Worries over Trump’s presidency

….also published in Daily Trust

Today the dramatic political developments that define the Donald Trump phenomenon in American politics culminate in his inauguration as the 45^th President of the United States of America. As arguably the most controversial President in the country’s more than 200-year old democracy, all eyes are on him to see how he will go about pursuing his many controversial campaign promises, or rather, threats, so to speak.

On the world stage, President Trump’s equally controversial foreign policy agenda, confrontational approach, principle-free pragmatism, inconsistency and unpredictability, represent new dynamics in the US foreign policy and indeed international politics and diplomacy. However, his inexperience, superficial perception of the intricacies of international politics, his simplistic and unrealistic solution proposals to many complex challenges in different parts of the world, his know-it-all attitude and tendency to disregard appropriate advice from the country’s various intelligence sources raise worries about the implications of some of his foreign policy actions on both the United States and the world at large.

With such deficiencies, President Trump would pursue his agenda by going to extremes in exercising his executive powers, and would also seek to leverage the vast instruments of persuasion and blackmail at his disposal to manipulate the Congress, where, though his fellow party members are the majority, he might face opposition over some of his policies due to his many controversial views, being an anti-establishment politician in the first place.

Consequently, many countries, communities and individuals around the world would be on the receiving end of President Trump’s anticipated foreign policy actions and inactions. For instance, judging by his brazen support for the Zionists in their continued occupation of Palestinian land, he will certainly further undermine the Palestinians’ decades-old legitimate struggle for an independent and viable country. In fact, he would seek to frustrate the struggle altogether. After all, during his campaign he had already tacitly vowed to further support the Zionists’ continued occupation of the land, and to even undermine the already unfair settlement terms imposed on the Palestinians by the international community since 1993 under the Oslo Accords where the Palestinians were effectively forced to succumb to the Zionists’ occupation of their land and indeed recognize the State of Israel on more than 75% of their land thereby settling for less than 25% of their land where the proposed State of Palestine was/is supposed to be established, with eastern Quds as its proposed capital.

Nevertheless, since the ratification of this unfair settlement arrangement 24 years ago, the Palestinians’ dream of statehood on just less than 25% of their land has not been allowed to materialize, as the successive Zionist governments have been seriously undermining any effort toward that end, e.g. by, among other things, continued construction of illegal Jewish neighborhoods and other infrastructure on the very proposed territories for the proposed State of Palestine.

Yet, President Trump is now apparently determined to effectively end the US recognition of this already unfair arrangement in favour of the Zionists, having vowed to relocate the US embassy in Tel Aviv to eastern Quds, in line with the Israel’s insistence on keeping the whole Quds city as the permanent capital of the State of Israel, which, by implication, means abolishing the entire arrangement.

Likewise, now that the so-called Islamic terrorism and fight against it have been politicized and turned into bargaining and blackmailing tools among various governments and vested interests around the world, President Trump appears keen to not only maintain the controversial and indeed largely hypocritical US anti-terror policy, but to also go to any extent even if it involves neglecting the US strategic interests and abandoning its traditional European allies. This explains his admiration for his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin who is currently at the forefront in championing repressive authoritarianism in a growing number of countries where he is belligerently unleashing misery, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, in a vicious alliance with Iran, e.g. in Syria, or in pursuit of his expansionist agenda e.g. in Ukraine from where he forcefully carved out a region i.e. Crimea and annexed it to Russia. After all, a growing number of such repressive dictators e.g. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and some terror militias e.g. Khalifa Haftar militia in Libya and Houthi militia in Yemen are already inviting or giving the green light to Putin to help them  consolidate their cruel grip on power or usurp it by force.  

Anyway, President Trump seems eager to cooperate with such notoriously oppressive dictatorships, tyrannical theocracies and even militias, which would, in turn, continue to perpetrate their systematic persecution of their real or perceived political opponents under the pretext of the war on the so-called Islamic terrorism.

By the way, though, admittedly, there are some misguided and gullible Muslims who commit some terror acts, the reality is that, many governments around the world are, through their respective intelligence agencies, actually infiltrating such misguided Muslim groups, sponsoring hence manipulating them and turning a blind eye to their vicious plans to launch terror attacks, then turn around to officially condemn it and even pretend to fight them by conducting some superficial military actions against them. Whereas, they actually capitalize on the situation to perpetrate and seek to justify their persecution of individuals, subjection of communities to misery and destabilization of countries, with impunity, in pursuit of their ideological and/or political agendas.

It’s pertinent to point out that, inasmuch as Iran, for instance, is notoriously involved in such a conspiracy in a growing number of Muslim countries, the long-standing, albeit largely tacit and sometimes open secret, mutual understanding between it and the US that enables it to perpetrate its overt and covert destabilization activities in many Muslim countries, will certainly continue unchecked under President Trump, notwithstanding the usual exchange of harsh yet empty rhetoric against each other, which politicians and public figures in both countries have always done to impress their respective citizens and admirers, most of whom are actually oblivious of the actual nature of US-Iran relationship.