Why Mitt Romney ended up all alone.

James ANTLE III

Impeachment has ended in the acquittal of President Donald Trump and all we have to show for it is a legion of op-eds praising Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator to vote to convict on one of the two articles. (You can read my more skeptical take on Romney here.) The whole affair ultimately fizzled out, even though John Bolton threatened to inject some excitement into the proceedings as recently as last week. Why in the end did this end up being a party-line affair, sans Romney?

1. The public hearings made the impeachment inquiry look partisan. Republicans were outraged by the House Democrats’ process, which included a lot of closed door hearings and leaking to the press. But that was the only time period where there was an undeniable uptick in popular support for impeachment. Adam Schiff and company learned from the Robert Mueller report that you needed a clear narrative of wrongdoing, not a nuanced document about which competing arguments could be made. The House’s initial approach allowed Democrats to get their side of the Trump-Ukraine story out without the American people seeing any Democrats. Eventually, however, some kind of transparency was going to be needed (notwithstanding calls for the Senate to remove Trump by secret ballot) and once impeachment became a television show in which Democrats and Republicans did battle, momentum in the polls stalled.

Once that occurred, there was little incentive to cross party lines. Impeachment was popular enough, especially with the progressive base, that Democrats couldn’t abandon it. It was too unpopular, especially among grassroots conservatives, to compel many Republicans to break ranks. Trump isn’t as popular with Mormons as he is evangelicals, so Utah’s Romney could afford to vote for one of the articles of impeachments. Even Justin Amash, who represents Gerald Ford’s old congressional district in Michigan, had to leave the party once he decided he was pro-impeachment based on the Mueller report before Trump-Ukraine. (I defended Amash’s integrity and conservatism.) Zero Republicans ended up voting for impeachment in the House. Trump’s removal was always going to require 20 Republican senators to break ranks and that was an extremely tall order under these political conditions.

2. Democrats didn’t really expect to convict Trump. Once it was clear that this was going to be a partisan impeachment, of the kind Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had previously wanted to avoid, it could serve only two purposes: damage Trump in the 2020 election and fire up progressives who wanted congressional Democrats to go through with this. Jim Geraghty outlined a serious case that could have pried loose some Republican this side of Amash and Romney (or at least made acquittal votes tougher to justify).

But Democrats never thought enough Republican votes were in play to matter nor did they think their activists would be satiated by an impeachment over the Impoundment Control Act. Instead they stirred together a strange cocktail of maximalist liberal Trump-Russia conspiracy claims and neoconservative talking points about the need to fight Russians over there rather than over here. The whole thing relied on hyperbole and self-serving narratives that the the White House was an Aaron Sorkin program before Trump got there.

3. The break between Trump and Senate Republicans never came. Bolton aside, the big risk for Trump—who does not boast relationships with the senators in his own party as strong as Bill Clinton’s—was that he would become enraged when GOP lawmakers did not go as far in defending him as he preferred. Trump said the Ukraine phone call was “perfect,” many Republican senators believed it was inappropriate but not worth removing a president in an election year. In the end, Trump’s lawyers and House Republicans offered the defense the president wanted. Senators like Lamar Alexander explained the rationale for his votes the way he wanted. No split came, which left Romney by himself.

4. It’s an election year. At the end of the day, “Let the people vote” triumphed over Democratic arguments that asking for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma (and still releasing the aid when nothing of consequence happened) constituted election interference that needed to be dealt with immediately. The voters are going to get to decide what they want to do with Trump.

5. It’s the Trump era. The news cycle has moved quickly ever since Trump’s famous escalator ride. On the day of his acquittal by the Senate, impeachment was perhaps the third biggest story. Even world historical events don’t feel like an especially big deal for longer than 72 hours or so. Trump powers through them and the public tunes into something else. Some other pols, like Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, have learned from his example.

theamericanconservative.com

When the Republican US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on 26 March 2012 that, "Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”, he was actually stating publicly something that US President Barack Obama secretly agreed with and had been working since day-one of his Presidency to implement — and his State Department had secretly already been drawing up plans since 2011 to overthrow the Moscow-friendly leaders of two nations: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych. But Obama (who was the most gifted liar in US Presidential history, and really understood how to use truths to demolish even lies that his own policies were secretly based upon — simultaneously criticising bad polices while secretly implementing them) responded to Romney’s statement of March 26^th, by saying on 22 October 2012, “Gov. Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia … the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years.” And Romney replied, “ROMNEY: Excuse me. It’s a geopolitical foe [now he pretended he hadn’t said that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe”; he knew that what he had said months earlier would lose him votes, and that Obama was now taking advantage of this], and I said in the same — in the same paragraph I said, and Iran is the greatest national security threat we face. [What he had actually said there when the interviewer challenged him on his anti-Russia remark was “Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran. A nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough.” He diverted the issue from “number one” to “nuclear,” so as to mislead viewers as to what the issue here was. He recognized right away that he had let slip a belief that was highly controversial to express in 2012.] Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin. And I'm certainly not going to say to him, I'll give you more flexibility after the election. After the election, he'll get more backbone.” 

Little did Romney, or the US public — or Vladimir Putin — know that Obama’s own anti-Russia campaign would become publicly unleashed only after Obama’s re-election.

Whereas Democrats lie, when they are not outright deceived, to say that Obama was a progressive; Republicans lie, when they are not outright deceived, to say that Obama wasn’t a conservative. Republicans want a consistently fascist leader, and can’t be satisfied by anything less. Republicans tend to be uncompromising, demanding to conquer the ‘enemy’; Democratic Party voters prefer “bipartisan solutions” — negotiation, instead of confrontation; win-win games, instead of win-lose games; good-faith deals, instead of bad-faith conquests; and so this is how Democratic Party politicians need to present themselves not only to Republican Party voters, but also to their own Democratic Party voters. Republican Party politicians, by contrast, don’t need to appear ‘bipartisan’ in order to retain the support of Republican voters. This is an authentic strategic difference between the two Parties: it stems from the difference — however slight — that exists between conservatism and liberalism. (Each of those two ideologies is both neoliberal and neoconservative — free-market and imperialistic. Progressivism is neither, but Obama and Trump are both. Billionaires want both, and won’t financially back any Presidential candidate who isn’t both.)

In the same TV interview on 26 March 2012 when Romney uttered his charge that Russia is America’s top enemy, he went on to explain: “It is always Russia, typically with China alongside. And — and so in terms of a geopolitical foe, a nation that’s on the Security Council, that has the heft of the Security Council and is, of course, a — a massive nuclear power, Russia is the — the geopolitical foe and — and the — and they’re — the idea that our president is — is planning on doing something with them that he’s not willing to tell the American people before the election is something I find very, very alarming.” Romney actually knew that secret negotiations are going on all the time between nations’ leaders. He was simply trying to appeal to the many voters who don’t know this basic fact. But he wasn’t nearly as gifted a liar as Obama was; so, he lost to Obama.

Romney not only damned Russia’s Government, but he damned China’s Government, and he damned Iran’s Government. That’s the neoconservative trifecta; and the current Republican US President is carrying it out. In order to conquer Russia without a first-strike nuclear blitz attack, the only way would be to eliminate, first, both China’s Government and Iran’s Government, because those are the most powerful Governments remaining still as allies of Russia. And Republicans (such as Romney) even blame Russia for having inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear defense against America’s growing nuclear MADness, which MADness had started with Reagan’s “Star Wars” ABM (also called “BMD” or ballistic-missile defense) dreams.

