by Fabrizio Agnocchetti

Contrary to popular belief, American imperial power does not reside at the White House, even when supported by the majority of Congress. The imposing machinery of the federal administration determines the trajectory of the nation by guaranteeing the strategic continuity of the hegemonic projection. The election of the president, considered an important step in the imperial parable, in reality takes essentially the form of a change of representation and narrative. The case of Donald Trump, an effective interpreter of the structural malaise of the dominant stock of Germanic ancestry.

The US elections and the inauguration of the new president always arouse great interest because they are considered of the utmost importance for the trajectory of the world's hegemonic superpower, and therefore for the repercussions on our lives. In reality, the weight of the occupant of the White House is largely overestimated.

The Funding Fathers had a deep aversion to English monarchical absolutism and at the same time believed that a virtuous administration of the Republic must be protected from the fickle moods of the people. Thus, on the one hand, they wanted to create a system of checks and balances particularly effective to prevent any single power from dominating the others, on the other hand, they discouraged the popular vote in various ways. The result is a Constitution in which the president assumes a symbolic role of representation and narration. The American one is mistakenly believed to be a presidential republic, but in reality it is a purely parliamentary regime, since political power resides above all in Congress. The president is virtually powerless without a majority in both houses and cannot dissolve them.

Moreover, in their rather aristocratic and not very democratic vision of society, the Founding Fathers wanted to reduce the role of politics in favor of that of the state administration in defining the trajectory of the nation. It is no coincidence that the word "democracy" is never mentioned in the Constitution and, even today, Americans call "The Government" the state bureaucracy and not the executive branch. Clearly, they could not have foreseen that America would become the informal empire1 the largest, most widespread and most powerful on a planetary scale that history has ever known. They would therefore never have imagined that the federal administration would assume its current gigantic dimensions. The hypertrophic growth of state apparatuses, especially after the Second World War, was such as to undermine this very balance of powers sought and achieved since the foundation.

The world's largest employer is not one of the world's largest private multinationals – Wal Mart, Mc Donald's, Coca-Cola, to name a few – not the military of one of the two most populous countries in the world – India and China – but the US Department of Defense (“Pentagon”) with its nearly three million personnel. Not to mention those classified (“classified") and those of the private companies that he employs, such as, for example, the ContractorsThe American secret service is an extremely large and complex body, made up of seventeen intelligence agencies – the best known of which, the CIA – with often divergent visions and tactics, in strong competition with each other. Given the network of organizations, think tanks and companies linked to them, it is difficult to calculate the exact number of total employees in the sector. In 2010, the The Washington Post has put forward a rough estimate that more than eight hundred thousand people had access to classified national security information. A necessarily partial figure, because it cannot take into account an indeterminate number of agents scattered across the planet, who do not appear in official records because they are infiltrated.

If we consider the American federal machine as a whole, we arrive at more than five million registered employees. Among them, thousands of civil servants occupying high positions, supported by tens of thousands of technicians with specific skills, administer and have responsibility for quadrants of the globe assigned to them. A truly capillary organizational structure of imperial matrix, which places de facto the power of "governance" of the planet in the hands of the American state apparatus.

Regardless of the occupant of the White House and the political color of Congress, the imposing machines of the federal administration ensure the strategic continuity of the informal empire, whose structural pillars are the control of all the world's seas and the domination of Europe. For their maintenance and consolidation, it is absolutely necessary to prevent Germany from converging geopolitically towards Russia and China and Beijing from taking control of the China Sea through the conquest of Taiwan. No occupant of the White House or majority of Congress will ever be able to abdicate these long-term strategic imperatives; the machines would not allow them to do so.

The United States is not an ordinary nation, but an empire2 multinational, dominated since its foundation by the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic lineage (English, Scottish and Irish), then merged with the Germanic lineage (Germans and Scandinavians), which became the majority, thanks to the massive immigration of the 19th century3. Concentrated mainly in the Midwest and, more generally in the continental part of the Country, the German American, characterized by rigid social discipline, high productivity and strong community feeling, formed the backbone of impressive economic development and overwhelming military strength, which led America to conquer and subjugate the planet4. But being at the forefront of maintaining and consolidating world supremacy is an extremely demanding task, and not only because of the condition of perpetual war that it imposes. Like the Roman Empire and the British Empire that preceded them, the United States of America cannot ignore two other structural elements of its hegemonic status: the gigantic trade deficit and the imposing flow of immigration. The first is necessary to maintain the "provinces" economically dependent, becoming the buyer of last resort of their products; the second is essential to maintain a highly dynamic and competitive society and, above all, a young, aggressive and violent population. The economic sacrifices imposed by deindustrialization, the absorption and assimilation of ever-increasing quantities of immigration and the continuous war effort, have generated and grown in the dominant strain the malaise that characterizes all great empires in their mature phase. In the United States, it began to manifest itself with the second term of the Bush administration and has continued to grow since then.

