Washington and Moscow seem to have returned to Cold War-style economic and political tit-for-tat even as the Donald Trump presidency teeters ever closer to a possible major political crisis bigger than the Nixon-Watergate one. In a clear indication of this trend, the governing Republican Party in Congress last week moved to stymie any attempt by their own President to block the on-going Russia probe as well as to soften sanctions against Russia. And, a prestigious African-American civic group has issued a travel warning to non-White people travelling in the state of Missouri.
Meanwhile, in Teheran, President Hassan Rouhani took oaths on Thursday for a second term after his convincing electoral win in May over several more conservative rivals. On the Syria-Jordan border, victorious Lebanese Hezbollah militia oversaw the withdrawal of Syrian anti-government rebels from their border havens to other areas yet held by rebel groups.
In East Asia, the US and North Korea traded threats of “pre-emptive strike” (the US) and responding missile and artillery bombardment (North Korea). This came after Pyongyang test-launched into the Sea of Japan what they said was an ‘inter-continental ballistic missile’ (ICBM) capable of reaching most of mainland USA. The US promptly sent a flight of two B1-B supersonic long range bombers and their fighter escorts across Korean Peninsula skies and, a day later, announced the test-launch of one of its own (already much-tested) ICBMs into the Pacific Ocean. The American bomber flight, of course, strictly kept to South Korean airspace - just as military units always do in such warlike feints which are not intended to provoke actual hostilities.
The South Koreans, of course, have little say over these warlike stunts by the US, its dominant partner in the Cold War era defence pact that protects South Korea from a hypothetical ‘invasion’ by the North, even though the Korean War ended nearly seventy years ago.
On the Indo-Chinese border in the eastern Himalayan range, adjacent to Bhutan, Indian and Chinese border patrols are also feinting but with some actual hostile light weapons exchanges. In this pocket of Doklam, in the high Himalayas and the high desert plateau east of the Range, the borders of India, China and Bhutan meet in improperly demarcated lines of control.
Beijing resents its current disadvantage in that both the Indian and Bhutanese sides of this territorial triangle are manned by Indian troops thereby giving India the edge as they overlook the Chinese troops manning their side. Last week, officials in Beijing grumbled publicly that India was infiltrating troops beyond its territory in violation of the status quo.
India has a long-standing defence and foreign policy treaty with Bhutan in which, at Bhutan’s request, Delhi provides national defence for that small, Buddhist monarchic democracy as well as oversees its foreign relations. Indian troops are on the Bhutan-China border in fulfilment of that treaty.
Despite critical comments in Chinese Communist Party journals regarding Indian interference in Bhutan, the Bhutanese government has yet to acknowledge any such interference. Both Delhi and Beijing have indicated, however, that they are content to limit this dispute solely to the remote pocket of barely populated mountains. They are all too aware of the far bigger mutual gains in bilateral economic relations.
Last week President Trump grumblingly signed in to law the latest set of economic sanctions passed by the US Congress against Russia, Iran and North Korea. These sanctions are actually of some limited nature in terms of how they are applied. They target specific individuals and institutions (government and private) involved in activity which, the US says violates the various either international law or specific treaties that regulates or restricts types of weapons production.
Thus, North Korea is sanctioned – yet again – for seemingly violating its treaty with the UN to restrict its nuclear weapons capability. Pyongyang, however, insists that, irrespective of whether or not it is nuclear weaponizing, it has a right to develop its conventional missile capability. The entire world knows that North Korea, unlike the already most nuclear-weaponized USA, is a long way from developing nuclear bombs small enough to be carried by rockets and designed to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures in inter-continental flight.
Most observers are sceptical about the effect of such sanctions, noting that, since the Cold War, North Korea remains the most ‘sanctioned’ country in the world. But this has not constrained the supposedly ‘communist’ dictatorship in Pyongyang from proceeding apace with its armament programmes. Many would argue, however, that if, with the end of the Cold War, the old South Korea-USA military alliance had been wound up, the impoverished and beleaguered regime in Pyongyang may have focussed more on socio-economic development. Instead, with the world’s sole superpower remaining threateningly at its doorstep and annually practising military invasions, Pyongyang feels pressured to continue to attempt to match its defence capability with that of the US.
Washington, of course, has been happy to maintain its Korean War defence pact with South Korea long after the end of that war simply in order to remain close to what it sees as its real rival: China.
Both China and Russia are well aware of the real reasons for the stationing of US forces on the Asian side of the Pacific, far beyond America’s shores. After all, US forces reached out across the Pacific long before the Korean War – during the World War 2 – and have remained there as part of the US’s continuing strategic outreach as a global superpower.
The difference, today, is that the world is no longer bi-polar and, the nuclear deterrent, itself, is multilateral, with so many nuclear-armed states other than the old ‘Eastern Bloc’ and ‘Western Bloc’ of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, for the world’s (still) sole super-power, the leadership in Washington – both Republican and Democrat – seems to be unaware that that ‘age of superpowers’ is ending and that the very concept of nation-states behaving like the old ‘superpowers’ is fast losing any validity.
In the past, the US could have isolated Iran, for example, from all economic and political support. Today, however, the US cannot command a whole community of nations to collectively sanction Iran. In any case, the treaty that regulates Iran’s nuclear build-up is signed by six major powers – Russia, China, USA, UK, France and Germany (the P5+1 group) – and cannot be changed without further negotiations and consensus.
Thus, when the US unilaterally imposes sanctions against Iran, it simply means that Teheran continues to deal with the rest of the world. In fact, amid these narrowly targeted sanctions against Iran’s nuclear industry, US companies continued to compete with other country corporate to do business with the newly vibrant Iranian economy.
When President Hassan Rouhani resumed his leadership in Teheran last week, he did so in a country which now has the longest record of elective democracy and greatest socio-political stability in all of West Asia. The world’s biggest Shiite country, Iran has the advantage over the conservative Sunni monarchies in the region in that it is a stable, largely democratic, polity and its economy is not heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
Iran has a multi-sectoral economy with both fossil extractive as well as extensive manufacturing industries and, allowing for improved travel logistics, will soon have a booming tourism industry. The wonders of ancient Persia as well as the beauty and mystery of Islamic civilisation beckon.
When President Donald Trump signed the Russia-Iran-North Korea sanctions law last week he did so under protest. In fact he issued a statement saying the new sanctions law was “unconstitutional” in that it restricted the President’s ability to make any changes in the sanctions policy without reference to Congress.
Most analysts read this as a move by Congress as insurance against the President who is under suspicion of being partial to the Russian on the one hand, and, on the other, is notorious for unilateral and – more importantly - un-intelligent executive behaviour. No one wants a 70-plus, cantankerous old tycoon known for blundering gaffes in a political world completely alien to him, to be in sole charge of American foreign policy.
At the same time, however, the hard Right of the Republican Party is busy trying to recreate an old-fashioned, socially conservative and White-centred nation while they are in power.
The Justice Department is busy plotting to roll back decades of progressive laws and practices that provided various supportive socio-economic programmes for the yet socially backward African-American community as well as other socially disadvantaged groups such as the lowest income groups, women, and marginalised sexual orientation groups.
The Black/White divide is, once again widening in America. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) last week issued its first ever travel warning against an American state. The NAACP now warns African Americans and other non-White groups that they risk racial harassment and discrimination when they travel to the mid-West state of Missouri.
Thus, while the world begins to savour some freedom from the weight of superpower geo-politics, the people of America may be facing greater political burdens from the regressive policies of the new regime in Washington.