Romney was there regretting that the US can’t remove and replace the international arrangements that the great American progressive President FDR had instituted at the U.N. with its inclusion of the Soviet Union on the U.N. Security Council. Republicans now damn Russia for having inherited that U.N. seat, too. They want to un-do all of FDR’s great progressive legacy; they’re not satisfied merely to have worked with the post-Reagan Democratic Party (today’s Democratic Party) and so eliminated almost all of it (Glass-Steagall and almost all of the rest). They want war, global conquest. Whereas Democrats on the national level, as exemplified by Obama, want to conquer Russia gradually, Republicans on the national level don’t have the patience, but rush toward World War III: “brinksmanship.” The Democratic Party’s voters are satisfied merely with continued liberal hypocrisy, such as Obama and the Clintons exemplified — it’s a Party that needs to be replaced, because it leaves the country with no progressive alternative, much like the hypocritical Whigs were replaced in 1860. (But, if some assassin’s bullet then quickly ends that new progressive Party, too, such as happened in 1865, the only progressive alternative remaining will, as a consequence, be outright revolution — if World War III doesn’t come before then.) 

The turn away from FDR was gradual between 1945 and 1948, but the future American direction was made clear in 1948 when the US CIA became established finally upon the dual basis of hating Russians and of becoming financially addicted to the international narcotics trade so as to have enough money (in addition to the on-the-books type, from the US Treasury) to expand into and take over America’s Deep State and thus the country, on behalf of America’s international corporations, such that even the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy is now very reasonably attributed by many well-informed Americans to JFK’s growing turn away from the CIA’s obsession to destroy Russia. Already, the CIA had brought over into the United States many key German Nazis (a very bad sign that post-FDR America was going to have a rotten core), and the CIA helped other Nazis to become safely established in Argentina and other countries. JFK had become increasingly disillusioned with the US Deep State that he found himself surrounded by, and he was expecting to implement its ouster from power in his second term, which never came.

Then, on the night of 24 February 1990, US President George H.W. Bush secretly established the US policy for the US and its allied governments to adhere to for the future (after the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact and its communism all ended peacefully in 1991), for America’s equivalent of the Soviets’ Warsaw Pact military alliance — NATO — to continue on afterward, against the now lone nation of Russia, and to take into NATO the formerly Russia-allied nations, so as to create the way, by thus expanding America’s military empire, to surround Russia and finally take over ultimately Russia itself. His successors in the US White House have all adhered to this secret policy of surround-and-capture. Obama entered office intending to eliminate Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad; and, even more importantly, Obama started planning in 2011 to eliminate Russia’s neutralist next door to Russia in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych — thus setting up the basis of lies on which Obama’s sanctions against Russia, and NATO’s massing of troops onto and near Russia’s borders, are ‘justified’.

US President Donald Trump continues this policy, against both Syrians and Ukrainians, with the aim of completing what Obama had only started (but had amplified from his predecessors). First, here, will be discussed Ukraine; then, Syria:

On January 18th, the AP headlined “Ukraine passes bill to get occupied regions back from Russia”, and reported that the Minsk peace accords that Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, and Vladimir Putin had worked out (contrary to Obama’s intentions), and that had been accepted and signed by both the Ukrainian Government and Russia, as well as by the separatist far-eastern region Donbass, in order to establish a peaceful method for re-integrating into Ukraine the separatist formerly Ukrainian region in Ukraine’s far east, called Donbass, were now officially being reneged-upon and rejected by the Ukrainian Government; and Ukraine also now is committing itself to conquering the Crimean region in the former Ukraine’s far south, which had voted over 90% to rejoin and become again a part of Russia, and Russia did reintegrate Crimea, as the residents there overwhelmingly wanted. Ukraine’s Government has thus now established, as its official policy, that only war and conquest of its former far-eastern portion, and also of its far-southern portion (now again a part of Russia), is acceptable. Ukraine had never complied with the Minsk accords’ requirement for Ukraine to accept the far-eastern region (Donbass) peaceably back into Ukraine. However, the US Government and its allies blamed only Russia and not the Ukrainian Government (which is vastly more to blame) for the failure of the Minsk accords to be implemented, and Obama’s economic sanctions against Russia were constantly being renewed upon that fallacious, clearly counter-factual, anti-Russian, basis. Most of the Minsk accords were simply ignored by Ukraine. For example, here are the final two paragrahs, and they were totally ignored and violated constantly by Ukraine:

• Pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision. Disarmament of all illegal groups.

• Constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new Constitution to come into effect by the end of 2015, the key element of which is decentralisation (taking into account peculiarities of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, agreed with representatives of these districts), and also approval of permanent legislation on special status of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in accordance with the measures spelt out in the footnotes, by the end of 2015.

What caused Ukraine to opt for war against Russia, and to turn away from the Minsk accords, is that US President Trump had decided to sell to Ukraine even weapons that Obama had thought would be too likely to bring about a US-Russia war too quickly; Trump is apparently even more eager for a US-Russia war than Obama was. So, now, the fascist regime that Obama had installed in his 2014 coup in Ukraine will be given even greater sway than it had under Obama. They will go back to doing as they had been doing during the first months after Obama had installed this regime: killing the residents in the areas of Ukraine that had voted over 90% (in Donbass) for the man whom Obama had overthrown, and over 75% (in Crimea) for him. Unless those voters can be either killed or forced to emigrate into Russia, the fascist regime that Obama had installed on Russia’s doorstep would be voted out of power in the next general election. Evidently, Trump is at least as dedicated to continuance of that fascist regime as was his predecessor, who had installed it.

Regarding Syria, the Trump regime is likewise continuing the Obama regime’s policies. Obama supported Al Qaeda* (called in Syria “Jabhat al-Nusra”) against Syria’s Government, and so does Trump. Even the leading neoconservative propaganda-sheet, the Washington Post, once goofed and included the scandalous reality that the big hang-up between the US and Russia that was preventing a cease-fire and blocking a stop in the bombing in Syria by both the US and Russia, was: “Russia was said to have rejected a US proposal to leave Jabhat al-Nusra off-limits to bombing as part of a cease-fire.” Russia insisted upon continuing the bombing of both ISIS-controlled and Al Qaeda-controlled areas, even during the general cease-fire, but America would allow only continuation of the bombing against ISIS-controlled areas. Without Al Qaeda (Nusra), the US invasion of Syria would have had no boots-on-the-ground leadership for the many other jihadist groups that the Sauds had recruited worldwide and financed to fight there. Protecting Syria’s Al Qaeda was crucial to America’s entire war-effort in Syria. And Trump — who had campaigned against “radical Islamic terrorism” — is continuing Obama’s policy there, too: supporting radical Islamic terrorism, against Syria’s Government.

Brett McGurk, who ran Obama’s Syria-policy, is likewise running Trump’s Syria-policy; and he hasn’t had to change the policy at all: it relies upon Al Qaeda in the Arab-majority areas, and upon Kurds in the Kurdish-majority areas. As that WP article, which was dated 19 February 2016, noted “The US team, headed by senior White House adviser Robert Malley and State Department envoy Brett McGurk,” were negotiating with the Russians about the conditions for a cease-fire in Syria while Obama was in power. (They were the people working to protect Al Qaeda in Syria.) And McGurk still is, and hasn’t changed. (As for Malley — co-authoring there at the neoconservative-neoliberal The Atlantic magazine — he’s with the US and NATO billionaires-funded neoconservative International Crisis Group, which pontificates about being kind and humanitarian in wars, so as to be able to sell more of them to liberals around the world. But McGurk has been the real operator, no such mere “front man” for the war-industry.)

