by Gordon M. Hahn
I think many among Republicans and the right in general are overly fixated on former President Donald J. Trump, in some circles to the level of a fetish. Trump’s presidency was a success and the presidential election was unfree and unfair, delegitimated by media censorship and unprecedented, record-setting, massive electoral fraud, if it was not a fraudulent result and thus stolen as a result of the level of fraud. But Trump’s character was too often unpresidential and needlessly divisive. Ronald Reagan achieved greater policy and political success with humor, a smile, and an endearing charisma. To be sure, today’s Democrats are not those of the Reagan era; Nancy Pelosi — reminiscent of a deranged witch at times – is no Tip O’Neill. (ASIDE: We were told the more there were women in politics, the more civil they would be; that hypothesis appears to have been debunked by the appearance of American political history over the last several decades, in particular in the last decade.) The Trump administration also achieved some notable results in foreign policy. Most of all,
TRUMP’S RECORD
Domestically, although Trump was very good for the economy, as I predicted he would be, he was divisive with his tweeting and language, rendering him unpresidential. He seemed to begin to rise a little to the stature of the presidency in the runup to November 3, and certainly faced the most vile, putrid Democrat opposition any president has ever had to face: Obama-Clinton coup, Geobbels-like Dem media, falsified impeachments, and finally electoral fraud. The failed coup attempt was followed, if the voter fraud did in fact turn the election, by a revolution from above towards the establishment of a soft-authoritarian, one-party regime. So, Trump was even more a victim than a perpetrator of political polarization. In foreign policy, Trump did better than I expected. Although he was tied down in following through on building a modicum of cooperation with Russia and calming down the new cold war, he put the Chinese on notice that it cannot count the US out yet. Even Biden’s top foreign policy advisor has advised publicly that the new administration/regime continue major aspects of Trump’s China policy. Trump also made major gains towards peace in the Middle East and put Iran on the defensive.
I warned that Trump’s Achilles’ heel is his ego, and although the election fraud was massive and may very well have turned the election against him. There was not sufficient time to gather and organize the evidence for a fair court hearing, and when time ran out he took the gamble of calling a massive crowd onto the streets in a highly charged political atmosphere where either (1) leftist radicals could organize a false flag operation or attack Trump supporters setting off a bloody conflict that could have sparked civil war or (2) agitated rightists might engage in or spark violence. It appears the latter occurred. Trump did not incite an insurrection against the Capitol or the government on January 6th. He is responsible indirectly for the tragedy and, moreover, may have fallen into a trap laid by the Democratic congressional leadership, which appears perhaps to have left the Capitol under-protected intentionally, hoping to pin the blame for an insurrection on Trump. If not for his ego, he would have allowed the constitutionalists among the Republican congressional cohort – Crus, Hawley, etc. — to mount their challenge without the accompanying crown and ultimate riot, leave office calmly, and then mount a massive effort to uncover the extent of election fraud with an eye towards Biden’s impeachment if Republicans gain a majority in the House and Senate in 2022. This would have been a jumping off point for his possible return to the presidency in 2024.
A POST TRUMP REGIME TRANSFORMATION AGENDA
It is now too late for Trump to repair his reputation enough to win another presidential election. His goal should be to ‘help’ or push the Republican Party to become less cautious and stand on the shoulders of constitutionalists like Sens. Cruz, Lee, Paul, and Hawley and find a charismatic constitutionalist perhaps from among those four to challenge the authoritarianizing Biden regime and anti-constitutional and increasingly communist-minority nationalist or communo-fascist Democrat Party. Should the Biden administration continue to authoritarianize, attempt to create a one-party system by stacking it with DC and Puerto Rican statehood, citizenship or avenues to illegal voting for 11 million illegal immigrants, or pack the Supreme Court, then the Republican Party must begin a peaceful movement of civil disobedience. Regardless of what the Biden administration/regime does, Republicans must begin to create a parallel society ‘underground’ so it does not fall under the dominance of or ostracization from the increasingly statized economy, media, and society. This parallel society must be more robust than that created by the Polish Catholic Church and Solidarity under communism. It must become a refuge for a true (not QAnon) Great Reawakening of the kind outlined by Glenn Beck and eventually, if necessary, a peaceful revolution from below similar to that which occurred in Czeckoslovakia during the fall of communism. In fact, before too long this may be the very same task of the American Awakening Party—overthrowing the new post-modern form of communism with an identitarian face.
