By Nicholas Spyridon Kass

Wednesday Nov. 13, 2024

Editor’s note: Even though President-elect Donald Trump made the greatest political comeback in American history, the Deep State, though wounded, remains active. There were news reports of Pentagon meetings of officials deciding how to respond to the incoming president’s orders.  And that’s why we asked Nicholas S. Kass, longtime American intelligence and diplomatic official—and America’s foremost expert on the Deep State here and in Türkiye—to join me and co-host Jeff Carlin on the Chicago Way podcast. We talked about the Deep State as the dangerous nut that must be cracked if we are to keep the republic.

I’ve included the podcast link above.

On the Chicago Way, I mentioned I wanted to republish a column Nick had written before the election: The American Deep State Through “Foreign” Eyes

Here is that column, originally posted in August after the Obama/Pelosi coup forced President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. It was written in the form of a Swiftian “memo” to the leader of some fictitious country, from his fictitious Ambassador to the United States. It offers a generalized “foreign” view of the political situation in America following President Biden’s withdrawal of his candidacy for the 2024 elections. The rest is history.

JK

MEMORANDUM

To: His Majesty the Prince of Nerastia

From: H.E. Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary of Nerastia to the United States of America

Subject: Political Instability in the United States: Implications for Nerastian Interests

KEY POINTS

The current moment in Washington presents a potentially acute challenge to Nerastia’s strategic interests.

The so-called “Post-Modern Coup d’Etat of 2024” has suddenly forced the long-incapacitated President Biden to withdraw from the presidential election scheduled for November.  In the process, it is creating opportunities for the coupists to orchestrate the emergence of a more vigorous successor.   This person—likely Vice President Kamala Harris—will be chosen primarily based on loyalty to the Washington bureaucratic-political-oligarchic establishment, and to its neo-liberal foreign and social policy pretensions.

On the one hand, in some ways, a general continuity and predictability in US policy would be good for Nerastia.  On the other, the deteriorating security situation in our wider region, continuing economic challenges, and the often tone-deaf neo-liberal embrace and advocacy of social issues deemed alien and destabilizing by key constituencies in Nerastia and some other countries, makes it clear that course corrections would be beneficial.

Either way, as a nation committed to democracy, with painful experience of totalitarianism shared with many countries across a vast region of Europe and elsewhere, Nerastia cannot and ought not rely, or be seen as relying, on Washington’s pro-coup elements to maintain the US policy status quo.  In this context we should be mindful that in the US, the problem of what is increasingly seen as a rogue administrative/Deep State” apparatus, which has come to dominate US policymaking, has become a key election issue.

Under the circumstances, our goal should be to maintain cordial relations with the establishment, while anticipating and mastering the new political grammar of the possible next administration as a hedge against change.

We should take confidence from the fact that a hard-headed, realistic analysis of the situation in our region bodes well for the continued strength of the Transatlantic ties that are vital to our national interests.

 

DISCUSSION

The eclipse of Biden in what some commentators are describing as the “Post-Modern Coup” has demonstrated yet again the political ruthlessness and brutality of the establishment/Democrat Party/Deep State apparatus.  It also highlights the ability of Biden’s reputed “friend,” former President Obama—who according to local media led the coup—to orchestrate operations behind the scenes of formal political life. The coup forced Biden on 21 July officially to withdraw from the November presidential election, left him deeply and publicly humiliated and effectively ended his presidency in all but name.  We can anticipate more of such operations in the run-up to the elections.

In fact, the success of this coup comes against a backdrop of the US Deep State’s increasing operational tempo over the past decade, particularly regarding what some commentators refer to as the ongoing “coup process” targeting former President Trump, who is once again the Republican Party candidate and the leader in the public opinion surveys.

As you know well, the anti-Trump coup process was launched by then President Obama in 2016, carried forth by the Deep State’s “resistance” against President Trump over the entire course of his tenure, via media-bureaucratic information operations, politicized investigations, and the like.

Ironically, prior to his own victimization, Biden himself was an enthusiastic supporter of the mop-up phase of the anti-Trump operation, including what is known in the new American idiom as “lawfare.”  The purpose of these politicized lawfare operations is twofold.  First, they intend to jail Trump for life, ruin him financially, and prevent his returning to office in the election. Secondly, they aim to intimidate, hamstring, and domesticate a Republican Party and electorate that is setting a populist course and challenging the equities of the neo-liberal establishment and Deep State.

Again, such processes are all too familiar to us and to our neighbors, and we know all too well where the consolidation of such a methodology may lead.  In their totality, this new American penchant for domestic coups bears an uncanny, pronounced, and by now well-documented resemblance to the situation that obtained for many decades in Turkey, which until relatively recently was dominated by the corrupt, nominally democratic, secularist-authoritarian Kemalist regime. Indeed, the term “Deep State” originates from the Turkey of that era.

 

OUTLOOK

For now, the US administrative apparatus/Deep State continues to control security policymaking in diverse areas, often despite the preferences of elected civilians. It is likely to take steps in the run-up to November, as it did before the 2020 election, to perpetuate its dominance—and thereafter, especially if Trump wins.

