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.