Obama himself would probably be surprised at the extent to which Trump is adhering to Obama’s foreign-policy thrust of placing hostility against Russia and Russia’s allies, above hostility against jihadists and jihadists’ allies. On 10 November 2016, just two days after Trump’s election as President, Obama did a sudden about-face, seemingly in order to avoid the embarrassment of having his successor publicly condemn him for having been depending so heavily upon the hated Al Qaeda: the WP bannered “Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria” and reported that, “President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government.” (The clause “at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government” was yet another rare peep in that neocon newspaper, which enabled a perceptive reader to get a glimpse of the broader reality, that America was in Syria not in order to defeat jihadists, but in order to defeat Syria’s Government.) Nominally, Obama on 9 September 2016 had finally allowed his Secretary of State John Kerry to sign with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a cease-fire agreement that accepted Russia’s demand that both ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria continue to be bombed; but, on September 17th, just five days later, Obama’s Air Force bombed Syrian Government troops in the key city of Deir Zor and thus enabled ISIS to take control of that city, which bombing by the US violated and thus ended that same agreement, and finally ended Russia’s trust in anything it might sign with the US Government. Russia promptly set up its own peace-negotiations for ending the Syrian war, and excluded the US Government from it; the process involved instead Russia, Iran, and Turkey, and it made more progress, in much shorter time, than the US-backed peace-process under U.N. auspices ever did; so, when Obama gave that order, on November 10th, finally to start bombing Al Qaeda in Syria, he probably was trying to accommodate the fundamental change-of-policy on Syria, that Trump had campaigned and won on. Perhaps only later did Obama come to recognize that Trump’s promises didn’t mean anything more than Obama’s own promises did. 

McGurk likewise has continued Obama’s use of Syria’s Kurds to break off a chunk of Syria, and he is infuriating Turkey’s Government on the hot issue of formation of a Kurdistan, just like McGurk’s comments backing the Kurds against Syria were when the US puppet-leader happened to be Obama. Under Obama, a Turkish newspaper reported on 7 February 2016, that Turkey’s leader Tayyip “Erdoğan directed severe criticism at the visit to the town by Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama's special envoy for the anti-Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL*) coalition,” and this was because of America’s support for the Kurds against Syria. Then, the pro-US-regime Arab newspaper in English, Al Monitor, headlined, now during the Trump era, on 1 August 2017, "Turkey in Uproar Over McGurk” and opened, “Turkey’s scapegoating of US special envoy Brett McGurk over the military partnership between the United States and the Syrian Kurds grew crazier today, with one pro-government newspaper labeling him a murderer.”

On January 22nd, the geostrategic blogger who posts his anonymous reports at his “Moon of Alabama” site, pointed out that the Trump Administration tells contradictory lies to different people, and that it thus assures not only defeat, but embarrassment, to the US:

US allied Turkish forces invade Syria to kill and "cleanse" US allied Syrian YPG/PKK Kurds in Afrin. The Trump administration immediately steps in to assure the respective allies of its continued support:

• Today the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, the US diplomat Rose Gottemoeller, visited Ankara to tell the Turkish allies that everything is fine. The US will stand with them.

• Today Commander of US Central Command General Votel and US Diplomat Brett McGurk visited Kobane to tell their Syrian YPG/PKK allies that everything is fine. The US will stand with them.

On January 18^th, McGurk had already reaffirmed to the Kurds in Iraq, that the US backs them against Iraq’s Government. It’s all being done so as to increase US weapons-sales to America’s ‘allies’: to the aristocracies that are vassals to the imperial one, America’s. When the US President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 17 January 1960 Farewell Address that “the military-industrial complex” might take over the country, he said it because he knew that it had largely already done so; but, by now, that take-over is long-since a fait accompli.

Not only has this policy destroyed Ukraine, and destroyed Syria, and, before that, destroyed Libya, and destroyed Iraq, and destroyed Afghanistan, etc.; but, the US leaves to Russia’s formerly allied or friendly nations the enormous burdens of repairing the vast harms that the US regime had caused.

For example: At a ‘Defense’ Department press conference, now under President Trump, on 19 May 2017, the “Special Envoy Brett McGurk” said, as he had been saying all along under his former boss, Obama, “We will never work with the Assad regime”; and, “the reconstruction costs of Syria are — are so high in the multiple, multiple billions of dollars” and "the reality in Syria is that so long as — until there's a credible political horizon, the international community is not going to come to the aid, particularly the areas under the control of the regime.” In other words: the war that the US and Sauds had led and armed and financed against Syria would receive no reconstruction money from the perpetrators unless the given area of Syria where such reconstruction is being done has broken away from Syria’s Government. There is no change, here, too. Even regarding America’s backing the Kurds to grab parts of Syria where they predominate, McGurk-Trump is the same as was McGurk-Obama — and McGurk is infuriating Turkey’s Government on the hot issue of Kurdistan, just like McGurk’s comments backing the Kurds against Syria, and against Iraq, were when the US puppet-leader happened to be Obama.

The reconstruction costs for Syria alone are estimated at upwards of $250 billion.

Trump’s domestic US policies are even more conservative than Obama’s were, but in the field of foreign policies — at least ones that fall under the rubric of ‘national security’ — Trump is continuing Obama’s policies: the neoconservatism continues unchanged, as if ‘US national security’ policies are unaffected by whom the resident in the US White House happens to be. But isn’t that the way it is in any regime? Only the deceit is less skillful now.

* Terrorist organization, banned in Russia by court order.

Fast forward to the present and one finds a number of Democrats and not necessarily registered Democrats like CNN's Fareed Zakaria, change course by saying that they were wrong and Romney was right about Russia. (There's some debate on where Zakaria's views can be actually placed. Notwithstanding, he's arguably best categorized in the neoliberal grouping, which has an influential base in the Democratic Party.)

Contrary to the neocon belief shared by some others, something else has been at play which has continuously warped much of the US mass media and political establishment commentary about Russia. Concisely put, whenever a major Russia related news issue occurs, there's a noticeable knee jerk reaction to slant towards the anti-Russian perspective. Such examples include the situation in Ukraine (in 2004 and 2014) and Georgia in 2008). More recent instances concern the suspect coverage of doping in Russian sports and the allegation of a Vladimir Putin backed Russian government effort to hack the Democratic party, for the benefit of Donald Trump.

The anti-Russian bias sharply contrasts from the effort to defend and understand the mainstream Israeli perspectives, as evidenced by the criticism accorded to the Obama administration by such Democrats as New York Congressman Charles Schumer and talking head commentator Douglas Schoen. Along with the Israeli government, Schumer, Schoen, et al, were aghast that the US abstained on the December 2016 UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, which expressed opposition to the further building of Israeli government approved Jewish settlements, on territory internationally seen as occupied and comprising a future Palestinian state.

All of the other UNSC delegates voted for that resolution, including the Western cultured democracies of New Zealand, France, Spain and the UK. Said document references a condemnation of terrorist attacks – something the Obama administration emphasized as a basis for its UNSC non-veto. At the UNSC, the US Ambassador Samantha Power (in explaining the Obama administration's position), expressed staunch criticism of the Palestinians, while noting that prior US administrations had all opposed the further construction of Jewish settlements beyond Israel's pre-1967 boundaries.

