This is an important article by Christian Parenti, a Marxist commentator, who argues that the gist of Trump’s foreign policy was a return to 19th-century style xenophobic isolationism, marked by reducing US presence in Europe and Asia, and even the Middle East. Although Parenti doesn’t discuss Trump’s hawkish stances on Latin America regarding Cuba, Venezuela, and Mexico, this is also consistent with the Monroe Doctrine model associated with 19th century US foreign policy. At least on foreign policy, the return of Trump is probably far preferable to the election of any of his Republican challengers, except (possibly) Vivek Ramaswamy. A number of articles, mostly from the Left, offering counterarguments to Parenti’s position are available online. See here. It’s also interesting to compare Parenti’s article with this article endorsing Biden from an antiwar perspective. See my comments on Biden’s foreign policy here as well.

By Christian Parenti, Compact

Within 24 hours of former President Donald Trump’s arrest on 34 overhyped felony counts related to hush-money payments made to conceal an extramarital dalliance, his re-election campaign raised $4 million, and he widened his lead in the Republican primaries to almost 30 percentage points. Yet a CNN poll also found that 60 percent of Americans approve of the indictment. These numbers are probably less important than they might appear. The trial will likely mobilize the base in both parties and pull swing voters in both directions—for a net effect of zero.

Even so, the indictment does real harm to the American body politic. It has already set off another Trump-centric media feeding frenzy, at the expense of issues far more serious than the former executive’s half-remembered infidelities, and it creates a dangerous precedent, further politicizing the judiciary and inviting escalation. Above all, it is a reminder that Trump has been investigated, impeached, and indicted not because of the crimes of which he is accused, but because he has dared to oppose the imperial foreign policy favored by elites.

Fans of the indictment insist that no man is above the law, not every case creates a precedent, and other countries indict their leaders. For example, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to jail, and France is still a democracy. But the Trump indictment is of a piece with other developments that should be cause for worry. Just to name one example, a few weeks before the former president’s arrest, Internal Revenue Service agents visited the home of journalist Matt Taibbi while he was testifying at a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

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