Political elites in Washington and other western capitals may be disgusted or shocked by US President Donald Trump’s latest overnight Tweet of vulgar crudities against top woman political TV show host, Mika Brzezinski, but the rest of the world could care less. And, while White House officials countered criticism of the President from both Republican and Democratic leaderships, most US commentators argued that Trump’s mass following actually empathised with the sexist connotations of Trump’s Tweet and his vicious dig at the media elite.
White House media officials insisted on the President’s right to “fight back” at critics going as far refusing to condemn the almost violently sexist crudities in that Trump Tweet that said “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she and “Psycho Joe” visited him at Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Eve last December.
The rest of the world has much to worry about, and cry about, before it seeks comic relief (again) from the antics of a bumbling superpower leader. France is mourning legendary feminist leader and veteran politician Simone Veil, who died on Friday. Most of West Asia and the Persian Gulf was tensely watching, on the one hand, how Qatar stands up to the harsh sanctions siege by the small, Saudi-led coalition of Arab states and, on the other, the continuing retreat of Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria.
Germany was celebrating the legalising of same-sex marriage while waiting to see how much more the huge but declining Deutsche Bank would be fined by the US Treasury for laundering billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains of Russian oligarchs. Already, New York State has fined Deutsche Bank hundreds of millions of dollars on similar charges.
Reactions
In Asia, reactions from Beijing are awaited after last week’s sudden actions by Washington affecting China or its interests in East Asia. Last week President Trump publicly accused China of failing to rein in North Korea’s seemingly rapid militarisation and, the US State Department announced more sanctions against North Korean personalities and institutions as well as against a bank in China.
Having earlier Tweeted the claim that “China has failed …” to contain North Korea, Trump announced his renewed hard line against North Korea during last week’s visit to Washington by newly elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Mixed, even confusing, signals came out of Thursday’s meeting between the leaders of what were, till recently, two long-time military allies against the spread of Communism.
Moon Jae-in, a charismatic human rights and peace activist, was telected by a convincing margin in May on a platform that emphasised peaceful dialogue with North Korea. He also represents a growing popular sentiment in South Korea that did not see North Korea as an imminent threat – the doctrine of America’s containment strategy that is founded on strong military alliances with Japan and South Korea.
President Moon has already called for a halt to the further deployment by the US in its South Korean bases of a powerful new anti-missile defence system that is ostensibly aimed at North Korea but has the capacity to cover and resist missile launches by both China and Russia nearby.
Issue
Significantly, a threat from North Korea is no longer a major issue in South Korean politics and never figured in the last presidential polls. Many South Korean analysts agree that tensions with the North continue not because of the past Korean War but more because of the continued presence of US forces and bases in South Koreas and the continued annual joint military exercises between American and South Korean forces in the immediate vicinity of North Korean territory. The explicit purpose of these annual exercises is to counter a presumed North Korean threat.
US officials continue to claim a threat to US national security if North Korea develops long range nuclear missiles. What is not acknowledged is the threat perceptions of Pyongyang of America’s already existing military capacity that includes both bases and air and naval strike forces stationed at North Korea’s very borders as well as nuclear-tipped long range missile forces in the US that can easily target any part of Asia.
US National Security Adviser HR McMaster also last week publicly confirmed that the Americans were considering possible military options to deal with North Korea.
In what seems to be a policy reversal in relation to China, the US announced last week a series of measure that Beijing will not like: the finalizing of a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, official State Department listing of China as one of the world’s worst human traffickers and, sanctions on a Chinese bank, the Bank of Dandong, for doing business with North Korea.
These measures were announced just as the Chinese government was formally celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the official return of the British colony of Hong Kong to China. To many in Asian capitals, who have to deal with China on their doorstep, are watching Bejing’s response to what seems to be the deliberate timing of these punitive measures by the US.
Has Washington lost its finesse now that it is under the tutelage of Trumpian ‘experts’? Does the Republican administration still think that the US remains the overwhelmingly dominant power in Asia? Are they not aware that with the end of Communist bloc the Asian friends of the US no longer need its military umbrella the way they did during the Cold War? Are they not aware that many of these Asian states also perceive their close neighbour, China, also as an economic power whose proximity and friendship brings much dividend for the region; that Beijing may be a better business partner than good old Uncle Sam?
America’s allies in Asia are no longer unified in a single bloc favouring capitalism over socialism. Rather, they are now in a world of many centres of economic and geo-political power often with cross-cutting relationships between states.
One’s enemy’s enemy is no longer necessarily one’s friend. Neither is one’s friend also one’s friend. And this does not apply only to Asia.
In West Asia, for example, Turkey and Saudi Arabia may have been building a friendship, but Ankara has a closer friend in Qatar which is now seemingly Riyadh’s mortal enemy.
Last week Ankara hosted Qatar’s Defence Minister and the Turkish government affirmed the expansion of the newly established Turkish military base in Qatar. At the same time, Ankara continued to affirm support for Doha in the on-going economic siege against it by a small, Saudi-led coalition of Arab states. This coalition, basically the Saudi Arabia and the UAE with a few impoverished, Saudi-financed, Arab and Muslim states, has imposed a virtual total blockade of Qatar since early June.
Ankara seems to be holding firm to its support for Doha against Riyadh for now. This alignment is in ine with Ankara’s gradual move eastwards in Asia.
Until the end of World War 1, Turkey, as the Ottoman Empire, dominated West Asia as far as the Gulf and was the enemy of several Arab insurgencies. It was the Saudi royal family of a coalition of Arab tribes in the Arabian Peninsula that was propped up by the British during World War 1 when the Ottoman regime sided with Germany. Thus, the Saudis do not have good memories of Ankara.
Space
On the other hand, the gradual waning of US power in the region has prompted Ankara to attempt to fill the geo-political space as the most powerful Muslim-majority state in the region and beyond.
Turkey is also playing a key role in weakening the IS and, also, by default, undermining the Syrian regime. How much longer Ankara will persist in undermining Syria remains to be seen, now that it has experienced the negative fall-out in the form of a flood of refugees from that war-torn country.
Thus, as Russian and Syrian forces approach the last IS stronghold of Raqqa from the west and Kurdish and Syrian rebel forces helped by American units approach from the east, Turkey has seen fit to send its own forces across the border into Syria.
Its intention is to secure some of its own border territory from Kurdish separatist insurgents now forming part of the American-led anti-Damascus coalition in northern Syria.
IS may even fade away – perhaps to chaotic Libya – but the myriad other armed groups – armed by various extra-regional actors like the US and the Gulf states – will remain to fight it out over Syria.
Immediate neighbour Turkey, naturally, will want to have say in that.
Last week yet another UK citizen was arrested on terrorism-related charges, at Heathrow Airport, London, on arrival from Turkey. The person was identified by police only as young woman from north London area, according to news reports from London. The woman was suspected to have entered Islamic State controlled territory in northern Syria from across the Turkish border.
This, as Ankara knows, is only the tip of the iceberg.