Why the British Fear an “American Reflex” under Trump

The level of panic among operatives of the City of London/British intelligence is reflected in an op-ed by Bronwen Maddox, the Director and CEO of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), published in the Financial Times on Aug. 30. Under the headline “U.S. Allies Need to Wake Up to the Trump Question,” it points to the threat posed to European interests by polls showing Donald Trump as the front-runner for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. This support, in her view, “should prompt a foreign policy rethink for the U.K. and its allies”.

She explains: “British foreign policy, like that in much of Europe and many democracies beyond, is based on the presumption that the U.S. in some sense always remains the same. Its presidents, its policies, its wars of choice come and go. But America upholds the principle of international institutions even if it rails against some of them or funds them sporadically. It continues to pick up the giant’s share of the tab for NATO, above all. Those assumptions are confounded if Donald Trump is elected again.”

In the event of a second term, Ms. Maddox asserts, Trump “would have an utterly different conception of America’s role in the world and the nature of its democracy at home, of the rule of law at home and abroad. And so would the U.S. voters who elected him.”

This shows what the imperial elites of London truly fear, that a different conception of America’s role, i.e., no more business as usual, is a threat to the continued dominance of the “unipolar order”, which the U.K. and NATO depend on. It implies an end of U.S. support for the Ukraine war, as well as for regime change coups against nations rejecting the demands of that unipolar order, etc. Lyndon LaRouche once referred to this as an “American reflex”, which has served as a rallying point for U.S. Presidents in the past to steer foreign policy away from supporting the interests of the Anglo-American oligarchy.

As for Donald Trump himself, while he appears to many European elites as a problem, for being unpredictable, uncontrollable, even a patsy for Vladimir Putin, during his four years as president he fell far short of his pledge to “drain the swamp” of U.S. politics, i.e. to shut down the permanent bureaucracy some call the Deep State. This shadow government coordinates closely with the British establishment, as can be seen in the role of British intelligence networks behind the scenes in shaping “Russiagate”, a perfect example being the role of former MI6 operative Christopher Steele in providing the documents falsely portraying Trump as a blackmail victim of Putin.

But now, with the nations of the Global South no longer tolerating foreign, neocolonial intervention in elections and government policies, will the American reflex take over again? If African nations are adopting the anti-colonial posture once associated with the American Revolution, can the U.S. population be far behind?

For Bronwen Maddox and the RIIA, the American reflex is clearly a threat to the current world order, and must be smothered. It is useful to recall the importance of the RIIA, which was set up in 1920, after World War I, as the leading foreign policy/intelligence operation of His Majesty’s government, and continues in that role today.