Should Republicans or a successor party ever come to power again in America, they will be faced with implementing the establishment of a much more vibrant republican — that is, representative system — that further separates the state from the economy, big business, and lobbyists and subordinates officialdom to we the people. I made some modest proposals and a deeper analysis of the Obama and Trump years in: https://gordonhahn.com/2020/12/29/the-authoritarianization-putinization-of-america-parts-1-and-2-complete/
TRUMAPLYOSE AVERTED AND THE POST-TRUMP WORLD
Trump started no new wars and did not appropriate unconstitutional powers to wage war (unlike Obama), but his fall means the forces that are pushing the world towards confrontation will not just regroup but go on the offensive, raising the risk of war with Russia and/or China in places like Ukraine, Eastern Europe in general, and southeast Asia and the South China Sea. Biden’s corrupt business ties to China make him vulnerable to pressure from Beijing. While Russia did not ‘have something’ on Trump, as the Dems incessantly claimed to justify and coverup their own illegal government activities and corrupt business dealings, as a result of those dealing China may very well ‘have something’ on Biden. This could subdue Biden or force him to take unprudent steps to prove his anti-Sino credentials that could spark a military conflict with China.
Regarding Russia, the Democrats’ constant attempts to foil Trump by impeachment and prior to that other means (Obama-Clintongate) hamstrung Trump from making some inroads against the new cold war, which deepened slightly. Indeed, his actual policies were sufficiently tough, except in public diplomacy. In the face of the avalanche of Democrats’ false accusations of Trump’s collusion with Putin, natural combativeness and obstinance pushed him to remain silent when the Russian leader went too far or when some signal of concern was necessary, as when one of Russia’s top opposition leaders, Alexei Navalnyi, was poisoned.
Now, the US is geostrategically, politically, and ideologically aligned for conflict with Russia. Geostrategically, NATO expansion has borught world history’s most powerful military alliance to Russia’s very borders, sparking wars in Georgia and Ukraine so far. The ‘frozen conflict’ in Ukraine can explode into large-scale war at any moment given the presence of hotheads on both sides, in particular Ukrainian and Russian ultra-nationalists. Biden’s corrupt business dealings and ties to certain elements inside Ukraine will give him greater leverage over Kiev. The Soros-tied foundations’ largesse to not just democratic but also nationalists and ultra-nationalist forces will flow more intensely. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, apparently poisoned on the eve of the Us election, timed his return to Moscow to coincide with the arrival of Biden to the White House, hoping to capitalize on Biden’s campaign and recent historical tough talk on Putin.
The Biden administration is likely to increase lethal military aid to Ukraine, escalating Kiev’s tensions with Moscow. At the same time, Putin’s position is beginning to weaken both within the state apparatus and among the public, though as of yet not precipitously so. But with his advancing age and the public’s natural Putin fatigue, his position is likely to continue to weaken and the decline may begin to accelerate. As it does, he could lose control over radical statist and ultra-nationalist elements, or he may decide to bolster his popularity by more intense conflict with the West, which is likely to give all the cause he will need to justify a gambit (assuming the West does not outright provoke a conflict, as it did in Georgia and Ukraine). In sum, there will be a dynamic of mounting escalation and counter-escalation that could detonate in Donbass or even in Crimea. The Belarusian opposition’s long-standing nascent color revolution will also get greater financial and moral support from the Biden administration, intensifying tensions in Eastern Europe.
Under Biden, a weakened and weakening America will return to the globalist agenda of environmentalism, identitarianism, socialism, postmodernism, and global government, now all under the Great Reset. China will meanwhile continue to develop its state capitalism, expand its economic and soft power, and establish an alternative to the West as an economic, financial, political, and ultimately military alternative world. The world will move increasingly towards bifurcation, or China will commandeer the globalization process through its One Belt-One Road mega-project, bringing the non-West in, bringing the West down, and keeping America out. Biden may be inclined to remove fears of his being beholden to Beijing because of leaks they could arrange regarding his business dealings by getting tough with Beijing, creating another tension point and under circumstances where China and Russia have a near de facto military alliance.
Finally, the authoritarianization of American domestic politics is in play. The Biden administration plans to taint all conservatives with the broad brush of ‘white supremacism’ in a what will now be official federal policy of reverse racism and genderism against whites and males, create a one-party system thorough DC and Puerto Rican statehood, granting legality of not citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens, pack the Supreme Court with liberal-leftist judges, and support censorship of republicans and conservatives. With the ‘shining city on the hill’ itself eschewing republicanism, human, civil and political rights, new momentum will accrue to authoritarian elements worldwide. Will this increase pressure to foment color revolution in places like Russia or China (Hong Kong) to maximize the contrast in appearances between the shining hill and the ‘darkness.’
If you thought the Trump years or 2020 were worrisome, in a year, or two or three, you might be in the midst of nostalgia for those times. If the risk of World War III was minimal by 2019, it will be significant from now until America completes or comes to term with its decline. If there was no risk of civil war in 2019, then it came on the agenda in 2020 with the BLM/Antifa riots and anti-white racism and violence. After the elections and January 6th, civil war and/or revolution has moved to near the top of the agenda for some on the far-right and many on the left and far-left. It has become the chief concern and fear for most Americans, and this is proper and fitting, however unfortunately.
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About the Author – Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, http://www.canalyt.com and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, www.cetisresearch.org. Dr. Hahn is the author of The Russian Dilemma: The West and the Making of Russia’s Security Culture (McFarland, forthcoming in 2021), Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018), The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.
Dr. Hahn also has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, and the Hoover Institution.