UNITED States President Donald J. Trump’s skirmishes with “Russiagate probe” on his Russian links and the latter’s alleged intervention in US elections took new twists with the recent release of the “Nunes Memo,” revealing that it was actually British intelligence and the Democrat cabal led by Obama and Hilary Clinton behind the campaign to oust Trump.
Pandora’s box opened? The Russia-probe pressuring Trump and his associates in congressional probes and investigations by Special Counsel and ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller have created their own negation and backlash that are opening up the figurative “can of worms” or the proverbial “Pandora’s box” of the bitter truth that the Trump accusations were all “trumped-up” charges.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, chairing the House Intelligence Committee, released his controversial Nunes Memo revealing that Russiagate was orchestrated by British intelligence Christopher Steele for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton’s and Obama’s intelligence community.
Nunes’s Memo said “Steele, an FBI source, was paid over $160,000 by DNC-Clinton, via law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Trump’s ties with Russia.” Peter Strzok, an FBI agent, bragged texting messages about a “secret society” to bring down Trump after elections and that there was no substance to Russian collusion.
Even the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity declared “there was no Russian hack. Rather, the Wikileaks report was produced by a lead from inside DNC, not a Russian hack. The DNC leak was a “cut-and-paste job to make it look like it was product of a crude Russian hack.”
Seth Rich of DNC, one source of the leaks, was surprisingly murdered in July 2016 and remains unsolved. Congressman Dan Rohrbacher, who met Julian Assange of Wikileaks, also confirms the DNC/Podesta e-mail trove was a leak, not a Russian hack.
Thawing cold war vs toeing line for war. We hate Trump for his obnoxious bloated ego and many racist, misogynist and Islamophobic remarks magnified by his opposition, but cluelessly he has stepped on the toes of neo-conservative war-hawks representing the military-industrial complex.
Trump declared to stop regime changes, called the Cold War Nato obsolete, and wants to cut down defense spending abroad after wasting trillions of dollars in exporting war during the Bush-Obama terms. He also dismissed the “color revolutions” backed by George Soros and similar groups, like the 2004 Orange revolution in Ukraine; 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia; 2005 Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan; 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, Yellow Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong; Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa; the failed White Revolution in Russia; and lately the Purple destabilization against Trump that has faded in color.
These groups want Trump to toe their line, but Trump simply wants to thaw the ice and warm up relations with Cold War rivals Russia and China.
Art of the Deal is his Art of War. Trump allegedly has no depth, hates books and prefers abbreviated shoot-from-the-hip Twitter messages, but because of his inherent nature known for his Art of the Deal book, he is achieving slowly global peace by doing business
with arch-enemies. More so, with China’s global win-win development Belt and Road Initiative, which is a total contrast to the “zero-sum dog-eat-dog game” of “globalization” and “geopolitics” that result in “winners and losers” or massive poverty amid pockets of rising wealth for a few, and perpetual military conflicts. Effectively, he breaks what British Empire Lord Palmerston’s support for “Permanent Wars and Permanent Revolutions.” Palmerston is also known for the saying, “There are no permanent friends and enemies, but permanent interests.”
It is ironic Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize, but has fueled wars in Libya, Syria, the Arab Spring and his Pivot to Asia, which triggered tensions with China in the West Philippine seas, the installation of Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence missiles in South Korea, Japan reconsidering its anti-war constitution and the Philippines’s Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, allowing US troops under its Visiting Forces Agreement to rent bases, an agreement not ratified by the Senate and mocks our antinuclear and anti-military bases constitution.
In contrast, Trump threatened North Korea, encouraging the neocons, but welcomes the Winter Olympics participation of North Korea. In short, while Obama talks peace, but funds war, Trump’s braggadocio makes him talk of war, but does peace.
Executive Intelligence Review Mike Billington says North Korea is not crazy to go to war knowing it could easily be wiped out. It abandoned its nuclear war program in 1994, and by 2002 joined South Korea’s “Iron Silk Road” to build railways from Busan, through North Korea, up to Rotterdam, plus an industrial complex at the border in Kaesong, employing over 50,000 North Koreans by 123 South Korean companies. These were all stopped during Bush’s time. Trump can do a Sun Tzu if he can revive this, so everybody wins without firing a shot.
Conflicting forces remain. Apparently, there are still conflicting forces within Trump’s administration, which do not want Trump to talk peace with traditional enemies. Even two weeks before he took office, Obama undermined Trump by sending 4,000 troops to Poland in an act of provocation with Russia and disrespect for Trump. Since then other forms of aggression followed, which could have triggered Russia to retaliate, but both Putin and Trump have kept their cool.
At the recent Davos World Economic Summit, Andrei Kostin, a Russian top banker and Putin ally, complained to Financial Times of North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s arms buildup, increasing tension and risks. Former US Defense Secretary William Perry also expressed worry of the “reckless US military buildup in both Europe and the Pacific bringing the world closer to war than ever existed during the Cold War.”
Kostin warned that the US Congress threats of “more sanctions on Russia would be like declaring war, much worse than the Cold War. Congress is playing with fire, turning the relationship from bad to worse.” Fortunately, Trump blocked them.