When it comes to Israel: Schoen, Schumer, Power and a good number of US media and political elites see a hypocritical world that's disproportionately opposed to the Jewish state. To some degree, it can be reasonably argued that they've a point. They also exaggerate things along the lines of Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon's UNSC whataboutism moment when he (during the UNSC discussion on the December 2016 resolution on Jewish settlements) brought up the carnage in Syria. Contrary to what Danon suggested, the UN has spent a good deal of time discussing Syria and other issues including Srebrenica and the former Ukrainian SSR. These discussions included biases against Russia – the type shared by Schoen, Schumer, Power, et al.

As one of several examples, consider the hoopla they make in condemning Crimea's reunification with Russia, versus their comments on Turkish action in northern Cyprus (against the desire of that island nation) and the effort to separate Kosovo from Serbia (contradicting UN Security Council resolution 1244 and the preference of Belgrade). With New York Times approval, Power staunchly advocated a most hypocritically flawed effort to have the UNSC formally recognize Srebrenica as a genocide – a matter which Russia correctly vetoed, in a way that isn't supportive of wartime atrocities.

I've a good sense of knowing what Schoen, Schumer, Power and others thinking like them might say in reply. This point concerns the lack of diverse interaction in numerous mass media situations. As is, they apparently don't see much fault in what they've expressed on Russia related issues. (Out of concern for not being repetitive, I won’t get too bogged down on this particular, given my prior commentary at the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), rerun at Eurasia Review, with some non-SCF posted material.)

An extreme instance of anti-Russian prejudice was exhibited by Gersh Kuntzman of the New York Daily News, who equated the murder of Russian Ambassador (to Turkey) Andrei Karlov with the assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a Jew. In place of Karlov, you can be sure that the New York Daily News would fire a journo for making that analogy to the murder of an Israeli diplomat by a Palestinian, or a US official by an Iraqi. Such is the environment that has folks like Keith Olbermann openly rant about «Russian scum».

All this said, there's a basis for optimism among those favoring improved US-Russian ties. Taking an anti-Russian platform, Romney, John McCain and (more recently) Hillary Clinton failed to gain the US presidency. This encouraging sign is indicative of an American public that isn't so threatened by Russia.

In winning the US presidency, Donald Trump has bucked the prevailing biases against Russia. Practically speaking, Russia and the US shouldn't be so opposed to each other. US mass media has recently had some more eclectic Russia related moments that include Tucker Carlson's Fox News hosted segments with Glenn Greenwald and Stephen Cohen, as well as a diverse Zakaria moderated CNN discussion with Cohen, Fyodor Lukyanov, Anne Applebaum and Phil Mudd.

These situations are noted with a cautious optimism. Overall, the US mass media and political establishment remain unfairly skewed against Russia.

Public relations wise, Trump benefits by having a lengthy and diverse selection process – something that appears relatively evident. His reported consideration for John Bolton and Mitt Romney could be construed as a message of accommodation to those with neocon leanings. As US president, Trump has to deal with what his predecessors have faced – trying to reach out to the opposition, while not drifting too far away from the stated counter preferences.

For sure, the appointment of Romney as secretary of state, will be seen as a backtracking from Trump's inclination to seek improved US-Russian ties. Trump and Romney had harsh things to say of each other. Their recent meeting, serves the optical impression of both men putting aside their differences out of respect for the country and its highest office. Whether they've actually buried the hatchet to the point of having Romney as secretary of state is questionable.

During the transition period to the presidency, Trump has conferred with Henry Kissinger and (as reported) is considering long-time Republican California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, for the secretary of state position. From a constructively critical, pro-Russian realist perspective, Rohrabacher seems like the best candidate under reported consideration. He has an extended Capitol Hill background in addressing foreign policy issues. In the last few years, Rohrabacher has shown (when compared to his congressional peers) an objective enough understanding of Russia's position.

In comparison to some of the other reported secretary of state candidates (notably Bolton and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani), Rohrabacher should have an easier timer in getting Senate confirmation approval for the position in question. Bolton is viewed in some influential circles as having an overly aggressive foreign policy stance. Giuliani's business ties outside the US and his degree of substantive foreign policy experience have been questioned. He is perhaps better suited for a spot dealing with domestic matters. Giuliani's support base, close ties to Trump and interest in the secretary of state job, improves the New Yorker's odds in getting that position. 

Rohrabacher's long standing pro-Israeli Reagan Republican persona makes him compatible with much of the American political establishment. In the 1990s, he supported a hardline stance against Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro). More recently, he has advocated wooing Russia away from China. This latter advocacy appears difficult. Ideally, the Kremlin seems to seek improved ties with the West, without hindering its relationship with Beijing. Rohrabacher has suggested that recognizing Kosovo's independence is a basis for considering Crimea's changed territorial status. (Along with some others, neocons and neolibs assert that Kosovo's independence is legit unlike Crimea's reunification with Russia. If anything, I believe the reverse to be true. This is a subject worthy for a lengthy high profile debate.)

In their coverage of the secretary of state opening, the three main US cable TV news stations (Fox, MSNBC and CNN) have had little, if any mention of Rohrabacher being considered for that spot – instead focusing on the other candidates. Trump is known to detest (what he sees) as flawed aspects of the media. His selection of Rohrabacher would serve the purpose of sticking it to the media, as well as choosing an acceptable enough individual by mainstream standards.

Besides Rohrabacher, Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker, is the other reported secretary of state candidate, who is currently in elected office, with establishment foreign policy experience. Corker's foreign policy views don't match Trump's perspectives as well as Rohrabacher's.

For the purpose of cozying up to the establishment, the selection of Corker or Romney would be Trump's best bet. On that score, Rohrabacher arguably falls somewhere between them and the options of Bolton or Giuliani. The establishment's main sticking point against Rohrabacher, pertains to some of his Russia related views.

For now, the constructively critical, pro-Russian realist position should not be too hung up over the likes of former CIA head James Woolsey, involved with Trump's transition. Granted, that Woolsey's personal opinions on Russia leave something to be desired, as evident during a recent RT Worlds Apart Show. (Concerning that particular show, too bad there was not more follow-up on some of his comments. Contrary to Woolsey, anti-Russian bigotry has been regretfully present in instances that include the bigoted influence of the Captive Nations Committee and the hypocritically flawed effort to get Russia banned from the Olympics.) Notwithstanding, Woolsey exhibits some flexibility in his stating the possibility for improved US-Russian relations.

Jared Kushner is said to be quite influential with his father-in-law Donald. To the dismay of some Russia unfriendly elements, Kushner's New York Observer owned publication (recently renamed as Observer) has featured the politically incorrect commentary of Mikhail Klikushin. There's of course Trump himself, who has pointedly gone against some of the establishment biases against Russia.

Let's see how all of this plays out.

Still, the Democratic candidate desperately needed a convincing victory in this debate. In recent days Obama has slumped too close to Romney in the polls. Samples showed that their rating was practically equal on an average level of approximately 46-47%, and sometimes even with an advantage of 1-2% for the Republican. The distribution of sponsorship is very typical. The major donors for Romney are dominated by financial corporations and for Obama by companies related to information technology. It turned out that by betting the «big money» on the Republicans they were gradually tipping the scales in their favor. It appears that the Democrats calculations basically materialized. A poll conducted by CNN, found that the victory in the debate gave Obama 48%, and Romney only 40%. (1)

One of Obama`s main directions of attack on Romney was on the «Russian Front». Barely concealing a sarcastic grin, the President said to his opponent: «Governor, I'm glad that you recognize «Al-Qaeda» as a threat, because a few months ago you thought that the greatest geopolitical threat to America was Russia … but you probably know that the cold the war ended more than two decades ago». (2) Frankly Romney was «seduced» by this attack, despite the fact that Obama, in response to his earlier statements, has repeatedly and successfully used the statement that the Cold War has been over for a long time. For the Republican it was extremely awkward to give up his well-known views, especially as the president also condemned his rival for his constant incoherence and inconsistency. While insisting that Moscow still rules an «evil empire,» at the same time as the majority of Americans have not bought in to this idea since Ronald Reagan, so it became difficult for Romney. Frankly he bobbed and weaved and tried to justify himself: «When I spoke of Russia, I had in mind that it is only a geopolitical enemy, while Iran and» Al-Qaeda «are the enemies in terms of U.S. national security». Denoting the new «main enemies,» Romney, however, said he would not reject the previous statement: «If I become president, I will not wear rose-tinted glasses, when thinking of Russia and Vladimir Putin. I will not promise him more flexibility; what he will get from me is only inflexibility. «However, his specific accusations against Moscow boiled down to the fact that it continues to «put a spoke in the wheel» of the Americans when voting in the UN Security Council. That is, Romney does not want to see Russia infringe on the «rights of America,» and he questioned the sovereignty and freedom of choice of another state.

Romney tried to demonstrate the same veneer of hardness in respect of China, saying that «on the first day of my presidency I will accuse China of manipulating exchange rates». It is not as if Beijing does not regularly hear allegations of this kind from the Americans, to which the Chinese are indifferent, for the past interdependence of the two largest economies of the world, the United States is increasingly becoming more dependent and vulnerable. Understanding this Obama noted that his administration has already taken steps to bring China to justice at the WTO. If we take into consideration Beijing`s legitimate claims against Washington, no less (consider as example the last steps of the White House to prevent the expansion of the Chinese in the field of IT monster Huawei in America), it is clear that neither the incumbent president nor the challenger have a real recipe to «curb» China. However, rhetoric aside, in their analytical developments the Americans have long recognized that the major geopolitical conflict in the years to come will be a world struggle between the Chinese «Behemoth» and the American «Leviathan». And apparently, the U.S. political elite are still not ready for this fight.

Of course it might seem odd that the current leader of the White House defined «Al-Qaeda» and international terrorism as the major geopolitical threat to America. These «parties» have their own special, but not geopolitical, nature. Obama refused to apply the dubious laurels of «major threat» to Russia. However, there should also be no delusion, as during the years of the Obama administration, Russia became the main testing ground of modern American technology of «soft» or «smart» power on «not quite friendly territories»… Tied amongst first place, on the geopolitical threat of nuclear weapons in Iran, Romney was even more precise, although we probably should talk about the threats to American allies rather than directly to the United States. Significantly this time the Republican candidate’s angry invective towards Russia was at least partially repudiated.

What is truly alarming, is Romney`s position on Iran. In relegating Tehran to the role of the chief enemy of America instead of Russia, the Republican made a number of far-reaching statements. According to him, not only will he not allow Iran to become a nuclear state under any circumstances, but he will also bring President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before the courts: «If I become president of the United States, I will ensure that Ahmadinejad is convicted under the UN Convention on Genocide, this will I do». Romney also pledged to ensure «that Iranian diplomats around the world will become pariahs, just as when we were pursuing South African diplomats during the apartheid years». Thus, the Republican exposed another «reason» for war against Iran. I must say, in the ranting condemning Ahmadinejad for «genocide» Mitt Romney belongs to the absolute minority in world politics. Such blatant hypocrisy in the invention of casus belli (justification for an act of war) is very similar to allegations about the development of nuclear weapons by Iraq before the invasion of that country, as well as the hunt for Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

What is interesting is where did Romney get such ideas? Do not be surprised if the source is found, for example, in Israel. The Republican candidate, as few before him in America, is tied hands and feet by obligations to Tel Aviv. Probably, the position of the U.S. financial elite that supports Romney, is very sensitive to the opinion of the Israeli lobby in the country, and is predefined by the same. For a «breakthrough» in the presidential race, many believe, a Republican must owe the same groups. Understanding that, during the debate, Obama was also generous with compliments to Israel, calling the country «a true friend of America». However, Tel Aviv has already outlined officially to opt for Romney. Given the fact that in parallel to the unfolding preparations for early parliamentary elections in Israel, in which according to polls, the Likud leader and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a strong lead, is not hard to see how this «sweet couple» can drag the world into a major war in the Middle East. If you think about the character of the new accusations against Iran, their principal feature is not feasible. It is possible, for example, to suspend its nuclear program, but it is impossible to take to the incumbent president to a court in a foreign country, and no country in the world would recognize a tort of genocide against them. Postulating abstract information, Romney deliberately simulates the thesis, the outcome of which is possible only with the use of force, although it is stipulated that a military strike on Iran should be only a last resort.

So far it's hard to say, if the candidates foreign policy debate in the U.S. presidential election will have a decisive impact on the preferences of American voters. As always, for Americans internal problems will remain most important.

Will both candidates learn the necessary lessons from this debate? Hopefully if Obama wins he will remember the advantage gained in the final debate, and perhaps in the whole campaign, was brought to him by the statement saying that the cold war with Russia ended over 20 years ago, and Russia is no longer a geopolitical enemy of America. However, these words need to be reinforced by deeds. If Romney gains the upper hand, there is a chance that he will recall in his memory that his «cavalry charge» on Russia nearly cost him his place as the head of the White House. Mitt Romney will have to understand that the time of unchallenged U.S. dominance in the world has gone forever and the relationship with other nations, including Russia, has to be built in new ways.

As I have mentioned on these pages before, in golf parlance, this election is match play not medal. It’s the number of delegates one wins on the Electoral College that counts each state electing delegates in accordance to the seats allotted to them by the voters. Obama could have a majority of votes and lose if Romney’s votes are in the right places. This happened as recently as Bush v Gore in 2000.

Much turns on the Debates. They do not impact the vast majority who are committed Republicans or Democrats. It’s the «floating» votes, perhaps 10-15% who decide the winner add to that vote may or may not be added a new young vote as represented by the «Occupation Revolution». As I said to the group who occupied the Vancouver Art Gallery, "you folks will travel 500 miles to protest but won’t cross the street to vote". If some of these youngsters abandon their nihilism and actually vote it can only help Obama.

There was one surprise in the debates – Obama missed, and badly missed, two key points.

1. He allowed Romney to get away from the fact that the economic problems came about as a direct result of George W. Bush who was notable for his absence during the campaign, unlike Bill Clinton whose support was key to Obama’s campaign. Obama took with little complaint Romney’s shots about the increase in deficits during Obama’s term when he could have – and I think should have – made it clear that he inherited one hell of a mess from George W. Bush. 

2. Romney kept noting that when he was Governor of Massachusetts, he worked well with a legislature that was 87% Democrats. I bellowed into the TV «remind Romney and the nation that this was because the members were reasonable people being Democrats while he, Obama, had to deal with Republicans know towing to the Tea Party, quite a different thing»!

The first debate was a catastrophe for Obama because he allowed Romney to get away with such things as I just mentioned. Suddenly Romney was seen as a real candidate which had as much to do with Obama’s horrible performance than anything Romney said. Romney looked presidential while Obama looked like he was running for mayor of a small town. Had I been predicting to you then, I would have said Romney would win. As Obama said, «Governor Romney had a good night while I had a bad night». He also observed that there were two debates to go but the momentum belonged to Romney.

In Debate # 2 went to the President. He re-discovered his tongue although the winning moment came when Romney tried to pin the murder of the US` Ambassador in Libya on him and was badly caught out as making a disgraceful accusation that CNN and others exposed as utterly unwarranted. At that point, the election was a toss-up and Obama gave considerable hope to his supporters. He scored point after point making Romney looking much like a kid being told to sit in the corner and wear a dunce cap.

