What Has Trump Just Done?

The Rogue President Of A Rogue State: The world cannot allow itself to be dictated to by a single state or a single individual. This is especially so if that single individual and the nation state he speaks for have stepped outside all the recognised boundaries of reasonable international conduct.

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY morning (9/5/18) has yet to be fully understood by the peoples of the world. Upon learning of President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, the temptation to simply roll one’s eyes and shake one’s head was hard to resist. Many would have recalled Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and assumed his latest move was in a similar vein.

It is not.

Not only has Trump pulled the US out of the Iran Nuclear Deal (known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA) but he has also announced his intention to impose the most stringent sanctions on what he calls “the Iranian regime”. Now, one might assume that this unilateral decision (while serious for those American companies who have, in good faith, recommenced trading with Iran) will leave the rest of the world’s traders unaffected.

It does not.

The world’s trading enterprises, large and small, have been given between 90 and 180 days to extricate themselves from any contracts they may have entered into with Iranian citizens and/or organisations, or face the full wrath of the American government. In other words, the US is telling the rest of the world who it can, and, more importantly, who it cannot, trade with on Planet Earth.

One has to go quite a long way back in history to find a precedent for this sort of behaviour. All the way back, in fact, to Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt to prevent the imperial and national entities of Europe from trading with Great Britain. It was, to borrow Barack Obama’s phrase, “a serious mistake”. Not only did Napoleon’s “Continental System” fail to inflict serious damage on the British economy, but it also set in motion the diplomatic and military stratagems that, in just a few years, would bring the French Empire – and its Emperor – crashing down.

The rest of the world then – and now – cannot allow itself to be dictated to by a single state or a single individual. This is especially so if that single individual and the nation state he speaks for have stepped outside all the recognised boundaries of reasonable international conduct.

It is important to state clearly and repeatedly that the JCPOA was signed by the United States, the four other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, Russia, France, the UK) and Germany. The agreement was then endorsed unanimously by the Security Council – giving it the force of international law. Repeated inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have confirmed that Iran is adhering strictly to its undertaking to halt its nuclear programme. President Trump’s unilateral abrogation of the agreement is, therefore, a breach of faith; a breach of trust; and a breach of international law.

Kaiser Wilhelm II is said to have described the 1839 treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium as a mere “scrap of paper”. It was his decision to ignore this “scrap” that pushed the British (and her dominions across the seas) into World War I. By tearing up the JCPOA, Trump has not only spat in the faces of the Russians, the Chinese and his closest allies, but also in the faces of every other member of the United Nations. Like the Kaiser, he is convinced that his contempt for the rest of the world will provoke no response of which he need be afraid. The rest of the world, he has been assured, will not jeopardise its relationship with the United States for the sake of Iran.

Maybe not.

World leaders will look at the people around Trump: Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State; John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor; and Rudi Giuliani, the President’s friend and lawyer; and they will see a neo-conservative cabal which is not only unafraid of unleashing war, but in whose estimation the unleashing of war represents the most expeditious and effective means of “making America great again”.

Trump’s tearing-up of the JCPOA will, therefore, be interpreted by the rest of the world as the first step along the road to bringing about “regime change” in Tehran. The probable sequence is tried and tested. Impose an economic blockade to “make the economy scream”. Launch a bombing campaign to degrade Iran’s vital infrastructure. Organise an “uprising” by internal enemies of the Iranian government. (An uprising not unlike the CIA-MI6-sponsored coup that toppled Iran’s only democratically-elected government in 1953.)

The rest of the world, however, will pay a very high price if it opts to appease the United States and its President. Global capitalism cannot operate in a world where goods and services cannot flow freely across borders. If it allows the US to impose economic sanctions (a power formerly reserved to the UN Security Council) upon any nation state it deems to be an enemy and enforces those sanctions in defiance of international trade agreements (not to mention international law!) then the globalised capitalist economic order will fall apart.

China cannot afford to let that happen. Its economy (and the politically vital prosperity it generates) depends upon a world across which goods, capital and labour are able to move freely. Russia, too, cannot afford to remain inert in the face of an economic blockade and/or a military assault upon its Iranian allies. The governments of Germany, France and the UK will similarly have to weigh up the costs and benefits of permitting the United States to control their trade and overthrow governments at will.

Trump’s announcement that he is tearing up the JCPOA and imposing the most stringent economic sanctions upon Iran will either go down in history (assuming there is anyone left to write it!) as the move which set the US on course to becoming an unabashed global tyrant; or, as the actions which precipitated the creation of a global coalition of nations dedicated to the containment of the United States.

Perhaps America’s erstwhile allies should take a leaf out of Benjamin Netanyahu’s book and produce for Trump’s exclusive viewing a short YouTube video explaining Halford Mackinder’s famous formula for global hegemony: “He who controls Eastern Europe controls the Heartland; he who controls the Heartland controls the World Island; he who controls the World Island controls the World.” It could show, using simple but exciting graphics, exactly how the European Union, the Russian Federation and the Peoples Republic of China, when brought together in a self-defensive alliance with Iran, Iraq and Syria (and quite possibly the nations of Africa and South America) would fulfil completely the components of Mackinder’s geopolitical prescription.

