by The last week has been extraordinary, even by the standards of these extraordinary times. A flurry of Executive Orders from the new President of the United States has thrown the global order into chaos and sparked outrage throughout the world. But he has only done exactly what he said he would do. There is nothing in the Executive Orders signed so far that was not announced during the Presidential campaign, repeatedly and to loud cheers from his many supporters. The President was lawfully voted in by the people of the United States on the basis of the promises he made to them, and he is now following through on those promises. Frankly, I find this hard to criticise. If his decisions are illiberal, discriminatory and racist, that is because a substantial proportion of the American people are illiberal, discriminatory and racist. The problem is not the President, it is those who elected him. I do not understand why those who cherish liberal values and human rights convinced themselves that President Trump did not mean what he said. Not to follow through on his promises would have been a major betrayal of those who voted for him. How could anyone possibly respect or trust a President who made promises on the campaign trail that he had no intention of keeping once in office? Honesty, loyalty and trustworthiness are the foundation of civic society.
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Frances Coppola considers the following as important: EU, Middle East, Oil, US, war
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The last week has been extraordinary, even by the standards of these extraordinary times. A flurry of Executive Orders from the new President of the United States has thrown the global order into chaos and sparked outrage throughout the world.
Bannon's world view makes fascinating reading. He frames America's relationship with the rest of the world as a religious war in which America bears primary responsiblity for marshalling the forces of the Judaeo-Christian West against a growing Muslim threat:
But I strongly believe that whatever the causes of the current drive to the caliphate was — and we can debate them, and people can try to deconstruct them — we have to face a very unpleasant fact. And that unpleasant fact is that there is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global. It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act.It is not hard to work out what US national security policy is likely to look like, if these are the views of the man now driving it.
Mr Putin and Mr Trump had a detailed discussion of pressing international issues, including the fight against terrorism, the situation in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, strategic stability and non-proliferation, the situation with Iran’s nuclear programme, and the Korean Peninsula issue. The discussion also touched upon the main aspects of the Ukrainian crisis. The sides agreed to build up partner cooperation in these and other areas.
The two leaders emphasised that joining efforts in fighting the main threat – international terrorism – is a top priority. The presidents spoke out for establishing real coordination of actions between Russia and the USA aimed at defeating ISIS and other terrorists groups in Syria.Russia, remember, was instrumental in the recent destruction of East Aleppo at a huge cost in civilian lives. The Obama administration stood by, wringing its hands, while the city was flattened. That was bad enough. But the Trump administration, it seems, would have joined in the bombing. And will, in future.
The final piece in the puzzle is this Presidential Memorandum signed the day before the immigration ban. It directs the Defense Secretary to conduct a 30-day "readiness review" of the armed forces, and in conjunction with that, produce an amendment to the 2017 fiscal budget for "military readiness". And within 60 days, he is to submit a "plan of action" to rebuild America's armed forces to the level of "readiness" he considers necessary. Of course, rebuilding the armed forces was another of President Trump's campaign promises, so there are no surprises here. But this paragraph should give everyone pause for thought:
Upon transmission of a new National Security Strategy to Congress, the Secretary shall produce a National Defense Strategy (NDS). The goal of the NDS shall be to give the President and the Secretary maximum strategic flexibility and to determine the force structure necessary to meet requirements.No-one in their right minds would deny that a new National Security Strategy is desperately needed. But just look who would be driving it. The Chief Strategist now has a key role in national security. It is beyond doubt that Steve Bannon's views will significantly influence the new National Security Strategy.
So America is rearming, in anticipation of a new war in the Middle East. A much larger and wider-ranging war than the previous inadequate and inconclusive incursions in Iraq and Libya, which probably did more harm than good: removing the dictators simply left a void into which Islamic State stepped. The immigration ban on seven Middle Eastern countries should be seen as the precursor to the coming conflict. It is ostensibly "temporary", but then so is a war. And if the National Defense Strategy concludes that those countries pose a sufficiently grave threat to the US to justify military intervention - which to me looks like a racing certainty - then the ban would obviously be made permanent, for reasons of national security. You don't allow immigration, or even casual visitors, from countries you intend to invade.
Nor should we imagine that the coming war would be limited to those countries.The White House has already indicated that more countries could be included in the immigration ban. Personally, I would regard inclusion in the immigration ban as a statement of intent.
But how would such a war play out? After all, Islamic State is hardly your usual tinpot dictatorship. It is not even a coherent country. It is a diffuse network of enclaves in multiple countries, and its terrorist tentacles extend even into developed countries such as Belgium and France.
Clearly, strikes against IS strongholds would incur a terrible civilian price, which is unlikely to be remotely palatable to Western populations. Security is one thing, but genocide is another. And because IS does not hesitate to use civilians as shields, genocide would be necessary. So I hope - I really hope - that those now planning the defeat of IS can find another way.
This interesting piece in the FT might give a clue as to a possible strategy. Islamic State is critically dependent on oil. If Western forces, including Russia, can break IS's grip on the oilfields of Iraq and Libya, it might be possible to starve them out. Thousands would die, of course, but the US could blame IS for their deaths. President Trump's comments about "seizing Iraq's oil" should perhaps be seen in this light, though their acquisitive tone suggests there is another agenda too. After all, he is a businessman: takeovers are his daily bread.
So flatten anywhere in the Middle East where IS has a foothold, seize control of oil production in those countries and hand it over to Western oil companies (starting with Exxon Mobil - Rex Tillerson's appointment is no accident). Russia would need a cut, of course - probably the Caspian oilfields currently belonging to Iran.
The accommodation with Russia might require a larger sacrifice too. President Trump has already said he wants to reform NATO, and President Putin has made no secret of his preference for recovering the territories of the former Soviet Union. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the price for Russia's cooperation with the US would be that NATO withdraws from the former Soviet states, leaving them at Putin's mercy. The Baltic states clearly fear this.
President Trump has also made no secret of his intention to break up the EU: the EU's Guy Verhofstadt sees the President as one of three major threats to the bloc, the others being Islamic State and President Putin. If the EU fails, then Europe could perhaps end up being divided into a Russian zone and an American zone: where the line falls would be decided by a summit, rather than a Cold War. There would be some poetic justice in this: the continual conflicts in the Middle East and much of Africa are themselves to a considerable extent the long-run consequence of the former European powers deciding colonial claims by drawing lines on a map. And like their former colonies, the countries of Europe would pay tribute to their new overlords in the guise of "defence contributions" or "economic contributions". Such is the fate of vassal states.
It would be a mistake to imagine that US aggression would be limited to the Middle East. The White House's website cites North Korea as a serious risk justifying the development of a completely new, state of the art weapons system: it is telling that the President discussed Korea in his call with President Putin. And a few days ago, the White House warned China that it would not allow it to seize "international territory"in the South China Sea. Whether this develops into a full-scale war, or simply a simmering standoff like the Cold War, remains to be seen.
The present turmoil is the prelude to a major redrawing of the global political map and realignment of powers. In the past, such realignments have always involved war, as resurgent tribal interests fight to restore historic territorial claims: even the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not conflict-free. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that this time is different.
Related reading:
Currency wars and the fall of empires - Pieria
Austerity and the rise of populism
What have we learned from history?
The immigration ban is a headfake and we're all falling for it - Medium
Also read Heather Richardson's Facebook post on the "shock event" and how important it is not to play the game.
Image from CNN.