton.
 
But what about the students?  ;D

http://americanmilitarynews.com/2016/11/colleges-offer-help-to-students-triggered-by-election-day-stress/?utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=alt&utm_source=asmdss
 
Trump throws the future of NATO into doubt. Europe must step up to defend itself
JULIET SAMUEL
Juliet Samuel 10 NOVEMBER 2016 • 6:30AM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/11/10/trump-throws-the-future-of-nato-into-doubt-europe-must-step-up-t/

Donald Trump has finally spoken by phone to Theresa May, after first calling the leaders of nine other countries, including Ireland and Australia.

The US President-elect spoke to Mrs May at 1.45pm after first speaking  to the leaders of nine other countries - Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea within 24 hours of his victory.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/10/what-special-relationship-donald-trump-speaks-to-nine-other-worl/

Brits hyperventilating over not being the first call but there is value, and maybe even merit, in doing things this way.

America's national pastime these days is: Poker.

The most valuable asset any military commander has is: Surprise.

Fundamental rule of campaigning: Time spent in recce is seldom wasted.

The President, like our Prime Minister, is hired as an agent to act on the behalf of his clients - the country he serves.

A key element of deal-making is convincing the other party that you don't want or need the deal.

Based on all of these I suggest that Trump, as a well versed dealmaker and poker player, has done the following through his wilder statements:

He has created a persona of unpredictability, perhaps even instability. - This in turn means that he now holds a new hand.  The deck has been reshuffled and nobody knows how he will play them.  This creates Surprise.  That serves him and his country well.  The rest of the world, including Britain, needs to wait and see.

His isolationist statements serve to remind everyone else that the US can shut up its borders and survive.  The rest of the world be damned.  You want in?  You will have to pay.  He doesn't need the deal. Everyone else does.  They will have to come to him.

If I were going to develop a new market I prefer the Lanchester Strategy.  It found favour among Japanese businesses.  It favours indirect engagement. It favours learning about your situation before confronting it.

So, looking at the list of countries the Donald chose to call before he called Theresa:

Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea

Regroup:

Mexico,

Egypt, Israel, Turkey,

India, Japan, Australia and South Korea

Ireland,


The Mexican call is a no brainer.  He has already had communications with Mexico.  It was a, if not the, leading issue during his campaign.  It is THE Domestic issue that needs to be solved.

Egypt, Israel, Turkey - Topics of conversation there?  Israel? Palestine? Syria? Russia? Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood?

India, Japan, Australia and South Korea - China and Theresa May's recent visits and the prospects of her Free Trade missions.

Finally, Ireland - Nobody knows the Brits better than the Irish and nobody is more in tune with the EU-UK dynamic.


After all that?

Talk to Theresa and invite her over for coffee and conversation at her earliest convenience.


More interesting are the countries not on the list:

China

Russia

The EU

Any of the founder states of the EU.


My sense is that Trump is focusing on China  (Japan, South Korea, Australia, India)

He is likely to take Russia out of the picture by sidelining Putin through some conciliation - Ukraine isn't getting Crimea back any time soon but Syria will be tidied up as quickly as possible to deny Vladimir his chance to show off his ancient arsenal.

The EU will not be invaded from the east.  But neither will they be playing any serious roles in the near future.

Meanwhile Britain seeks free trade deals with Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and the US.

Canada has a free trade deal but that deal is always, like every other deal, always open for renegotiation.

I expect the following:

XL pipeline
Kinder Morgan pipeline
F35s
SM6s

And I would not be surprised if the Northern Gateway were approved through either Kitimat or Prince Rupert.

The Carbon Tax will be bloviated - the Liberals will not back down but neither will it be enforced.

And now I shatter my crystal ball.    [:D









 
Apparently we need in as well:

We called him - to discuss our willingness to renegotiate NAFTA.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/10/trudeau-happy-to-talk-about-nafta-with-trump.html

Apparently Wynne is concerned.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/11/09/wynne-worried-about-trump-threat-to-ontario-economy.html
 
Chris Pook said:
Apparently Wynne is concerned.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/11/09/wynne-worried-about-trump-threat-to-ontario-economy.html

I should hope she is concerned.  She has most likely done more to put Ontario's economy in the dumpster than anyone else in its' history.  Speculation of Trump fiddling with NAFTA could seal the Ontario decline in the history books.

[edit to add:]

This about says it:
14955851_10154570825510874_982218349797895424_n.jpg
 
How about this?

DEW Line and Nuclear Bomarcs bought Canada the Autopact.

The North Warning system bought Canada the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement

It seems likely that our NATO/NORAD premiums on NAFTA are due.
 
We better sort out our Defense in the North.
 
I couldn't agree more with your assessment CP.

If our own government can't (won't) kick start our economy and properly fund/equip our military here's hoping a Trump administration compels them to. 
 
Henry Kissinger, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic.

"The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions."

