In the United
States, the term "deep state" is used to describe a conspiracy theory
which suggests that collusion and cronyism exist within the US political system
and constitutes a hidden government within the legitimately elected government.
Some people believe that there is "a hybrid association of elements of
government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able
to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as
expressed through the formal political process", whereas others consider
the deep state to encompass corruption that is particularly prevalent amongst
career politicians and civil servants.
The term was
originally coined to refer to a similar relatively invisible state apparatus in
Turkey "composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services,
military, security, judiciary, and organized crime" and similar alleged
networks in other countries including Egypt, Ukraine, Spain, Colombia, Italy,
and Israel, and many others.
Following
the disclosure of documents released by WikiLeaks, the term was adopted by
people who alleged that the information points to a deep-state conspiracy that
seeks to delegitimize democracy and the policy goals of "the people.”
Definition
of Deep State
According to the journalist Robert
Worth, "The expression deep state had originated in Turkey in the
1990s, where the military colluded with drug traffickers and hit men to wage a
dirty war against Kurdish insurgents". The term "deep state" is
likely a translation from the Turkish derin devlet (literally:
"deep state" or "deep polity").
In The Concealment of the State,
Professor Jason Royce Lindsey argues that even without a conspiratorial agenda,
the term deep state is useful for understanding aspects of the national
security
establishment in developed countries, with emphasis on the United
States. Lindsey writes that the deep state draws power from the national
security and intelligence communities, a realm where secrecy is a source of
power.:35-36 Alfred W. McCoy states that the increase in the power
of the U.S. intelligence community since the September 11 attacks "has
built a fourth branch of the U.S. government" that is "in many ways
autonomous from the executive, and increasingly so."
In a Foreign Affairs journal
article and subsequent expansion in a law review, UCLA Law professor Jon D.
Michaels rejects "the premise of an American deep state” in a defense of
what he terms the 'administrative state' against Trump's attempts to
“deconstruct" it. Michaels argues that the concept of the 'deep state' is
more relevant to developing governments such as Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey,
"where shadowy elites in the military and government ministries have been
known to countermand or simply defy democratic directives" than the United
States "where governmental power structures are almost entirely
transparent".
According to David Gergen, quoted in Time
magazine, the term has been appropriated by Steve Bannon and Breitbart News
and other supporters of the Trump Administration in order to delegitimize the
critics of the current presidency. The 'deep state' theory has been dismissed
by authors for The New York Times and New York Observer. University
of Miami Professor Joseph Uscinski says, "The concept has always been very
popular among conspiracy theorists, whether they call it a deep state or
something else."
Former NSA leaker Edward Snowden has
used the term generally to refer to the influence of civil servants over
elected officials: "the deep state is not just the intelligence agencies,
it is really a way of referring to the career bureaucracy of government. These
are officials who sit in powerful positions, who don't leave when presidents
do, who watch presidents come and go ... they influence policy, they
influence presidents."
In an opinion piece by linguist Geoffrey
Nunberg, he said the "deep state" is an "elastic label –
depending on the occasion" and its "story conforms to the intricate
grammar of those conspiracy narratives". He also contrasted the change in
the "twin bogeys of conservative rhetoric", from bureaucratic
"meddlesome bunglers" of "big government" to
"conniving ideologues" who "orchestrates complex schemes".
According to political scientist George
Friedman, the Deep State has been in place since 1871 and continues beneath the
federal government, controlling and frequently reshaping policies; in this view
the U.S. civil service was created to limit the power of the president. Prior
to 1871, the president could select federal employees, all of whom served at
the pleasure of the president. This is no longer the case.
On March 20, 2018, Senator Rand Paul
said "Absolutely there is a deep state because the deep state is that the
intelligence communities do not have oversight." He continued, "There
is no skeptic" [emphasis in original] among the four Republican and
four Democratic Senators "who are supposedly" providing oversight, so
that the intelligence communities, "with their enormous power ... have
become a deep state." On December 4, 2018, Paul, in commenting on the CIA
Director briefing only those eight Senators rather than the entire Senate,
added "The deep state wants to keep everyone in the dark. This is just
ridiculous!" On December 10, 2018, he said "The very definition of a
'deep state’ is when the very people, congressional leaders – people who are
elected by the people – are not allowed to hear the intelligence."
Writing in a piece for the Moyers
& Company website, John Light asserts that the term deep state
"has been used for decades abroad to describe any network of entrenched
government officials who function independently from elected politicians and
work toward their own ends," but during the era of Trump the term has been
twisted to mean "a sub rosa part of the liberal establishment, that crowd
resistant to the reality TV star’s insurgent candidacy all along."
Michael Crowley, senior foreign affairs
correspondent for Politico, wrote "Beneath the politics of
convenience is the reality that a large segment of the United States government
really does operate without much transparency or public scrutiny, and has
abused its awesome powers in myriad ways.
Deep State
and U.S. Politics
The term "deep state" has been
associated with the "military–industrial complex" by several of the
authors on the subject. Potential risks from the military–industrial complex
were raised in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address: "In
the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist." Stephen F. Cohen in his book War with Russia?
(released November 27, 2018), claims that "At least one U.S.–Soviet summit
seems to have been sabotaged. The third Eisenhower–Khrushchev meeting,
scheduled for Paris in 1960, was aborted by the Soviet shoot-down of a US U-2
spy plane sent, some think, by 'deep state' foes of detente."
