Is there a "Deep State" controlling U.S. foreign policy?

Great Debates
21

This is an eloquent restatement of what a Doper once termed the Genius Fool theory - which explains how shadowy, all-powerful, far-reaching cabals conjure up massive, sinister plots but are undone by foolish mistakes discovered by average but alert citizens communicating over the Internet (example: the 9/11 conspiracy).

Everywhere you look there are Deep State operatives working to elevate Israel to unheard-of realms of power (and others plotting to destroy it), depopulate the world through the use of vaccines, fluoride and GMOs, implant computer control chips in everyone, put the Koch Brothers in charge of Bohemian Grove, use clever plastic surgery to conceal Hillary Clinton’s third Eye…the list goes on and on.

Thank goodness we have independent pundits and alert Dope posters to unravel these plots as fast as they happen!

I wanted an influential job with Deep State, but all I got was a lousy t-shirt. :frowning:

22

I think a more useful question than “does a Deep State exist?” is “name a political entity that doesn’t have a Deep State.”

If even the local homeowners association can be assessed as having a Deep State – because that damn Old Man McCreary who is really nosy, what with his wife has been treasurer for so long that she knows where all the bodies are buried, so the McCrearys always have more influence on the board than they really ought to – then the term is totally meaningless.

Or at least, we are then probably talking about something fundamental to human nature and politics, rather than an out-of-control Illuminati pulling the strings of every powerful person, from POTUS to the administrator of your city’s garbage collection service.

23

Doubt it. The current US foreign policy has all the attributes of a 2 AM late night alcohol fueled college bullshit session.

24

That is in no way inconsistent with Lofgren’s hypothesis.

25

I don’t think there is a deep state. I think we have a lot of institutions and individuals fighting for power. Of course attempting to manipulate those that compose the political class has a large potential reward since the state has so much power.

26

In Lofgren’s analysis, the United States before WWII. There was a political elite and a bureaucracy and politically powerful corporations before then, but the Deep State is a new thing and the MIC is a major and indispensable part of it.

27

So if the trusts get together and pay off politicians in outright bribery for most of this nation’s history before WWII, that doesn’t count as having power behind the throne because it isn’t specifically related to national security issues? Am I misunderstanding something about this argument?

28

Exactly, except the powers were getting involved in foreign policy. Ask Smedley Butler or a Tagolog speaker.

29

Based on the quotes in the OP, the definition of “Deep State” would seem to be “Domain Experts”.

Oh darn.

30

If Trump is ever elected POTUS, we better hope this Deep State exists!

31

Not really. We have a large, well-funded, technologically-unparalleled, well-trained military.

We need to find reasons to keep using it, so our men are combat-worn and we don’t grow into impotent has-beens like the European powers.

Not that the above necessarily reflects my thinking, but represents the sort of think-tank intellectualism that I believe is at the heart of the MIC “deep state.”

Where it gets very shady is when our civil liberties get stolen in the immediate aftermath of a so-called “terrorist” attack. That’s the oldest trick in the book, and it’s fabulously effective at manipulating public opinion. They had the “Patriot Act” signed before the third tower fell.

32

“Worn?” We don’t want our troops combat-worn. Now, yes, there is a benefit to having them combat-trained, but combat-worn troops make mistakes.

You do have to be careful, though, to avoid conspiracy fantasies, such as “Bush caused the WTC attack to happen.” Maybe Bush (et al) took advantage of it, but that’s pretty much business as usual in a democracy. If the governing party doesn’t take advantage of an incident, then the opposition party will. There are no “non-partisan” disasters.

33

Do tell.

What are some of these false flag “terrorist” attacks that have been used to steal our civil liberties?

34

Historically, false flag attacks are used to gin up public support for a war. Like when the Joint Chiefs of Staff authored the Operation Northwoods proposal to stage Cuban aggression as a pretext for war against Fidel Castro. President Kennedy rejected it, though just a few years later we settled for the Gulf of Tonkin charade to get us into Vietnam.

Perhaps the salient example of a false flag being used to attack civil liberties was when the German Reichstag was conveniently set on fire 4 weeks after Hitler was sworn in as chancellor:

*The day after the fire Hitler asked for and received from President Hindenburg the Reichstag Fire Decree, signed into law by Hindenburg using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone. *

Did Bush perpetrate 9/11? Probably not. At any rate, we’ll never know. But he achieved the ultimate two-fer: get a free war (or two) and crack down on those pesky civil liberties. Wrapped in the warm comfort of Patriotism, who had the balls to resist?

35

Yeah, we’ll never know if 9/11 was an inside job. And we’ll never know if Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK. And we’ll never know if Barack Hussein Obama was actually born in Kenya.

Truly, these are all impenetrable mysteries. So we better assume the worst.

36

The current success of Trump seems to be pretty good evidence that no single body controls the government.

37

No Shit. If you ever needed evidence that no one has their hand on the wheel and this whole thing could spin out of control if the people are not vigilant, well, you have it now.

38

The consensus seems to be that the Deep State concept is little more than the anthropomorphising of the simple observations that:

-No-one can be an expert in everything so we have to turn to genuine experts when we need to, and those experts bring baggage.

-The civil service has a certain level of intertia and an historical tendency to self-preservation and empire building.

-That corporate culture within civil service organisations persists past any one administration.
These things may be a feature, not a bug. People who gain positions of power often note how little power they actually have - their decision making is constrained precisely to prevent the corrupt or the thieving or the demagogic to have too much power. A judge is constrained by the law, a President by the need to get others such as the military and treasury to go along with mad plans to invade the UK, etc.

Since the example of Trump has been raised, let me use it as an example. Trump affects not to know about the proper constraints on power, as though by act of will he could build a vast wall along the Mexican border, with (by necessary implication) a vast staff to man it, and the capacity to simply demand that the Mexicans pay. Pushback will come from Treasury, for whom it will be an unproductive uneconomic sinkhole, from foreign countries who point to the counter-productivity of these things historically (looking at you East Germany), the State Department who will point out the problems that will emerge with Mexico and aligned nations, and from Immigration who say it will not work, etc.

If a certain cast of mind wants to call this the Deep State’s overriding the decisions of a popularly elected President, I say that is what the complex array of bureaucrats and power-checks is supposed to do. A bureaucracy that gives frank, fearless and non-partisan advice is what we are supposed to have. None of that means a President is powerless to effect change, it just tops-and-tails the more harebrained ends of the spectrum.

A common trope in the conspiratorial versions of all this is that all the visible participants in the political process are mere cyphers for hidden masters. Not really so. Aside from cases of frank corruption, the politicians typically make their own decisions about whose advice they will seek and whose they will accept, based on their meta-skills at making decisions - deciding Dr Fred is an alarmist, the motivations of Dr Barney to be inappropriately passive, etc. Often, their initial ideas about how to behave are modified once they are fully appraised of the constraints that bind their exercise of power of which they were previously unaware. If Dr Barney’s view prevails in this process, that does not mean that Dr Barney is some sort of Svengali who has inordinate control over the brain of the politician.

39

Maybe they have some friends in the Bilderberg Group meetings:

40

No, only that no single body controls the elections.