Ashok Dhillon
Jan 20, 20189 min
It was a stormy 2017, and apart from the hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, Donald Trump was the biggest geo-political cluster bomb, rocking the very foundations of the already fractured World-order by the sheer reserves of his general ignorance, limitless capacity to do harm, and deeply offending crudity. Apart from all the other bad actors in the World, and there never ever seems to be a shortage of those, Donald Trump assures an unsettled, stormy 2018, with the potential for multiple disasters, both economic and political. His unsettling influence greatly exacerbates existing problems, and has actively aggravated the most serious ones.
Take North Korea as an example: North Korea has been a problem for the West for a very long time. The problem specifically being North Korea’s decade’s old desire to achieve nuclear weapons capability, to secure effective deterrence against its old enemies, South Korea, Japan, the Democratic West, but primarily the United States. North Korea does not fear South Korea or Japan, or generally the West, its primary cause for concern is the big bad United States, which in its pursuit of democratization of some authoritarian non-democratic governments (there are others that it fully supports, like Saudi, Egypt and many, many others) poses the greatest threat to the incumbent dictatorship of North Korea.
North Korea decided decades ago that its only effective defence against the vastly more powerful America was the ownership of deliverable nuclear weapons that could strike the U.S. mainland. Towards that goal, North Korea has dedicated itself single-mindedly over the past decades, and through the many U.S. administrations, to acquire nuclear technology, know-how and materials, and with the help of Pakistan, China and Russia (primarily), North Korea made solid progress towards its goal. And although the West and U.S. in particular, put pressure on it to NOT be able to achieve its ambitions, North Korea overcame all obstacles and sanctions to come within a stone’s throw in achieving its goal of not only having functional nuclear weapons, but being able to deliver them accurately, on indigenously developed Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
And then came Donald Trump. His opening salvo to North Korea, regarding its nuclear and missile development program and impending ‘tests’, was a categoric ‘it ain’t happening!’ Then he went on to, as he is prone to do, run down the previous administrations as being too soft and ineffective and incapable of dealing with the bad boys of the World such as Kim Jong-un, as he ‘the tough guy’ would, and in doing so he would bring peace on this earth.
Unfortunately, and predictably, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Trump’s tough guy rhetoric and implied challenge to North Korea’s leader, unleashed an unprecedented and defiantly hostile response from Kim Jong-un, with accelerated multiple ‘tests’ that significantly advanced North Korea’s entire nuclear and missile program, which not only humiliated Trump, but sent him scurrying to China’s President Xi for assistance in restraining Kim Jong-un. When that didn’t work, all Trump was left with was issuing indiscreet threats, name calling, and trading of personal insults with Kim Jong-un. At the end of it all, Trump accomplished nothing with his inability to deal with ultra-sensitive international threats with finesse and maturity, instead his inherent penchant for silly grandstanding took a bad situation and made it much, much worse.
Today, North Korea is far more advanced in its nuclear and ICBM programs, and more determined than ever to accomplish its goals and far more defiant because of the direct challenges from Trump.
Things have deteriorated to a point where America is feeling the chill draft of the ‘Cold war’ era threats, with false missile alarms going off in Hawaii, and the return to the reality of the possibility of actual nuclear attacks that America had almost forgotten about under the stabilizing hands of the previous American administrations that Trump constantly disparages.
Things have deteriorated to a point where even Canada is feeling threatened from the possibilities of errant North Korean missiles, meant for the U.S. but landing in Canada, to start discussing ‘Missile Defense’. And since Trump’s indiscreet grandstanding South Korea and Japan have had to deploy THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile systems to counter the heightened missile threat from North Korean. This is all due to Trump’s clueless bargaining behaviour more in keeping with school yard bully tactics that backfire, than sophisticated international conflict and risk assessment and mitigation.
What has happened with North Korea, the considerable escalation of nuclear threat and conflict from a slow-burn to a conflagration, is now being engineered by Trump with Iran - goaded on by the ever hawkish, Palestinian land grabbing, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s strategy over these many years has been to claim efforts towards peace-accord with the Palestinians, while doing everything, with the unqualified backing of the U.S., to undermine the process, against all international and United Nations condemnation, and to continue to annex Palestinian land with multitudes of illegal Israeli settlements.