"I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?"

"And a second question is: What are we trying to achieve? We don’t want Asia or Europe to fall under the domination of a single hostile country. Or the Middle East. But if avoiding that is our goal, we have to define hostility. According to my own thinking about Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it is not in our interest that any of them fall under domination."
 
Brad Sallows said:
Henry Kissinger, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic.

"The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions."

"I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?"

"And a second question is: What are we trying to achieve? We don’t want Asia or Europe to fall under the domination of a single hostile country. Or the Middle East. But if avoiding that is our goal, we have to define hostility. According to my own thinking about Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it is not in our interest that any of them fall under domination."

To me that suggests supporting the local, the parochial, the national over the hegemon.
 
Brad Sallows said:
Henry Kissinger, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic.

"The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions."

"I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?"

"And a second question is: What are we trying to achieve? We don’t want Asia or Europe to fall under the domination of a single hostile country. Or the Middle East. But if avoiding that is our goal, we have to define hostility. According to my own thinking about Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it is not in our interest that any of them fall under domination."

That is the traditional American Grand Strategy. Of course it has also been the British Grand Strategy, arguably since the time of Elizabeth 1. I could even suggest this is the proper Grand Strategy of any Maritime power, of which the United States is the largest and greatest.

As for Canada and NATO, while the President Elect wants us to do our share (i.e 2% GDP defense spending), I think there will be a series of carrots and sticks. If Canada fails to ante up, the NAFTA dues are certainly one thing on the table, but other bilateral agreements can also be placed on the table as well. And since the US may well start advancing their program on missile defense given the growing and evolving threat, we should not be surprised to discover intercept zones existing over our land mass if we demonstrate we are not serious about sharing the burdens of continental defense.
 
A bit of historical background as to where a lot of the problems began. It is interesting the sort of people wo create and support these programs to destroy the United States are nevertheless unwilling to leave the embrace of the largest and most successful free market economy in human history for true Socialist paradises like the DPRK, or perhaps China or Cambodia in the more recent past. Funny, that.

(Part 1)

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7522

CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY (CPS)
Strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis

See also:  Frances Fox Piven  Saul Alinsky  George Wiley
ACORN  Motor Voter Law  National Welfare Rights Organization

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair), the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls."  Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act.

This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. The three met in January 1966, at a radical organizers' meeting in Syracuse, New York called the “Poor People's War Council on Poverty.” Wiley listened to the Cloward-Piven plan with interest. That same month, he launched his own activist group, the Poverty Rights Action Center, headquartered in Washington DC. In a calculated show of militancy, he sported dashikis, jeans, battered shoes, and a newly grown Afro. Regarding the Cloward-Piven strategy, Wiley told one audience:

“[A] a lot of us have been hampered in our thinking about the potential here by our own middle-class backgrounds – and I think most activists basically come out of middle-class backgrounds – and were oriented toward people having to work, and that we have to get as many people as possible off the welfare rolls.... [However] I think that this [Cloward-Piven] strategy is going to catch on and be very important in the time ahead.”

After a series of mass marches and rallies by welfare recipients in June 1966, Wiley declared “the birth of a movement” – the Welfare Rights Movement.

Cloward and Piven publicly outlined their strategy at the Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference, held in September 1966 at New York City's Hotel Commodore. To read an eyewitness account of their presentation, click here.

In the summer of 1967, Ralph Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests - and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones."

These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," wrote Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy."

The National Welfare Rights Organization pushed for a “guaranteed living income,” as prescribed by Cloward and Piven, which it defined, in 1968, as $5,500 per year for every American family with four children. The following year the NWRO raised its demand to $6,500. Though Wiley never made headway with his demand for a living income, the tens of billions of dollars in welfare entitlements that he and his followers managed to squeeze from state and local governments came very close to sinking the economy, just as Cloward and Piven had predicted.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven had given special attention to New York City, whose masses of urban poor, leftist intelligentsia and free-spending politicians rendered it uniquely vulnerable to the strategy they proposed. At the time, NYC welfare agencies were paying about $20 million per year in “special grants.” Cloward and Piven estimated that they could “multiply these expenditures tenfold or more,” draining an additional $180 million annually from the city coffers.

New York City's arch-liberal mayor John Lindsay, newly elected in November 1966, capitulated to Wiley's every demand. An appeaser by nature, Lindsay sought to calm racial tensions by taking “walking tours” through Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and other troubled areas of the city. This made for good photo-ops, but failed to mollify Wiley's cadres and the masses they mobilized, who wanted cash. “The violence of the [welfare rights] movement was frightening,” recalls Lindsay budget aid Charles Morris. Black militants laid siege to City Hall, bearing signs saying “No Money, No Peace.”

