Russia versus the United States in the season of Donald Trump

The Presidency that Donald J Trump assumed on January 20, 2017 and the circumstances of his winning the 2016 election under the cloud and suspicion of collaborating with the Kremlin to swing the election in his favour and the attendant probe by both the FBI and House committee is beginning to impact on decisions taken by key officials of the Trump administration in the arena of foreign policy and defense. The notion that the Russian government meddled in the US Presidential election in favour of Republican candidate Donald Trump, while it began in the twilight days of the Barak Obama administration has with the appointment of Robert Mueller the former FBI director appointed as special counsel by deputy Attorney general Roseintein assumed a life of its own and it is beginning to weigh down on the Trump administration.

The fact that Trump is being investigated for having close ties with the Kremlin effectively ties the hands of the President in taking decisions seen as favorable to Russia, this effectively ties down the hands of the President in taking any decision seen as pro-Moscow. The reverse side of the equation which is the subject of this write-up is that each time Trump or his officials take a hard line on Russia, he is seen as vindicated of any prior ties with the Russians. This state of affairs is definitely not healthy for the US or the Trump administration who now have to be hawkish in their approach to Moscow in order to obtain a reprieve from American public opinion.

This trend is obviously noticeable in the decision by the Pentagon in shooting down a Russian built, Syrian owned SU-22 plane which was seen as attacking pro-US rebels fighting the Islamic state in Syria, The decision by the Americans to shoot down the Syrian jet was obviously taken not only to protect the US-led Syrian rebels but obviously to show that Trump is not a whimp where fighting the Pro-Russian forces are concerned. The danger is that the Russians are now viewing themselves as pawns in the chess game between rival and opposing groups in Washington. That no doubt informs Russia's hard line in threatening to target and attack coalition aircraft west of the Euphrates River seen as threatening Russian/ Syrian air operations.

The sum game is that because of this pre-conceived notion of Trump and the need to vindicate himself, US policy on Russia is automatically on a default setting which is dangerous and unhealthy for world peace. That President Trump can no longer follow his convictions but know-tow towards a hardline on the Kremlin is the fallout of this investigation into the President's alleged ties with Putin. Whether this state of affairs will benefit or be healthy to the US on the long-run is still to be known, but any course of events that puts the President in a strait-jacket is not only unhealthy but unsafe for America on the long-run.

Donald Trump's America, exploring the frontier between freedom and tyranny

The United States of America, the world's oldest and boldest experiment in democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights is after two centuries and a half century of existence beginning to tolerate in its body polity and embrace extremist views that would have been deemed wholly incomprehensible about fifty years ago. The great arsenal of democracy according to Franklin Delano Roosevelt has after fighting two world wars to defend human rights, the rule of law and check totalitarianism is itself beginning to be fatigued with the norms of the liberal democratic order and beginning a romance with extremist ideas in the guise of rejuvenating the American dream.

Nobody who lived through the Cold war and saw the determination with which the USA fought for the dignity of man , the rule of law and democratic norms would believe that he will live see a day when the American president will make it obviously clear that the non-native born immigrant or the vibrant American press with all its failings would be declared to be the enemy of the American dream or ideal.

That Donald Trump with the kinds of extremist views, falsehoods and deceptions he embodied in the course of his campaigns could receive the support of 62 million American voters and win the White House goes to show how much the respect for the liberal political climate has dimmed with the mainstream American voter. Donald Trump cannot and should not be held responsible for the shift in the liberal thinking of the average American today.The man is a business man, deal maker and an opportunist who could clearly see the moral breach opening up in the psyche of the average American voter and decided to explore it to win the White House.

The ideals of the founding fathers of the USA are clearly blurred and lost in the consciousness of many main stream Americans today. The huge price paid in blood and bounty to secure the democratic freedoms enshrined in the nation's polity are clearly eroded and degraded in the national consciousness today.

I make bold to say that there is not much difference between the political climate in the USA today and the the Italy of 1922 and the Weimar Germany of 1931 when the fascists in Italy under Benito Mussolini and the national socialists under Adolf Hitler began to make great gains and strides in the political order, coming out of the fringes of main stream political thinking and beginning to dominate the national consciousness.  The idea was that these were strongmen able to bend the institutions of state to achieve their political aims and advance the national agenda rather than men driven by the lust for power who had no clearly defined political direction and were simply megalomaniacs who were egocentric and driven by the desire to be in the middle of the limelight and the national discourse.