This brazen flaunting of International law, and the exercise of overwhelming military superiority (with the possession of the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East [estimated 200 warheads]) to cow the Arab countries into submission, does not win Israel many friends but fosters resentment that festers underground until it boils over. Iran is the only sizeable Islamic country left that poses a challenge to Israel, so it is constantly targeted by Netanyahu for destruction by its massive and always acquiescing body guard, the Middle-East-Buster, the United States.
Iran for its account is not entirely innocent in inviting trouble from Israel and the U.S. by, at times, indulging in rhetoric that is downright threatening and highly inflammatory. The price it pays for such indiscretions is a perpetually hostile Israel and U.S., apart from its traditional hostility and enmity with the much larger Sunni Islamic World led by Saudi Arabia.
The security of Israel is a legitimate issue that has been considerably diminished in the past decades as the Arab countries that were a real threat, singly and collectively, were effectively destroyed and taken apart like Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Saudi Arabia was always more realistic and always in the back pocket of the U.S., and therefore it and its satellites in the Middle East posed no real problem to Israel. Today, the greater Arab World poses no greater threat to Israel than to the rest of the World, and mainly by individual terrorists or vastly inferior adversaries such as Gaza’s Hamas or Lebanon’s Hezbollah which are more of a nuisance than real threats. So, Iran’s existence as major independent Islamic nation is an anathema to Israel and the U.S., and an irritant that must be destroyed regardless of the lack of just cause. Just cause would have been a nuclear armed Iran, but a conventionally armed Iran is no real threat to the combined might of the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia along with the other Sunni Islamic nations, which is practically every major Muslim country in the World including Egypt and Pakistan. So while at times Iran’s rhetoric is inflammatory, its ability to do any real harm to Israel is very limited. Nor is its terror sponsoring reputation as deserved as America’s propaganda makes it out to be. Saudi’s virulent strain of Sunni Wahhabi Islamic doctrine is the incubator of both Al Qaida and ISIS, two of the most destructive and powerful terrorist organizations in the Islamic terrorist World, including their offshoots and proxies.
Yet, in spite of the open fact that both Al Qaida and ISIS were Sunni Islamic terror networks based on Wahhabi extremism, the U.S. continually blames Iran as being the sponsor of Islamic terror, even though Iran is not Sunni but Shia, a traditional opponent of Sunni Islam and therefore of Al Qaida and ISIS, which in recent years it fought in Iraq and Syria.
Additionally, the U.S. cites the lack of human rights in Iran as justification of its enmity even though in comparison to Saudi Arabia, America’s ‘special friend’, Iran is downright liberal. The bias is deep and unjustified and decades long for geo-political, economic (oil) reasons. The other day, Tillerson cited the lack of economic growth in Iran and the resultant suffering of the Irani people, on its ruling regime, the Mullahs, which was the most shameless untruth as he wilfully ignored the fact that the U.S. has imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran since the toppling of its puppet Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the ‘Shah’, in 1979, with the express intent of stifling Iran’s economy and punishing its new Islamic regime, which it did.
So according to current administration, Iran’s lack of economic growth and the resultant suffering of the Irani people was not the decades long American led economic sanctions but of a regime that have had to govern under the most restricted economic conditions. It is this kind of blatant distortion of truth that Iran has had to contend with for years, and it’s happening again now with more vigour under the ‘king of lies’ himself, Donald J. Trump, and his equally complicit representatives, Tillerson, Haley et.al.
For the most part the general public is too indifferent to question the official propaganda emanating from its governments and therefore great injustices are done, millions of innocents murdered under the pretence of some trumped up charges of weapons of mass destruction or nuclear programs that are only trying to emulate what the first world already has – massive and excessive nuclear deterrence. This attitude of ‘we can have it, and even need it, but you can’t’ is inherently unbalanced and unfair. After all any attempt by the non-nuclear nations to rid the World of nuclear weapons, or even to reduce them, is met with immediate refusal by the U.S., whose nuclear button is probably the biggest and most destructive in the World, at least according to the consistently size conscious, and therefore inherently insecure Trump.