Lindsay answered these provocations with ever-more-generous programs of appeasement in the form of welfare dollars. New York's welfare rolls had been growing by 12% per year already before Lindsay took office. The rate jumped to 50% annually in 1966. During Lindsay's first term of office, welfare spending in New York City more than doubled, from $400 million to $1 billion annually. Outlays for the poor consumed 28% of the city's budget by 1970. “By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy,” Sol Stern wrote in the City Journal.

As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

Crucial to Wiley's success was the cooperation of radical sympathizers inside the federal government, who supplied Wiley's movement with grants, training, and logistical assistance, channeled through federal War on Poverty programs such as VISTA's.

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" -- the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements.

Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a July 20, 1998 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."
 
Part 2

In a January 2011 article in the Nation magazine, Frances Fox Piven would reflect upon the elements that had helped make the welfare-rights movement successful in the 1960s:

"efore people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves 'mothers' instead of 'recipients,'"

In the same 2011 article, Piven noted that "protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands."

After the welfare-rights movement had run its course by the mid-1970s, Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "Voting Rights Movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Cloward and Piven despised America's electoral system every bit as much as they despised its welfare system, and for much the same reason. They believed that welfare checks and voting rights were mere bones tossed to the poor to keep them docile. The poor did not need welfare checks and ballots, they argued. The poor needed revolution.

In their 1977 book, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, Cloward and Piven asserted that the “electoral process” actually served the interests of the ruling classes, providing a safety valve to drain away the anger of the poor. The authors wrote that “as long as lower-class groups abided by the norms governing the electoral–representative system, they would have little influence.… t is usually when unrest among the lower classes breaks out of the confines of electoral procedures that the poor may have some influence,” as when poor people engage in “strikes,” “riots,” “crime,” “incendiarism,” “massive school truancy,” “worker absenteeism,” “rent defaults,” and other forms of “mass defiance” and “institutional disruption.”

In 1981, Cloward and Piven wrote that poor people lose power “when leaders try to turn movements into electoral organizations.” That is because the “capability of the poor” to effect change lies “in the vulnerability of societal institutions to disruption, and not in the susceptibility of these institutions to transformation through the votes of the poor.”

To advance their radical agenda, Cloward and Piven focused more intently on transforming the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. Because Democrats professed to represent the lower classes, many poor people believed they could get what they wanted by voting Democrat. Thus their energies would be channeled into useless “voter activity,” rather than strikes, riots, “incendiarism” and the like.

Ten years earlier, when Cloward and Piven determined that the welfare state was acting as a safety valve for the establishment, they resolved to destroy the welfare state. The method of destruction they chose was drawn from the teachings of Saul Alinsky: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” And so they did, challenging the welfare state to pay out every penny to every person theoretically entitled to it. Alinsky called this sort of tactic “mass jujitsu” – using “the strength of the enemy against itself. Now Cloward and Piven concluded that the Democratic Party was also acting as a safety valve for the establishment. Thus they would try to force Democrats to "live up to their own book of rules" -- i.e., if the Democrats say they represent the poor, let them prove it.

Cloward and Piven presented their plan in a December 1982 article titled, “A Movement Strategy to Transform the Democratic Party,” published in the left-wing journal Social Policy. They sought to do to the voting system what they had previously done to the welfare system. They would flood the polls with millions of new voters, drawn from the angry ranks of the underclass, all belligerent and the demanding their voting rights. The result would be a catastrophic disruption of America's electoral system, the authors predicted.

Cloward and Piven hoped that the flood of new voters would provoke a backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike, who would join forces to disenfranchise the unruly hordes, using such expedients as purging invalid voters from the rolls, imposing cumbersome registration procedures, stiffening residency requirements, and so forth. This voter-suppression campaign would spark “a political firestorm over democratic rights,” they wrote. Voting-rights activists would descend on America's election boards and polling stations much as George Wiley's welfare warriors had flooded social-services offices. Wrote Cloward and Piven:

“By staging rallies, demonstrations, and sit-ins … over every new restriction on registration procedures, a protest movement can dramatize the conflict.... Through conflict, the registration movement will convert registering and voting into meaningful acts of collective protest.”

The expected conflict would also expose the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, which would be “disrupted and transformed,” the authors predicted. A new party would rise from the ashes of the old. Outwardly, it would preserve the forms and symbols of the old Democratic Party, but the new Democrats would be genuine partisans of the poor, dedicated to class struggle. This was the radical vision driving the Voting Rights Movement.

ACORN spearheaded this "voting rights" movement, which was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Also key to the movement were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

All three of these organizations -- ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE -- set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which President Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. At the White House signing ceremony for this bill, both Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were in attendance. The new law eliminated many controls on voter fraud, making it easy for voters to register but difficult to determine the validity of new registrations. Under the new law, states were required to provide opportunities for voter registration to any person who showed up at a government office to renew a driver's license or to apply for welfare or unemployment benefits. “Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship,” notes Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections. “States had to permit mailing voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election officials. Finally, states were limited in pruning 'deadwood' –people who had died, moved, or been convicted of crimes – from their rolls.

