Living in Trump’s World

America’s new National Security Strategy document is, in every sense, a reflection of President Donald Trump. That is, the word “values” never appears, and the main duty of allies is simply to do whatever America says. The idea that there might be nations with which America shares ties of friendship, history, and values is simply absent, which is hardly surprising given that Trump has managed to convince even many Canadians that America is “an enemy nation”.

The fact that America is now widely distrusted and that Trump is, internationally speaking, the most disliked president that America has ever had, is not mentioned, though the huge loss in America’s soft power is a factor of great importance.

What is interesting is the new set of priorities. First and foremost, America intends to dominate what the document calls “our Hemisphere”, including maintaining a major military presence there to guard against “urgent threats”. It’s hard to know what those are supposed to be. Assuming that America keeps its long-standing promise not to invade Cuba, which other Latin American country really challenges America? Even Venezuela hardly qualifies and can be easily dealt with by Washington if it feels like it.

So, the real meaning of this updated Monroe Doctrine is just a warning to China, Russia and other third parties to keep out.

This is unlikely to be popular in Latin America whose countries value their national sovereignty as much as anyone else. The famous remark that the tragedy of Central America was that “it is so far from heaven and so close to America” really applies to Latin America as a whole.

Everywhere it will have been noted that, when Trump threatened Brazil with much higher tariffs if it dared to imprison Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a military coup, Brazil simply ignored that threat. It jailed Bolsonaro, and then Trump had to cut many of the tariffs he had imposed because they were putting up prices for American consumers.

Middle East

The document announces that America’s preoccupation with the Middle East is “over”.  Logically, that ought to be true – though events have continually pulled Washington back there. Ever since 1948 the United States (US) has wanted to support Israel on the one hand but has also wanted to maintain friendships with Arab states because the US needed the Middle East’s oil. This balancing act was remarkably successful but it was a strain.

Then, however, the fracking/shale revolution suddenly freed America from dependence on Middle Eastern oil, which is why it has recently been able to have such a strong pro-Israel policy. And the oil and gas from shale could well last a century or more. Meanwhile, US national interests really lie elsewhere.

The most striking part of the national security strategy concerns Europe which it sees as a continent in decline. In effect, it accuses European leaders of having betrayed Western civilisation by allowing mass immigration which, within 20 years, will render the continent “unrecognisable”. This is, of course, a transposition of Trump’s nativist priorities for America onto Europe.

Although the document doesn’t spell this out, it seems clear that what it is particularly concerned about is Muslim immigration. In this, of course, it is in company with many Europeans who support anti-immigration parties – like the French Rassemblement National, the Alternative for Germany in that country, Reform UK in Britain, and so on – which Trump effectively backs, calling them “patriotic parties”.

The document says that mass immigration threatens to produce “civilisational erasure”, internal strife, censorship of free speech, suppression of political opposition, falling birthrates, and loss of national identity and self-confidence.

In addition, the document accuses the Europeans of blocking a peace deal with Russia, which is to say, they don’t agree with Trump’s efforts to sell out Ukraine and give Russian President Vladimir Putin whatever he wants. It talks of the need to re-establish “strategic stability with Russia” which, effectively, means allowing Putin to have his zone of influence in Eastern Europe just as America has an exclusive sphere of influence in Latin America.

This is, of course, exactly what America’s allies are most afraid of – that Trump would like to divide the world into the spheres of influence of the three strongmen – Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin, and himself – and that he will do deals with Xi and Putin, selling out whoever he wishes in order to get a good deal for himself and the US.

It is ominous that the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has welcomed Trump’s strategy document, saying it is largely compatible with Putin’s views.

No Mention

Compared with all previous US national security documents what is really striking is that there is no mention of democracy, human rights, freedom, national sovereignty, the free world or allies: in effect Trump seems to regard all this as mere verbiage. The real talk is about money and territory.

Thus, the US rivalry with China is viewed in purely economic terms: there is no mention of China’s human rights record, its complete lack of democracy and free speech or any of the other defining characteristics of authoritarian and democratic systems.

The other area of the globe which is marked out as an American sphere of influence is the Western Pacific – i.e. Hawaii, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia more generally. The document maintains an ambivalent silence about the future of Taiwan but emphasises that all the US’s allies in the region must spend a lot more on defence so they can share the burden of containing China.

It is striking that the document does not talk of the Indo-Pacific as the Biden administration did: it’s as if the rest of the Pacific and Indian Ocean territories have been written off, a reflection of the Trumpian assumption that only immediately adjacent areas – Latin America and the Western Pacific – are America’s concern. Nor is there any consideration of India as possibly America’s most important ally.

It seems likely that Trump is still in a huff about Prime Minister Narendra Modi denying his claims to have made peace between India and Pakistan. Many decades of careful American diplomacy, wooing India, have been wrecked because of Trump’s pique.