I pause here to note that Obama’s fact finders were noticeably better than Romney’s throughout the debates. Sadly, appearances make a difference and someone should have plastered down that roaming hunk of hair and got Romney to give up the sneer with which he watched the president. 

The key point – perhaps for all the debates – came when Romney alleged that the US Navy had fewer ships than in 1916 letting Obama nail him thusly «I think Gov. Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example. And that we have fewer ships that we had in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed.

We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so, the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s what are our capabilities? 

It certainly was a «gotcha» of the first order! This remark did more than just embarrassing for Mr. Romney – it was a defining moment because it showed Obama to be more «presidential, by far, than his opponent This is the advantage a sitting president has if he plays his cards right- to look as a man in command with all the facts at his grasp.

I don’t want to be too critical of Romney – he’s come a long way and is by no means out of the race. There are plenty of tripping points and tipping points ahead. Obama must be careful while Romney must take risks, and this is really the point – out of the debates and all the cuts and thrusts, little wins and big ones there was a victor. The public want someone who looks and acts presidential – that is the lasting impression both me wanted to achieve but only President Obama accomplished this. The prize is now his to lose.

The vice presidential debate doesn’t usually amount to much but it seemed to me that the Democrats did accomplish something. While the Republican candidate Paul Riley didn’t look like Sarah Palin he didn’t look like the man to take over either. Joe Biden, if only by comparison, looked like he could start answering the phone in the Oval Office if the tragic beed arose.

 For many years the Republicans have gotten away with appalling VP options – Spiro Agnew, Dan Quayle and the aforementioned Palin come quickly to mind. Riley clearly is the darling of the Tea Party so only appeals to those who support Romney anyway. 

 This is not easy to say but Americans are concerned about Mr. Obama’s longevity for he is not only a candidate for assassination as all presidents are, he is also black. Obama and the Democrats know that the public are more concerned with succession than ever before. Mr. Biden looked like a better candidate if, God forbid, something happens to President Obama while Riley looks like the part of the Republican Party Mr. Romney wants to distance himself from, rather than a firm hand on the tiller of the ship of state.

 All of this from a west coast Canadian who, admittedly, sees the race much differently than the average voter, if such exists. I see Romney as a rich kid who made his money not be creating industry and jobs but flipping paper. His call for a trade war with China on his first day in office scarcely shows the wisdom needed from the leader of the world in trade but more like George W. Bush waving his six-shooter.

Obama must bear criticism for not getting the US economy in better shape but if the bottom line is «who looked best as a president in these times?», empty the piggy bank and bet it all on President Obama.

– Tageszeitung (Germany), upon re-election of George W. Bush in 2004

«How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?»

– Daily Mirror (London), upon re-election of George W. Bush in 2004

The shock and dismay with which so much of the world greeted the reelection of George W. Bush as President in 2004 was entirely genuine. It seemed incomprehensible to political observers outside of the United States, even savvy ones, that the country would choose to leave in power a transparently fraudulent clique, guilty of massive military aggression, systematic abuse of human rights, widespread corruption, disregard of constitutional constraints on executive power, reversal of civil liberties, frenzied upward transfer of wealth as a principle of national policy, dismantlement of social safety nets, undermining the civil service, etc., etc., etc. The great majority of those 59,054,087 Americans who voted for Bush in 2004 were voting against their own economic (and other) interests, as a similar number does in virtually every US election, national and local. This is a conundrum that requires some investigation if we are to understand the upcoming Obama vs. Romney presidential election and foresee the political trajectory of the country across subsequent elections. Along the way, we may find that the self-destructive voter of today is not exactly the same as he was in previous elections.

According to voluminous polling data, nearly half of all likely voters intend to vote for Romney and other Republicans this year, notwithstanding the party's now slavish devotion to 1) supply-side economics (cutting tax rates, especially on the wealthy and on corporations, on the avowed assumption that this will generate economic growth, and thus serve to enhance tax revenues to compensate for the taxes lost by virtue of lower rates) and 2) trimming the public sector of the economy (because, as they insist categorically, the public sector is wasteful in everything it does). It is not possible to square the GOP's approach with the economic interests of the overwhelming majority of voters. Thus, supply-side economics is so discredited as to be unfit for honest discussion. To begin with, the correspondence between lower taxes and faster economic growth is dubious. For instance, no one has been able to demonstrate a link between lower capital gains tax rates and investment. (1) The threshold above which individual federal income tax rates impinge on economic activity is at least 50 percent, and quite possibly 70 percent, or double the highest marginal tax rates in the US right now. And historical data from around the developed world do not show faster economic growth where tax rates on high earners have been reduced. (2) Further, in scholarly forums even the spokesmen most sympathetic to supply-side economics admit that any growth that might conceivably issue from reduced tax rates cannot replace more than 32 percent of the revenues lost because of the lower rates (unsympathetic estimates are far lower, naturally). (3) Finally, the tax cuts Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan are proposing will accrue overwhelmingly to the richest Americans, while middle class taxpayers are almost certain to receive tax hikes. (4)

In conclusion, therefore, Republican voters should have no reason to expect faster economic growth for the country or lower taxes for themselves. They should be able to see that they are voting for huge upward transfers of wealth, together with a dismantlement of social safety nets and all manner of protections against commercial and environmental abuse (not to mention many other Republican pathologies). Nor can Republican voters expect ideological satisfaction or vindication in the form of a shrinking of the public sector in the US economy. The demographic pressure of an aging population, the overhang of federal and state debt, and the huge, accumulating backlog of deferred infrastructure maintenance guarantee an expanding economic role for the government over the next generation, at least. (5)

«Can there really be fascist people in a democracy. I am afraid so».

– Bob Altemeyer (6)

How, then, are we to understand the decision of approximately half of the country to vote against its own economic interests? Various forms of delusion and ignorance are at work, but the list of candidate explanations is substantial. Let us consider a few examples.

First, for a layer of people just above the poor, rivalry plays a role. Moderately poor people fear the possibility of government programs lifting people below them up to their level, at which point they would become part of the poorest segment of the population. Next, as we have posited in earlier contributions to this forum, the stagnation of working class Americans' wages over the last 40 years has deprived them of hopes to better their condition through work. The only lifeline visible to them is lower taxes, a promise Republicans bellow at every opportunity. The scholarly determination that Romney's plan is highly unlikely ever to deliver tax cuts to working people does not penetrate widely in the population, which brings us to a third explanation for economically irrational voting: the authoritarian personality.

"When misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs."