The Motor-Voter bill did indeed cause the voter rolls to be swamped with invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people -- thus opening the door to the unprecedented  levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections during the 1990s, and culminating in the Florida recount crisis in the 2000 presidential election.  On the eve of the 2000 election, in Indiana alone, state officials discovered that one in five registered voters were duplicates, deceased, or otherwise invalid.

The cloud of confusion hanging over elections serves leftist agitators well. “President Bush came to office without a clear mandate,” the leftwing billionaire George Soros declared. “He was elected president by a single vote on the Supreme Court.” Once again, the "flood-the-rolls" strategy had done its work. Cloward, Piven, and their disciples had introduced a level of fear, tension, and foreboding to U.S. elections previously encountered mainly in Third World countries.

In January 2010, journalist John Fund reported that Congressman Barney Frank and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer were preparing to unveil legislation calling for "universal voter registration," whereby any person whose name was on any federal roll at all -- be it a list of welfare recipients, food stamp recipients, unemployment compensation recipients, licensed drivers, convicted felons, property owners, etc. -- would automatically be registered to vote in political elections. Without corresponding identity-verification measures at polling places, such a law would vastly expand the pool of eligible voters, thereby multiplying the opportunities for fraudulent voters to cast ballots under other people's names.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his "Shadow Party," through whose support the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns to overload, and cause the collapse of, various American institutions. Leftists such as Barack Obama euphemistically refer to this collapse as a "fundamental transformation," on the theory that society can only be improved by destroying the deeply flawed existing order and replacing it with what they view as a better alternative.

Major Resource: The Shadow Party, by David Horowitz and Richard Poe (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2006), pp, 106-128.

 
This is the thinking behind the new Administration's Grand Strategy:

http://www.hoover.org/research/new-american-grand-strategy

A New American Grand Strategy
by General Jim Mattis
Thursday, February 26, 2015

The world is awash in change. The international order, so painstakingly put together by the greatest generation coming home from mankind’s bloodiest conflict, is under increasing stress. It was created with elements we take for granted: the United Nations, NATO, the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods and more. The constructed order reflected the wisdom of those who recognized no nation lived as an island and we needed new ways to deal with challenges that for better or worse impacted all nations. Like it or not, today we are part of this larger world and must carry out our part. We cannot wait for problems to arrive here or it will be too late; rather we must remain strongly engaged in this complex world.

The international order built on the state system is not self-sustaining. It demands tending by an America that leads wisely, standing unapologetically for the freedoms each of us in this room have enjoyed. The hearing today addresses the need for America to adapt to changing circumstances, to come out now from its reactive crouch and to take a firm strategic stance in defense of our values.

While we recognize that we owe future generations the same freedoms we enjoy, the challenge lies in how to carry out our responsibility. We have lived too long now in a strategy-free mode.

To do so America needs a refreshed national strategy. The Congress can play a key role in crafting a coherent strategy with bipartisan support. Doing so requires us to look beyond events currently consuming the executive branch.

There is an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second order effects and more problems for us. I suggest that the best way to cut to the essence of these issues and to help you in crafting America’s response to a rapidly changing security environment is to ask the right questions.

These are some that we should ask:

What are the key threats to our vital interests?

The intelligence community should delineate and provide an initial prioritization of those threats for your consideration. By rigorously defining the problems we face you will enable a more intelligent and focused use of the resources allocated for national defense.

Is our intelligence community fit for its expanding purpose?

Today we have less of a military shock absorber to take surprise in stride, and fewer forward-deployed military forces overseas to act as sentinels. Accordingly we need more early warning. Congress should question if we are adequately funding the intelligence agencies to reduce the chance of our defenses being caught flat-footed.

We know that the “foreseeable future” is not foreseeable; our review must incorporate unpredictability, recognizing risk while avoiding gambling with our nation’s security.Incorporating the broadest issues in its assessments, Congress should consider what we must do if the national debt is assessed to be the biggest national security threat we face.

As President Eisenhower noted, the foundation of military strength is our economic strength. In a few short years paying interest on our debt will be a bigger bill than what we pay for defense. Much of that interest money is destined to leave America for overseas. If we refuse to reduce our debt or pay down our deficit, what is the impact on national security for future generations who will inherit this irresponsible debt and the taxes to service it? No nation in history has maintained its military power while failing to keep its fiscal house in order.

How do we urgently halt the damage caused by sequestration?

No foe in the field can wreck such havoc on our security that mindless sequestration is achieving. Congress passed it because it was viewed as so injurious that it would force wise choices. It has failed and today we use arithmetic vice sound thinking to run our government, despite emerging enemy threats. The Senate Armed Services Committee should lead the effort to repeal the sequestration that is costing military readiness and long term capability while sapping troop morale.

Without predictability in budget matters no strategy can be implemented by your military leaders. Your immediate leadership is needed to avert further damage. In our approach to the world, we must be willing to ask strategic questions. In the Middle East, where our influence is at its lowest point in four decades, we see a region erupting in crises.

We need a new security architecture for the Middle East built on sound policy, one that permits us to take our own side in this fight.  Crafting such a policy starts with asking a fundamental question and then others: Is political Islam in our best interest? If not what is our policy to support the countervailing forces? Violent terrorists cannot be permitted to take refuge behind false religious garb and leave us unwilling to define this threat with the clarity it deserves. We have potential allies around the world and in the Middle East who will rally to us but we have not been clear about where we stand in defining or dealing with the growing violent jihadist terrorist threat.

Iran is a special case that must be dealt with as a threat to regional stability, nuclear and otherwise. I believe that you should question the value of Congress adding new sanctions while international negotiations are ongoing, while having them ready should the negotiations for preventing their nuclear weapons capability and stringent monitoring break down.

Further, we should question if we have the right policies in place when Iran creates more mischief in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the region. We should recognize that regional counterweights like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council can reinforce us if they understand our policies and if we clarify our foreign policy goals beyond Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

In Afghanistan we need to consider if we’re asking for the same outcome there as we saw last summer in Iraq if we pull out all our troops on the Administration’s proposed timeline. Echoing the military advice given on the same issue in Iraq, gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible. We should recognize that we may not want this fight but the barbarity of an enemy that kills women and children and has refused to break with Al Qaeda needs to be fought.

More broadly, is the U.S. military being developed to fight across the spectrum of combat?

Knowing that enemies always move against perceived weakness, our forces must be capable of missions from nuclear deterrence to counter-insurgency and everything in between, now including the pervasive cyber domain. While surprise is always a factor, Congress can ensure that we have the fewest big regrets when the next surprise occurs. We don’t want or need a military that is at the same time dominant and irrelevant, so we must sort this out and deny funding for bases or capabilities no longer needed.

The nuclear stockpile must be tended to and fundamental questions must be asked and answered: We must clearly establish the role of our nuclear weapons: do they serve solely to deter nuclear war? If so, we should say so, and the resulting clarity will help to determine the number we need. Is it time to reduce the Triad to a Diad, removing the land-based missiles? This would reduce the false alarm danger. Could we reenergize the arms control effort by only counting warheads vice launchers? Was the Russian test violating the INF treaty simply a blunder or a change in policy, and what is our appropriate response?

The reduced size of our military drives the need to ask other questions: Our military is uniquely capable and the envy of the world, but are we resourcing it to ensure we have the highest quality troops, the best equipment and the toughest training?

With a smaller military comes the need for troops kept at the top of their game. When we next put them in harm’s way it must be the enemy’s longest day and worst day. Tiered readiness with a smaller force must be closely scrutinized to ensure we aren’t merely hollowing out the force. While sequestration is the nearest threat to this national treasure that is the U.S. military, sustaining it as the world’s best when smaller will need your critical oversight. Are the Navy and our expeditionary forces receiving the support they need in a world where America’s naval role is more pronounced because we have fewer forces posted overseas?

With the cutbacks to the Army and Air Force and fewer forces around the world, military aspects of our strategy will inevitably become more naval in character. This will provide decision time for political leaders considering employment of additional forms of military power. Congress’ resourcing of our naval and expeditionary forces will need to take this development into account. Because we will need to swiftly move ready forces to act against nascent threats, nipping them in the bud, the agility to reassure friends and temper adversary activities will be critical to America’s effectiveness for keeping a stable and prosperous world. I question if our shipbuilding budget is sufficient, especially in light of the situation in the South China Sea.

While our efforts in the Pacific to keep positive relations with China are well and good, these efforts must be paralleled by a policy to build the counterbalance if China continues to expand its bullying role in the South China Sea and elsewhere. That counterbalance must deny China veto power over territorial, security and economic conditions in the Pacific, building support for our diplomatic efforts to maintain stability and economic prosperity so critical to our economy.

In light of worldwide challenges to the international order we are nonetheless shrinking our military. Are we adjusting our strategy and taking into account a reduced role for that shrunken military?

Strategy connects ends, ways and means. With less military available, we must reduce our appetite for using it. Absent growing our military, there must come a time when moral outrage, serious humanitarian plight, or lesser threats cannot be militarily addressed.  Prioritization is needed if we are to remain capable of the most critical mission for which we have a military: to fight on short notice and defend the country. In this regard we must recognize we should not and need not carry this military burden solely on our own.

Does our strategy and associated military planning take into account our nation’s increased need for allies?

The need for stronger alliances comes more sharply into focus as we shrink the military. No nation can do on its own all that is necessary for its security. Further, history reminds us that countries with allies generally defeat those without. A capable U.S. military, reinforcing our political will to lead from the front, is the bedrock on which we draw together those nations that stand with us against threats to the international order.

