US FOREIGN POLICY AND TRUMP’S CONTRADICTIONS: QUESTIONS OF METHOD, by Michele Nobile

IN DUE LINGUE (Inglese, Italiano)
IN TWO LANGUAGES (English, Italian)

INDEX: 1. The problem: where is the Trump administration’s foreign policy going? - 2. What a President of the United States will never do - 3. American exceptionalism and the myth of splendid isolation - 4. Limits or decline of American power? - 5. Conceptual fetishism: multilateralism/unilateralism, unipolarity/multipolarity - 6. The dangerous contradictions of the Trump administration’s foreign policy

© Evan Vucci

1. The problem: where is the Trump administration’s foreign policy going?

During an important speech on foreign policy in April 2016, Donald Trump thundered: “We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops. We tell them. We’re sending something else. We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now”.

Indeed, uncertainty and variety of assessments about the course of the Trump administration’s foreign policy continue to be significant. What unites critics and supporters of the present Administration’s foreign policy is the fear or hope that, driven by nationalism, the United States may withdraw into what is called isolationism.

Also deliberately spread, confusion is such that it is worth examining the elementary parameters of US foreign policy – what a president will never do – and some fundamental concepts, which are also useful for understanding the particular contradictions of the current Administration.

It should be recalled that among US foreign policy specialists soon there was an area of diehard critics who considered the billionaire candidate for the US presidency totally inadequate – because of lack of preparation and temperament – for performing the functions of head of the executive and commander-in-chief.

There were even those who called him a sort of “Manchurian candidate”, that is an agent of Russian interests. Critics of candidate Trump included great part of the most important Republican Party intellectuals and neoconservative functionaries who were severe in their judgment.

In Europe, on the other hand, Trump’s success was greeted with enthusiasm by the xenophobic and nationalist right-wing in favour of leaving the European Union and the eurozone. In this case, enthusiasm for Trump was instrumental and seasoned with a considerable dose of hypocrisy that glossed over the fact that in any negotiation their small homelands would count for nothing in the face of the North American giant. But Trump is (was?) also appreciated by the Putinian and Russophile left as “another blow to imperialism”.

This could also be a combination of incompetence, ignorance, ingenuity and stupidity, but it is mostly the result of simple dissolution of the most basic criteria of understanding and evaluation of what imperialism is, be it North American or Russian or Chinese … .

For centrist allies and opinion leaders, the label of isolationism serves as an instrument for taking a position in diplomatic negotiations. These know very well that a US administration can raise its voice and beat its fists on the table, demand this and that (for example, a more adequate contribution to NATO costs), but never terminate the alliance itself.

They understand well that it is precisely the limits of the great American power – and the global dimension of North American capitalism – that make the reproduction of alliances indispensable.

A third position is thus outlined, in practice an obligation for those who have responsibility for government and must necessarily negotiate with the North American administration. If Trump is incompetent and inadequate, argue the optimists, a “madman” prone to dangerous blunders, the government officials and functionaries who put US foreign policy into practice can moderate the lines of the President or bring them back on track within normal limits.

For the optimists, the National Security Strategy (NSS) issued in December 2017 moves in this direction. However, for others the interest of a document like the NSS depends on the extent to which it is consistent with the worldview and personality of the President. For this reason, the 2017 NSS is not very reliable on important points.

Uncertainty is great but it can be reduced, as well as the optimism.

2. What a President of the United States will never do

Since the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the beginning of the construction of an ocean fleet commissioned by Theodore Roosevelt (assistant of the Navy Secretary in 1897-1898, under McKinley, and president from 1901 to 1909), and certainly since the First World War, the United States has acquired the capacity to project its military power all over the planet; and to a greater extent than any other advanced country, US capitalism extends far beyond national political boundaries, continuing to maintain a structurally central position in the world economy.

In this context, attention has to focus on the constitutional duties of the President of the United States as head of the executive and commander-in-chief – to preserve, protect and defend America and the Constitution.

America and the “American way of life”, of course, are no longer those of the Founding Fathers, so that the interests implicit in those duties are now vastly greater and more complex than they originally were.

Consequently, since the Great Depression and especially since the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, the dimensions of the apparatus that make up the executive and the powers of the President have grown such as to alter the original constitutional balance.