-Bob Altemeyer (7)

According to a prominent authority in social psychology, Bob Altemeyer, a substantial proportion of the population is locked in what he terms an «authoritarian personality» These people prioritize authoritarianism so strongly that they are impervious to reason. They will not recognize refutations or inconsistencies of their beliefs, and will support right-wing authoritarian political candidates even when a sober assessment would reveal this to be detrimental to their personal economic interests. (8) John W. Dean, a leading analyst and critic of American conservatism, and very well acquainted with Altemeyer's work, recently estimated that 23-25 percent of the country fall into this category, implying a huge reservoir of intransigent support for the Right. (9)

Predictably, racism overlaps to a significant extent with authoritarian personality, but it deserves independent mention as we close our incomplete catalog of explanations for diseconomic voting. American sociologists estimate that «…up to a quarter of whites are still unrepentant bigots». (10) Racism waned significantly in the last decades of the twentieth century, as Hall and Lindholm relate. But there are reasons to believe it is retreating more slowly of late. As Paul Krugman summarized the last fifty years of electoral success for a GOP that has sprinted far to the Right on economic issues: «…the ability of conservatives to win in spite of antipopulist policies has mainly rested on the exploitation of racial division». (11)

The persistence of diseconomic voting patterns is not just discouraging, but ominous. Recent research on political psychology has confirmed the common sense suspicion of a linkage between authoritarian proclivities and economic anxieties, and also low self-esteem. (12) Sure enough, the financial crisis and recession has seen the rise of the authoritarian Tea Party and also a measurable erosion of empathy in much of the population. (13) In 1937 George Orwell succinctly expressed the political ramifications when a substantial portion of a middle class suffers a rapid decline, and effectively becomes part of the working class:

«All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it? When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a working class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working-class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist party». (14)

The upshot is that the mean-spirited, vindictive politics of the Right is finding increasing support in the American electorate. The trend could be reversed. Political proclivities are malleable. A government that respected its people, promoted security of employment and health care, and adequately countered the barrage of right-wing fear mongering would go far towards shaping a healthier political climate. Judging from his first four years in office, it does not appear probable that President Obama would energetically steer the electorate towards political sanity in a second term, and a President Mitt Romney would clearly accelerate the descent into vindictive politics. It would seem, therefore, that regeneration depends on the population itself—that part of it that still values regeneration, that is. 

(1) See, e.g., Bloomberg Business Week, October 8th, 2012.

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney is on the offensive when it comes to world politics. On October 8, 2012 he spoke at the Virginia Military Institute outlining an aggressive return to world affairs under his presidency. He identified Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as a threat. Without going into detail Romney stressed that "Putin's Russia casts a long shadow over young democracies and where our oldest allies have been told we are 'pivoting' away from them". His stance on other issues will hardly facilitate the improvement of bilateral relations. For instance, he promised to deliver tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets to Syria's opposition and clearly hinted he doesn’t view 2014 as the final time to pull out from Afghanistan. Looks like the Republican candidate’s camp pins hopes on the military after 11successive years of war. "I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region – and work with Israel to increase our military”, Romney said. He actually hinted very distinctly that to his mind forces on the ground in the Middle East were more effective than the present administration's policy of fighting war by remote control guided unmanned aerial vehicles. As he sees the things "drones and the modern instruments of war are important tools in our fight, but they are no substitute for a national security strategy for the Middle East," The Republican’s most specific proposal was to increase shipbuilding from nine to 15 ships a year and to keep at least 11 aircraft carrier groups deployed year round, as well as increase spending on a multi-layered national ballistic missile defense system.

The criticism of Russia has been a keynote in his speeches during the whole duration of the campaign and even prior to it. Romney's website has published his election program in which he promised to curb Moscow in case he took office as president. He has called the START-3 nuclear arms reduction agreement the "worst foreign-policy mistake" committed by the Obama’s administration. The incumbent president is accused of desire to "appease Russia" on missile defense. To his mind Russia is America's "number one geopolitical foe" led by the man bent on rebuilding the "Soviet empire." To crown it all, Mitt Romney expressed his willingness to be the godfather of the Russian opposition and organize the training for opposition activists at American educational centers. Congressman Paul Ryan, the candidate for vice-presidency of the USA, supports the radicalization of the country's foreign policies, particularly about the relations with Russia. Actually Romney and Ryan lean hard right, toward the neo-cons, the policies by and large the same as during the George Bush era. And they say the same things as the electoral program of the Republicans.

The program paid special attention to the US-Russian relations. According to it, the Russian administration is authoritarian and does not respect human rights. The GOP document urges the Russian leaders to "reconsider the path they have been following: suppression of opposition parties, the press, and institutions of civil society; unprovoked invasion of the Republic of Georgia, alignment with tyrants in the Middle East; and bullying their neighbors while protecting the last Stalinist regime in Belarus." The Republicans view the Russian Federation as a foe of the United States. They refer to it as a traditional rival of the United States along with North Korea, Iran and China. The Republican platform supports his views citing "Russian activism "as one of the "gravest threats to our national security".

According to his pre-election promises, first off Romney is going to revise the plans connected with the deployment of the missile defense system in Europe and other regions. He also intends to support European countries to reduce their dependence on the Russian oil and gas. In case he wins the US will apply efforts to strengthen the ties between the U.S. and Central Asian republics.

Russia and major global issues

The bilateral relations may be going through hard times, but still there are significant achievements. In 2010 the first full-scale nuclear arms reduction treaty was concluded since the times of Cold War. And after years of non-cooperation, the both countries began to cooperate to support the beleaguered NATO mission in Afghanistan. Early this year, NATO and Russia came to agreement on the use of Ulyanovsk airbase in the Volga region to assist NATO efforts to resupply its forces in the country. Even the official Republican program mentions important areas of cooperation recognizing "we do have common imperatives: ending terrorism, combating nuclear proliferation, promoting trade, and more." No matter how acrimonious the future dialogue maybe it’s in the US interest to continue discussions instead of curbing contacts. The Cold War mentality represented by Mitt Romney ignores the very real common interest in reducing nuclear stockpiles, non-proliferation and organized crime. The both states have accumulated quite a lot of positive experience of cooperation.

There is clear understanding the Mr. Romney’s position is motivated by the election race and election rhetoric. Russia still matters in US foreign policy because of its permanent seat on the UN Security Council, its ties to states such as Iran and Syria, its influence as a global and regional power, its possession of the world's second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. There are other factors to reckon with, like the reliance on Russian transit corridors to support US forces in Afghanistan to 2015 and beyond. There is a great chance the realities of life like the ongoing financial troubles will make the administration opt to spare conventional capabilities and procurement by reducing the nuclear force, want it or not. There are also businessmen interested in Russian investments, lucrative deals in troubled times.
Aspirations and opportunities

It’s not about emotions only. It’s a substantiated vision of things. Mitt Romney expounded his views in the book "No Apologies: The Case for American Greatness" that saw light in 2010. The stance has support in the expert community. For instance, the Mitt Romney's views were echoed in a popular article Yes, Russia Is Our Top Geopolitical Foe by John Arquilla published in the September 17 edition of Foreign Policy. Mr. Arquilla represents the Rand Corporation, he’s widely known as one of the network-centric warfare concept, also called network-centric operations, a military doctrine. No doubt he expresses the views of influential circles of US society.

The USA is facing the problem of overstretching its might. The crisis has made the problem obvious. Now the Conservatives are prone to adopt a “make it or break it” approach pinning hopes on converting the navy and air force advantage into foreign policy gains. It’s the Pentagon not economy who Mitt Romney and his supporters pin hopes on.

The essence of what we know so far about US foreign policy to be implemented in case Romney wins is that the Republican candidate and his supporters have learned nothing from what was to be learned from the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lessons of the Arab spring. If the Republican candidate sincerely believes in what he says then he is not able to align the aspirations with possibilities. The times the USA could play the role of global leader are over. The national debt greater than the gross domestic product, the armed forces bogged down in the hopeless quagmire in Afghanistan, the growing influence of China or the BRICS and other poles of power – all these factors undermine the US claims for global domination. No way arming the Syrian opposition, delaying the pull out of Afghanistan, and “getting tough” with Russia could bolster the aspirations to global dominance. To the contrary this policy will aggravate the implications of the mistakes already committed. The refusal to find a compromise on the missile defense with Russia will result in adequate response. Getting tough? Moscow will get tough on the issues where the USA cooperation. Getting tough on China would make China get tough in return; the tough stance in the Middle East would only worsen the things.

