Why should Mr Trump obey the law?

After all, he’s American

Since the Second World War, and, arguably, since even before the Second World War, the United States has been immune from prosecution. Prosecuting the United States is like touching the king, an act not governed by law as such, but by a thing called protocol. And it was the United States that invented this particular protocol, just as it was very probably a king somewhere at some time who invented the protocol of not touching them.

Image: Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel of Germany surrenders, bringing the second World War to a close and clearing the way for establishment of the new world order.¹

It is out of the wreckage of World War II that the United States and its Big Four allies (France, the United Kingdom and, less so, the USSR) constructed the new world order that has prevailed ever since. Whilst it may be a temptation to object to the word prevail, one first has to consider that the vast majority of instances across the world in which the following three prongs were not present came about at the instigation of one party in particular: the United States of America.

The post-war new world order comprises these three prongs, then: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international political order set down in terms of the United Nations Charter, and the international economic system known as Bretton Woods (the brainchild mainly of America and Britain). There underpinned the structure, of which these three measures are the foundation stones, a wide-ranging public sense of approval. The three measures were broadly seen across the length and breadth of the globe as a way out of the mire, which is what they were.

One element of the world’s population nevertheless found this structure to be distasteful, for a number of reasons. One was the predominant place that was assumed by human rights. Another was the requirement to follow certain rules and regulations in relation to commerce and trade. This population element can generally be designated as the elite. The elite are one of the three elements within any population, the other two being the working folk, those who contribute to feathering the nests of the elite and are tolerated by the elite as a necessary evil (that is not overstating the regard in which they are held), and the disposables. Disposables? Yes, those whose existence can be disposed of. Literally. For instance the 2,000 strikers (figures vary between 47 and 3,000, depending on which account you read) working for United Fruit in Colombia, mown down by gunfire on 5 and 6 December 1928. To be clear: unionists are already disposable to elites. But unionists on strike especially so. That lesson, if no other, came out of this Banana Massacre.

Those who rely on government benevolence for their existence (or, in the parlance of the present Trump administration in the US, who rely on government for their employment) and are not necessarily required in order to feed with their labour the machinery that generates wealth for the elite, or who actively endeavour to thwart that wealth-generation machinery (qua worker or qua government official), are disposable; thus runs the mantra. It is a mantra that is founded in one of two propositions. Either in a sage truth: that otherwise the disposables will assume control of the means of production and evict the elites from their position of superiority, because disposables are every bit as greedy as elites, when push comes to shove. Or in an arrant misunderstanding: that workers who put in a fair day’s labour for a fair day’s wage consider themselves content, are grateful to their bosses for the opportunity granted to them to bring up their families in relative comfort, and harbour no aspirations to overthrow their masters. In some ways it was the Haitian Slave Rebellion of 1791-1804 that embedded in elites’ minds the former point of view as universally applicable: slaves do not want to be just free, they want to be the elite. In how far that assumption transposes to reality, the reader can decide for themselves, by looking at the current state of Haiti and its political and civil turmoil, and at the turmoil that has accompanied decolonisation in certain parts of the world. I make no judgment, I simply draw attention.

Between the workers and the disposables lies a grey area: trying. Most social welfare programmes will limit the length of time for which, say, unemployment benefit is payable: the unemployed worker must, within that period, try to secure gainful employment. Some benefits are means tested. That means that those whose assets are above a certain level are disqualified, and this might seem contrary to the philosophy underlying the requirement to try—which it is. Some shades of the political spectrum see trying as a valid reason to grant welfare to an individual. Others, such as the elites, regard an individual’s needs in terms of welfare as excessive from the first cent, based on the above considerations. On one view, welfare gives the beneficiary a leg-up to establish themselves as a contributor within the working population. On the other view, they are bloodsuckers. Between those two views are 50 shades of grey.

Faced with this array of human rights, compassion, and the UN Charter’s plea for restraint in the use of armed force, the prime fixation of post-war elites was to attenuate their effects. This was primarily done through the offices of the US government. It is interesting to read modern analysis of the current state of government in the United States, the general conclusion being that it has been bought by elites, mainly tech elites. But even back in 1915, the US government invaded and annexed/occupied for 19 years the Republic of Haiti, which it did at the behest of a bank: Citicorp. Whether the US government is now owned by elite interests, it has a long track record of acting at the behest of elite interests, going back, in fact, to the Founding Fathers.

