Monday 6 March 2017

President Trump and the Rise of a New Global Order

Trump's foreign policy is all about 'winning' by whatever means possible. If that means beating ISIS by using carpet bombing, so be it. If it means trying to take on China and compelling it to cave in to US might, that will have be done. Remilitarisation for war assumes a huge global crisis and war shall happen: the focus is reducing Chinese power.

The 'strategy' is to repeat the 1980s again when the US beat the Soviet Union. Communist China is loathed as it's 'communist' and becoming more successful at capitalism in some ways than the US. An arms race would allow 'reindustrialisation'. Arms companies are quite pro-Trump. Russia is 'winning' because considered ruthless.

Trump's entire focus is to return the US to the 1980s when America Was Great. The 1990s and 2000s are considered a period of mistakes and betrayal. Back then there was paranoia about Japan taking over from the US. The 1989 crash put an end to that. China terrifies US nationalists as it is both economically and politically powerful.

Trump's foreign policy will be in continuity with certain underlying agendas. Resource struggles with China in Africa will intensify. Human rights will be considered a luxury for an age of weakness and cause of decline. 'Taking the oil' and minerals, a certain 'neo-realism' will mean hard power and straight business dealings will prevail.

What the US under Trump is not interested in is spreading 'our values': they are not for export and others either cannot 'do' democracy and need dictators, not least the Arabs. Strongmen will be backed: oil access and interests are what matter and the rest is not America's business which is business.

Refugees and migrants from hostile societies are not thought America's problem. That the US helped create the instability from which they are fleeing is a problem caused by 'humanitarian' foreign policies that tried to save the world or do good. America gets no credit anyway for it: being hated but not feared or respected is futile.

The world is shifting towards a new system that will be post-liberal and, indeed, post-Western. The latter was inevitable anyway which is why the former is considered a goal by Bannon and Trump because it means weakness in a new predatory environment in which the strong and ruthless survive and the weak shall perish.

A new age of wars and violence and hard borders is coming, hard borders for those with the will and means to protect themselves from unwanted invasive forces and threats to their way of life. Consumerism means resources must be secured by whatever means necessary. It is what the people really want.

China threatens that with its economic power and growing global dominance in regions previously dominated by the West,such as Africa. In Libya, for example, a deal between Trump and Putin will mean a new dictator General Heftar will be in place and Italy will be protected from migrant incursions: the oil will be secured.

Across that continent,the US will copy the Chinese model of no strings attached when courting their leaders. Arms sales will increase to rival China, resources secured,new weapons tested in various arenas where resources are needed. Freedland ignores the fact this was happening already: Trump will just be more openly ruthless.

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