by Hall Gardner
Trump's claim that unauthorized immigrants were permitted to vote for Clinton in the millions is evidently false. But what is true is that when states count all residents for purposes of redistricting, whether or not those residents are eligible to vote, that can change the social and political balance of the election districts at the time of the census. This fact can lead the party who is in the majority in each state's district to try to fix the size and shape of those districts in that party's favor, using the process of gerrymandering.47
Yet Trump's negative approach to illegal and unauthorized immigration overlooks the fact that many immigrants fill seasonal and other low-paying jobs that most Americans generally do not want. Trump has nevertheless threatened to expel illegal and unauthorized Mexican and other immigrants. He has furthermore demanded that Mexico pay for the border wall/fence that he plans to extend between the two countries. And he has also threatened to block the remittances that are sent back to the families of undocumented workers living in the United States—an action that would be probably be ruled illegal.
Nevertheless, if Trump is able to force large numbers of aliens to leave the United States, this act could destabilize Mexico and other Central American countries whose populations depend on those remittances. As some 50 percent of Mexicans live in poverty, the remittances of undocumented workers accounted for as much as 2.1 percent of the Mexican GDP in 2010, and they considerably exceeded earnings of Mexico's oil exports in 2016. In fact, immediately after Trump threatened to block bank transfers and helped to erode confidence in the peso during his campaign, Mexicans abroad sent nearly $2.4 billion in transfers in November, 24.7 percent higher than in 2015—the fastest expansion since March 2006.48
Trump's threats have generally hurt the Mexican economy. A weak Mexican economy will augment the power of the mafia and the fees of coyotes who take immigrants across the US border, and who will not necessarily be stopped by a wall or fence. A weakened Mexican economy would concurrently strengthen the hands of drug lords in Mexican society, and create greater socioeconomic instability that could impact US urban areas as well. This is true given the degree of violence, political corruption, money laundering, and arms trafficking that takes place as drug traffickers attack each other's gangs for control over territories and populations, and engage in extortion from industries, such as avocado production. This appears plausible given the link between higher remittances and lesser crime rates in Mexico.49
A politically unstable failed state on or near US borders could potentially require US police, if not military, interventions. Trump purportedly warned the Mexican president that Mexico was not doing enough to stop those “bad hombres down there”; he said, “You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”50 Jest or not, in December 2010, Mexican drug smugglers were involved in a controversial gun battle with US Border Patrol agents that killed a US officer in a remote canyon in southern Arizona. Incidents like the latter, which involved US government efforts to trace US manufactured guns sent to Mexican drug gangs, could drag the United States into more overt intervention along the border. Such a jest could become a self-fulfilling prophecy—if relations between the United States and Mexico continue to deteriorate—along with the relations between the United States and Venezuela, among other Latin American countries—in part due the perverse political-economic regional impact of the illegal drug trade and the War on Drugs, which results in drug addiction and the spread of guns and criminality in many US cities. (On Venezuela, see chapter 6.)
By contrast, a major change in US policy that would legalize some drugs, and treat the drug epidemic as a social and health issue, could help wind down the War on Drugs, improve US relations with Mexico and Latin America, reduce the number of prisoners in US jails, permit law enforcement authorities to focus on other forms of criminality (including white-collar financial crime and terrorist groups), while concurrently helping to reduce the spread of guns throughout the United States.51 (See chapter 10.)
FEARS OF DOMESTIC ISLAMIST TERROR
To add to this heightened sense of paranoia, Trump's accusations against millions of “illegal” immigrant voters, who purportedly voted in favor of Hillary Clinton, have been combined with Trump's claims that Islamist terrorists have been trying to infiltrate into American society—by means of both legal and illegal immigration.
In January 2017, Trump activated a ninety-day immigration ban on individuals from seven “countries of concern” and which happened to be Muslim-majority countries. Five of these were predominantly Sunni: Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria. And two were predominantly Shi'a: Iran and Iraq. Yet after his first immigration ban was blocked in the courts, Trump issued a new order in March 2017 that dropped Iraq from the list—after reassurances from the Iraqi government that it would provide increased information sharing with the United States. But this shift also appears to have resulted from the fact that US businesses and the US military have major interests in Iraq.52 The new order would not include American green card holders or previous visas, for example, and it would no longer permanently ban Syrian refugees. At the same time, Trump authorized new decrees that would make it easier to deport any illegal or unauthorized aliens.53
Ironically, however, Trump's efforts to ban immigrants from six or seven Muslim-majority countries do not impact the nationalities of the individuals who were directly involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: Saudi Arabia had nineteen citizens involved; the United Arab Emirates, two; Egypt, one; and Lebanon, one. In addition, the September 11 attacks were not even orchestrated from Saudi Arabia, or even from Afghanistan—which the United States, under a UN mandate, then attacked in December 2001; the attacks were coordinated by an al-Qaeda cell operating out of Hamburg, Germany—a NATO ally.