That Donald Trump has no clearly defined political agenda or economic program is still not clearly discernible to his most rabbid supporters who are blinded by prejudice and sentiments. It will take a little while for many  to realise that Trump has no real program, but the desire to win the White House and trounce his political enemies, paticularly Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. Running for the White House was meant to be the latest in his string of accomplishments as a born winner.  Fulfilling his many campaign promises would be an after thought. For now it will suffice him to blame the American press and his many political enemies for his present failings.

 When the American people chose to freely elect a man that despises the free press, disparages immigrants, has contempt for intelligence briefings, mocks the judiciary and denigrates judges, threatens to seize the oilfields of an independent nation, mocks the concept of NATO and the EU, has contempt for free trade agreements and sees climate change as a hoax, i knew the American dream was in for a rough ride in the hands of Donald J Trump.  250 years of democracy,freedom and the rule of law can sometimes be taken for granted and i daresay that the 62 million Americans who chose the Trump ride truly decided to take democracy for granted.

DONALD TRUMP'S INAUGURATION IS USHERING IN A NEW WORLD ORDER

DONALD TRUMP'S INAUGURATION IS USHERING IN A NEW WORLD ORDER

 Come January 20, 2017 a new world order is set to begin with the inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.  The last time a new world order was created in 1991,came with the demise of the Soviet Union and the liberation of the East European nations from the yoke of communism and Soviet rule. Over a quarter of another century, the phenomenon is about to repeat itself. Each time a new world order comes on stage, it comes with its own reverberations and upheavals with the consequential domino effect and the toppling of ideologies, alignments and a shake-up of the world political order as we are about to witness again.

It is expected that the beginning of a new re-alignment of political forces and Geo-political realities always comes with its own teething pains and birth pangs. For those of us who have canvassed for the last few years that the the United States needed to reinvent itself to maintain relevance and leadership at the global level with the emergence of a new world economic order championed with the rise of China as a global economic super power able to compete,rival and even challenge the United States for global economic supremacy, the present trend of events does not come as a surprise. The Barak Obama administration spent the last eight years fighting to uphold a status quo globally that could no longer hold in the face of newly emerging facts and trends.

When Mikhail Gorbachev emerged in 1985 as the General Secretary and leader of the Soviet Union he came with his reforms of Glasnost {openness} and Perestroika {restructuring} purposely for the purpose of saving the Soviet economic and political system in a struggle that was doomed to failure. What his reforms succeeded in accomplishing was the quick demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the present world order that catapulted the United States to the position of a Super Power in a unipolar world, a position she has enjoyed for another quarter of a century until the emergence of China as first an economic Super power as she is now for all practical purposes and reality except, for the most deluded minds finding it difficult to grapple with reality.

The revival of Russia as a global military power and the ascendancy of India as a rising economic and military power alongside with the emergence of Germany as the dominant nation in the European Union have all weakened in no small measure the Anglo- American political/economic hegemony that has kept the US at the helm of world affairs since the end of the Second world war in 1945. 

While the US remains a major player in the affairs of the globe, her ability to unilaterally fashion and dictate the pace of world affairs is what is sadly coming to and end in this new emerging world order of which Donald Trump is the percuss-or and champion. The angst,rage and hostility being directed at Donald Trump's policies and even Presidency is coming from those who naturally resent this tide of change and direction of global affairs and who feel they will be losing out as the status quo is giving way. How this new world order will ultimately shapen out is still at best a matter of conjecture, but a re-approachment that will ease tensions between the United States and Russia and lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons while fashioning out increased co-operation between the leading nuclear states will definitely help to make for a better world and a safer planet for all.

The Warsaw Pact collapsed in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the present world order, it is yet to be known what the fate of NATO and the European Union will be in the face of the re-rapprochements and realignments that will be taking place globally once Donald H Trump is sworn into office on the 20th of January.

