Just as the general election is the dominant news in Britain, in the US it is the impeachment investigation of President Trump. Impeachment is the process of bringing charges (‘articles of impeachment’) against the president of the United States. If the House of Representatives approves articles of impeachment, then the Senate can try the president. If convicted he will be removed. Such is the excitement that the liberal TV news channels are carrying the investigation live, while social media is buzzing with news, views, gossip and rumours. Nothing it seems – at least to liberals – is so important. ‘At last’, the mood seems to be, ‘we’ve got him’. But what, really, is this impeachment attempt all about? What is its significance?
Trump is responsible for breaking up immigrant families, interning 70,000 of their children in appalling conditions, encouraging racism and right-wing terrorism, increasing pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases, supporting the aggressive expansion of Zionist settlements in Palestine, telling lies on an industrial scale, urging violence against political opponents – the list of crimes is endless. And what do the Democrats want to hold him to account for? For allegedly trying to pressure Ukrainian leaders into providing political dirt on former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son which could be used against candidate Biden in the president’s re-election campaign in 2020.
Witnesses have given evidence under oath which seems to support this: Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the EU, reversed earlier closed-door testimony to confirm that there was a deal offered – military aid would not be suspended if the Ukrainian president could dig up and publicise some dirt on the Bidens. Sondland went on to drag other administration officials into the spotlight: Vice-President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the acting White House Chief of Staff were either involved in the pressure campaign or aware of it. Subsequently, a Defense Department official, Laura Cooper, testified that Ukrainian officials may have known as early as July that the $391m package of security assistance was being withheld by the Trump administration. This contradicted Republican allegations that they only became aware when the delay became public in August.
The following day it was the turn of David Holmes, a political counsellor at the US Embassy in Ukraine, and Dr Fiona Hill, former White House expert on Europe and Russia, both career diplomats, to testify. They both described how the priority of US diplomats was switched from focusing on implementing US imperialist policy to pursuing the domestic political priorities of Trump’s re-election bid. It is this diversion that enrages the Democrats.
Although there are plenty of further potential witnesses who could testify, many of them have not, despite requests to the White House. However, the Intelligence Committee already has enough material to report back to Congress that there are grounds for impeachment. Fighting White House obstruction through the courts to get access to these witnesses would simply delay proceedings without altering the Committee’s report materially. The report will then go to the House which will decide whether to impeach the president and try him.
Ruling class media has blatantly ignored that for the Democrats to start discussing possible Ukrainian interference in US elections is breath-taking hypocrisy. It was, after all, the US Democratic Obama administration which far exceeded what Trump appears to have been up to, going way beyond election meddling to stage an actual coup d’état in Ukraine in early 2014! (see FRFI 238) The then US Vice-President, Joe Biden was responsible for the operation and his son, Hunter Biden, was added to the Board of Directors of Ukraine’s largest energy producer, Burisma, receiving $50,000 per month. The Democrats may come to regret their zeal, for Republicans have been quick to point out such instances of apparent corruption. Even some liberal journalists have been forced to start investigating the Bidens.
Clearly there are risks to the Democrats from their pursuit of Trump over the Bidens. The important point is that impeachment does not change the system, but just reshuffles personnel. According to the US Constitution, on conviction, the president leaves office and the vice-president replaces them. Important sections of the imperialist state machine are unhappy with the antics of President Trump: leaving their former Kurdish allies to face the Turkish invasion of their territory alone; his erratic decision-making; his sudden reversals in policy; his failure to understand basic aspects of imperialist strategy, such as the role of foreign aid; the denigration of the intelligence services and so on. There can be little doubt that they would be happy to see Trump replaced by someone with a better understanding of how to practice imperialist aggression and oppression in a more effective and strategic way instead of staggering from one Trump-created crisis to the next. It’s quite possible that a President Mike Pence might be a more balanced and effective imperialist – but the Democrats seem to have forgotten that, as a born-again creationist and anti-abortionist, he would be yet another reactionary fanatic in the White House.
The Democrats confine themselves to fighting via the ballot box and the courts. They see themselves, at least in part, in competition with Trump for the votes of the white working class. The Democrat establishment is terrified of radicalism, so even the slightly pink-tinged candidacies of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are seen as dangerously socialistic vote-losers. Hence the attraction of ex-Veep Joe Biden: he’s reliably ‘centre of the road’ (ie solidly pro-imperialist) and considered appealing to Middle America. Any discussion of his creepy behaviour toward some women and his record of opposition to bussing (a desegregation measure meant to balance the racial composition of schools) has been shut down by leading Democrats.
The entire impeachment process is utterly quixotic. If Trump is sent for trial to the Senate, the Republicans have a majority there and Democrats won’t be able to muster the two-thirds vote required for a conviction. This pointless exercise is designed to create a noisy and distracting circus show in Congress in the run-up to the autumn elections, as well as providing some air cover for Biden’s candidacy.
Quite how these antics are going to play out in the coming weeks is difficult to tell, but the Democrats have to make the effort to pretend that they’re engaged in some serious opposition to Trump. The only really effective opposition, however, is by massive protests against the entire fascistic programme of this administration. It is precisely this popular mobilisation that the Democrats are trying to head off. Be prepared for more, loudly trumpeted, ‘shocking revelations’ to distract the US people from organising and mobilising to defend themselves from the reactionary onslaught of the Trump regime.
Addendum, 30 December 2019:
Following publication of this article in our newspaper, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump. The charge had no relation to the vicious attacks on the US people made by his racist, misogynist, climate-change-denying administration, nor on immigrants and refugees attempting to enter the United States, nor its criminal support for the state of Israel and its attacks on the Palestinian people. No. Trump is charged with endangering the interests of US imperialism by putting the needs of his 2020 re-election campaign ahead of those of US imperialist strategy against Russia. It utterly ignores every reactionary policy, indicting him for not being reactionary enough! The Democrats, by this pathetic and pointless congressional manoeuvre, by their refusal to mount an aggressive popular mobilisation of the people outside the walls of Congress, are effectively collaborators with Trump in his orgy of reaction. They have paraded a wide variety of imperialist functionaries from the diplomatic corps and the military, praising their loyalty, integrity and honesty in putting the long-term strategic interests of US imperialism ahead of Trump’s erratic manoeuvres. Impeachment itself is going nowhere. The Republicans, who control the Senate where Trump would be put on trial, have made clear that there is zero chance of them convicting him. This was clear from well before the impeachment proceedings began. Like the Grand Old Duke of York, the Democrats have marched their troops to the top of Capitol Hill, and will now, ignominiously, have to march them down again. Meanwhile, Trump is left unfettered by Democrat antics, to incinerate all of the feeble legal rights and protections which may be enjoyed by US working people.
Steve Palmer
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 273, December 2019/January 2020
