America’s ‘Establishment’ Has Embraced ‘Deep States’

Philip Giraldi, a former military intelligence and C.I.A. case officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

Citizens in many countries wonder how certain government policies can persist in spite of widespread popular opposition or clear perceptions that they are harmful. This persistence is frequently attributed to a “deep state.”

The phrase is often applied to Turkey, where the nation’s security services and governing elite pursue the same chauvinistic and inward-looking agenda no matter who is prime minister.

Supporting such forces that enforce stability at the cost of democracy buys friendship with no one for the U.S., and empowers radicals.

But every country has a deep state of some kind. “The Establishment,” as it’s been called in the United States, where it evolved from the Washington-New York axis of national security officials and financial services executives. They are said to know what is “best” for the country and to act accordingly, no matter who sits in the White House.

This comfortable consensus in America favors the forces that provide a measure of stability in troubled regions, including Turkey and Egypt. Such stability comes at a cost, though.

In Turkey, deep-state forces support not only oligarchical interests but, it’s been plausibly contended, criminals including drug traffickers, money launderers and weapons merchants, when it suits their interests. Some analysts believe Egypt, too, has a developed, dominant, deep state, that is actually running the government. As in Turkey, the Egyptian version has grown out of the national security establishment.

In both countries real democracy has been the first victim. Both Turkey and Egypt are now ruled by autocrats who have among their first steps eliminated an independent press and freedom of speech.

The unwillingness of the United States to seriously confront the effects of supporting forces that enforce stability at the cost of democracy ultimately buys friendship with no one, because supporting promoters of strength to repress radicalism largely serves only to empower those same radicals.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/06/do-secret-cabals-rule-more-than-the-imagination-in-turkey-and-egypt/americas-establishment-has-embraced-deep-states