The factors that incited American action were its disdain for people power, more prosaically communism, including efforts to redistribute land and assets from the elites to the populace, and its desire to install in foreign countries a leader who is our kind of guy. And the theatres in which America pursued this action are many, from Indonesia (with President Suharto), to Laos, to Cambodia, Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Cuba, and so on and so forth, sometimes with success, other times with less success. Much of the action goes accompanied by prevailing voices of wisdom and truth, which are exclusively controlled by a very small percentage of the population: on a world scale it is less than 1 per cent. One might like to consider how it comes that 99 per cent of the world’s population adopts the policy advocated by 1 per cent. For instance, the G-7 group of nations, which meets annually to discuss economic matters, by far eclipses the G-15 group, which comprises 17 (despite the name) important developing nations and whose proceedings are rarely deemed worthy of front-page presentation elsewhere than in Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper—the widest circulated daily in the Arab world (https://english.ahram.org.eg/). But, quite simply, the western world only ever gets to hear about what the G-7 say, and in that, with an accent on the wealthiest of those nations, and nothing at all about the G-15, for which you need to go and look at publications in the relevant countries themselves.

The long and short of it is that the G-7 expect to exploit the world, both the Global North and the Global South, with impunity and reap the vast majority of its benefits. The Global South is granted (not entitled to) a marginal benefit for itself. If the Global South demands or takes a margin that is excessive in the eyes of the North, through independent development, otherwise referred to as radical nationalism, economic nationalism or excessive development, the North’s speculators, backed if necessary by US violence, will redress the situation. That is the G-7’s relationship to the G-15. It’s a relationship that, if you’re a resident in one of the G-7 nations, you will rarely hear about and never contest. What separates the G-7 from the G-15 is primarily national wealth and the G-7’s shared values of pluralism, liberal democracy and representative government. And, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Otherwise, what separates them is the Tropic of Cancer.

For all the scepticism that can be levelled against the wealthiest nations of the world, the United States holds a quite unique position amongst them. When the World Trade Organisation celebrated 50 years of the global trading system in 1998, among the speakers was President Bill Clinton of the United States as also other world leaders from the rich North, who praised the WTO for the marvellous achievements that had been attained since GATT had been established after the war (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, the WTO’s forebear). When it came the turn of the UN to speak, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD—United Nations (formerly: Conference on) Trade and Development, representing the rest of the world—said this:

“No one should be fooled by the festive nature of these celebrations. Outside there is anguish and fear, insecurity about jobs, a life of quiet desperation.”

Again, you need to look up publications from the third world to read these words. The leading nations, for their part, ignored them. And now there is a realisation dawning: that inside the leading nations, there is also anguish and fear, insecurity about jobs and a life of quiet desperation. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was hailed as a great breakthrough for trade in that region. Now, President Trump is against free trade, or at least he says so. And so are factory workers in the US. Those who, in the aftermath of NAFTA’s introduction in 1994, pushed to unionise were frequently faced with intimidation in the form of transfers of business to the cheaper labour areas of the Agreement’s ambit, mainly Mexico. Trump’s dislike of NAFTA led to the signing of the USMCA, or United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, which came into effect in 2020 and whose future is uncertain under Mr Trump, even if it serves well the interests of business, although less the interests of workers. He who fails to heed voices of caution will come to voice caution himself.

So, what is the unique position of the United States? It is simply this: the goals or purposes of the United States and its leaders are high-minded, sincere and benign. Crucially, this holds true regardless of the facts on the ground. The wholesome intentions of the United States are a dogma whose acceptance is the sole key to be able to enter the field of discussion regarding action taken by that country. Those who resist acceptance of that mantra are dismissed as simply being radical lefties—in religious terms, heretics. They have no seat at the table. They will never, ever attain a position of influence, or have a voice in the discussion or, Lord help us, be accorded the powers that allow for a change to the system. And understanding that is a key to understanding much about our modern world, including D. J. Trump, Esq.