Far from making America great again, Donald Trump’s reckless tearing-up of the Iran Nuclear Deal may actually signal the beginning of the end of the United States’ global supremacy.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 9 May 2018.

Napoleon Little?

The Revolution Concluded: At the end of every revolutionary period a figure arises who promises to restore order and stability. The most famous example of this historical type is Napoleon Bonaparte. One hesitates to describe Andrew Little as Labour’s Napoleon, but what cannot be disputed is the eagerness with which both the membership and the caucus responded to his calls for  unity, focus and discipline, and to his passionate reaffirmation of Labour’s radical political mission.

 

LABOUR’S annual conference in Palmerston North concluded with a rip-roaring speech from Andrew Little – and no controversy. How much responsibility for the absence of negative headlines should be attributed to the party’s decision to exclude the news media from most of the conference proceedings is unclear. Behind those closed doors there may have been a party seething with discontent. But, the authorised version, of a rather chastened party, eager to swing-in behind its new leader and his red-letter promises, is almost certainly genuine.

 

If so, then it would seem that the “revolution on the conference floor” that first came to the public’s attention back in 2012 has run its course. Three years ago there was no mistaking the belligerent mood of conference delegates. They were still furious that, in 2011, the parliamentary caucus had passed over their preferred candidate for party leader, David Cunliffe, in favour of David Shearer. That fury fuelled their dramatic decision to subject future leadership contenders to a party-wide ballot. How the delegates cheered when union organiser, Len Richards, declared: “Today’s the day we take our party back!”

 

Richards’ boast was proved correct less than a year later when Shearer threw in the towel and the party membership elected David Cunliffe as leader, on the first ballot, and in the teeth of bitter caucus opposition.

 

But, Cunliffe’s dismal performance as party leader throughout 2014, culminating in Labour’s catastrophic election defeat, left thousands of demoralised and uncertain party members in its wake. The narrowness of Andrew Little’s victory over his rival, Grant Robertson (50.52 percent – 49.48 percent, on the third ballot) spoke eloquently of just how uncertain the membership felt about the party’s future direction.

 

One year on, in Palmerston North, that uncertainty had vanished. Twelve months of steady leadership from Andrew Little has settled down both the caucus and the members, to the point where, if the tweets emerging from the conference are anything to go by, both sides can now give a passable impression of actually liking one another. Pep talks from Hawkes Bay MP, Stuart Nash, and the party president, Professor Nigel Haworth, on the need for increased unity and discipline have clearly had their effect.

 

So, too, have the party’s years of internal strife.

 

As any student of the history of revolutions will attest, the revolutionary process unfolds in three, clearly discernible, phases. First there is the moment of revolt, when the people rise as one against the ancien regime. Dickens, in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, called this “the Spring of Hope”. Once the old order has fallen, however, the revolutionaries rapidly fall out over the vexed question of what should take its place. It is during this phase that the Revolution “devours its own children”. Finally, with most of the revolutionaries dead, and the people exhausted by years of terror and upheaval, a figure arises who promises to restore order and stability. The most famous example of this historical type is Napoleon Bonaparte: someone with both the ability and the ruthlessness to bring the Revolution to an end.

 

Napoleon Bonaparte: Someone with both the ability and the ruthlessness to bring the Revolution to an end.

 

One hesitates to describe Andrew Little as Labour’s Napoleon, but what cannot be disputed is the eagerness with which both the membership and the caucus responded to his calls for  unity, focus and discipline, and to his passionate reaffirmation of Labour’s radical political mission.

 

Sheer exhaustion may also explain the New Zealand Labour Party’s curiously subdued reaction to the rank-and-file revolution that installed Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party. It wasn’t that the Kiwis were all secret Blairites, more a matter of New Zealand Labour having “been there, done that, sold the T-shirts – lost the election!”

 

In restoring order and stability, Little has been quietly, but very ably, assisted by Labour’s President, Professor Nigel Haworth. As delegate Stephanie Rodgers tweeted from the conference on Saturday afternoon: “Cries of mock outrage as it’s announced we’ve wrapped up a policy discussion with time to spare.” Anyone with the slightest experience of Labour conferences will grasp the enormity of that achievement – testimony to the quiet authority and gentle humour of Haworth in the Chair.

 

And just as Napoleon’s coup d’état consolidated and entrenched the French Revolution’s achievements, Little’s keynote speech to conference delegates confirmed, in the most dramatic fashion, that Labour’s democratic-socialist aims and objectives, so unequivocally restated by the 2012 “revolution on the conference floor”, are now inscribed in the programmatic bedrock of the party’s platform.

 

The policies mandating a capital gains tax and raising the retirement age to 67, both of which aggrieved a large number of ordinary members, have been quietly discarded. Policies attacking poverty, homelessness and unemployment have taken their place.

 

Without this gesture of solidarity from the caucus to the rank-and-file, this weekend’s ‘Peace of Palmerston North’ could never have been more than a temporary ceasefire.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 10 November 2015.