Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, said that if elected, he might halt purchases of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies unless they commit ground troops to the fight against the Islamic State or “substantially reimburse” the United States for combating the militant group, which threatens their stability.
“If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection,” Mr. Trump said during a 100-minute interview on foreign policy, spread over two phone calls on Friday, “I don’t think it would be around.”
He also said he would be open to allowing Japan and South Korea to build their own nuclear arsenals rather than depend on the American nuclear umbrella for their protection against North Korea and China. If the United States “keeps on its path, its current path of weakness, they’re going to want to have that anyway, with or without me discussing it,” Mr. Trump said.
And he said he would be willing to withdraw United States forces from both Japan and South Korea if they did not substantially increase their contributions to the costs of housing and feeding those troops. “Not happily, but the answer is yes,” he said.
Nu een verstandig mens:
Noam Chomsky: There is something new in the 2016 election, but it is not the appearance of candidates who frighten the old establishment. That has been happening regularly. It traces back to the shift of both parties to the right during the neoliberal years, the Republicans so far to the right that they are unable to get votes with their actual policies: dedication to the welfare of the very rich and the corporate sector. The Republican leadership has accordingly been compelled to mobilize a popular base on issues that are peripheral to their core concerns: the Second Coming, "open carry" in schools, Obama as a Muslim, lashing out at the weak and victimized, and the rest of the familiar fare. The base that they've put together has regularly produced candidates unacceptable to the establishment: [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain, [Rick] Santorum, [Mike] Huckabee.... But the establishment has always been able to beat them down in the usual ways and get their own man ([Mitt] Romney). What is different this time is that the base is out of control, and the establishment is almost going berserk.
Analogies should not be pressed too far, but the phenomenon is not unfamiliar. The German industrialists and financiers were happy to use the Nazis as a weapon against the working class and the left, assuming that they could be kept under control. Didn't quite work out that way.
All of this aside, the US is not immune to the general decline of the mainstream political parties of the West, and the growth of political insurgencies on the right and left (though "left" means moderate social democracy, in practice) -- one of the predictable consequences of the neoliberal policies that have undermined democracy and caused substantial harm to most of the population, the less privileged sectors. All familiar.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten