The speed at which international affairs develop
these days is breathtaking. Politicians, diplomats and commentators are being
left behind.
The previous norms by which events were
judged no longer apply. We cannot say with any certainty what will happen next
month, let along plan for a world in which future generations will survive.
The United States and North Korea were at
each other’s throats, each threatening the other with nuclear annihilation;
then it was all smiles with a summit in the planning stages and suggestions
that US President Donald Trump could be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize;
now the talks may be called off as North Korean President Kim Jong-un sets new
conditions.
Similarly in the Middle East, where Trump’s decision
to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has upset decades of careful (if
unsuccessful) diplomacy. His withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is another
savage blow to the status quo.
Veteran observers say it is like being cast
adrift in an open boat with no rudder or sails. The old certainties no longer
exist. Anything could happen.
There are many in the Trump camp who applaud
this. They say the old order had failed to bring results; that the president is
a disrupter forcing those who had been comfortable behind the barricades of
their beliefs to face new realities.
The problem with this reasoning is that
throws into the dustbin decades of knowledge and experience built up by thousands
of foreign affairs specialists. Their expertise is rendered useless. Diplomacy
becomes a guessing game, a series of gambles in a world where gambling can be
very dangerous and consequences unknown.
I have written before about the dangers of a
Trump-Kim summit, mainly because for all his tough talk the US president is
desperate for a deal to burnish his image and to flip a Twitter-finger at all
his detractors.
Trump’s track record shows he has no
patience with the niceties of negotiation. To put him in the ring with Kim and
his team at this time could easily lead to catastrophe.
Similarly with his decision to come down
heavily on the side of Israel in the Middle East, which is having the effect of
rekindling enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause among neighbour nations that
might have been leaning towards putting pressure on Hamas to be more reasonable.
There is no hope of the US regaining its
position as a neutral umpire in efforts to solve the impasse, even if a future
US President tries to do so. Arabs have long memories.
There is very real danger in cutting loose
from the Iran nuclear deal. Here we are dealing with a sophisticated nation of
some 80 million; a country that had successfully repelled the better armed and
Western backed forces of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during eight years of war.
President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate by
Iranian standards, caught flack for even treating with the Great Satan. This
rebuff holds the danger of driving the Government into the hands of extremists
who might well want to develop the nuclear bomb to annihilate Israel (and
probably Saudi Arabia for good measure).
To be fair, the world that Trump inherited in
January 2017 was already fraught with risks and uncertainties. What he has done
is increase these dangers without having any kind of containment strategy.
Worse, he has abandoned or alienated all those who might have been able to
point a way out of the mess.
I believe Trump sees the world outside the
borders of the US as an annoying sideshow, but his crash-though-or burn-attitude
to international problems has us gripping the sides of our seats. What comes
next? Who knows?
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