Trump has denied that the immigration ban is aimed at Muslims alone. He has claimed that his administration has only been pinpointing those individuals from “countries of concern” who could engage in extreme violence. Nevertheless, the fact that Trump had demanded a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in December 2015 during his election campaign after the San Bernardino killings by Islamic State sympathizers—and that he plans to “eradicate” radical Islam from the face of the earth, as stated in his January 2017 inauguration address—project the public image that Trump intends to engage in a crusade against the whole Muslim world.
THE QUESTION OF DOMESTIC TERRORISM
Even if some form of immigration ban is eventually upheld by the courts, it is not at all clear that such a ban would necessarily address the real security problem involving acts of terrorism inside the United States. This is because acts of extreme violence are not always influenced by radical Islamist theology, and many of these acts have been carried out by US citizens, not by immigrants or Muslims.
Such acts of terrorism, among many others, include the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in which the killer was not an Islamist. They also include the 2013 attack in Orlando, Florida, in which the killer purportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. What the two cases had in common was that both killers were mentally disturbed “lone wolves”—with very different personal and social grievances. And both had legally purchased semiautomatic weaponry as American citizens.54 While al-Qaeda and Islamic State represent organized groups that can provide some technical know-how and information to individuals, lone wolves often act in the hope that their violent actions will be disseminated by the media and then inspire others.55
The issue raised here is that given Trump's near-obsessive focus on Islamist militants, the real dangers of “right-wing,” anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and other forms of violent fanaticism and xenophobia must not be ignored. The Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, for example, murdered seventy-seven young Norwegians on July 22, 2011, at a Labour Party Youth summer camp in the hope that the media attention he would obtain would help his fascist cau
se gain support in Europe and in Russia. Breivik had hoped to spark a war against both politically correct “cultural Marxism” and against Islamist movements.56 Breivik's attack and his right-wing ideology then influenced the American Adam Lanza, who shot and killed twenty-six people (including twenty children) at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Lanza then shot himself.57
In August 2017, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan organized a “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest a decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee; the violence at that demonstration, which resulted in the death of one counterprotester and the injuring of nineteen others, shows that these right-wing movements are coming out of the closet in the belief that Trump has appeared to sympathize with their cause. Trump did not strongly condemn the white supremacist movement and its racist and neo-Nazi slogans, and instead affirmed that the violence was caused by “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”58 Former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke stated that protesters were “going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back.”59 (Further, other acts of terrorism have been influenced by ideologies other than political Islamism. The killings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge in 2016 by two disturbed US veterans, Micah Johnson and Gavin Long, respectively, were facilitated by the access to assault weapons. These acts appeared to be more inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and black nationalism than by Islamist ideology.60)
And finally, Trump was absolutely silent on the issue of gun control when a deranged individual, Stephen C. Paddock, engaged in a mass shooting in Las Vegas, using a device that turned semiautomatic weapons into automatic. Paddock killed himself, and no one seems to know the motivation for the shooting, except perhaps that he had lost a significant amount of wealth and feared losing his casino “high-roller status.” Armed with at least twenty guns, Paddock was able to bring four thousand rounds of ammunition into his hotel room before killing at least fifty-eight people and wounding 546.
TRUMP'S CONTINUING FOCUS ON MUSLIMS
In his February 2017 address to Congress, Trump became the first president to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” He purportedly overruled his newly appointed National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who had argued that these groups are better described as “un-Islamic”—even if they claim to represent Islamist beliefs. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama officially referred to “Islamic terrorism.” This is because the term conflates Islam as a religion with terrorist organizations that manipulate Islamic beliefs for their own political purposes. In addition, anti-state partisan groups that engage in acts of terrorism and violent extremism might or might not possess “Islamist” ideologies. Trump reiterated the same offensive term in his September 2017 speech to the UN General Assembly, when he proclaimed that he would “stop radical Islamic terrorism.”
The issue raised here is that because Trump is focusing on what he has called “radical Islamic terrorism” primarily, US policy might avoid focusing its attention on far-right-wing or far-left-wing or other individuals/groups that are also plotting the use of extreme violence—but that do not possess Islamist ideologies (e.g., the Charlottesville attack and the Las Vegas mass shooting). Yet the October 31, 2017, attack in a Lower Manhattan bike path by Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek citizen whom Trump claims had won the green card—but who had ostensibly converted to Islamist extremism only since living in the United States, and who was then praised by the Islamic State for his actions—has permitted Trump to once again go on the attack against violent Islamist movements and immigrants in general, while trying to avoid crucial issues raised by right-wing violence in Charlottesville and by the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
The problem is that the official US government use of the term “radical Islamic terrorism” can be manipulated by militant groups with Islamist ideologies to augment recruitment. This is very problematic because one the major sources of pan-Islamist recruitment is the very high un- and underemployment rate of youth throughout much of the Arab/Islamic world, plus police repression. In addition, these youths are often attracted to militant Islamist movements because Islamists argue that the tremendous Arab oil wealth, which is controlled by the royal families of these countries, which are in turn backed by the United States, European (or Russian) military-industrial complexes, could be better invested in job creation and development of the poorer Arab states. Groups like al-Qaeda and IS oppose not only the United States, Europeans, Russia, China, and Israel but also the Arab Gulf monarchies. (See chapter 8.)
In sum, Trump is doing much too little to unite the country against “hate and evil” in all forms. On the contrary, his anti-Muslim propaganda and perceived sympathy for extreme right-wing movements appear to be helping to spread “hate and evil” and to polarize American society.
THE QUESTION OF IMPEACHMENT
Many of the allegations against Trump discussed in this chapter could be used to impeach him, but the process could prove to be very long and make it even more difficult to pursue US diplomatic initiatives that are truly intended to foster regional and global peace.61 All accusations against him have, of course, been denied by Trump as “fake news - a total political witch hunt.”62
Nevertheless, there appear to be viable grounds for the alleged complicity of a number of Trump's political advisers with Russian officials, but it really depends on what was the precise purpose of those contacts between the Trump team and Moscow. The Trump team has been accused of complicity with Moscow in the effort to find damaging information on Hilary Clinton, with information allegedly provided by Russian intelligence services. There have been further allegations that Trump and/or his associates might have obtained significant stock shares in the Russian government's Rosneft Gas Company (close to Putin) in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Moscow and downplaying the Ukrainian question.63 As previously mentioned, the disclosure of the “Paradise Papers” could open the door to further congressional investigations of alleged Trump administration corruption.
While a number of the previously mentioned charges have not yet been proved, Trump and his associates have engaged in major business deals with Chinese firms—which has also raised ethical and constitutional questions. In March 2017, for example, Chinese officials rapidly approved thirty-eight new Trump trademarks, including branded businesses from hotels to insurance to bodyguard and escort services.64
In May 2017, Trump was additionally accused of allegedly sharing US secrets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In this meeting, Trump was said to have revealed the city in the Islamic State's territory where the US intelligence partner, Israel, had detected the purported IS threat to laptops. This sharing of information, which is the president's prerogative, apparently did not go through the appropriate intelligence channels and was not approved by Israel, which feared that it could expose the source of the information. This action, by itself, did not present a case for Trump's impeachment, but it could be considered a violation of his oath of office, in addition to representing an example of presidential incompetence.65 If it is proven that Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey did represent obstruction of justice, then this could provide at least one basis for impeachment.
If Trump were impeached, or forced to step down by his own cabinet under Article 25 of the US Constitution, Christian conservative Vice President Mike Pence—who is at least partly responsible for Trump's turn toward a more hardline anti-Russian position—could take his place. But these scenarios will take time to carry out and it is not clear that the Republican-controlled Congress wants Trump out yet—at least not until its radical tax-reduction proposals are implemented into law, after the Republicans failed to defeat ObamaCare and implement a new plan.
More likely, Trump will continue to use both external and internal “threats” such as illegal immigrants, Islamist terrorists, and North Korean nuclear weapons testing to deflect criticism aw
ay from the investigation into his affairs with Russia for as long as possible. At the same time, critics of Trump will point to Russia as the predominant “threat.” Not all of these “threats” are imagined, and Russia, along with China, could soon represent a real danger—but only because of the failure of US diplomacy to deal with Russia, China, and other perceived threats more effectively.
THE IMPACT OF DOMESTIC THREATS ON FOREIGN POLICY
In sum, allegations of the Kremlin's influence in the US election process, combined with accusations of “illegal” immigrant votes taking part in the US elections, plus fears of Islamist “terrorist” infiltration into American society, not to overlook Beijing's and Pyongyang's alleged cyber-intrusions, all appear designed to illustrate purported foreign threats to the sacrosanct American democratic process and to the safety and security of American society as a whole. On the one hand, Senator John McCain was not alone in decrying alleged Russian cyber-tampering as an “act of war.” On the other, President Trump himself has made both “illegal” immigration and fears of “Islamic terrorist” infiltration into American society major issues of his presidency—while Trump's public pronouncements have worked to escalate nuclear tensions with Pyongyang.
If steps are taken to impeach Trump, the danger in such a situation is that Trump's presidential decisions that impact both domestic and foreign policy could be made for domestic tactical reasons, to protect Trump himself—and not for any greater national or international purpose that could serve the greater cause of global peace. As events continue to play out under the looming possibility of Trump's impeachment process, any of these foreign “threats” could be manipulated by the president, his cabinet, or Congress in such a way as to start a war, either accidentally or accidentally on purpose, in the effort to divert American popular attention away from domestic controversies that involve the ongoing struggle for power within Washington and with rival states abroad. A major war could break out—particularly if a rival or anti-state organization engages in something, correctly or incorrectly, interpreted by Washington to represent an action hostile to US interests.