2016 ELECTIONS, AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS, THE RISE OF INSURGENT POLITICS

After over a hundred and twenty years of being the nation referred to as God's own country , the dream land, the land of the brave and the free, the rainbow coalition, the land of limitless opportunity, the United States of America is facing an unparalleled identity crises as it heads into the 21st century and confronts the the reality that a bipolar world that in the early 21st century yielded way to a unipolar world is now giving way again to a multipolar world . There is nothing truer of the 21st century than the fact that constant change and willingness to adapt has become the reality of the hour and not just the day.  It is a fact that a lot of Americans particularly the baby boomer generation are fighting hard to come to terms with the fact that the cultural and racial mix that had been the bedrock of US society for over a hundred years is now giving way to a coalition of a type not necessarily ascribed to the Rainbow that they have come to recognise.

America is confronting change in ways and dimensions that many are finding very hard to bear especially as it is affecting their political and economic well being. It is just natural and very human for folks to resist any form of change that touches on their wellbeing and diminishes their leverage in life and society. Urbanisation, globalisation and the world wide web and associated innovations have radically changed the face of the earth not just the United States. The information age and economic innovations of the last quarter century are simply saying to all to change or perish. For the poor and deprived, it comes as good news but for the rich and privileged for whom the prospect of change comes with the threat of a loss of privilege and benefits the prospect of change becomes daunting.

No group of people are feeling the scare more than the white privileged members of society for whom retaining the existing social order is a task that must be done. The fact is that the information age is creating a more egalitarian world where opportunities are opening up across a global spectrum to all who are willing and ready to participate.  Information technology has reduced the world to a truly global village where skills and expertise are being freely traded just as easily as goods and services . Geography and boundaries are no longer able to insulate any society from the effects of globalisation. Donald Trump's dream wall may succeed in keeping out immigrant Mexicans but it will not succeed in keeping out cheaper and more competitive goods and services from streaming across the border and threatening American jobs.

Many times to regain competitiveness you have to remove the safety nets you have built around yourself that is denying you a capacity for honest self appraisal. If the generation of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders' insurgent supporters have ever sat down to honestly ask themselves as to how best to permanently adapt to the reality of an ever changing world they will soon come to realise that enduring change will not come through a political revolution that is only designed to obscure your view of stark reality but one that honestly helps you to make the fundamental changes that will enable you to regain competitiveness once more on a global level. Americans must never forget that the US came out of a Great Depression in the 1930's that wiped out close to a quarter of GDP in a space of five years to a period of growth and expansion albeit in wartime that saw the US economic expansion occupy close to 50% of global output by 1950.


That is the kind of mindset that the nation needs to galvanise and not a destructive set of values that undermines the very basic principle of American economic prosperity which is rooted in  innovation, hard work and capacity to adapt to change in whatever shape or form that it is required in order to keep productivity on an upbeat level.  Finally it must be remembered that the global wind of change that is straddling even the United States is not going to wait for any nation or society that is not ready to make the compromises needed to gain the headwinds. The recurring decimals remains that change and compromise remains the mantra for growth and relevance today in this fast evolving world. A Roman senator once appealed to his colleagues in ancient Rome 'we have succeeded in changing the world can we not change ourselves' ?

Managing the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East , the unraveling of Syria

  The ongoing conflict in Syria is a great tragedy involving the lives of millions of people being killed and rendered homeless and stateless because certain groups of nations have taken sides and are engaged in score settling while a human tragedy is unfolding on a monumental scale.

When the Arab spring started in 2010 and governments and ruling houses were collapsing in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and eventually Yemen and Syria it was hailed by many as the dawn of a democratic transition sweeping through the Middle East by many Western governments and generally encouraged or tolerated even when legitimate governments and regimes were being undermined.

 It took the descent of Libya into chaos for the global community to realise that every time a legitimate government is overthrown through violence it creates an opportunity for other elements albeit undesirable to fill the vacuum.

History has always shown and revealed that the violent overthrow of a legitimate government no matter how oppressive its policies may be has hardly ever led to the establishment of a just and humane society.

Violence always tends to breed violence and any form of reform rooted in violence will only spur another cycle of violence to alter it. Those who come to power by the sword always invariably fall by the sword. The Western democracies have always tended to look the other way when a repressive regime is being displaced by a violent uprising except when the regime in question is in their good books.

The universal fact still remains that government to be just and equitable ought to be borne out of a negotiated settlement and a out of a shared consensus. The idea of forcing a regime change at the barrel of a gun ought to be condemned and discountenanced by the civilized world no matter how abhorrent the regime in question maybe.

