Trump and Gorbachev

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Whether Mikhail Gorbachev was an agent to the US intelligence as accused by his opponents or not, and whether Donald Trump was an agent to the Russian intelligence as accused by his opponents or not, the aspects of similarity in the circumstances which brought them to the rule, and the conditions in which each one rules, as well as the roles which are represented by each one of them in the history of the superpower where both of them stood at the top of the pyramid in it are elements that allow the objective comparison between the two figures.

Gorbachev has led the Soviet Union after the defeat in a war that was the first war which he launched within an offensive plan outside the borders after the World War II, through the entry of his troops to Afghanistan, it was not mere an arming support for an ally or a circumstantial escalation of a position. That defeat led to the rise of the popular resentment in the Russian community entitled the compliant from spending on wars, the glories of the greatness, and the rise of voices that called for the priority of paying attention and concern to the declining Russian interior, that suffered economically and socially, and where the services were retracted and its infrastructure was eroded. While Trump is leading America after a resounding defeat of many wars that were the first after the World War II which aimed to extend the influence of the American leadership in the world in an offensive way and within an imperial campaign not within the context of an involvement in a war, its beginning was the support of an allied regime or a subordinate as the wars of Vietnam and Korea. It adopted a slogan of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the beginning and then overthrowing Syria. As a result of the defeat there were escalated claims to abandon the pursuit behind the role of the world policeman, while America internally is retracting economically and socially as described by Trump himself in his electoral campaign in terms of unemployment, the declining services, and the imminent collapse of the infrastructure, so he launched his slogan America first, in confronting this situation.

Trump’s campaigns against the ideological media which is dominated by him in a factional way are similar to Gorbachev’s ones launched against the ideological media, moreover the escalating campaigns of Trump against the intelligence are similar to Gorbachev’s ones. The two men are in a battle with the elites of their countries that led their global aspect namely the media and the intelligence. The racist white calls of Trump against the US interior are similar to the Russian Gorbachev’s white calls against the countries of the Soviet Union and which were looking to get rid of them as burdens. Trump’s battles with the economic blocs which monopolize the US economy in favor of the minority of the owners and workers, versus the decline of the sectors which employ most of the Americans and which their owners are distributed on a major faction of the owners of the capitals represented by Trump are similar to the battles of Gorbachev against the possession of the country of the huge economies and the marginalization of the rising capital. Both of them raises the slogan of the balance of the economy’s aspects through perestroika project for the reconstruction, and a direct contact with the people as nominated Glasnost by Gorbachev, and which is translated by Trump in his daily tweets on Twitter.

Gorbachev considered that the reason of the bottleneck of the Soviet Union especially Russia was due to the useless investment on the race of arming as a tax for the global leadership, and that the weighing of the private sector in the economy will lead to the recovery of the middle class and the structures of the useful production. Trump considers that the economic bottleneck of America is due to the tax which it pays as a cost for the global leadership, either through spreading huge forces outside the borders to protect rich allies that do not pay anything as Japan, Europe, and the Gulf or through economic facilities for the poor allies within agreements that led to the weakness of the US economy as the agreement with Argentina and the countries of the Pacific which is known as NAFTA. The two men converge on the call to liberate their countries from these burdens as a way for the economic recovery and the getting out of the bottleneck and recession.

Gorbachev’s policies which based on removing the dominance of the country on the major economic sectors have led to a big decline of the earnings and the weakness in the country’s ability to spend, so the market declined and became weaker. There were new economic powers that quickly handled the economy of the market including the enormous class differences in the community. Russia within ten years emerged as a country from the third world after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the fall of the socialist system, and the collapse of its military alliance entitled Warsaw Pact which most of its countries moved to the West under the title of the European Union or NATO. The question which faces Trump and his project is whether the linking of the military deployment with the paying of its costs by the allies will lead to the regression of the influence on the allies and thus on the world, and whether weakening the giant intercontinental enterprises in favor of the US national companies which depend on the US market will lead to the confusion in the qualitative importance of the US currency in the world markets and to the bankruptcies as a result of the scarcity of the external resources and the revenues of the speculation of the US banks, and whether all of that will open the debate about the justification of sticking to the dollar as a mandatory international currency in the banking transactions and in the US banks as a knot for the passage of the financial transactions in the world. The dollar and banking currency are the last ways for protecting the US leadership in the world, and they are translated by the sanctions through which America is threatening all of its opponents.

It is striking that the Jewish community in each of Russia and America is supporting these two men, and it is striking their excessive enthusiasm toward Israel. Israel’s interest in Gorbachev was confined with making the international arena in favor of America while through the Israeli weakness it is enough from Trump to submit an ally in America which does not believe that Israel is in need of who can save it from itself and from its arrogance, on the contrary to share with it this arrogance, an ally that reassures its settlers that they have an ally that does not argue with them, as it is striking how the fall of the Soviet Union was the insurance policy for a quarter of a century for Israel which was facing with the rise of Gorbachev a valiant Palestinian uprising that is known by the uprising of stones and an active Lebanese resistance that has already  liberated half of the occupied territories. But the US monopoly of ruling the world was as a momentum for Israel to overcome many threats and crises, while the instability of America today coincides with the entry of Israel into deadly existential crisis, where it does not have an insurance policy. It is striking as well that at the time of the Russian regression America has rushed to fill the gap, and at the time of the American regression Russia rushes to fill the gap, so the history repeats that powerfully but harshly… this is history.

The paradox here is that Gorbachev has waged the battle of changing the Soviet Union at the spokesman of the cultivated elegant elites against whom he described by (the bullies) while Trump is waging his battle as a “bully” who fights the pedant elites . It is enough to notice the language of Trump.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,