Advertise On EU-Digest

Annual Advertising Rates

1/29/17

Russia-USA Relations: Trump and Putin’s New "Oligarchic International" - by Alexei Bayer

Ever since Donald Trump began running for President of the United States, he has managed to heap abuse on pretty much everyone.

His targets range from the Mexicans to the Chinese and include plenty of Americans, from actress Meryl Streep to Rep. John Lewis.

The one man who can do no wrong by Trump is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

It may seem like a strange affinity between a fat cat real estate developer and an ex-KGB colonel who devoted the first half of his life to the cause of burying capitalism.

There have been claims that Putin holds “kompromat” on Trump – damaging materials such as sex tapes – forcing the new U.S. president to sing to Putin’s tune.

While such kompromat material may exist, there is a less conspiratorial explanation why the two are bromancing together — and what kind of world order they are starting to build jointly.

“The working men have no country,” Marx and Engels declared in their Communist Manifesto back in 1848. They famously called for the proletariat of the world to unite because they regarded nationality was a fake distinction. What truly mattered, they said, was class solidarity.

The first Socialist International was founded in London in 1864 and “The Internationale” became its anthem.

The global super-rich class emerged nearly four decades ago. Its members hail from different countries and different walks of life. They have different professional backgrounds and earn their money in a variety of legal, semi-legal and criminal ways.

They ranged from the heirs of the Rothschilds to wildly successful tech entrepreneurs and the investors who backed them.

The class includes financial speculators, bankers, heads of publicly traded companies, with their huge bonuses and golden parachutes, sports and entertainment superstars and so on.
And, of course, let’s not forget the kleptocrats, the oil sheiks and the drug barons.

Each in his own way, Trump and Putin are extreme exemplars of this group. Putin is probably the world’s richest – and most shameless – kleptocrat. He has turned Russia into the world’s first nuclear armed mafia state.

His policy of destabilizing the United States and the European Union and whipping up nationalism at home has been designed with one purpose in mind – to keep himself and his super-rich cronies in power.

Putin claims to be a Russian patriot, but he is bleeding Russia dry and shamelessly, but effectively corrupting all of its institutions.

Trump is not just a billionaire himself (even though no one knows for sure whether he is, because he tends to exaggerate his net worth). His business model also directly caters to them, since his buildings attract the super-wealthy.

Contrary to his sloganeering, Trump doesn’t give a damn about America (and “making it great again.”) Short of finally triggering an American Revolution – an event for which the world is still waiting — America can hardly be any “greater” for him and his ilk than it is right now.

n fact, Trump seems to hate the United States, to judge from how viciously he attacks other Americans and how he is now debasing a proud American institution, the Presidency. Needless to say, like any true oligarch, he has paid no taxes for years.

Trump may wear a stars ‘n’ stripes lapel pin, but his loyalty lies elsewhere — with the nation of the super-rich. He and Putin are countrymen.

It has been asserted that once he assumes the presidency, Trump will sacrifice American interests in favor of Russian ones. It is a mistake to make that assumption.

Putin cares as little about Russia as Trump does about America. The two only care about making the world safe for themselves and all the other super-rich. They might was well adopt a common slogan: Oligarchs of the World Unite!

Read more: Trump and Putin’s New "Oligarchic International" - The Globalist

No comments: