Geopolitics of bullying: The Trump era

It is no secret to anyone that the United States (USA) is engaged in various conflicts around the world. Military wars, economic and financial blockades that also transcend the diplomatic and geopolitical scenario, all with the same objective: to generate invasions against other sovereign territories to strike coups, to deteriorate their democracies and to align them with their interests.

All this is done by Washington while promoting, financing and creating paramilitary groups with terrorist ends to expand the profits generated by the war industry and even the high dividends generated by having control of the powerful and multimillion-dollar drug industry.

Since January 20, 2017, when the magnate and businessman Donald Trump began to exercise his presidency from the White House, his conflictive politics has led the US country to confront not only its historical «enemies» such as Russia, China, Iran. and Venezuela; but also against their own allies including Germany, France, the European Union and even Israel.

It would seem that for the White House, everything in their country is in very good conditions and there is no need to worry about what their own citizens suffer daily. This is how, rarely, the media structure – designed to tell what the US does and does not do outside its territory – narrates what really happens in its own internal forum.

Millions of poor that keep on increasing in number, who in turn add more that live in conditions of misery, people who are left homeless due to mortgages and unpayable rent that end up surviving in tents and cars in the vicinity of highways and adjacencies of cities, brutal increase in citizens who become addicted to hard drugs and opiate drugs, thousands of them dead due to overdose, not to mention the serious figures of unemployment, exclusion and racism, are just some of the problems that are almost never in the headlines of the media corporations that promote the editorial line dictated by the Pentagon.

It’s different when it comes to generating tendencies of public opinion manipulated and even false to discredit other governments and peoples, especially those that are contrary to Washington’s interests and hold the flags of self-determination, independence and sovereignty. But, for the Trump administration, not only is it not enough to be allied to it’s geopolitical, economic, and military strategies, among others, it must also be entirely complacent and submissive, otherwise there is the very likely risk of entering its sanctioned list, starting a tough diplomatic tension and entering the crude war of tariffs.

This is how the US not only openly fights against China, Russia, Mexico, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Nicaragua, Libya, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Niger, Iraq – to mention a few – but also with Germany, France, and other countries of the European Union (EU) that try to separate themselves from US hegemony such as Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain, among others.

US and its entanglements: the wars it can not win and the ones from which it can not get out

In Afghanistan alone, the invading US troops have been trying for 18 years to give an image that is favorable to the White House. The millions of murders, crimes against humanity committed and innumerable human rights violations, especially against women, children and the elderly, are only a part of the crimes committed by the US military in Afghan territory, a country that has multiplied the export of heroin and opium crops since the US military forces control it, despite not having won the war they face against the rebel patriotic armies that still defend their nation despite the occupation.

The same happens in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Niger, as well as in most of the civil wars and armed conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. So these armed conflicts are a kind of trap that the US government itself can not get out of, first because they fail to win, second because they do not want to admit defeat and third because they can not find a way to finish them unharmed, as it happened in Vietnam.

Some analysts believe that the US has never won a war in which it has entered, at least in recent years.

Interviewed by the BBC in 2017, Professor of Political Science, Dominic Tierney, author of several books on American wars and conflicts, such as “The Right Way to Lose to War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts” (the right way to lose a war: The US in the Age of Conflicts that can not be won), published in 2015, explains that since 1945, «Americans have not won any great war beyond the Gulf War of 1991, because the nature of the conflicts has changed».

«It is much easier to enter a war than to leave it. The United States spent five years negotiating peace in Vietnam (…) It is extremely difficult to leave because the US does not want to lose, does not want to admit failure and remains trapped indefinitely», adds Tierney.

According to the Pentagon’s latest unqualified report on the use of military force, delivered in 2017, the US has between active personnel and reservists, 227,000 US soldiers permanently stationed abroad, a figure that does not include special operations troops, the nearly 14,000 troops in Afghanistan and others that are part of covert actions and that are within the «classified information».

«America First»

Under the slogan «America First», Trump bases all the strategies of his foreign policy, a kind of reissue of the Monroe doctrine that permeated all the US war policy with the phrase «America for the Americans», but considering «Americans» only to what interests – economically and geopolitically – the US government.

Under that premise, Trump renews the imperialist actions of Washington against the rest of the countries: ‘it is done, said and acted’ according to what the US says, if it’s not like that, it’s considered an enemy and in that sense it must be attacked and annihilated.

This is the case against Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico and Bolivia, just to consider some of the countries that still maintain sovereign governments outside the American doctrine and that aspire to take their people to the greatest possible state of happiness through sovereign social models different from what the US intends to impose in the region.

For this reason, these governments are considered enemies of the United States, not to mention Mexico, which has not yet fully entered that list but is surely on its way. Proof of this, is Trump’s stubbornness in building the border wall that, according to him, the Mexicans themselves must pay.

Trump already threatened Venezuela with a military invasion and every day the spokesmen of the White House reiterate that the option of war has not been withdrawn from the table. Likewise, the financial and diplomatic blockade against Caracas is increased, with the objective of overthrowing President Nicolás Maduro, by promoting the creation of a parallel State to control its energy, mineral and natural riches such as oil, gold, coltan, gas, iron, diamonds, water, land for cultivation, among others.

At the same time Nicaragua – led by the Sandinista President Daniel Ortega – is also sanctioned, while Cuba receives more pressure through the blockade suffered by its people for more than half a century. Other countries in sight are the Evo Morale’s Bolivia and the Mexico of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In this same sense, Trump faces the giants of Asia and Europe: China and Russia. The war against these nations is directed towards the deterioration of their commercial businesses with the imposition of tariffs against their products and the imposition of sanctions for being ‘supposed’ countries that violate human rights and freedoms.

Diplomatic relations with Russia have reached their lowest levels. Almost the same happens with China, Iran and now also the US intends to include India, after this country increased its economic and trade ties with Venezuela in the fields of energy, health and science.

Trump administration and the deterioration of diplomatic relations and increase in conflicts

Under the Trump administration, the number of US troops in Afghanistan increased from 8,500 to 14,000 as of January 2017. The argument used by Trump was «to force the Taliban to negotiate a political agreement».

In 2016, before Trump became president, Israel took a position contrary to his candidacy. Israel’s interior minister, Aryeh Dery, was concerned about Trump’s inauguration as president. Trump’s declarations about not allowing Muslims into his country were repudiated by the Israeli government for not respecting religious freedom and the institutions related to the issue, repudiated Trump’s expressions as «discriminatory and contrary to the spirit and values of his nation».

During the 2016 US presidential election, the Israeli media expressed concern over the eventual victory of the tycoon. The Israeli press described him as the worst candidate in history; undemocratic, racist, misogynist and xenophobic, and pointed out that according to the Israeli embassies, Trump lacked a coherent policy in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

However, during his administration, Trump has taken a position in favor of the government of Israel and against the Palestinian struggle, to the point that he came to declare himself «a great admirer of Israel». So strong has been his pro-Israel position, that on December 6, 2017 he said that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and ordered to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, a fact that was rejected by most of the world leaders and generated protests in several muslim countries, especially in the Palestinian nation.

With North Korea Trump has tried to maintain diplomatic relations in a low profile, although in 2017 they reached very strong levels of tension. In August of 2017 Trump said that there would be «fire and fury as the world has never seen» when North Korea carried out it’s nuclear tests, after the US increased the pressure against the government of Kim Jong Un. The bilateral relations are currently in terms of respect.

With Iran, the opposite happens. The Trump administration has increased sanctions and pressure. Since his inauguration he began to criticize the nuclear agreement with Iran, to the point of disqualifying it on May 18, 2018 when deciding the unilateral exit of the treaty that includes other nuclear powers like Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and the European Union.

In the same way it happens with India. The US has decided to increase pressures against that country, after Venezuela began to increase it’s export of crude oil and the sale of 500,000 barrels per day that it previously distributed to US companies and as a result of the bloody economic and financial blockade against Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), now it must relocate those barrels to the Indian market.

The US also includes India in its trade war by increasing tariffs against it’s products.

In the case of China, the US war transcends the commercial arena and even reaches outer space. Since March 2018, Trump has increased unilateral sanctions against the Chinese economy by imposing tariffs in the order of 50,000 million dollars, using Article 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and arguing «unfair trade practices» and «the theft of intellectual property».

In response, the People’s Republic of China also approved tariffs on more than 128 US products, including in particular soybeans, one of the main US exports to China. However, the war between both nations, which are fighting for global economic power, are faced in the outer space race.

In 2018, Trump rescued the idea of creating an army to control outer space, called the United States Space Force, which will be active from 2020. This action puts in danger peace treaties on the space of the planet Earth, which prevents any nation take over space and above all threaten another from that area.

Russia, China, among other nations showed their concern about this US threat and said they were ready and willing to avoid any war intention from space. In fact, Russia and China maintain active projects for the cooperation and development of all countries and the protection of peace.

Trump fights against Germany, France, the EU and NATO

Another important point is Trump’s fight against Germany, France and the European Union. With the block of European countries, the main conflict in the US goes beyond the military sphere and the support that Washington aspires to take from the North Atlantic Organization (NATO), considering that it’s «contribution» is greater than that of other countries, and this has splashed to France, Germany, Japan, Italy and other NATO members.

For Trump, it is an option for the US to abandon NATO or reduce it’s investment in the organization, even turning it’s back on its most faithful partner in the old continent: England. This produced reactions from France and Germany, which consider that their contributions to NATO are valid and that, in the best of cases, they should arm a purely European military organization, without the presence of the US.

In fact, in the diplomatic sphere, relations between the government’s of Trump and Emmanuel Macron in France are at very low levels, as is the case with Angela Merkel’s Germany.

And it is that the fight with Germany also has antecedents in the imposition of tariffs, same that increased the conflicts of Trump with Merkel are of long date, as well as the insults and tantrums made in front of cameras on the part of the American tycoon during meetings with the EU and NATO.

Trump decided to impose sanctions against Germany’s steel and aluminum exports in March 2018. At that time, Germany rejected the US «unilateral measures» and said they would bring «painful consequences for international trade».

In this same context, the EU regretted «deeply» the decision of Washington and said that they would not remain «sitting idle while our industry is hit with unjust measures that put at risk thousands of European jobs”.