As an emblematic representative of the dominant Germanic lineage, Donald Trump has been able to express his discomfort. The electoral pillars of MAGA5 impact precisely its three main causes, in order to mitigate it: reindustrialize the country, reduce the flow of immigration, end the wars and bring the soldiers back home. An eminently unrealistic program, because it would represent the withdrawal of America from its informal empire and its retreat into an anachronistic nationalist isolationism. The state apparatuses would never allow it, as evidenced by the first term of the Tycoon New York. His intentions, to say the least, are vague, to reduce the power of the federal administration – the Deep State, as he usually calls it with a negative connotation – to the point of elevating the White House, supported by the majority of Congress, to determine a new isolationist geopolitical posture, they necessarily come up against the material impossibility of implementing the Spoil SystemLiterally "spoil system", it was born in the United States under the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), when the new occupant of the White House replaced almost all the bureaucrats of the federal administration with civil servants loyal and faithful to the new government.6 tens of thousands of highly specialized bureaucrats. But even if the president were to miraculously succeed in such a titanic undertaking, the deep soul of the country would never accept abdicating its role as the hegemonic superpower on the planet. Election propaganda is confronted with the reality of geopolitical fundamentals.

However, employees of the so-called Deep State are mostly members of the dominant strain, therefore very sensitive and receptive to its moods. The assault of the Capitol Hill Four years ago represented an important breaking point in Washington's imperial parable, since the state apparatuses did not at all underestimate this acute manifestation of malaise brought to the Capital from the belly of the Country.

This explains the historic change in posture that the United States inaugurated under the Obama administration, and which (strongly) accelerated under the Biden administration, just after the attempted coup of January 6, 2021. America has reduced to a minimum its intervention and even its presence on the chessboards deemed less strategic, subcontracting them to its proximity agents ("proxies"). An example is above all that of the Middle East, where the state apparatuses worked hard for a convergence between Israel and the Sunni Arab countries in order to contain Iran, to arrive at the signing of the Covenants of Abraham. Son of the same downsizing, the disengagement from Afghanistan was done in a "disorderly" manner - to use a euphemism - because there was no convergence on the withdrawal and the simultaneous handover of the country to the Taliban, but rather a real fracture between the different federal agencies. In the Sahel, following Washington's new posture, France was unable to maintain all of its positions and some traditional bastions of its (neo)colonialism found themselves in the hands of the Russians. At the same time and symmetrically, the American state apparatuses intensified their control over areas considered strategic, such as Germany, Eastern Europe and the Far East.

The introduction of customs tariffs or in any case the adoption of incentive policies for American industry, started under Obama, continued under the first Trump mandate and accelerated under Biden7, does not have the illusory and anti-imperial objective of reindustrializing the country, but the concrete and strategic one of reducing the enormous trade surpluses of China and Germany. Both countries use them above all to contain strong internal centrifugal forces, which would otherwise tear apart their national unity. A surplus that at the same time benefits their more or less conscious projections of regional and/or global geo-economic hegemony. However, the side effect of a certain reindustrialization generated by these measures can only alleviate the economic malaise of the dominant strain.

The construction of the wall to seal the Mexican border, begun under the Obama administration and continuing for the last four years, does not have the nationalist and unrealistic objective of stopping the flow of incoming Hispanics, but the purely imperial one of facilitating the assimilation of immigrants, creating a physical separation that breaks their cultural ties with the homeland.

The November election result and Donald Trump’s first inaugural address therefore only confirm a structural trend that has been underway for almost twenty years in American society: the malaise of the dominant stock. Continental America, of predominantly Germanic descent, which bears the heavy imperial burden, is frustrated and angry. It harbors a resentment towards the Coasts and “provinces” of Western Europe – the Old Europe, according to Donald Rumsfeld's famous definition - considered as parasites who live behind him, as major beneficiaries of the Pax americana without contributing to the sacrifices necessary to defend it. Frustration and anger that the new president knew how to collect and narrate, triumphing in the electoral confrontation.

Far from representing a turning or even a new era geopolitically, the installation of the New York tycoon in the White House will reinforce, particularly in the narrative, the new American posture that the federal apparatus has been pursuing since the end of the 2010s. Customs duties will increase, particularly on German and Chinese products. It is certain that European "partners" will be pushed to assume greater responsibilities within NATO to help defend the Pax americana against its antagonists. The tones on the subjects change, they are much less friendly than those of the previous government, but the substance remains the same. The construction of the wall will continue, not to repel the ever-increasing flow of Hispanic immigrants, but to assimilate it to the dominant stock. America is an empire with global projection or it is not, it cannot become an ordinary Country. It has never conceived the figure of the emperor, precisely because it was born in opposition to monarchical absolutism. It cannot be a single man, however charismatic he may be, however much the beneficiary of a broad consensus, who changes the geopolitical fundamentals of a community. Even less if it is eminently.

source: The Diplomate

https://en.reseauinternational.net/etats-unis-un-empire-sans-empereur/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q57k3y3ONzg

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.