It explains utterances such as Richard Nixon’s statement to David Frost, the British interviewer, “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” For decades, that statement has been viewed with derision, or with approbation, depending on who you are. But now the US in fact has a president who not only acts such as to give substance to that view, but who has been accorded an immunity by the Supreme Court that underpins that view. As a result, President Trump does not need to abide by the law, just as the United States does not. The US does not submit to the jurisdiction of any international court, and President Trump does not submit to the jurisdiction of any national or international court. The US has a right of veto on the UN Security Council, which it uses in blatant pursuit not of what is right but of what is in its own interests (it’s not the only member to do so, it has to be admitted). And, perhaps most astonishingly, in at least the past two years, it has by implication sub-delegated its immunity in international action to the state of Israel, which also now enjoys blatant immunity from any kind of act against its own people, against the people of Lebanon or of Syria or of other neighbouring states and, most pointedly, against the people of Palestine. When international diplomats on a fact-finding mission with the consent of the Israeli government wander slightly from their prescribed path, it is not a gentle “This way, please, ladies and gentlemen” that the Israeli army issues; instead it shoots live ammunition over the diplomats’ heads. If that is not indicative of a sense of immunity paralleled by the United States’ own actions in Laos, then it’s hard to see what would be. It is a wonder that no one was injured, for I have little doubt that Israel’s cloak of immunity would yet still have shielded it from any consequences whatsoever, although that is a thesis that I am glad will not be put to the test. Not this time.

It is a realisation of the impunity with which the United States has acted since the end of the Second World War in all these usurpations of democracy, leftist government, popular redistribution of land and assets that might have been cited by the Republican’s opposition during last year’s election campaign to warn the American people of the parlous situation into which internal US policy might potentially slide in the hands of Mr Trump, were it not so that the Democrats have been as conscious, and guilty, of such attitudes themselves. Y’see, Richard Nixon, who himself believed what he told to David Frost in that soundbite, did actually resign when his acts became viewed as making his position untenable. And I think that many who even considered the possibility that Mr Trump might engage in acts that could, in terms of the letter of the law, be regarded as illegal if committed by anyone else, also believed that, like Mr Nixon, he would ultimately resign if he did so. But why should he? He enjoys immunity, as the head of state of a country that enjoys immunity. America will never submit to the judgment of the rest of the world, not unless the rest of the world devises a means to bring it to book. And its head of state will likewise never submit to the judgment of the rest of the world, nor indeed to the judgment of the American people, unless the American people can devise a means to bring him to book. And the prospects of that are … let’s say, there is no precedent. Nixon resigned despite his views; Trump will never resign, because of his views.

The immunity that the US enjoys has for 80 years been dependent on the dogma that has been tacitly consented to by the rest of the world: that the goals or purposes of the United States and its leaders are high-minded, sincere and benign, and promote central US foreign policy themes, which are freedom, democracy and human rights. Regardless of what the facts say. Note, this only applies to the United States, which justifies the unique nature of the position, as alluded to above. The high-minded sentiments expressed by Adolf Hitler, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, or by Japan, when it invaded Manchuria, are propagandist claptrap. But the sentiments expressed when the US invades a foreign territory are wholesome, believable and true. If you don’t agree with that, in some ways, you’re next. Like religious dogma, this regard for US foreign policy is a belief, one based in faith in the American way. And, just as faith in God should, logically, be shaken by evidence of the evil practised by man against his fellow man, and yet isn’t, so the belief in this dogma of American sincerity remains unshaken by the most Brobdingnagian examples of inhumanity on the part of the American nation. What goes for the American nation goes, therefore, for the American president. And now, what goes for the American nation goes also for the Israeli nation. Because America says so.

You can summon up as much evidence as you want of complicity to help Israel bombard the Palestinian people, starve them, deprive them of medical care and shelter, food and hope. And you can cite as many instances as you want of Trumpian grift, like the airliner gifted by Qatar, or the timing of tariff announcements, or the launch of his cryptocurrency. Go ahead, list them, proclaim them, write about them, denounce them, trample upon them. It will make no difference to the belief that resides in Americans (whether they ever test themselves on that belief or not), just as no evidence of evil on this Earth can deflect belief in God in Heaven above. For the dogma that God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform has long since been transposed to the workings of the US government and its head in the White House. However badly they seem to have acted, it is taken as a given: they act benignly.

It is changing that dogma that is the task that lies ahead. It extends far beyond tempering the excesses of Donald J. Trump, however: make no mistake about that and do not delude yourselves into thinking all will be well if he’s voted out at the next election. The problem is not Donald Trump, it is America. Instead, the task of righting this gargantuan wrong extends to tempering the excesses of the entire United States of America. The Democrats will not help you to dispel that belief, for it is one they hold to themselves. Those who would now speak for the voiceless risk nothing less than assassination and the retrospective silencing of their voices. It is not a joyful prospect.

I can grasp at only one comparison to bring this home to you: it is comparable to the prospect of abolishing not only the Holy Roman Catholic church, as God’s mouthpiece, but God Almighty Himself, into the bargain.

Let battle lines be drawn.

And good luck.

This article leans on a lecture given in 1999 by Professor Noam Chomsky:

1. By Adam Cuerden - This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=445063