The presidency is also imperial in domestic politics, but it is in foreign policy and in the use of military force that it has thrived in the most dramatic way.

This is clear from the words of various US presidents – from Bush Sr. to Trump – in the last three decades: “We are inescapably the leader of free world defence, the connective ring in a global alliance of democracies” (George H.W. Bush, 1990 NSS); “The need for American leadership abroad remains strong as ever” (Bill Clinton, 1996 NSS); “America cannot know peace, security and prosperity by retreating from the world. America must lead by deed as well as by example” (George W. Bush, 2006 NSS); “ … our national security interests must begin with an undeniable truth – America must lead” while renewing its leadership (Barack Obama, 2015 NSS); “The whole world is lifted by America’s renewal and the re-emergence of American leadership” (Donald Trump, 2017 NSS).

It is interesting how both Obama and Trump tie world leadership to internal renewal and the economy, albeit in very different – if not opposed – ways.

The notion that the United States should guide the development of world society is the political core of what is called hegemony, a term that has acquired a variety of meanings – especially when applied to international relations –, but understood here in the Gramscian sense: not mere dominion, but a “combination of force and consent which balance each other so that force does not overwhelm consent”, in order to achieve “intellectual and moral direction”.

That the combination of force and consent presents extreme variations in different regions of the world is an integral part of the exercise of hegemony. It must be emphasised, however, that the effectiveness of the foreign policy of a US administration in exercising leadership over allies consists precisely in being able to maintain the balance between force and consent.

The fact that the rulers of Europe and Japan fear the nationalistic isolationism of the United States, but not its internationalist commitment, is the best evidence of the extent to which North American hegemony has been internalised. The argument can be extended to cultural influence and to the fact that the United States remains an exceptional pole of attraction for immigration.

The position of leadership is indispensable both in the case of a policy that can be called “realist” and oriented towards maintenance of the balance of international power, and in the case that it appears animated by an “idealist” activism of the Wilsonian type; both in the case of a “defensive realism” approach – oriented towards maintenance of the statu quo – and in the opposite case of “offensive realism”, aimed at preventing the emergence of a competitor.

It is clear that a US President will never give up the absolute military superiority of the United States on the world stage. What does that imply? A massive nuclear arsenal; in the words of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review issued by the US Department of Defense:

“ … the US Armed Forces will be capable of simultaneously defending the homeland; conducting sustained, distributed counterterrorist operations; and in multiple regions, deterring aggression and assuring allies through forward presence and engagement. If deterrence fails at any given time, US forces will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale multi-phased campaign, and denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – a second aggressor in another region”.

At least since the end of the Cold War and for all administrations, the criterion that defines the military primacy of the United States is the ability to conduct military operations and win in “two major regional conventional contingencies” or “major regional conflicts”, that is in two important theatres and involving substantial enemy forces.

The reason the United States needs to be able to intervene in two theatres, calibrating priorities and pace of effort, is simple: to prevent an opponent from feeling it can seize the opportunity to act while American forces are blocked in a distant theatre.

Operationally, this is what defines American power and at the same time its limits, imposing the selection of areas and ways of intervention. The effective “great strategy” is the one that employs power with awareness of its limits.

UNNOTICED CHANGES OF EQUILIBRIUM IN THE NEAR EAST, by Pier Francesco Zarcone

IN DUE LINGUE (Inglese, Italiano)
IN TWO LANGUAGES (English, Italian)

© Neil Hester

The occurrence of events and related “media bombardment” very often distract attention from the most profound – or wider – meaning of what has happened and is happening … and the necessary help in understanding does not always come from professional commentators. This is particularly true of the Near East, theatre of a centuries-old conflict between Sunni Islam and Shiite Islam.

Generally speaking, a defeat of significant proportions of the first of these two Islams, with the consequent opening up of significant areas for the Shiites, is overlooked. The Sunni countries have lost all three wars against Israel, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (more or less secular, but Sunni) has in turn lost as many – the war with Iran and the two against the United States. In addition to that regime, domination of the Sunni minority over the rest of the Iraqi people has disappeared.

On the battlefield, ISIS has been reduced to a flicker and the dream/nightmare of the “caliphate” has dissolved. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia is paying a high price for its aggression, essentially at the hands of local Shiites; not to mention Arab and/or pan-Arab nationalism which has long since gone bankrupt (never mind the problem of who bears the greatest responsibility).

