Since we'll be hearing a lot about this concept from now on....
What is the "Deep State"
Sun, 2017-01-15 04:26
#1
swallow
What is the "Deep State"
Sun, 2017-01-15 04:30
#2
swallow
The term links to "deep politics" and is promoted, for instance, by former Canadian diplomat Peter Dale Scott.
It's not new. Here's part of Scott's definition from a 2014 article, in whiuch he explores the deep state's role in US foreign policy going back to the 1950s:
The "deep state" was defined by the UK newsletter On Religion as "the embedded anti-democratic power structures within a government, something very few democracies can claim to be free from."10 The term originated in Turkey in 1996, to refer to U.S.-backed elements, primarily in the intelligence services and military, who had repeatedly used violence to interfere with and realign Turkey's democratic political process. Sometimes the definition is restricted to elements within the government (or "a state-within-the state"), but more often in Turkey the term is expanded, for historical reasons, to include "members of the Turkish underworld."11 In this essay I shall use "deep state" in the larger sense, to include both the second level of secret government inside Washington and those outsiders powerful enough, in either the underworld or overworld, to give it direction. In short I shall equate the term "deep state" with what in 1993 I termed a "deep political system:" " one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society."12
Like myself, Lofgren suggests an ambiguous symbiosis between two aspects of the American deep state:
1) the Beltway agencies of the shadow government, like the CIA and NSA, which have been instituted by the public state and now overshadow it, and
2) the much older power of Wall Street, referring to the powerful banks and law firms located there.
[url=http://apjjf.org/2014/12/10/Peter-Dale-Scott/4090/article.html]The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld 国と深層国家と超支者ウォール・ストリート[/url]
Sun, 2017-01-15 09:52
#3
An interesting book in this regard is "National Security and Double Government" by Michael J. Glennon. From the introduction, after a list of policies initiated under George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama:
Given Senator Obama's powerful criticism of such policies before he took office as President, the question, then, is this: Why does national security policy remain constant even when one President is replaced by another, who as a candidate repeatedly, forcefully, and eloquently promised fundamental changes in that policy?
Various hypotheses have been suggested.
Sun, 2017-01-15 10:43
#4
An interesting book in this regard is "National Security and Double Government" by Michael J. Glennon. From the introduction, after a list of policies initiated under George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama:
Given Senator Obama's powerful criticism of such policies before he took office as President, the question, then, is this: Why does national security policy remain constant even when one President is replaced by another, who as a candidate repeatedly, forcefully, and eloquently promised fundamental changes in that policy?
Various hypotheses have been suggested.
That question might be a little like asking "Why did Mulroney make a whole bunch of sleazy patronage appointments, when one of the things he had attacked the Liberals on in '84 was their sleazy patronage appointments?" I think we know the answer to that question, and it doesn't require recourse to the existence of Deep States or parallel governments, ie. Mulroney didn't really care about patronage. However, he knew the public was in a tizzy about it in '84, so he attacked Turner on the issue, wagering that everyone would forget about it after a few months. And, bingo, they did.
Sun, 2017-01-15 14:18
#5
@ VOTD: you could be correct. The hypotheses that Glennon proposes include (I'm paraphrasing):
1) Substantive correctness of the policies - Bush was right and Obama was open-minded.
2) Domestic politics and Obama's personality: insincere, or no core beliefs, or ineffectual, or sell-out. I thnk this is your choice, but I may be wrong.
3) The distinction (drawn by Walter Bagehot) between the "dignified" institutions and the "efficient" institutions under the British Constitution, ported over to the U.S. There are institutions that are for show, and institutions that make the real decisions.
Only the last one gets us into "Deep State" territory, but it's the one the author advocates. However, he also admits that it may not be possible to separate these hypotheses cleanly.