Our strategy must adapt to and accommodate this reality. As Churchill intimated, the only thing harder than fighting with allies is fighting without them. Congress, through the Armed Services Committee, should track closely an increased military capability to work with allies, the NATO alliance being foremost but not our sole focus. We must also enlist non-traditional partners where we have common foes or common interests.

In reference to NATO and in light of the Russian violations of international borders, we must ask if the Alliance’s efforts have adjusted to the unfortunate and dangerous mode the Russian leadership has slipped into?

With regard to tightening the bond between our smaller military and those we may need at our side in future fights, the convoluted foreign military sales system needs a challenge. Hopefully it can be put in order before we drive more potential partners to equip themselves with foreign equipment, a move that makes it harder to achieve needed inter-operability with our allies and undercuts America’s industrial base. Currently the system fails to reach its potential to support our foreign policy.

As we attempt to restore stability to the state system and international order, a critical question will be: Is America good for its word?

When we make clear our position or give our word about something, our friends (and even our foes) must recognize that we are good for it. Otherwise dangerous miscalculations can occur. This means that the military instrument must be fit for purpose and that once a political position is taken, our position is backed up by a capable military making clear that we will stand on our word.

When the decision is made to employ our forces in combat, Congress should ask if the military is being employed with the proper authority. I believe it should examine answers to fundamental questions like the following:

Are the political objectives clearly defined and achievable? Murky or quixotic political end states can condemn us to entering wars we don’t know how to end. Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided. Such announcements do not take the place of mature, well‐defined end‐states, nor do they contribute to ending wars as rapidly as possible on favorable terms.

Is the theater of war itself sufficient for effective prosecution? We have witnessed safe havens prolonging war. If the defined theater of war is insufficient, the plan itself needs to be challenged to determine feasibility of its success or the need for its modification.

Is the authority for detaining prisoners of war appropriate for the enemy and type war that we are fighting? We have observed the perplexing lack of detainee policy that has resulted in the return of released prisoners to the battlefield. We should not engage in another fight without resolving this issue up front, treating hostile forces, in fact, as hostile.

Are America’s diplomatic, economic, and other assets aligned to the war aims, with the intent of ending the conflict as rapidly as possible? We have experienced the military alone trying achieve tasks outside its expertise. When we take the serious decision to fight, we must bring to bear all our nation’s resources. You should question how the diplomatic and development efforts will be employed to build momentum for victory and our nation’s strategy demands that integration.

Finally the culture of our military and its rules are designed to bring about battlefield success in the most atavistic environment on earth. No matter how laudable in terms of a progressive country’s instincts, Congress needs to consider carefully any proposed changes to military rules, traditions and standards that bring non‐combat emphasis to combat units. There is a great difference between military service in dangerous circumstances and serving in a combat unit whose role is to search out and kill the enemy at close quarters. Congress has a responsibility for imposing reason over impulse when proposed changes could reduce the combat capability of our forces at the point of contact with the enemy.

Ultimately we need the foresight of the Armed Services Committee, acting in its sentinel and oversight role, to draw us out of the reactive stance we’ve fallen into and chart a strategic way ahead. Our national security strategy needs bipartisan direction. In some cases, Congress may need to change our processes for developing an integrated national strategy, because mixing capable people and their good ideas with bad processes results in the bad processes defeating good peoples’ ideas nine times out of ten. This is an urgent matter, because in an interconnected age when opportunistic adversaries can work in tandem to destroy stability and prosperity, our country needs to regain its strategic footing.

We need to bring clarity to our efforts before we lose the confidence of the American people and the support of our potential allies.

This essay was adapted from statements made by the author before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 27, 2015.
 
The American Interest on how the various "myths" or narratives the we have used as shorthand to understand the world have unravelled. Part of what triggered the Trump phenomena is the realization outside of the coastal corridors that these myths no longer reflected the real world people could see just outside their door, and the understanding that something different was needed. Some similar points were made by Newt Gingrich in a speech eh gave here:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/30/the-great-unraveling/

AFTER OBAMA
The Great Unraveling
European policy on Russia is beginning to crumble as the French presidential candidates step away from sanctions. The WSJ:

The two leading candidates, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen, are both avowed opponents of sanctions meant to punish Moscow for its annexation of part of Ukraine and its support for rebels in the country’s east.

Russia’s bombing of Syria’s onetime commercial capital of Aleppo—called a war crime by France’s current leaders—hasn’t deterred either politician from urging closer ties between Paris and Moscow.

The victory of either candidate in the May election threatens to blow a hole in Europe’s sanctions against Moscow, which are a centerpiece of the Continent’s strategy for containing Russia’s military assertiveness.

In post-Obama world, Germany could end up being isolated on Russia. The harshest, most effective attack on the Russia sanctions comes courtesy of Fillon, who said that it is not so much an actual policy intending to change Russian behavior as a symbolic gesture. Put even less diplomatically, it is a sham—a fake policy that allows Westerners to feel better about themselves while doing nothing serious about Russia’s attack on the post-1990 settlement in Eastern Europe.

