Was anyone taken in by Trump’s isolationist rhetoric? He may rail against NATO, gut the State Department, slash funding for diplomacy, and withdraw from international agreements, but his executive appointments make it clear that “America First” really means “America über alles.”
Oil billionaire Rex Tillerson was no friend of democracy; his replacement, Mike Pompeo, is a deranged theocrat who has called for regime change in North Korea and first-strike attacks on Iran.
Now, H. R. McMaster’s seat as National Security Advisor has been turned over to John Bolton, best known for his stint as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush. Indeed, who could forget Bolton’s rabid national chauvinism, contempt for international law, and determination that any obstacle to U.S. hegemony in world affairs must be met with force?
The ruling class of the United States relies on imperialism, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. However, its imperialist maneuvers vary in scope, intensity, and methods (as well as in susceptibility to mass pressure). Even measured by the yardstick of the U.S. ruling class, Bolton and Pompeo are dangerous extremists, as committed to a far-right social and economic agenda as they are to unending war, including with nuclear weapons.
It has been clear since the beginning that the Trump regime is an unprecedented threat not just to the people of the United States, but to the entire world. Appointing extremists like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to craft foreign policy only escalates that threat.
Read more on Bolton and Pompeo from People’s World.
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John Wojcik started as labor editor of the People's World in May, 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There he served as a shop steward, as a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee, and as an activist in the union's campaign to win public support for Wal-Mart workers. In the 1970s and '80s he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York. Along with being labor editor, Wojcik is a co-editor of peoplesworld.org.
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Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C. bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of Press Associates Inc. (PAI), a union news service in Washington, D.C. that he has headed since 1999. Previously, he worked as Washington correspondent for the Ottaway News Service, as Port Jervis bureau chief for the Middletown, NY Times Herald Record, and as a research and writer for .Congressional Quarterly. Mark obtained his BA in public policy from the University of Chicago and worked as the University of Chicago correspondent for the Chicago Daily News.
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