ANALYSIS:

JAIME J. YAMBAO

AT the recent official visit of US President Donald Trump to the UK, London protesters inflated and floated near Westminster Abbey a giant orange balloon depicting Trump as a pouting baby, wearing diapers and wielding a smartphone. One of the organizers interviewed on TV said the balloon was meant to be an offensive answer to Trump’s customary ad hominem tweets against opponents and critics. To some people, like this observer, the balloon was a vaguely amusing but valid cartoon comment on Trump’s policies that are so disruptive of the world order. An Indian spokesman, speaking of the trade war that Trump is waging against his country called them “infantile.”

Living in Europe in the early 1970s, I often heard Americans referred to as “les grands bébés” (the big babies). But to the best of my recollection, that label was not as critical and negative as the Londoners’ balloon. There was in fact a note of endearment in the term. The US is a relatively young nation following rather innocent, even naïve values in its relations with other countries, including the primacy given to spreading democracy and human rights.

The balloon, however, depicted quite a different creature. The actuations of Trump during his sojourn in Europe seem to provide us with a clearer glimpse into his view and construct of the world and the role played in it by himself, his rivals, and their respective allies or camps. Trump earlier sang hosannas to Chinese President Xi Jinping, even congratulating the latter on being designated president for life by the Communist Party Congress. On his meeting and joint press conference with Russia’s President Putin, even his fellow Republicans criticized Trump for making “one of the most disgraceful performances by a US President, abasing himself before a tyrant” (Sen. John McCain).

Three spheres of influence
There appears in all these more than Trump’s stated admiration and envy for the powers that these strongmen exercise. It was reported that during the last Group of 7 summit, Trump raised the matter of welcoming Russia back to the group and suggesting recognition of the latter’s annexation of the Crimea because the people there spoke Russian. This would support Putin’s revanchist policies regarding the former republics and satellites of the Soviet Union because most of the people in these countries spoke Russian!

The positions that Trump expressed at the NATO summit in Brussels and the summit with Putin in Helsinki point to a proclivity to divide the world into three spheres of influence led by the three most powerful men on the planet. With the rise of China, the bipolar world of the Cold War has given way to a more chummy tripolar one. Trump’s reference to Europe as a foe can only be understood as a throwback to the Monroe doctrine, which sought to exclude the European colonizers from the Americas, leaving the Americas as the exclusive sphere of influence of the United States. Monroeism is alive and well in Trump, based on the recent disclosure of a Trump plan to invade Venezuela and save its people from President Maduro. It seems that given a fair deal, Trump would be willing to grant Putin and Xi their own spheres of influence.

Britain’ s projected departure from the European Union can thus be seen as unfortunate under the present circumstances. Brexit weakens both the United Kingdom and the European Union. It throws Europe into the margins of an emerging order of the most powerful countries in the world dealing with each other and settling the problems of the world among the three of them. This order is proving useful to Trump’s foreign policy priorities, namely the threat of North Korea and the making of a Middle East peace based on the security and regional dominance of Israel. Trump and Putin appeared to have struck a deal on getting Iran out of Syria and preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon as they expressed a common desire to protect the security of Israel. Under Trump’s view of diplomacy as a transaction, there has to be a trade-off. What is it? The recognition of Putin’s sphere of influence to include the Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and other former republics of the Soviet Union whose fall Trump considers the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

While boasting that his trip strengthened NATO, a subsequent interview revealed that Trump considered the alliance as not only an expensive but also an irrelevant proposition. Trump has objected to the US continuing to shoulder 90 percent of the NATO budget and shamed each NATO member-country into agreeing to spend 2 percent of their GDP on their defense. Hopefully, these NATO countries will build up their defenses using weapons Made in the USA, but this is not a certainty with European countries themselves being major arms manufacturers. Article 5 of the NATO treaty provides that an attack on one member-country is to be considered an attack on all. Trump has loudly questioned the sense of coming to the rescue of faraway, tiny Montenegro, even if this new NATO member is strategically located and spends 2 percent of its GDP on defense.

Regressive view of the world
In this mindset of the world, there is a singular rule prevailing over any alliance, multilateral or regional arrangement, international law or practice that many years and many superior minds have created. No country must take what Trump considers an unfair advantage of the United States. No foreign country, competitor or ally must contribute to the US trade imbalance and fiscal deficit. The US security umbrella will no longer be available gratis et amore. What — the Philippines may even be asked to pay for the secondhand, surplus, or scrap defense materials that it gets as the US contribution to the modernization of its armed forces!

There is nothing radically new and progressive in all this. On the contrary, there is a rather hoary, even antediluvian aspect to it. Trump’s view of the world is regressive, harking back to the wild, old days when international organizations and law were mostly rude or rudimentary and all that mattered was the will and dealings of the great animals of the jungle. In that world order, lesser denizens may simply be pushed around or kicked to the gutter.

We might just wake up one day to the South China Sea question being settled between the US and China. Just as when at the dawn of the 20th century we were celebrating the victory of the Philippine Revolution against Spain, our forebears woke up to find that Spain and the United States had brokered a deal turning over the Philippines to the latter for $20 million.

In the heat of the name-calling exchanged with Trump prior to the Singapore summit, Kim Jong-un may have been closer to the mark than the London protesters and had a lot of people running to the dictionary when he called Trump a dotard — a person in senile decay, an irritable, parsimonious, egoistic, self-deluding and obstinate person on his second childhood.

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