This is a bigger deal than it may look. The past 25 years of world politics have rested on a series of polite fictions, agreed-upon conventions and hypocritical pretenses: That we had a policy to end the North Korean nuclear drive (ditto for Iran); That Europe was becoming a great posthistorical power based on the mighty engine of the euro; That the two-state solution was just a settlement freeze away; That international institutions and civil society were replacing national governments at the center of world politics; That immigration was a no-brainer; That the progress toward free trade was inexorable; That democracy was irresistibly on the march; and so on. Americans and Europeans believed that the world would look more and more like we wanted it to without us doing any heavy lifting.

Those are all very comforting ideas, but sadly none of them are true. In the next few years we are going to have to face some less pleasant choices based on hard truths rather than comfy illusions. Having the kind of world we really want—safe, prosperous, democratic—is not fully achievable no matter what we do. And having a tolerable world involves working harder, spending more, and putting more skin in the game than we want. A different kind of statesmanship, harder-edged and less sentimental, is going to be needed. Pretending to have a Russia policy will no longer be enough; we will have to choose between the unpalatable alternatives of effectively blocking Russian moves or acquiescing in Russian wins. Brutal clarity rather than liberal pink cloud thinking is the rising force in international affairs.
In the meantime, expect the old world and the old certainties to continue to crumble and fade.
 
This could also go into the Brexit thread, but the divide between the "elites" and the population is an issue throughout the West, and populist backlash is evident across Europe with the rise of Nationalist/populist parties like AfD, Front National or the Party for Freedom, votes like Brexit and the Italian rejection of constitutional reform and suspension of freedom of movement across parts of Europe. The essential mission of the Trump Administration will be to defang the "Deep State" and use populism to restore the balance between political and bureaucratic institutions and the AMerican People:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/02/20/the-real-division-in-american-life-isnt-about-trump/

The Real Division in American Life Isn’t About Trump

Over at USA Today, Glenn Reynolds argues that America’s credentialed class—currently rending garments over every utterance of Donald Trump—underestimated just how bad things were before the Donald took office:

To the privileged and well-educated Americans living in their “bicoastal bastions,” things seemed to be going quite well, even as the rest of the country fell farther and farther behind.  But, writes Eberstadt: “It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then — and broke down very badly.” […]

In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”

The basic division in American politics today is not over the merits of President Trump. Many of those who voted for him believed that he lacked the moral grounding and gravitas that great Presidents must ultimately draw on. The division is between those who think that, before Trump, things were going just fine and the American elite was doing an excellent job and those who blame the rise of Trump on the failures and blindness of the so-called “meritocratic elite” who, they would argue, have been running the country into the ground.

In foreign policy, the United States has had two failed presidencies in a row. Our grand strategy of domesticating China into the world order by offering it an unprecedented opportunity to grow rich through low-wage manufacturing exports has hurt American workers without democratizing or reconciling China. Presidents Bush and Obama thought that the democratization of the Middle East would and could solve the terrorism problem—and so did their degreed and esteemed advisers and the commentariat.

Domestically, our leadership elite has watched passively as infrastructure decays, state and local pension systems accumulate unsustainable debt loads, the national debt inexorably climbs, and the social capital of the nation erodes.

There was no sign from the Clinton campaign that anybody understood that the nation’s path was unsustainable. The Clinton campaign was about “more of the same.”

The Trump voters were right that the nation needs change and that the “best and the brightest” are failing the nation the way they did during the Vietnam War; the Clinton voters were right that on the whole the Trump team lacks the skills and the temperament to run the country. Glenn Reynolds is right that this isn’t just another example of partisan gridlock. It is a danger to the stability of the United States political system.
 
A rather astounding comparison. While the author is correct in saying there is no way to compare the magnitude of each man's potential impact, the essential idea of doing politics as a pragmatic exercise in allocating resources is the unifying factor here:

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/03/09/will-donald-trump-be-the-american-deng-xiaoping/

Will Donald Trump Be the American Deng Xiaoping?
By Roger L Simon March 9, 2017

To mention Donald Trump in the same breath with Deng Xiaoping -- the man who led China out of the Dark Ages of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and into the modern world -- sounds ludicrous on its face.  And to a great degree it is.  Deng, after all, is -- not just arguably, but actually -- the man who personally is responsible for improving more human lives than anyone in history, lifting hundreds of  millions of Chinese out of abject poverty and undoubtedly saving untold millions from starvation by upending Maoism. (Historians believe Mao was responsible of 45 million deaths during the four years of the Great Leap Forward alone.)