If past practice is any guide, these may include media manipulation/suppression of information critical of preferred candidate(s), information operations in support of Deep State political equities, threat inflation to promote public fear and override formal checks on administrative power in the name of “national security,” resort to the investigatory apparatus to generate faits accompli against uncooperative political leaders as voters go to the polls, mass demonstrations, and street violence.

The fact is, however, that despite its successes the Deep State has some vulnerabilities as well.  First, its penchant for a “for the people, in spite of the people” approach, so redolent of secularist Kemalism/fascism, completely undercuts the establishment’s central message: that it is fighting to defend “democracy” against the “authoritarianism” of Trump and his supporters at home, and against a cast of allegedly similarly minded miscreants abroad.

This narrative will be increasingly difficult to sustain in the wake of Biden’s political demise, which ultimately came amid reports of clear private threats delivered personally to him by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an erstwhile ally and skilled political operator in her own right. Shortly before then, Biden himself made public via select media mouthpieces his concerns about party “elites”—meaning, Obama and his circle—seeking his overthrow, which is likely to linger beneath the surface of the party’s intramural politics.

Second, although coup creates opportunities to install a younger and more capable candidate, the interplay of ideological peculiarities and concrete interests among pro-coup Democrats suggest that, at least for the moment, the party is consolidating behind Vice President Kamala Harris.  Currently Harris is getting a de facto makeover by corporate media organs, which have grown accustomed to cooperating with the Deep State particularly over the course of the previous coups.

Nevertheless, until now, Harris has been widely regarded as an unserious political lightweight uninterested in mastering policy briefs, less popular even than Biden, and a notoriously poor manager with few leadership skills. Her ascendancy suggests to many that she would be president in name only.

Other candidates may surface before the Democrats formally nominate Biden’s successor at the party’s convention in Chicago next month, but it is highly unlikely; the Democratic party machinery appears to have orchestrated Harris’ rise in record time.  However, the fact that many of the putatively more serious potential candidates are formally supporting Harris suggests that they do not now see the benefit of seeking the 2024 nomination as outweighing the potential costs to their longer-term prospects, and prefer to wait for potentially more favourable conditions in 2028.

Lastly, the recent assassination attempt against Trump has shocked the electorate and upset the political playbook in an election where Democrats hoped their candidate would have a decisive lead on what Americans call the “character issue.” Trump’s recent lawfare convictions seem to be having the unintended effect of rallying, rather than demoralizing, Trump voters, who clearly see him as victim of a politicized charade.  Moreover, Trump’s demonstration of defiance and bravery under the would-be assassin’s bullets has underscored his reputation for toughness at a moment when Americans, confronting growing insecurities at home and abroad and losing faith in institutional Washington, are looking for tough leaders.

 

NEXT STEPS

Above all, we should understand that the handwriting may well be on the wall and begin now to develop policies that correspond to the emerging realities in Washington, rather than waiting until after the fact.

Despite the persistence and growth of the Deep State in recent years, the US Constitution and its balance-of-powers approach continues to serve to some extent as a check on unaccountable administrative power here, as reflected in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Chevron case and others (something, I humbly submit, is worth our attention, given our own struggles with unresponsive, often out-of-control bureaucracies, to say no more here).

This suggests that what is sometimes called “Big Washington”—the amalgam of bureaucratic and political classes in which normal citizens and democratic processes play little to no role—could be in for some big changes down the road, both at home and indeed in the foreign policy realm.

Moreover, the changes could reflect the growing expectation in the US that European states will begin to take more seriously their commitment to the common defence.  This would include eventually a dramatically larger share of the associated financial burdens and a renewed focus on a defensive strategy to protect the existing membership of NATO, rather than using the Alliance to project power and extend neo-liberalism abroad.

It is true that pressure to spend more on Nerastia’s defence would mean pressure to divert money from social welfare spending that has long been key to maintaining stability at home.  On the strategic level, however, the logic for such a policy shift is self-evident.

But even aside from financial considerations, it is by now clear that the current approach, promoting NATO operations out-of-area in places like Ukraine, undermines NATO solidarity and security by setting the stage for perpetual conflict with Russia that could bring war closer to our frontiers, and thereby threaten the vital national interests of Nerastia and other sovereign states in the region.

At present, the coups and other events in the United States have revealed some alarming weaknesses, and in fact pose great danger to the American republic. It would be far better for Nerastia to partner with an America strengthened, stabilized and reinvigorated by a renewed commitment to its extraordinary political traditions, and grounded in concrete realities rather than ideological fantasies.

To that end, we should prepare now.

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Nicholas Spyridon Kass is Senior Fellow for European Affairs at the Center for the National Interest.  He served in the U.S. Government for 31 years, retiring on January 20, 2021. Most recently he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Director for European Affairs (twice) and Director for Intelligence Programs at the White House/National Security Council, and Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Europe at the National Intelligence Council. A Turkish and Kurdish speaker, for many years he was at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. He also served at the Central Intelligence Agency, including as Intelligence Briefer to the Director of Central Intelligence, and was awarded for unique contributions to the CIA HUMINT mission. Now in the private sector, he is Executive Director for International Corporate Affairs at the Nawaf Salameh Family Office, headquartered near Bucharest, Romania. He can be found on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.