The Tribune

with CHARLIE HARPER

The latest US government shutdown started yesterday at midnight. Generally, if it doesn’t last too long, these events don’t affect us in The Bahamas very much if at all. They don’t even affect most Americans in their everyday lives too much either. When US voters do begin to feel the effects and register their dissatisfaction, the Congress in Washington usually wakes up and figures out how to restore the government with all its imperfections and inefficiencies.

Most of these shutdowns are blatant publicity grabs by greedy politicians who imagine that their grandstanding will impress their casually engaged constituents back home. We will see if the current shutdown is different from its predecessors.

Among the more visible US agencies, this particular shutdown has sidelined up to 89 percent of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency but only five percent at the Department of Homeland Security, which is of course home to US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE). The State Department is experiencing a 62 percent layoff rate, but American embassies and consulates abroad, including ours in Nassau, are expected to operate as usual, and visa and passport operations are proceeding normally. Air traffic controllers are on the job at American airports, though as in previous shutdowns many are working at reduced or no pay. They will be expecting reimbursement when the shutdown ends.

The American Department of Defense is suffering a 45 percent layoff rate among its civilian, mainly US-based workforce. The US military is deemed essential to national security and remains on the job with unreduced pay and benefits.

Which brings us to the biggest story of this week, notwithstanding the headlines about the government shutdown. The biggest story is the continuing attempt by the current American administration to alter the orientation and perhaps the mission of the US military.

As the continuing shock and awe of this second, more intentional Trump administration continues to sink into the American consciousness, a clear majority in the US disapproves of the president’s tactics and manners while more subtly reinforcing his belief that in many areas, voters agree with him.

Most Americans still cannot fathom the craven acquiescence of Congress and the Supreme Court in Trump’s persistent and effective efforts to strip from them much of their oversight powers over his executive branch of the government. But as those same Americans bristle at and increasingly fear Trump’s efforts, most still believe in the ultimate firewall against an overzealous president – the American military.

As one pundit remarked much earlier this year as the Republican/conservative blueprint laid out in the scary Project 2025 emerged as precisely the script for a second Trump administration, “we will always have our professional military as a bulwark against the autocratic tendencies of this or any other president.”

Really? On Tuesday on the grounds of the sprawling US Marine base in Quantico, Virginia about an hour south of Washington, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump both addressed an unprecedented assembly of around 800 US generals and admirals who had been ordered to attend from their posts in America and from all over the world.

To many, the fate of American democracy still rested in their hands. News film and reports from the meeting showed the military leaders watching Hegseth and Trump impassively as their leaders delivered remarks better suited for a political campaign rally than such an impressive gathering of military professionals.

At one point in his typically rambling remarks, Trump noted the lack of response from his audience. “You can agree with me or disagree with me,” he told the gathering. “But if you get up and walk out, that would have consequences for your career and future.”

That epitomises the president’s approach to government civilian and military employees alike. He clearly thinks that government employees should give their allegiance to him, as the elected head of their government. They should accept his often-iconoclastic views on the traditions of his current office. They should join in his retribution toward political foes and personal enemies. They should embrace his traditional Republican view that the federal government is too big and too little responsive to conservative leadership in the White House.

Failure to comply should result in dismissal, in Trump’s view. While most US presidents doubtless have shared this view at least episodically, none since Richard Nixon has acted on their impulses as has the current chief executive.

It has long been an open secret in Washington that for ambitious military officers in the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard or Marines, the surest path to future promotions lies in distinguished combat service or, in failing that opportunity in peacetime, the cultivation of warm personal relationships with key officials in the White House, on Capitol Hill, or in the more shadowy halls of the Departments of State, Treasury, Justice and Defense, and in the Central Intelligence Agency.

This makes sense. Rising military officers increasingly need to develop and show political skills, whether in developing key contacts overseas in allied (or even adversarial) militaries, or domestically in other key related federal national security agencies. Logically, as the next generation of national security leaders emerges in the executive branch, in the US Senate and in key federal agencies, relationships will exist that promote valuable and swift decision-making in the American national interest.

Trump & Company are seeking to alter that calculus. They are seeking to require allegiance to him and to his administration allies, judging that to be the highest obligation for government and military employees.

From Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the continuing machinations of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought, the current American administration is championing the notion that cutting positions, staff and programs from the federal government is a cherished and meritorious goal. The US government is the largest single employer in the country, with a workforce estimated at three million, including active-duty military personnel.

Meantime, the Trump administration is ramping up its military offensive and general bellicosity against drug trafficking in the Caribbean. Hegseth has travelled to Puerto Rico recently in a previously unpublicised visit, and the Pentagon is considering using Puerto Rico as part of its operations. This comes after American military planes have destroyed several Venezuelan small boats at sea that the US administration said were smuggling drugs from Venezuela. Over a dozen people have been killed in these attacks, and Trump has suggested that more are planned.

Hegseth has used warlike language to describe the Pentagon’s role in combating drug trafficking, a crime usually handled by civilian law enforcement such as the DEA. According to published reports, at least eight US warships have been reassigned to the Caribbean as part of an “enhanced counter narcotics operation” in a move the Venezuelan government called a provocation.

US relations with the Maduro regime in Venezuela continue to deteriorate. In Washington, Maduro is viewed as far too cosy with regional leftist governments in Cuba and Nicaragua and with some of America’s most potent overseas rivals including China, Russia and Iran. Maduro’s reelection last year is scoffed at as illegitimate, and rumours persist of clandestine US efforts to topple his government.

Additionally, for the first time in three decades, American relations with neighbouring Colombia have also deteriorated. Colombian president Gustavo Petro actively participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York during the recent UN general assembly, and the US revoked his visa in retaliation. The Colombian foreign minister just voluntarily renounced her US visa to support her president and prolong this diplomatic tit-for-tat. Petro has also denounced the US military attacks on the Venezuelan boats.

Still more significantly, for the first time since 1997 the US has ‘decertified’ Colombia for insufficiently working to suppress its cocaine production and drug trade. While this action is largely symbolic, it certainly indicates worsened bilateral relations. In that connection, Colombian elections are due next year. There have been several reports that Petro’s belligerency toward the US is designed to aid his party’s political prospects in those elections.

And meanwhile, as the US military’s role changes overseas, Trump’s deployment of National Guard units to American cities led by Democratic mayors continues, most recently in Portland, Oregon. Trump sees such actions as underscoring his law-and-order credentials while weakening political opponents. But it’s also further altering the role of the US military, with unforeseeable consequences.