Vigen Akopyan: Why did the system let Donald Trump win?

The world is looking hopefully at the 45th U.S. President, Donald Trump. Those who prophesied his victory, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, are enjoying the laurels of prophets, while the majority are pretending that the only factor that did not let their logical forecasts come true was her majesty “American Democracy.” Few of them doubt that the system will “align” Trump. This is exactly what Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said recently: “The political system has let a non-system candidate win but that very political system will align him.” But the next minute, he asked a rhetorical question, “But can Trump be aligned?” “Let’s wait and see,” was his answer.

In an interview to RT, Republican Senator from Virginia Richard Black said: “I have met many of the foreign policy people who surround Donald Trump. They are very pro-Syrian and very anti-terrorist. So, I cannot overstate the importance of this election to the war in Syria. This is going to dramatically shift the American position... This is perhaps the greatest single defeat for the terrorists since the war began. It's going to be a dramatic change with Russia. I am a military man. I spent 32 years in the military. And I know how wars are prepared. They don't just happen in an instant. They are built up for years. There was a movement towards WWIII with Russia.”

While the system and its metastases, like NATO, are considering how they will align Trump, the world has breathed a sigh of relief. The global political process (crisis) has been put on the standby mode, with hope for a reset and a shift from Hillary Clinton’s threats to destroy Russia to Trump’s non-system policy to restart contacts with the Russians against another non-system force – aggressive Islamism and trans-border terrorism.

What we are mostly interested in is the question formulated by Medvedev: “Why did the political system let a non-system candidate win the election?” The word “let” means that the “system” wanted Trump to win, otherwise, it would not have let him do it. Broken-hearted Clinton was right when she blamed FBI Director James Comey for her defeat – as voting for the “first female president” and voting for the “first accused female president” are two different things. And what is FBI if not a key component of the U.S. political system?

The paradox is that the U.S. political “system” has never acted as a system but has always been based on non-system forces, instruments, values and decisions. So, non-system Trump was a better option for it than “system” Clinton, a woman with the blood of the U.S. ambassador to Libya on her hands and a dissolute husband at home. No surprise that one more “system” man, Vice President Joe Biden refused to be Clinton’s Secretary of State and urged FBI to make public her e-mails. Nor was it a surprise that Clinton’s contacts with non-system radical forces in the Middle East became known before the voting. It turned out that Clinton not just got money from pro-terrorist regimes, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but had the daughter of a Muslim Brotherhood leader as her campaign assistant. Now it is clear what the “democratic” U.S. Administration was so happy when in Egypt Hosni Mubarak was replaced by Mohamed Morsi. The death of Muammar Gaddafi was hardly the cherished dream of Huma Abedin’s clan. But does the “system” have to answer for this?

Now that Barack Obama has to pass his office to a new president, he has sent his best intelligence and drone forces to find and kill the leaders of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front. As the Washington Post noted recently, Obama has largely ignored that group until now and his current haste looks like an attempt to cover some tracks. When the “system” stops pulling the strings, it may face the risk of somebody else starting to do it from the other side. Now the “system” is on the standby mode, while the processes it once launched and fueled for years are still developing. This is why Obama is so nervous.

But is Trump actually so much outside the “system”? For the “system” it makes sense to use non-system mechanisms only when it can no longer cure itself. Clinton would at best keep the “system” rolling mechanically, while Trump will take a non-system look at this machine and may try to reorganize and recover it. This is what he is mostly expected to do. And this is why the cogs still acting in that machine are so worried.

The “system” knows that it is sick. So, Trump will have to cut off the metastases that are choking it and will certainly face resistance. During his campaign, Trump presented a large list of judges, governors, mayors, generals, admirals and other officials who support him. And what is this if not the “system”? Trump knows the “system” perfectly well and was actively supported by some of its men during his campaign. And we don’t mean only transnational corporations.

Trump’s electoral promises reveal the system’s key problems. Let’s try to remember the most important theses of his program.

1. Stopping globalization for the sake of globalization, revising nonpaying trade deals.
2. Putting aside the “who is not with us is against us” tactics and looking for common grounds with independent players, first of all, with Russia – as China is economically dependent on the United States.
3. Stopping the “color revolution” practice.
4. Getting rid of “spongers” consuming America’s national security, particularly, those from NATO, an alliance with quite unclear tasks and goals.
5. Saving the Americans from their huge national debt. How Trump is going to do this is a different story.
6. Enhancing America’s military power.

Can these steps recover the U.S. “system” and make the United States strong and influential again? This is what the “system” must be interested in in the first place, mustn’t it? This is much more important than the nuclear war against Russia – the key goal of “Madam Killary” and her crazy bigots.

The abovementioned theses are the only way-out for the “system” – for having spent as much as $800 billion over the last decade, the Americans are now facing a pro-Iranian regime in Iraq, much stronger Iran, suspicious Israel and pro-Russian Egypt. They have lost Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even the Philippines. Instead of stable oil and gas supplies from the Gulf to Europe, the “system” is facing a chaos in Libya and Syria. And on the top of this heap of problems are reviving Russia, unstable the EU, declining Japan and prospering China. This means that the “system” has been going nowhere, with its $20 trillion debt being a back-breaking burden for humanity. The ideology of the “system” has been buried in Aleppo. What democracy they were going to establish in Syria and Libya? Do they have democracy at all? Now we see that they have!

In general, Trump’s mission is to restore the United States’ role of a schemer, an economic driver and a political trendsetter but not a chaos maker and a violence sponsor. A unipolar world is not only dangerous but simply impossible – as Vladimir Putin once warned. The system’s attempts to choke alternative poles will sooner or later exhaust and ruin it. Trump’s strategy suggests lower military activity and economy for the sake of global dominance. This strategy is quite rational for the U.S. “system” unlike the “strategy” of bellicose Clinton.

Russia is facing a new historical stage. The “system” will hardly be able to align Trump into something like Obama, Bush or Clinton. It has no such goal. It is more likely to take up his face and his basic priority to restore the United States’ power. But it will no longer confront Russia as confronting Putin has proved to be a costly, hard and even dangerous venture.

Vigen Akopyan, EADaily Editor-in-Chief