Karmic forces at work?

Saturday 14th November, 2020

The transition tussle in Washington has taken a turn for the worse; it has reached the Pentagon and is said to be fraught with the danger of adversely impacting the US national security. As if the tug-of-war between the Republicans and the Democrats at the White House were not enough, President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly been denied access to intelligence briefings. Classified material concerning national security is traditionally made accessible to the US President-elect, but Trump is no respecter of traditions or norms.

The US has made enough and more external enemies who are on the look out for the slightest opportunity to carry out attacks. Among them are elusive terrorist outfits believed to have established sleeper cells on US soil. Hence the need for the outgoing President to hand over the baton of national security to his successor within the change-over zone, which is between the declaration of the winner of a presidential election and the inauguration of the new President. Making matters worse, Trump has smoked out several key Pentagon officials and Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

National security is the be-all and end-all of any state, big or small. We have experienced the adverse consequences of political interference with the national security apparatus firsthand, not once but twice. In the early noughties, a change of government led to the upending of the defence establishment and a witch-hunt against state-intelligence officers, whose identities were revealed and gunned down by the LTTE. A similar situation arose following the 2015 regime change, and more than 250 people perished in terrorist bombings last year due to the debilitation of the state intelligence agencies.

President Trump seems to have taken a leaf out of President Maithripala Sirisena’s book; Sirisena prevented the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary, the IGP and others from attending the National Security Council meetings. Sirisena made a mess of national security and rendered the country extremely vulnerable.

Months before the presidential election, Trump complained of what he called sinister moves to rig the polls, and warned that he would not accept defeat. The Democrats may not have expected him to claim victory falsely, refuse to concede defeat and try to scuttle the transition process. They have, therefore, brought a knife to a gun battle, as some political observers have rightly pointed out. Biden has sought to pour oil on troubled waters; he has said he does not need classified briefings at this juncture, and the situation will improve within the next few days, but what is happening at the Pentagon and the White House leaves little room for such optimism.

Critics of Trump claim that the GOP’s resistance is beginning to crack, but Trump has not shown any sign of buckling under pressure. He is a worried man, but he does not seem to have given up hope.

The spring of hope the US expected to dawn after the presidential election amidst a pandemic has turned out to be a winter of despair owing to an unexpected turn of events. As cynics have said via social media, it has now become much easier for the US to change Presidents in other countries than at home. The US has helped many Presidents cling on to power in the face of electoral defeats and popular protests, in other parts of the world, and also had popularly elected Presidents ousted in some countries. Have the chickens come home to roost?

It looks as if the need had arisen for engineering something similar to the Arab Spring, in Washington, to oust Trump and straighten up the transition process.