Who holds the strings in USA?

ASIAS TRANS-ATLANTIC PLAYGROUND

International politics have never been this heated since maybe the Cold War. After a long period of time where United States done as they wish around the globe, new opponents start to rise up against them. Maybe we can even say, they start infiltrating rather than rising up.

Just like I have mentioned in my previous articles, there has been a culture war being fought in U.S for a while. The silence of left wing towards class struggle and completely focusing on identity politics on recent years has carried an interesting individual such as Donald J. Trump to the White House. But since the 2016 elections, the public kept speaking over a certain subject; foreign intervention.

Trumps cutting edge victory in 2016 were only explained with Russia’s intervention by his opponents. Last 4 years has convinced us that opposition in U.S always wanted to bring the attention towards this case. The allegations including Russian hackers social media manipulations, Trump campaign officials relations with Kremlin and Michael Flynn case were all pointing us towards Russia.

Similar accusations were pointed out by the Republican Party aswell. Trump was always accusing China of infiltrating international agencies and U.S based companies to subdue them politically with the fear of losing Chinese market.

Were all of these some baseless claims coming from incompetent political parties trying to subvert public opinion against their opponents or did any of it have any legitimacy behind them? Let’s talk about the accusations first.

MUELLER INVESTIGATION AND RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE TO 2016 ELECTIONS

Accusations towards Trumps victory in 2016 were not limited to the Democrat Party. The investigation started by Director of FBI Robert Mueller have gathered many evidences regarding to the subject.

First I should mention that U.S intelligence has concluded Russians have not stole or replace any votes on the election results. But the operations they continued online were targeting to manipulate voting citizens.

Before the elections, they have hacked databases containing personal informations of the voters. They have stolen e-mails of both Democrat and Republican election comittees. They have leaked lots of e-mails of Hillary Clinton via Wikileaks (a website that is leaking information of high value people and states) hoping to damage her campaign.

Russian hackers weren’t just passively leaking e-mails, they were also actively intervening with both campaigns. They were creating fake internet personas, posting online with an American citizen identity. They were even paying actual Americans to organize meetings in conversative states in favor of Trump.

Their only purpose was not smearing Clinton’s campaign. They were also hoping to recruit some members of Trump team into their ranks. Russian intelligence has contacted one of the young foreign policies advisors; George Papadopoulos and told them about Putin’s will of meeting with Trump before the elections. Papadopoulos has passed this information to Trump. Another foreign policies advisor Carter Page went to Russia in 2016 to give a speech and met with at least one Russian official. Because of this, he took the attention of FBI.

According to Mueller investigation, Trump was not working together with Russia in his campaign. But his team was happy to accept any help coming from them.

MICHAEL FLYNN CASE

Michael Flynn is a general that earned lots of awards for serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been assigned to the head of Defense Intelligence Agency by Obama. After 2 years of this duty he has retired. After Trump’s 2016 victory, he assigned him as national security advisor on his cabinet.

The incident that caused all attention to him happened right after the elections. Barack Obama, has brought sanctions towards Russia for meddling with their elections. Flynn, on a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, has stated retalliations towards these sanctions should be moderate as possible. Putin announcing there won’t be any retalliations towards U.S the day after had caused a shock in Washington D.C.

This action was recognized as crime with a law called “ Logan Act”. This was a law brought in 1799, after a Philadelphian politician called George Logan negotiating with the French for peace after an undeclared naval battle without the permission of U.S government. This law was preventing any U.S citizen to have communications with a foreign official of a hostile country.

Flynn has lied to FBI investigation in multiple occasions. Later on, he had to admit he has this alleged phone calls. But Trump was insisting what Flynn did was not a crime, Obama’s allies were trying to overthrow him.

As we have seen, it was not a secret that Russians were meddling with U.S internal affairs. Maybe they were not the reason of the culture war in U.S, but certainly they just provoked it further. With their fake internet characters and social media manipulations, they managed to polarize U.S political climate.