President Obama recognized some of the inherently unfair methods used to justify the destruction of the Middle East Islamic countries, so he chose to negotiate peace with Iran rather than go for the - ‘bomb them into the stone age - shock and awe’ - war tactics of the past Republican administrations (with the resulting millions of innocent Muslim civilian casualties) for which there is no accounting. Obama’s strategy put an end to the escalation of conflicts and produced a brilliant multi-country ‘Nuclear Agreement’ with Iran that was more progressive than anything that the World had witnessed since the end of the Second World War with the Marshall Plan (the rebuilding of former enemies, Germany and Japan, by the victorious U.S.).
Well Trump is no brilliant, visionary General George C. Marshall. In his dangerous obsession to constantly cater to his biased and incredibly ill-informed core base, Trump has re-targeted Iran to antagonize. Iran is fully compliant with the Nuclear Agreement but Trump wants to manufacture an excuse for America to wage war with the one major Near-East nation that is still large and homogenous enough to have an independent stance to the dictates of America and its dubious coalitions, against Shia ruled Islamic countries, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Unfortunately for Trump and the equally belligerent Netanyahu, in the case of the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, Obama had the foresight to involve 5 other major nations (other than the U.S.) namely Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – and the U.N. So, while Trump is simply itching to win points with his narrow viewed supporters, by cancelling, or otherwise heavily modifying the Agreement to the point of Iran disagreeing and withdrawing, the U.S. is only one Party to the Agreement – the 5 other signatories are not at all willing to tamper with an Agreement which in their view is working just as intended, which is to prevent Iran from pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.
Trump is not happy in being thwarted by other more rational and sophisticated World leaders and is therefore likely to do all he can to damage the stability of the relationship of Iran with the rest of the Western World. Unfortunately for Trump, Russia is the fly in the ointment, because his publicly professed hero Vladimir Putin solidly backs Iran and is in fact a partner to it for his Middle East presence, along with Assad of Syria. So Russia, ironically, may be the saviour of the Nuclear Deal, and the remaining minority Shia rulers, in what is left of a decimated Middle and Near-East, after U.S.’s efforts at democratizing and ‘liberating’ it (cynically, from its oil).
As if goading North Korea into greatly accelerating its nuclear program so that now it’s a real tangible nuclear threat and trying to destabilize Iran was not enough, Trump also decided to throw a brick into the hornet’s nest by announcing Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, to the outrage of every Muslim, and the rest of the World, because it is a recognizably illegal, illegitimate step. Obviously, Trump didn’t come into the American Presidency to bring peace and stability to the World, but to break it. Within 12 months he has undone years of great work by the previous President (Obama) and once again made America the force for division, distrust and conflict. For that he has earned the derision of two thirds of Americans and the rest of the rational World.
As we write this, under Trump’s Presidency chaos reigns. In spite of the Republicans controlling the Presidency, the Senate and the Congress, the atrocious governing skills of Donald Trump have resulted in the U.S. government shutting down due to lack of funding to carry on. Immigration policies are a shambles, racism is rampant with the President leading the charge and fanning racial/religious divisions. Partisanship in governing is sickeningly pervasive, making America look like a Banana Republic, in its dysfunction and petty personal interests taking precedence over the Country’s larger interests. Outside interference in the form of Russian meddling in America’s political system and the less than united opposition to it among America’s lawmakers, and the outright denial of it by the President himself, significantly weakens the Country and makes it prone to additional political chaos. And while the economy and the financial markets are flying high, they are more the result of the ongoing practices of Obama’s restorative efforts, and the Federal Reserve’s continuing accommodative policies, than Trump’s policies. But the economic expansion and the markets are both long in the tooth and therefore are both overdue for a correction, which when it happens will, along with the general political dysfunction, a disastrous foreign policy, will ensure a very stormy 2018, and beyond.