 In Africa for instance none of the regimes that were borne out of a guerilla or bush insurrection has ever given birth to a stable and dependable democracy. Such governments have tended to imbibe the stay put mentality and are themselves always needed to be forced out of office.  It was pretty obvious to the West that a regime as oppressive as that in place in Syria could only be 'forced' out but at what cost ?  

Can the human tragedy unfolding in Syria justify the arming of guerilla groups to overthrow a legitimate government ? This is a question the great Powers must answer, if not the Syrian scenario can easily repeat itself again. All the major powers looked askance as Syria descended into chaos and only began to be concerned as the chaos translated into the greatest exodus and migration of men across boundaries since the end of WW2.

 As Europe is now inundated with a refugee crises of unimaginable proportion, the evil of unsettling a legitimate government has begun to seep into the consciousness of policy makers worldwide.

The world must come to realise that governance is a serious business that must be addressed squarely and legitimately through consensus and dialogue and not by force or coercion if not the kind of tragedy we are seeing in the Middle East today will remain common place.

The notion of regime change that is being bandied in certain diplomatic circles in the West must give way to a notion of a legitimate democratic and constitutional transition no matter how painstaking the process may be.

PRESIDENT OBAMA PLEASE PROVIDE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NOW !

 PRESIDENT OBAMA PLEASE PROVIDE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NOW!

The world we are living in today is beginning to be reminiscent of Europe in 1938 when Nazi Germany was clearly in ascendancy and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier were clearly fantasising the dream of 'peace in our time' which did not match with on-going reality. The same mind set was also replicated in Washington where Republican hawks made it clear to President Franklin Roosevelt that on-going events in Europe had no bearing with the destiny and fortune of the United States and that the United States did not owe the World an obligation to bring its weight to bear on the events unfolding in Europe.

The situation in Syria today is towing the same line with all the world powers committed to an ill-defined campaign to end the reign of terror unleashed globally by ISIS and its Jihadist partners like Al Qaeda, El Shabaab and Boko Haram. The campaign is ill-defined and bound to generate its own problems among the alliance partners or may i say accomplices because the United States the only power strong enough to set parameters and give leadership to the global war on terror is shirking its responsibilities fifteen years after declaring war on global terror and inviting the global community to join in the campaign  against organised terror in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorits attack on New York and Washington.

I was not resident in the United States then, but the trauma of the events of that day is still clearly etched in my mind and cannot be erased in a lifetime. The surprising thing however is that fifteen years down the line in the campaign to eliminate global terror, we have an American leadership that is clearly tired and demotivated in providing global leadership in the sustained campaign to eliminate global terror. The offspring of that fading commitment is the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Nature we are told abhors a vacumn and the vacumn created by the premature and hasty withdrawal of American forces from Iraq clearly gave rise to the Islamic State

The Holy Scriptures tells us that whatever is WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING WELL. President George W Bush may have deposed Sadam Hussein under questionable motives but the fact remained that the pacification of  a post Sadam Hussein Iraq was America's responsibility no matter how expensive it may have turned out. I cannot conceive of any battle that you can win by shying away or running from the battlefield. It was American ground forces or what you may call 'boots on the ground' that deposed Sadam Hussein and it will take American ground forces whether we accept it or not to depose the Islamic State.

The emergence of the Islamic State was the bye product of the War in Iraq and ultimately on terror and its defeat in combat is a necessary pre-requisite to the logical conclusion of the war on terror as far as the Middle East is concerned. By 1944, the Second World War had become prohibitively expensive mostly to the UK and to some extent to the United States but both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not shirk from committing another five billion dollars to the opening of a second front in Europe in the invasion of France on June 6, 1944.  By 1944, there were no Republican or Democratic politicians that made any suggestions about the necessity of curbing spending or borrowing to get the war over with. The liberty bonds were joyfully advertised and cheerfully bought throughout the US because folks knew that this war had to be won.