The last 10 years the US foreign policy suffered serious setbacks. The two terms of George Bush brought about great damage to the US global stance. If Romney does what he says he will deliver the second blow to his country’s global interests. By and large it’s the same platform John McCain tried when a presidential candidate. He lost to Obama but the difference was only 6%, no great shakes for the Democrat. The numbers of US voters filled with discontent and frustration is a serious force to reckon with. It results in Tea party, neo-cons movement and other groups calling for restoration of Pax Americana. Romney tries to meet their aspirations. It’s a well thought strategy. But in case of victory he’ll have to shoulder the heavy burden of foreign policy mistakes committed by G. Bush administration that weakened the US so much. Perhaps reluctantly but he’ll have to insert corrections into the foreign policy concept. The matter is that you can leave the rhetoric behind be wise enough to face reality or learn the lessons the hard way, something far from meeting the interests of common Americans first of all.
 

We have discussed core dimensions of the privatization of public assets in this forum before, and have outlined the inroads privatization has made in the US. The current presidential campaign offers strong evidence of a leap in privatizations just over the horizon in America. Most important in this respect, Republican candidate Mitt Romney advocates a gradual privatization of health insurance for the elderly, and his running mate, Paul Ryan, is the most vocal member of the House of Representatives in calling for the privatization of Social Security (the federal pension plan). The savage austerity program implied in the (intentionally vague) Romney and Ryan budget plan would impel states and municipalities towards privatizing all manner of public assets, including school systems. In anticipation of this, their platform foresees chaneling huge numbers of school children into privately owned schools (a so-called «voucherization» program, which would ghettoize public education and ring up large profits for corporations running private schools). Romney has also been clear about his eagerness to sell off federally owned land, even saying that he doesn't know what the purpose is for having federally owned land. 

President Obama, for his part, has been less than energetic in safeguarding public assets. He has openly encouraged energy companies to expand drilling programs in the most environmentally risky manner (fracking of natural gas, and offshore oil drilling in the Arctic), and he has repeatedly hinted at his willingness to shrink federal expenditures by $4 trillion or more over ten years, so long as the Republicans accept a very modest measure of tax increases on wealthy Americans. The sort of budgetary contraction Obama is proposing implies a heavy dose of austerity for local and state governments, whom Washington would no longer be able to support at customary levels. Further, on a number of occasions–including his first debate with Romney on October 3rd, the most prominent stage of all–Obama has said he is prepared to pare down Social Security. Likewise, he is toying with cutting back Medicare and Medicaid (government-supported health insurance for the elderly and health care for the very poor, respectively).

Notice that deliberation on policies that would adjust the relationship of public and private property have run overwhelmingly in one direction in America for several decades. In keeping with Gore Vidal's famous quip that «the Republicans and Democrats are just two wings of the property party», discussion of reclaiming private assets into public hands is stillborn in Washington. Even when the nation's largest banks were on the brink of collapse on account of their own wrongdoing in early 2009, the Obama administration refused seriously to consider taking them temporarily into conservatorship, no matter how compelling the case for this was. 

Apart from policies that steer the distribution of assets between the private and public sectors, government can play a role in creating new public assets, in sectors like infrastructure, schools, and science. This has been a core function of government in advanced societies for more than 150 years, of course, and the US has as glittering a record as any country in this respect. Since the ascendance of Reagan in 1980, however, its performance has been chronically and embarassingly weak. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, for instance, the country added just 6 percent more mileage to its roadways, even as vehicle miles travelled rose by more than 60 percent. The George W. Bush years saw only about 1 percent more roads constructed. The rail network is now only half the size it was in 1970, even though it carries 137 percent more freight. The economic cost of freight bottlenecks and congestion total anywhere from $200 billion to $1 trillion annually, depending on how such estimates are structured.

Meanwhile, funding for basic science has flagged so much that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke devoted a special presentation last year to reminding the nation of the fact that government-led research and development generally produces better outcomes for society than does private sector R&D. Government-led research is much more heavily weighted to advancing fundamental science, which is the platform for sustained innovation. Private sector R&D, in contrast, focuses on developing commercially viable applications of basic science. Total US expenditures (public and private) on R&D have been stable over the last three decades, at about 2-1/2 percent of GDP, but the federal government's share has steadily shrunk over that period (from 50 percent in 1978 to just 26 percent by 2008), with deleterious consequences on the styles of science pursued. America's willingness to privatize R&D implies that the country will likely surrender a large share of its long-held preemenince in science and innovation over the next decade or two. 

Meanwhile, maintenance of existing public assets is subpar at best. A look at the state of transportation and water infrastructure tells the story in unambiguous terms. The percentage of GDP allocated to transportation and water infrastructure fell steadily from 3.1 per year in the early 1960s to just 2.4 in 2007. The federal stimulus package Obama achieved in 2009 delivered some much needed relief in this regard, but over 90 percent of the infrastructure allocations in that package have already been spent, and the shortfall in funding just to maintain infrastructure is enormous—anywhere from about $130 billion to $260 billion per year for transportation alone, according to a range of estimates. About 90 percent of the burden of maintaining transportation infrastructure falls on local and state governments (up from 80 percent 30 years ago, when the federal government still paid serious attention to public assets). Real expenditures per mile travelled have dropped by about 50 percent since the 1950s, and they stand to sink even further now, because local budgets are under ever-increasing strain. Elevated levels of unemployment and stagant wages for working people are reducing tax receipts, as are the persistently sluggish residential property values, all while pension liabilities for local government are escalating–annual pension payments equalled 15.7 percent of payroll payments in 2011, about two and a half times the 6.4 percent mark of a decade ago. Spending by state and local government has declined for 11 consecutive quarters.

A sustained, federally-sponsored infrastructure maintenance and buildout program is obviously long overdue. But it is just as obvious that Washington will not deliver anything of the kind. Last fall Obama included only a modest admixture of infrastructure projects in his American Jobs Act, and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives rejected it when the White House refused the Republicans' demand to include in the bill the relaxation of all manner of environmental regulations that constrain various industries' profitability (and protect the health of human beings and the environment, but of course that is of little concern to the Republican Party). 

Absent resuscitation of the American Jobs Act, reinforcement of transportation infrastructure in the US will depend on the obscure Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAPS-21) which passed in July. MAPS-21 allocates just $41 billion of federal funds per year to the sector. As paltry as that figure may be, the maturation of political patronage systems in the US over the last couple of decades ensures that the potency of this funding will be far less than it would have been in earlier generations. Washington politicians have perfected the practice of exchanging favors, to the point that favors, not social or economic benefits, govern the disbursement of funds for all manner of projects. As far as infrastructure disbursements are concerned, approximately one quarter now go to districts that cannot demonstrate the need for them. The rhetorical «bridge to nowhere» is seemingly everywhere now. In consequence, the return America gets on infrastructure investments has declined to near zero in this century, from mid-single digits in the 1990s, and double digits before 1980. 

Notwithstanding the galloping dysfunction in corporate-dominated Washington, the public sector of the US economy will not disappear, nor will all of the country's public assets disintegrate. The benefits Americans have enjoyed from these assets stand to shrink, however, and the bite may be fierce indeed. The police department of Detroit has just offered a poignant reminder of this, declaring their city so dangerous that it is unsafe to enter, and warning that they are not capable of responding when needed. In more ways than one, and sooner rather than later, the great mass of Americans will have reason to regret the retreat of their government…