Donald Trump, the newly elected and former US President, has received a strong mandate for peace from the American voters. However, it remains to be seen whether he can push through this agenda against the neoconservative war hawks in both parties. This depends, among other things, on whether the people he has nominated for key positions in his administration, such as Pete Hegseth for the Defense Ministry or Tulsi Gabbard as “Director of National Intelligence (DNI)”, can withstand the hearings in the US Congress (Senate and House of Representatives).
As DNI, Gabbard would oversee the 17 US intelligence agencies, the heart of the “Deep State” in the USA. Immediately after her nomination for the position, a smear campaign against her began in the mainstream media, fed and supported by the war profiteers and the services. There, one can read, citing “current and former intelligence agency employees”, that Gabbard lacks experience in intelligence, as a former Congress member and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, she may have military experience, but not a deep background in the field of intelligence, which is “unavoidable to understand the great variety of intelligence information, from which a picture of current or future threats is assembled”.
Gabbard is also accused of her Russia-friendly public statements undermining the ability of the United States to receive information from allies and partners. In another article, Defense one, Gabbard is already described as “extraordinarily dangerous” for US intelligence agencies.
On Tuesday of this week, the hearings in Congress began. Initial reports in the mainstream media speak of Gabbard’s “difficulties with details”, so that even some Republican senators have “concerns about her qualifications to lead the US intelligence community”, according to the Wall Street Journal the same evening.
As for these details, Gabbard “could not clearly articulate what the role of the Director of National Intelligence entails” and “seemed confused about a key aspect of US national security, namely Section 702 of the surveillance law”, citing the Wall Street Journal two Republican Senate staff members.
With such laughable details, even non-elected staff of Republican senators are trying to make public opinion against Gabbard. The Republican senators themselves, however, seem to be holding back, and a good reason for this is the person of Elon Musk. The Wall Street Journal barely veiled this when it asked a rhetorical question: “But will this play a role for the Republicans?” – and even gave the answer, namely: “The Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate, and a majority is all that is needed to advance Gabbard’s nomination. Moreover, Elon Musk has already announced his intention to initiate primary elections against Republican senators who stand against Trump’s nominations.”
In other words: Trump’s own party, the Republicans, has a majority, but among the Republican representatives, there are many who are deeply entrenched in the pockets of the war profiteers of the Deep State and therefore will not support Trump’s plans to radically reduce the global engagement of the US military. However, Elon Musk has already unambiguously let the Republican representatives know that he will “politicize” every one of them who votes against Trump in important matters, which currently applies to Trump’s personnel nominations for his cabinet.
At the hearings on Tuesday, the calculation of Musk already seemed to have shown its effect. There was no open rejection of Gabbard, although she, like Musk, is a strong opponent of these services. Musk and Gabbard have, for example, made no secret of the fact that they would like to see the CIA on the scrapheap of history as soon as possible. This had already led to strong outbursts of discontent among Republican congressmen.
At Gabbard’s hearing on Tuesday, there were only a few mildly critical remarks from Republican senators. The warning of the richest man in the world, who not only owns 400 billion dollars but also has the most powerful man in the Western world, the new US President Trump, behind him, seems to have had a disciplining effect on the Republican congressmen.
This could be a favorable sign for Trump’s intentions to end the conflict in Ukraine without the “war party” in Washington being able to mobilize sufficient forces to stop the peace. In favor of Trump’s plans is that the US and NATO war hawks and their allies in the EU have not achieved their goal in Ukraine, namely to bring Russia a strategic defeat. From this goal, the US and NATO war hawks are today further away than ever. For Ukraine, the situation on the battlefield and in civil society is catastrophic. And if one already speaks of a strategic defeat, then it is the Western war hawks who have been dealt a strategic defeat by Russia.
A “business as usual” like before is no longer possible for the US and NATO due to material and financial constraints, especially as the economic outlook in the West is anything but good. This narrows the argumentative basis of the US and NATO war hawks, that with a bit more military aid, the victory of Ukraine is just around the corner. This could open the door for Trump to a possible normalization of relations between the US and Russia and allow the new Trump administration to withdraw from the disastrous Ukraine adventure of its predecessor without losing face. For this, Trump has strong arguments, for example:
“This is not my war, I was against it from the beginning. What is happening in Ukraine with the people is a catastrophe. Ukraine has already lost the war, and any further help for Selenskyj means that even more of his soldiers will be driven senselessly to their deaths. This is criminal, and we will not support it with a single US dollar of tax money.