Resistance

Perhaps the most provocative part of the strategic document is its call for the US to “cultivate resistance” to the over-liberal European policies which have allowed mass immigration. In effect, this is a call for the US to aid the rise of far-right parties in Europe, a gross interference in their domestic policies and politics. This is quite incendiary stuff.

As it is there are suggestions on all sides that Europe could be heading towards civil strife as a result of the growing Muslim presence in its midst. Already in Britain one has seen anti-immigrant gangs trying to burn down migrant shelters and mosques while in France Eric Zemmour’s Reconquete party is a quite conscious evocation of the reconquista – the war to evict the Moors from Spain, climaxing in 1492. For, increasingly across Europe, there is not only a demand to limit immigration but to for so-called “re-migration” – sending migrants back to their native countries. This is naturally resisted quite fiercely.

The grievances against Muslim immigrants start with the fact that they seldom integrate with the local population and instead build a sort of counter-society. Indeed, the leaders of Muslim countries very strongly insist that they must not integrate – it is seen as synonymous with losing their Muslim faith. But, in addition, Muslims are associated with medieval attitudes towards women, with so-called “grooming gangs”, and with extreme intolerance, Islamic terrorism and anti-semitism.

Trump clearly shares these resentments, hence his knee-jerk halt to all Afghan immigration after a single terrorist incident, his characterisation of Somali immigrants as “garbage”, his prior halting of immigration from a number of Muslim countries and his continuing war of words against Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London.

In fact, Europe’s leaders have allowed the problem of growing Islamisation to creep up on them simply by adopting a laissez-faire attitude. Faced with growing popular discontent, they appeal for tolerance, which doesn’t work because Muslims are often the most intolerant.

Instead they attempt to limit confrontation by reducing freedom of speech – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government intends to outlaw Islamophobia, which is likely to trigger the very confrontations he is trying to avoid. In truth, the situation is delicate enough without America further “cultivating the resistance”.

Sympathetic

Other Americans are more sympathetic. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, America’s biggest bank, says the US should help Europe, which is weak, fragile, and disunited, but which shares American values. But there is something pathetic about the notion that, 80 years after the Second World War, Europe still needs to be treated as a weakling.

But what is really striking is that Putin’s entire strategy has been to split Europe from America and Trump’s new take on strategy suggests that he is succeeding. Moreover, Trump now suggests that he might mediate between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Putin – which is to say that he no longer regards America as part of NATO, Putin’s other supreme objective.

South Africans might wonder where they fit into this new strategic conception. The answer is they don’t. Trump regards them as irrelevant. In his eyes they had a chance to do a deal with him and they turned it down. More fool them.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has from the very beginning not understood how weak South Africa’s position is and has cavalierly acted as if the US was bound to want to reconcile with Pretoria. Indeed, he spoke of how it was inevitable that, in the end, the two countries would sit down together and work out their differences, rather as it had been inevitable that in the end the National Party and the African National Congress would do just that. He foolishly didn’t realise that there was nothing at all inevitable about that and that when an African-American Democrat like Ambassador Reuben Brigety had clearly lost patience with South Africa, the warning lights were flashing red.

Ramaphosa seems to be consoling himself with the thought that Trump can’t really expel South Africa from the G20, because other nations, perhaps Britain – or the African Union (AU) – will speak up for it. This is unlikely.

When the G20 gathers in Miami next year Poland will take South Africa’s place – possibly only an observer – and in all probability the AU will be disinvited too. In the longer-term, Poland will almost certainly replace South Africa. Poland, after all, now has the 20th biggest GDP in the world while South Africa – which was as high as 18th in apartheid days – is now 39th.

Meanwhile, South Africa is left rubbing its bruises after the US terminated its $440 million a year aid package. Pretoria should note, at the same time, that Kenya made the most forthright denunciation of Russian aggression when Putin invaded Ukraine and that Trump has just signed a $2.6 billion aid package for Kenya. Similarly, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have just signed a peace deal and Rwanda has been rewarded with $228 million of American support for its health budget.

One is left with the impression that South African foreign policy makers have been asleep at the wheel. They seem to have assumed that South Africa could keep on kicking America in the shins and still get US aid – that they could have their cake and eat it. And they haven’t even bothered to appoint an ambassador to Washington.

Still Asleep

Ramaphosa himself still seems not to have woken up, for he dreams on. And although he knew, when Jacob Zuma first proposed that the ANC legislate expropriation without compensation, that this was a wrecking manoeuvre, he adopted the measure himself and forced it through. The result is the wrecking of all hopes for large-scale foreign investment.

This is a difficult time. There is, though, a decent chance that the mid-term elections will render Trump a lame duck. Until then, we are living in Trump’s world. Ramaphosa’s case is more peculiar: he effectively chose to be a lame duck from the day he was elected.