Look, behind the laurels.

So much analytic attention is paid to the recent appointment of the president elect of the us in an attempt to gauge or develop a rational for the how’s and whys of what he is actually representing too the electorate that gave him such success and also not just those who did not, many still rolling from the result but also the fact of his (for a very few) unsurprising success, as it was, overlaid within the stupefying miscreant afflictions laid out by him to assuage a clamouring demand for change – any change! Thus his winning is offering his supporters a promised promoted variety of transformations soon to be afflicted upon the establishment that was with the result castigated for its lack of recognition of those cast aside by the Democratic Party and the whole corporate financial mafia. Now an unscripted change is also showing up in the strange bed fellows he is placing in the white house to help guide his policies through both the senate and congress which the republicans have lusted over as their gop right, against the current despised (as they see it) charlatan.

Many of the senate people already chosen, simple do not deserve to be where they are having overseen the shambles of the election and incapable over the years to put in place unifying strategy that would have forestalled the election of the chimera now to be soon sitting in the prime position as head of the most powerful nation of modern time (for the moment).

So Trump is drawing in a cadre of people that at first assessment seem to be a strange divers bunch of extremists, neo cons, un-repented self centred, Machiavellian, business orientated, socially and politically inexperienced and wealthy persons whom have little in connection with the dispossessed that appeared to want a wall street change in favour of main street and the fruitful future they desired; yet the administrative selection he is forming has little real experience to match the positions that he is injecting them into that can give confidence they can relate to those ‘left behind’ from the American dream. Given Trumps verbal flexibility with the truth or facts and unreconstructed policies yet to be made clear, is it obvious that a great deal of certainty is any area of domestic or international engagement cannot be taken with a security of commitment. No one can be sure just what he believes in (other than himself) or how his thought process will develop a consistent cogent direction in any sphere relating to governmental / inter-government activities.

What one might be certain of just now is that the us has gained a presidential person that will treat the position of president and all that is attached to it as an extension of business, perhaps as his own; as in, the usa is and can be run just like a business, it does deals to make money, your hired or fired according to the trim of your CV, you support us before we shore up you, we sweat the assets and maximise the profit take etc. It is inconceivable that he can economically deliver on any of the productive capacities he wants to ‘bring back’ to us soil (steel, coal, electronics, higher wages, jobs,) etc. However corporate USA might seem to pander to his desires, providing they get substantial tax breaks, as it has demanding shareholders and stakeholders but they are not overwhelmingly necessarily the mass electorate that put him in the position of power and certainly they do not want to see their profit-take diminished on unprofitable labour cost. 

Although trump will no doubt take on the chairmanship and CEO of the white house thinking it can be run like his other business interest, it is unlikely that he will have the tenacity or concentration required to be on top of the briefs that will fall before him to assess and attempt some insight to enable effective direction. So on current performance and with a measure of guidance and practice, he will have to be able to be engaged with a greater degree of factual scrutiny he has so far been able to avoid on home ground. But will he be able to participate to an extensive non domestic audience that will hear what he says yet may still doubt the veracity of his pronouncements or even derive just what he actually means due to the lack of his articulation ability, hence the real essence, if there is any, may be subsequently misconstrued.

So the us has chosen a inarticulate, coarse, self declared “smart”, wheeler dealer, politically naive, wealthy constricted intellect to lay out a ‘make us great again future’ to help the “have nots” and take on the workings of the game of ‘wall street against main street’. It does seem to some that he will be unlikely to master the balance between what is good for the public realm and what the establishment will demand; for running a country of millions of actors is not the same as running a business in which you have paid sycophants to prop up ones ego against those risking a castigation for countering a unapprised analysis of his own creation masked in dangerous ‘don’t tell don’t know’ scenarios.

With his lack of presentational skill, he will have to rely on his appointees to step to the front of the public relations scrum. They will be the ones pushing their own preferences in policies. Such preferences biases will be difficult to verify or forestall as he will most likely be unaware that the emphasis being placed behind policies may be unsophisticated but they will offer him strap line sound bites to match is ideas of what he is seeking to deliver as president, whatever that is. It is difficult to see but there may just be a glimmer of optimistic circumstance and it relates to the fact that he has no loyalty to any party or has political financial dependency so can act with some impunity against the establishment that has stifled any form of communal progress that has suffered from allowing wall street to hollow out the bed rock of the American dream. Assuming of course that those of the gops are willing to give a pass to whatever vision he aspires too and can stomach his eccentric egotistical personality.

There will be difficulties, of that there is no doubt, given the errant flexibility of his pronouncements thus far sampled from his election stumps and twittering. It is only indicative of a lack of subject intellectual content and ignorant indecisiveness that may well transform into misplaced finality of deeds and one can see that although he is looking to roll experienced administrative input back (dumb the experts) and cut down Obama care, make America great again, dig coal, dump the environment and be friendly to whomever he has his hands in their pockets of, there is very little global strategic vision that one can have confidence in and in this there are some pointers that are of real anxiety.

His global view of the world is business bound. This will be evident in what can be gained by an overture of amenability for procured dividends to key participants that does not conflict with an existing strategic position but if that position is seen to be underperforming can it be let go? Already he has taken on a more relaxed stance with Putin / Russia, took a snipe at china, favours israel’s continued rapacious acts against any two state peace, nods to an arms race and has no position on the whole middle east fragmentation (Syria etc); link this to his comment on NATO being out of date and on this position alone, his stance ought to be of great concern to NATO counties and western Europe. He may intimate that the us will not continue to support nato, although this is unlikely however the thrust of his intention may be to reduce that burden of the us dollar. In this one can agree that many nato member are not putting in resources to bolster nato and have had a very useful peace dividend since the end of the ‘cold war’. He is no doubt right that the laggards should put their due investment into the organisation or risk a very slow us military reaction to future stress occasions.

For Europe is in a dangerous interlude just now and it is not difficult to see where those stress point are. Some are socially political like Brexit, the euro, excessive migration, high youth unemployment, right extremism, and entering a prolonged period of stagnant growth. These are not directly connected to the USA nor are they of great interest to it but from these pressures may stem a rise in tension to instability and neutralise any chance of influencing existing military stress situation like, most Middle East countries, Syria, Iran, Tunisia or Ukraine/Crimea, and old ex eastern bloc countries now cosseted in the EU.  So far the EU has shown a remarkable incompetence and incapacity to be effective in projecting any unity of strength capable of military force without the umbrella of nato. It is also worth injecting the fiasco and affect of immigration as a result of the lack of controlled direction and one should not forget turkey, a nato member but one that is heading for large scale instability in which it currently thinks it has Europe by the immigration balls to gain political lassitude from the eu, if it pays ($) up. But turkey may soon become more intransigent with actions not compatible with EU democratic fundamentals. This alone is an incontestable unrecognised problem for Europe and this like other ‘European issues’  is one the new president could well decide is no longer of any importance to his prosperity vision for the usa.

  

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