US martial law no wild thought

[snafu]

copied from:
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/politics/gove ... r-BB1reQ5A


US martial law no wild thought
Opinion by Mauro Gia Samonte
Manila Times
1/11/2025

ONE thing very noticeable about President-elect Donald Trump's reascent to the White House is its cool, calm and all too cordial atmosphere. This is quite unlike that by Joe Biden four years ago which Trump's massive supporters even tried to block by storming the United States Capitol.

The move appeared to succeed, and Trump seemed on the way to reversing popular mandate through sheer people power. But he lacked one vital element: the support of the military. At the end of the episode, Trump resolved to pursue his second quest for the US presidency come next election.

It is not common knowledge, but for a limited coterie of political analysts, two levels of government pervade in the United States. One, the constitutionally constituted (i.e., through election), and two, what very few recognize only as "the deep state."

In every serious disagreement between the two levels, the deep state, having been spawned by the US military industrial complex, prevails.

It would be superfluous to stress that the deep state has the full support of the US military.

Now, why dwell on the issue?

The seeming smooth transition from the outgoing Biden administration to the incoming presidency of Trump happens at a time when the camp of Vice President Sara Duterte makes a loud noise about her removal by President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. from the National Security Council (NSC) together with former presidents Joseph Ejercito Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Rodrigo Roa Duterte. According to Salvador Panelo, Duterte's former chief legal adviser, the only point in Sara's removal from the NSA is Bongbong's political persecution of the vice president, with the removal as well of the former presidents serving only as deodorant for the allegedly dirty political move.

How shallow can a former chief presidential legal adviser get?

The NSC, created on July 1, 1950, through Executive Order 330 by President Elpidio Quirino, is the primary agency tasked with advising the president on the highly sensitive and delicate matter of national security. And as Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin asserts, it is the responsibility of President Marcos to make sure that all members of NSC have his full trust and confidence.

The removal of Sara and the three former presidents from the NSC must only mean that on the matter of Philippine security, the four no longer enjoy President Marcos' "full trust and confidence."

The question necessarily surfaces: Why raise the issue now?

It must be President Marcos' security mindset to accommodate the US position on foreign policy consistent with ground reality. In the continuously simmering situation in the South China Sea, the US hawks maintain their heyday of demonizing China through their propaganda mechanisms. For instance, the chief US propagandist in the region, Raymond Powell, recently made mountains out of molehills when he ventilated the presence of the biggest vessel of the China Coast Guard in the vicinity of Scarborough Shoal as an encroachment into Philippine territory. What does the spiel accomplish but a further escalation of the situation toward a shooting war with China?

What Powell fails to cite — certainly for obvious reasons — is that the venture of the China seacraft into Philippine waters is no different from the constant journeys of US ships — albeit military ones — in exercise of the US-promoted "freedom of navigation operations."

With President-elect Trump's avowed policy of ending all wars during his incoming term, this hawkish maneuver of Powell should be a no-no.

This must explain Bongbong's reason for removing elements in the NSC, whose attitudes and predilections are instantly anti-US.

Trump's thrust of governance has been mainly economic by nature. According to one account, "his one major criticism of the Iraq war was that neither Bush nor Obama paid sufficient enough attention to seizing control of that country's fabulous oil resources.

"Arguably, therefore, it is entirely conceivable that when Trump harps on an immediate ceasefire and a freeze on further Russian offensives in Ukraine that may create new facts on the ground, he may well be having an unspoken neo-mercantilist agenda."

According to the story, "Ukraine is a treasure house of multitrillion-dollar mineral resources, including rare earths. Its famed 'chernozem' (black soil) containing high percentages of humus (4 percent to 16 percent) and phosphorous and ammonia compounds with high moisture-storage capacity, makes it very fertile giving great agricultural yields — which indeed already captivates MNCs, and George Soros, consistent with Trump's 'America First' and MAGA strategies."

All told, therefore, Bongbong's security mindset must be in conformity with Trump's actual approach to the China question: not war but "neo-mercantilist agenda."

Trump actually betrayed this when in the run-up to his inaugural, among his first acts was to send an invitation to Chinese President Xi Jinping. To this day, no response has yet come from Xi's end.

At any rate, the invitation betrays the greatest flaw Trump commits even before his second term could take off: a clear intent to dismantle the deep state. To make peace with China could only mean diminution of the US' military industrial complex on which alone the deep state thrives.

Says one account on the issue: "Trump is not advocating a disbandment of NATO. His pressure tactic narrows down to NATO allies hiking defense budgets so that they remain a captive market for US weaponry — i.e., vitalizing the military-industrial complex."

At no instance in US history has such an intent against the deep state been made by a president and went away unscathed. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy acquiesced to dismantle the US missiles in Turkey in exchange for the Soviet Union dismantling its own missile emplacements in Cuba. A year after, in November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated.

With Trump appearing intransigent in his intent to dismantle the deep state, it is a lot better and easier to nip such an intent in the bud.

It took just 10 days for the Bolsheviks to arrest the Kerensky Cabinet and set the mechanism for installing for the subsequent 73 years the powerful Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The 10 days beginning today to Trump's inaugural on Jan. 20 is certainly enough for Joe Biden to resign, thereby bequeathing the US presidency to Kamala Harris, a known China hawk, and letting her do the rest of history.

US martial law? Why not? If that is what it takes to keep Trump out of the presidency — and preserve the deep state.

They frustrated Trump once. They could frustrate him one more time.