Mike Lofgren has claimed the
military-industrial complex is the private part of the deep state. However, Marc
Ambinder has suggested that a myth about the "deep state" is that it
functions as one entity; in reality, he states, "the deep state contains
multitudes, and they are often at odds with one another."
Tufts University professor Michael J.
Glennon claimed that President Barack Obama did not succeed in resisting and/or
changing what he calls the "double government"; the defense and
national security network. Mike Lofgren felt Obama was pushed into the Afghanistan
"surge" in 2009. Another major campaign promise Obama made was the
closure of Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp, which he was unable to accomplish. This
has been attributed indirectly to the influence of a deep state.
President Donald Trump's supporters use
the term to refer to allegations that intelligence officers and executive
branch officials guide policy through leaking or other internal means.
According to a July 2017 report by the United States Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, "the Trump administration was
being hit by national security leaks 'on a nearly daily basis' and at a far
higher rate than its predecessors encountered".
Trump and Steve Bannon, his former chief
strategist, have both made allegations about a deep state which they believe is
interfering with the president's agenda. In 2018, describing the deep state as
an "entrenched bureaucracy", Trump accused the United States
Department of Justice "of being part of the 'deep state'" in a
statement advocating the prosecution of Huma Abedin. Some Trump allies and
right-wing media outlets have alleged that former president Barack Obama is
coordinating a deep state resistance to Trump. While the belief in a deep state
is popular among Trump supporters, critics maintain that it has no basis in
reality, arguing that the sources of the leaks frustrating the Trump
administration lack the organizational depth of deep states in other countries.
Critics also warned that use of the term in the U.S. could undermine confidence
in vital institutions and be used to justify suppressing dissent.
The Washington Post's long-time
conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, said of the belief in a Deep
State:
I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, the Knights
Templar, Bilderberg, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a vast right wing conspiracy,
or, for that matter, a vast left wing conspiracy. Are there in the U.S.
government individual bureaucrats that are Democratic holdovers that would love
nothing more than to damage Trump? Yeah, of course there are. Is there a
concealed web of conspirators, malevolent permanent hidden shadow government?
Rubbish. And I would add that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone without the help of
Ted Cruz’s father.
Rolling Stone magazine, which
reported Krauthammer's comment, summarizes the Deep State concept this way:
"Is there actually a deep state? If you mean entrenched bureaucracy, then
of course there is. If you mean a government-wide conspiracy, then the answer
is almost certainly no. Salon
magazine traces Donald Trump's belief in a Deep State to conspiracy theorist Alex
Jones of Infowars, who, it says, "believes that the government —
aka the "deep state" — has orchestrated attacks and events throughout
history. This includes the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, the massacre
at Sandy Hook (he claims that many of the parents were actors), the Boston
Marathon attack, and on and on," including believing that the 9/11 attack
was "executed by the United States government." The magazine also
points to Trump's long-time ally, Roger Stone, as an influence.
Stone has
written several books which center of conspiracy theories, and blames Lyndon
Johnson for the death of President John F. Kennedy, and that Ted Cruz's father
was involved in that assassination.
In an article for The New York Review
of Books, Michael Tomasky quoted Newt Gingrich as using the term in the
context of the Robert Mueller investigation in July 2018, quoting Gingrich
stating: "[Mueller is] ... the tip of the deep state spear aimed at
destroying or at a minimum undermining and crippling the Trump
presidency". Gingrich then added to the statement that: "The brazen
redefinition of Mueller's task tells you how arrogant the deep state is and how
confident it is it can get away with anything".
Professor of international relations at
Harvard University, Stephen Walt, has written: "There's no secret
conspiracy or deep state running U.S. foreign policy; to the extent that there
is a bipartisan foreign-policy elite, it is hiding in plain sight."
The term has also been used in comments
on the "deep state"-like influence allegedly wielded by career
military officers such as H. R. McMaster, John Kelly and James Mattis in the
Trump administration. The anthropologist C. August Elliott described this state
of affairs as the emergence of a 'shallow state': "an America where public
servants now function as tugboats guiding the President's very leaky ship
through the shallows and away from a potential shipwreck".
On September 5, 2018, The New York
Times published an anonymous op-ed
titled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration"
written by a "senior official in the Trump Administration". In the
essay, the official was critical of President Trump and claimed "that many
of the senior officials in [Trump's] own administration are working diligently
from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations". House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy described this as evidence of the deep state at
work, and David Bossie wrote an op-ed at Fox News claiming this was the deep
state "working against the will of the American people". However,
there was some doubt as to the actual importance of the anonymous author with
some estimating hundreds or thousands of possible positions could be considered
"senior officials" and the inherent paradox of exposing the existence
of such a group.
Polls
According to a poll of Americans in
April 2017, about half (48%) thought there was a "deep state"
(meaning "military, intelligence and government officials who try to
secretly manipulate government"), while about a third (35%) of all
participants thought it was a conspiracy theory and the remainder (17%) had no
opinion. Of those who believe a "deep state" exists, more than half
(58%) said it was a major problem, a net of 28% of those surveyed.
A March 2018 poll found most respondents
(63%) were unfamiliar with the term "deep state", but a majority
believe that a deep state likely exists in the United States when described as
"a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly
manipulate or direct national policy". Three-fourths (74%) of the
respondents say that they believe this type of group definitely (27%) or
probably (47%) exists in the federal government.
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