By contrast, Shiite Islam (of which Iran is still the fulcrum) has rung up a number of local and strategic successes, a result largely due to the US “satan”, which has so far failed to get anything right – through ignorance, carelessness and inability concerning tactics and strategies worthy of the name.

Worthy of note is the manoeuvring ability of the post-Khomeini Iranian leadership, which has abandoned Khomeini’s original and clumsy revolutionary aura (moreover harmless in concrete terms) and opted for cold political pragmatism, acting under the cover of local intermediaries, patient long-term operations and, of course, ready to take advantage of the colossal mistakes of others.

In Lebanon, the US flattening of Israeli policy has created the preconditions for the expansion of Hezbollāh, promptly armed and organised by Tehran, with the result that the only Israeli military defeat so far occurred in Lebanon in May 2000 at the hands of Lebanese Shiites, with Israeli troops forced to retreat from that country.

Today Hezbollāh has a full-fledged military force, not as a conventional army but as a guerrilla force that is no less enviable than that of the Viet Cong, besides having the most up-to-date technologies which the Israeli Armed Forces have borne the brunt of.

In Iraq the picture has been even worse: having never understood that it was not at all a nation, and that the post-Great War British-designed artificial construction only stood on its feet thanks to its army, the United States then had the bright idea of dissolving the Iraqi Armed Forces immediately after the second Gulf War, automatically creating a base vacuum immediately used by Iran – above all politically.

And now, for the first time since the Fatimid Caliphate of Cairo (from the 9th to the 12th century), we have two Shiite-led Arab states: Syria (which it was already) and Iraq.

This brings us to Syria. Doubts now outweigh certainty about the spontaneity of the so-called “Arab Springs” as a coagulation of undeniable local disquiet; and in any case the fact is that US manoeuvres in the attack on the government of Damascus – with fatal support for the most dangerous and cruel forms of Islamist extremism (Sunni) – were thwarted by Russian intervention alongside Iran and Hezbollāh.

The conclusion is that today there is a “Shia corridor” from Damascus and Beirut to Tehran, passing through Baghdad. The blatant attempt by Washington to interrupt it using the Kurds of Syria is destined to fail because of both the foreseeable opposition of Turkey and the poor military solidity of the Kurds, despite claims by Western media linked to the “single thought” notion, as well as the demonstrated ability of Iran (Khomeini’s spirit has long died) to manoeuvre for its own ends also with Sunni Kurds, from Turkish PKK to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Moreover, Iran’s remarkable military consolidation, albeit at present only in terms of conventional armaments, means that this country is an important regional power in the Persian Gulf, such that, in the hypothetical case of a withdrawal of the United States from the area, it would soon fall under Iranian hegemony.

In this regard we should understand one another. For Tehran, the experience of the previous war with Iraq was absolutely precious in terms of equipping itself in order not to fall back militarily into the same situation and of finding war alternatives. It is out of the question that if the United States were to attack Iran (as Trump sometimes threatens to do), it would be defeated in the first round, but by virtue of the experience of the “asymmetrical” war gained in Lebanon and in Iraq occupied by the United States, it would already certainly be capable of causing substantial damage to the aggressor even at this stage, including economic damage if it managed to block the Strait of Hormuz, where a massive amount of oil transits every day.

In the second round then, the real problems would start for the Americans: controlling the immense territory of Iran would be virtually impossible, even for of its war power, and unless it decided to embark on indiscriminate destruction of towns (and of the civilian populations that inhabit them), the guerrilla and terrorist techniques well known by the Iranians would mean that the daily arrival in the United States of transport planes loaded with the coffins of dead soldiers would upset the not very spartan psychology of the average American. Not to mention the economic costs.

It is well known that the United States continues to privilege relations with the Sunni countries and that establishing better relations with the Shiite countries is considered a kind of betrayal. In this regard, Western foreign policy “experts” – including also officially appreciated “Orientalists” – generally consider Shiite Islam a kind of mediaeval relict. This leads to an overvaluation of Sunni Islam’s capacity for constructive purposes in the Near East … understanding that it is Sunni Islam that is really mediaeval.