But Trump side had another target in their hands; China.

CHINESE INFLUENCE OVER USA POLITICS

Let’s mention we will not talk about an interference on Russia’s level. Chinese overall political stance chooses to build financial alliances and opening new markets rather than meddling with interior politics of said countries. However, it still is a fact that economical power that China bears is a long term threat for U.S ideal of “being the best” around the globe.

Trump administration believes situation is not limited to Chinese peaceful intentions. According to them, China is using their economical influence to control international agencies and American corporations for their political agendas. Let’s take a look on this accusation from a couple occasions.

BLITZCHUNG INCIDENT

Actually it was very recent that Americans realized the margin of censorship over the U.S companies that implemented by Chinese government.

October 2019 was a heated time for Hong Kong. Protests spread like a wildfire all over the region after a law was talked of passing that complies to China about returning political criminals that taken refugee in Hong Kong. It was mostly libertarians and conversatives of the west that cared about this events at that time.

On 6th of October an e-sports event organized by U.S gaming giant Activision Blizzard would carry the meaning of these protests for westerners to another level. One of the participiants of the tournament Ng Wai “ Blitzchung” Chung used the slogan of “Free Hong Kong, revolution of our times” during an interview, which caused him to lose all his rewards and get banned permanently from participating in any tournaments. This behaviour by Activision Blizzard faced heavy backlash in the western world. Despite e-sports is a growing industry in many places, I must remind you that Activision Blizzards annual income in 2019 has passed 7 billion dollars and they are an important figure in the U.S.

Many westerners changed their internet nicknames to “FreeHK”, same slogan was used in many events all over the world. However, protesters in the west faced similar reaction from companies. Even in NBA, protesters opening signs talking about Hong Kong or Uyhgur Turks were thrown out. At least for majority of U.S citizens it was evident that their own countries corporations left the western values behind in exchange of cheap labor and colossal Asian market. In these corporations defense, they claimed that their platforms are not open for political discussion. But their eager stance for using “Black Lives Matter” slogan on their products after recent anti-racism protests proves that they tend to cash in on political matters as long as the outcome will be profitable for them, and losing Asia market is definitely not one of those cases.

Trumps accusation of China was not limited to this. He blamed them from many worldwide events such as “climate change being a Chinese hoax” and the spread of Covid-19 all over the world. I still must state that despite “World Health Organization” knew the human-to-human transmission of covid-19 they kept silent until it was too late. They were also too late to declare pandemic and cause thousands of lives to be lost. Their overall compliance towards China not only grew doubt in U.S convervatives, but also in many experts and concerned individuals.

HOW LIKELY A COLD WAR HAPPENING IN THE U.S BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA?

I believe now you have an idea about how much Russians and the Chinese have influence over U.S politics. At one side we have Russia, trying to influence one side of the U.S in order to gain ground and privileges in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and on the other side we have China, using their economical power to subdue American companies to their will. Chinese attitude towards Hong Kong and Taiwan, their claims on the small islands in the Chinese sea and even pushing India to a military conflict by making claims over one of the most fragile issues of all Asia; Kashmir, makes us think that China is turning to a more aggressive state.

If China plays this aggresively over both U.S and Asia, would’nt that push Russia for more competitive policies and maybe even for a race on influencing the U.S?

At least for now, answer to this question is a no. China is a way more powerful country in terms of economy, military and overall influence. Despite some regional competitions, both countries main purpose is to break U.S hegemony over the entire globe.

Meanwhile United States has a polarized society in their hands. Despite common ideas, these inner conflicts have not come to life with Trumps presidency and it does not seem like will end when Trump leave the seat. Some Americans believe Russia is the main enemy of their country, some thinks its Chinese that they should beware but what does the state thinks about this question? Are their priorities as enemies Russia and China? Or they have some unfinished business in the Middle East? Wish to see you next Sunday with a new article…