Deng, like all of us, was not perfect, but he clearly had a political genius and incredible courage in his ability to battle and ultimately defeat the monolithic power of  Mao Zedong, who had jailed him and had his son pushed out a window (the son has spent the rest of his life as a paraplegic). It's the stuff of great novels. (Yes, I realize Maoism still lingers in China, but, as I mentioned, nothing's perfect.)

Back in 1961, at the height of Mao's reign and three years before the publication of the Chairman's Little Red Book, Deng slyly and metaphorically attacked the ideological rigidity of communism with one simple statement (dare I call it a tweet?  If so, it was the most potent tweet of all time): "I don't care if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."

Simple as it is, that bears repeating: "I don't care if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."

There are minor variations in the various translations but they all have the same pragmatic, anti-ideological import.  The Chinese evidently never forgot it, because, although many still may pretend-profess to be communists, they are in reality Dengists.  This has led to the world's most succesful crony capitalism, but, again as I said, nothing's perfect.  Whatever the case, modern China is a giant improvement with Deng Xiaoping's fingerprints all over it.  The unbelievable Shanghai skyline -- that's Deng.

Like a Serial Killer, Mao Zedong Manipulated Everyone

So is Donald a Dengist?  As yet, of course, his impact is extremely minor by comparison and even making such a comparison of someone who was born a peasant in impoverished rural China, became a communist and then lived to subvert communism in the most populace country on the planet with a to-the-manor-born scion of a Queens real estate mogul is, shall we say, a bit of a stretch.

Nevertheless, the Deng analogy suddenly jumped into my head when I saw a video the other day of a smiling (yes, smiling) Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) -- normally a bitter enemy of anything Republican -- emerging from a White House meeting with the president.  Cummings had been talking with Trump about the high cost of pharmaceuticals and apparently, evidently to Cummings' surprise, there had been another meeting, this time of the minds.  It didn't matter if the cat was black or white (Democrat or Republican -- no racial implication intended here). People were having trouble affording their meds, the one item they needed above all besides food.

I had a similar reaction when I read the next morning that the president was bowling with a number of members of Congress of various persuasions.  Good for him, I thought.  This is a man who, besides being a people person, wants to get things done.  Lindsey Graham, another longtime opponent, also came out smiling from lunch. (Question: How did Deng survive in an even tougher environment?  Or was it tougher?  The New York Times and Washington Post reporters act as if Trump can't even put his socks on straight, even though they themselves seem to be having some difficulties. The Eurocrats attack him as a pariah as their own societies implode around them. Virtually our entire entertainment industry and academia -- speaking of the Cultural Revolution -- is aligned against him.)

The current healthcare debate is another example of Trump's Dengism.  Anyone who is even slightly honest and takes a few steps backwards from the current clamor knows that in a society the size of the United States there is no such thing -- from total socialized medicine to the purest of free markets -- as a perfect solution to healthcare.  Someone's ox is always going to get gored.  Yet Trump is keeping the door open to everyone, aiming ultimately to get something done, because, as we all know, Obamacare ain't workin'.

This all raises the perpetual question of pragmatism versus ideological principles. The Groucho joke aside ("These are my principles.  If you don't like them, I have others."), we all need some basic ideals to rely upon, some way to understand the world.  But there's a difference between liking and loving your ideology. I have my ideological leanings, but I don't love them. They give me a base from which to operate.  Pelosi and Schumer are examples of people who love their ideology.  You almost always know what they are going to say about just about anything -- and, for that reason, what they say usually has little to do with the solution of the problem.  What they have to say also therefore is of very little interest, no more than a Knicks fan telling you the amazing news he roots for the Knicks (duh!).  This is also true of certain people on the right.  And, of course, it was true of Barack Obama who rarely, if ever, even spoke to the other side.  He knew best.

Ideological rigidity doesn't always end up like Robespierre guillotining his former comrades, but it is almost always a serious impediment to the advancement of society and our own ability to see.  It blinds us and holds us back. (I consider myself some kind of libertarian-conservative, but I'd also like to be free to support government-financed infrastructure if it becomes necessary).  Deng Xiaoping clearly felt the same way, as I suspect does Donald Trump. I also suspect, and hope, that if Trump is able to succeed in what he is doing he will at least partly break this ideological yoke that seems to have brought our country to a standstill. People who complain he is not a "real conservative" annoy me as much as those who insist he is.  I don't care if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.


P.S.: While surfing around doing research for this article, I was pleased to find I was not the first to recognize this odd similarity.  On July 15, 2016, Frank Li wrote on econintersect.com: "America is 'desperately in need of a great transformational leader like China's Deng' ... Could Donald Trump possibly be that leader?"  You will also find an amusing photo of Deng with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at that link.

Further, believe it or not, I actually met Deng Xiaoping.  He visited Los Angeles in 1979 and, still a leftist at that time, I was invited to a small reception in a working class neighborhood near downtown.  He came, again believe it or not, no one could make this up, in the company of the Osmonds!  You can read about it here, if you're interested.
 
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