Is The U.S. Being Transformed Into A Parliamentary System?

Former President Trump released a statement on August 22 saying, "It is time for Joe Biden to resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen in Afghanistan." Trump is trying to distance himself from the deal he made with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops, negotiated directly by his Secretary of State Pompeo and signed in February 2020. Trump intended to finalize the deal by bringing Taliban officials to Camp David, but backed away from that when the "optics" of such an event were met with sharp criticism. However, ending the "endless wars", which included withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, had been a consistent theme for Trump, even though he was unable to use his position of Commander-in-Chief to accomplish it, due to enormous opposition from the War Hawks of both parties. Others calling for Biden's resignation are former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri -- both of whom are considered possible presidential candidates in 2024 -- and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn. Joining them is Rep. Liz Cheney, who emerged as the leading anti-Trump Republican in Congress, voting in favor of his impeachment in January 2021, and is the daughter of one of the key sponsors of the "endless wars", former Vice President Dick Cheney.

While representatives of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex are heaping abuse on Biden, an even more virulent attack has come from the United Kingdom and NATO, led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Unapologetic over his responsibility for promoting the wars, under the imperial doctrine of the "Responsibility to Protect", Blair used the withdrawal from Afghanistan to launch an attack on the American political system and population, not just on Biden. "We didn't need to do it," he wrote. "We choose to do it. We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars'." The decision to leave, he continued, was not driven by "grand strategy, but by politics." He asks, "Has the West lost its strategic will?...If the West wants to shape the twenty-first century it will take commitment."

Blair is referring to the commitment of the British Empire, a "commitment" demonstrated by its willingness to go to war, and to induce others to fight wars which it instigated, since the 18th century. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is especially bitter for apologists for Britain's "Great Game", the contest over control of Afghanistan which dates back to the mid-19th century, and was the model for Zbigniew Brzezinki's "Arc of Crisis" doctrine, which first brought the U.S. into Afghanistan's civil war beginning in July 1979, months before the Soviet invasion at the end of that year. The damage is compounded by Biden's rejection of the gang-up against him, at the G7 meeting called by Boris Johnson, to convince Biden the U.S. must remain in Afghanistan. Blair commented that Biden's rejection of the British demand poses the risk that the U.K. will be relegated "to the second division of global powers." This theme was reiterated by numerous British commentators, typified by Andrew Rawnsley, who wrote in the {Observer} that "Mr Johnson's capacity to influence Mr Biden was less than that of the President's dog." Rawnsley made clear why this decision was such a blow to imperial Britain, which is accustomed to deploying American military strength to back up British global policy, stating that the U.K. has "lots of vital interests around the globe, but not the means to safeguard them by itself" -- thus, the shock and rage which has greeted Biden's betrayal of "Global Britain".

The Issue Is The U.S. "Presidential System"

The deeper, underlying issue exposed by this outburst of impotent rage is the long-term British project to transform the U.S. from a "Presidential system," in which the president is mandated to defend the "General Welfare", above partisan and special interests, into a "Parliamentary system", in which the president is captive to special interests, represented by political parties which serve global corporate cartels -- especially those aligned with British imperial interests. The British have intervened repeatedly in U.S. politics, usually through their allies among Wall Street financial interests, to undermine this unique feature of the American system, including the empire's support of the Confederacy against Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War, and its role in coordinating assassinations of American system leaders, beginning with Alexander Hamilton, and including Lincoln, McKinley and Kennedy. Today, they have added scandal mongering, run by intelligence agencies through media cartels, to their tools for destabilizing governments, scandals which are completely fabricated, as in the case of Russiagate against Trump.

It was British networks which played a leading role in the regime change coup against President Trump. Trump was impeached twice after his election in 2016. Though he was not convicted and therefore not removed from office, his ability to conduct the business of the Executive branch on behalf of the American people -- the most important responsibility of the President -- was drastically reduced by the charges that he was not legitimately elected, but placed in office by "meddling" by Russia's President Putin. In particular, Trump's attempt to transform the U.S. relationship with Russia, to achieve one of collaboration between the two most powerful nations militarily, rather than one dominated by geopolitical confrontation, was the target of "Russiagate", which severely limited his capacity to affect that transformation.

American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche spoke extensively about the crucial importance of this feature of the American system. For LaRouche, the question of the Presidential system is directly related to the ability of the Executive branch to run the economy as a "credit system", in which credit is issued by the government, and that credit can be monetized, and then money issued as currency. Unlike the leader in a parliamentary system, the President is elected by the people, with his position as head of the Executive branch separate from the Congress, and serves at the behest of the people, and is not beholden to the whims of the legislative branch or the parties, which can be influenced by powerful private influences. In the British parliamentary system, Prime Ministers can be brought down by revolts by their party members.