One of the reason the West was resolutely commited to victory in WW2 was because leadership was in place that sold to the people the absolute necessity to defeat the twin evils of Nazism and Fascism.
Without that kind of resolution of spirit i dont see how any form of evil can be defeated on this Earth, The WAR ON TERROR cannot be fought with any less determination than the Second World War was fought if lasting results were to be obtained on the long-run. We have seen from the realm of medical science that a half-hearted treatment of any disease will only strenghten and harden the virus or germs, necessitating the production of even more expensive treatment or vaccines in dealing with a situation that could have been dealt a fatal blow if the necessary commitment was shown in the first inastance.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see today that the United States was not really safe as long as the Nazis were running riot in Munich, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1936-39 any more than the AVERAGE AMERICAN can think he is immune to events in Paris , Syria, Egypt or the Lake Chad Basin today. The chickens of the late 1930's ultimately came home to roost and the terrorist chickens we see playing havoc today will definitely come home to roost if we choose to bury our heads in the sands and play the Ostritch.

SOUND ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT AS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF A PRUDENT DEFENSE POLICY.

SOUND ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT AS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF A PRUDENT DEFENSE POLICY.

The defense policy of a nation cannot in practical terms be separated from the economic policies of the nation. There is an intrinsic link between a healthy economic state in a nation and its ability to defend itself on the long run both from internal and external enemies. The soundness of one’s defense infrastructure cannot ultimately be separated from the financial policies and health of the nation enunciating those policies.

The 20^th century revealed in no small measure the link between the depth of your pocket and your ability to win in any conflict particularly when it is protracted as modern conflicts amongst major powers are tending to be. Using the two major conflicts of the 20^th century as a case study, it is obvious that the nations that had the capacity to maintain a staying power in a protracted conflict tend to come out the winners.

Chinese communist leader Mao Tse Tsung once enthused that ‘God is on the side of the bigger battalion’ in any conflict; but the nations that were soundly defeated in both WW1 and WW2 started the wars with the Bigger Battalion mentality and were roundly defeated by the nations with deeper pockets and ultimately staying power. The goal and key is not the quantity of the  outlay to start with but the power and ability to not only sustain your outlay no matter how small it may appear to start with, but the ability to grow the outlay on an exponential basis as the conflict becomes protracted.   

If your ability to sustain and grow your outlay on an exponential basis is compromised by your present posturing, then defeat is around the corner in the long-run as the conflict becomes protracted and ultimately is decided in the theater of attrition. Better a small that becomes big on the long-run than a big that becomes small on the long-run.   No country enunciated this principle better than the US in her outings in the two conflicts of the first half of the 20^th century.

 None of the countries that engaged the US in the First and Second World War would have welcomed the US as an adversary had they known the true strength of America’s production capacity. Both Germany and Japan were first defeated psychologically before their battle field defeats simply because they found themselves tangoing with an adversary that seemed to have unlimited resources.

By 1944 it had become obvious to both Germany and Japan in WW2 that they had made a wrong choice in picking adversaries by betting against the United States of America. President Franklin Roosevelt knew during the Depression years that America’s great security lay not in the protection offered by the two great oceans but in the unlimited capacity of the American nation and workman. When he announced in 1941 his plans to build 100,000 aircraft for the US Army air force and 80,000 tanks for the army, his adversaries thought he was bluffing. Well time showed he was not bluffing.

President Roosevelt is my personal role model for a leader who knew how to balance the security of a nation in terms of the relationship between the bread basket and the arsenal. In the second half of the 20^th century, it seemed the Great Powers except for Great Britain had learnt the lessons of the immediate past in the reverse. Both the US and the Soviet Union went on an arsenal building spree that did not necessarily accrue to great victories as observed in the Vietnam War for the US and in Afghanistan for the Soviet Union.

All it succeeded in doing was to put America into a cycle of indebtedness which seems to be on the upswing, and to take the Soviet Union into the drain pipe. In this first half of the 21^st century, the same cycle is about to repeat itself as the bigger battalion mentality has engulfed the Great Powers once more, resulting in the committing of Billions of Dollars into Defense procurements that may never be used in reality while the nation in reality is sinking into a deeper debt sinkhole that ultimately limits your capacity and flexibility for exponential growth in defense capability when you sincerely need it.

Great Britain, Germany and France are the only major powers today that are pursuing a pragmatic policy in defense spending and plans that wisely put butter before guns.  Because common sense will tell you that if the economic capacity of a nation is well harnessed its productive powers will be released when truly needed.