Under the Hamiltonian credit system, and the operation of a National Bank, with credit directed to improvements in physical production and development of new platforms of infrastructure, the U.S. emerged under the Founding Fathers, and later under the direction of Presidents Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who developed credit systems under their authority, as the most powerful physical economy on earth. The victory of the American colonies in its war of independence established the U.S. as the leading anti-colonial power in the world. Following the defeat of the British army in 1783, to the anti-colonial stance of Franklin Roosevelt against Churchill during World War II, which continued under Eisenhower and Kennedy, leading elements of the City of London shifted from a military strategy to instead forge alliances with American financial and corporate oligarchs, to undermine the American system. The assassination of Kennedy, and the 1971 decision by Nixon to end the fixed-exchange rate Bretton Woods system -- under pressure directly from the U.K., and British monetarist economists in his cabinet, such as George Shultz and Paul Volcker -- combined with liberalization of corporate campaign funding of U.S. election campaigns, further undermined the authority of the Presidency to act against special interests, to defend the nation from geopolitical adventures and neoliberal economic policies.

LaRouche repeatedly stated that it was the prospect of a return to the Presidential system, under his direction, with a commitment to a credit system rather than an imperial monetary system, which drove the City of London and its allies in the U.S. into a murderous rage against him. It was the prospect that Trump could be induced to junk the monetary system of the City, Wall Street and the U.S. Federal Reserve, and move toward LaRouche's policies, which was behind Russiagate, as there was never a shred of evidence of Trump "collusion" with Putin. Instead, pro-British neoliberal networks inside the Trump administration worked with members of both U.S. parties to reduce the power of the elected Executive, while simultaneously undermining the sanctity of the U.S. electoral system.

A leading figure in the effort to turn the U.S. into a British-style parliamentary system was William Yandell Elliott, who wrote a tract, "The Need for Constitutional Reform" in 1935, in which he presented a plan to replace the U.S. Constitutional system with a parliamentary system. Elliott's screed argues that the "heresy of nationalism" is the cause of wars, and that "universal peace can be founded only on the unity of man under one law and one government...the Nation of man embodied in the Universal state." What must emerge will be a "Universal Parliament representing people, not states." Mankind must move on a "slow path...toward the consciousness that the era of nations is over." In this and in later pieces, he attacked the concept of sovereignty, which must be surrendered to a "world system."

Elliott combined in his globalist schemes the pro-Confederate, anti-industrial agrarianism, which he imbibed in Nashville during his undergraduate days at Vanderbilt University; the Fabian Socialism adopted during his time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford's Baliol College, which inspired his promotion of schemes to establish modern "Round Tables" to impose his design; and the pro-feudal doctrines of the pro-Roman Catholicism of the Carlist movement. During his fifty years at Harvard, his students included notably Henry Kissinger, who worked closely with him for years, and Samuel Huntington, whose "Clash of Civilizations" theory was grafted on to Mackinder's imperial geopolitics, to shape the disastrous "War on Terror", which includes endless wars, colonial economic policies and state surveillance in the homeland.

Undermining the Sanctity Of Elections

Part of this assault on the American system includes an attack on the role democratic elections play in choosing representatives, who serve to enact policies which promote the General Welfare. The controversy over the presidential elections in 2016 and 2020 has eroded public confidence in the sanctity of elections. This is paralleled by the push by the Davos billionaires to impose the Great Reset, which will take away the ability of constituents to affect the economic policies of government, by placing control over fiscal/spending policy into the hands of "technical experts" serving financial institutions and corporate cartels, thereby taking that power away from elected representatives. The escalation of censorship furthers this process, by limiting debate to only those ideas approved by the corporate controllers of media and social media.

This process is affecting not only national policy. On August 24, New York's Lieutenant Governor, Kathy Hochul, was sworn in as Governor, replacing Andrew Cuomo, who had served as Governor since 2011. Cuomo was elected Governor three times, by solid margins (60% or more in two of the elections), but has been forced to resign due to charges of sexual harassment, which have been allegedly corroborated in a report filed by the state's Attorney General. Cuomo resigned, rather than dispute the charges, which he denies, saying his accusers have engaged in a political hit job.

During his tenure, Cuomo had been one of the most powerful elected officials in the country. His relatively sudden demise -- which occurred without the due process afforded to those under attack -- is an example on the state level of what has been undermining Executive authority on the national level, and how emotions can be manipulated to replace critical judgement. Another example of this is the effort to recall Democratic Party Governor Gavin Newsom of California. On September 14, voters will go to the polls to vote on whether to recall Newsom, who received 62% of the vote in 2018. The recall was initiated over anger about "mask mandates" and "lock-downs" related to his efforts to combat the COVID pandemic. Should the vote to recall him succeed, the new governor will be selected from among some forty candidates, whose names will appear on the ballot below the "Yes" or "No" for recall. It is possible that the winner in the most populous state in the U.S. could be elected by less than one-quarter, of the votes cast.

Taken as a whole, these developments represent a profound challenge to the American people. A nation founded on a commitment to advancing the General Welfare of all its citizens is under an escalating attack by private interests, which are directed by the historic enemy of the United States, centered in the City of London. The target of those interests is the principles which underlie the Constitution. As LaRouche often insisted, how the American people respond will determine whether the nation has the moral fitness to survive.