Category Archives: Society

Donald Trump, Government, Islamic State, Politics, Society, Terrorism, United States

President Trump launches a new war on terror

UNITED STATES

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President Donald Trump has vowed to wipe Islamic State from the ‘face of the Earth’ – and to link arms with old allies like Britain.

Intro: Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be America’s highest priority.

The newly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, has launched a new war on terror and has vowed to eliminate Islamic State ‘from the face of the earth’.

But his bold declaration to “eradicate completely” radical Islamic terrorism was at odds with his inauguration speech ‘America First’ inward-looking agenda.

And it is not clear how Mr Trump and his advisors plan to succeed without jeopardising international relations and running up huge costs on military operations.

While he has previously promised a more effective military campaign than that of Barack Obama, many of the actions he might take to accelerate progress in Iraq and Syria come with potentially dangerous side effects.

These include the deterioration of already strained ties with NATO ally Turkey, an increase in America or civilian casualties and reinvigorated militant recruitment.

It is extraordinary, given the tentacles of the terror group’s extended reach across Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Tunisia and Libya – as well as parts of France, Belgium, Italy – and Britain.

Sceptics were also quick to point out that several past presidents, most notably George W. Bush, had failed to keep similar promises to beat terrorism. Yet in his speech, Mr Trump threw down the gauntlet to Islamic State and its supporters around the world.

He said: ‘We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilised world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.

‘We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement, and, most importantly, we are protected by God.’

He has said that on taking office, he will tell his top generals they have (just) 30 days to present him with a plan for defeating IS.

Since Mr Trump’s inauguration on Friday 20 January, his administration has expanded on the plans to defeat terrorism.

A statement on the White House website said: ‘Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be our highest priority. To defeat and destroy these groups, we will pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations when necessary. In addition, the Trump Administration will work with international partners to cut off funding for terrorist groups, to expand intelligence sharing, and to engage in cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable propaganda and recruiting.

‘Next, we will rebuild the American military. Our Navy has shrunk from more than 500 ships in 1991 to 275 in 2016. Our Air Force is roughly one third smaller than in 1991.

‘President Trump is committed to reversing this trend, because he knows that our military dominance must be unquestioned. Finally, in pursuing a foreign policy based on American interests, we will embrace diplomacy. The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies. The world will be more peaceful and more prosperous with a stronger and more respected America.’

He also pledged to ‘reinforce old alliances’ in a sign that Britain’s “special relationship” with the US could be boosted under his leadership. In response, Theresa May said she was certain Mr Trump intends to advance links between Britain and the US. Mrs May said: ‘I congratulate President Trump on taking office.’

‘From our conversations to date, I know we are both committed to advancing the special relationship between our two countries and working together for the prosperity and security of people on both sides of the Atlantic.’

Looking at the pledges made by President Trump during his inaugural speech on Capitol Hill on Friday, January 20, 2017:

IN-BRIEF

. Build The Wall – Mr Trump said: ‘We will bring back our borders.’ But his campaign pledge to build ‘an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall’ between the U.S. and Mexico was not mentioned.

. Guns – Keen to placate gun rights supporters, Mr Trump has promised to abolish gun-free zones around schools and military bases. ‘My first day, it gets signed – no more gun-free zones,’ he has said. He says gun-free zones are a magnet for mentally-ill gunmen.

. Bring Back Jobs – Mr Trump has pledged to rebuild America ‘with American hands’ and ‘follow two simple rules – buy American and hire American’. His promise to help jobless American workers in the country’s depressed heartland was, for many voters, his most important pledge. Critics say it will also be the trickiest as many of those manufacturing jobs appear to have moved to lower-wage countries for good. The President has vowed personally to call the bosses of major US firms who plan to move jobs overseas and warn them they face a 35 per cent tariff if they go ahead.

. Drain The Swamp – His 100-day action plan included six measures to tackle what he sees as sleaze and corruption. They include a constitutional amendment to impose terms limits on all Congress members, a hiring freeze on all federal government employees, restrictions on the creation of new regulations and a limit on the lobbying activities of White House and congressional officials after they leave office.

. Protect US Trade – He has promised to immediately renegotiate or withdraw from the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the deal that governs commerce with, among others, Mexico. He has also vowed to dash plans to take the US into the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

. Control Immigration – Decisions on immigration ‘will be made to benefit American workers and American families’, Mr Trump said, although he also added: ‘When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.’ In recent weeks, he has backed away from his call for a temporary ban on Muslim visitors entering the country. Instead, he has said he plans from his first day in office to suspend immigration from ‘terror prone’ countries and impose ‘extreme vetting’ on others.

. Repeal Obamacare – Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, reforming America’s famously complicated and expensive health insurance system, was his administration’s most radical achievement. It guarantees health coverage for all Americans but has landed many people with higher bills. Mr Trump intends to scrap it.

. Infrastructure – One of the few areas where Mr Trump is likely to get Democratic support is his pledge to spend $1trillion over the next decade on investing in America’s crumbling infrastructure. In his speech, he pledged to ‘build new roads, highways, bridges, airports, tunnels and railways’. Such huge spending will surely complicate his plans to slash taxes, especially for business, without plunging the US further into the red.

. Global Warming – Mr Trump has previously questioned the existence of global warming, describing it as a hoax dreamt up by China. Confirming the fears of many environmentalists, the White House website has already signalled President Trump’s intentions on climate change, saying he is ‘committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the US rule’. Mr Trump has promised to tell the United Nations that the US will no longer be contributing money towards its climate change programmes.

. A New Missile Defence System – One of Mr Trump’s first moves was to announce plans for a missile defence system to protect the US against attacks from Iran and North Korea. The announcement on the White House website contained no further detail about the measures being planned. It remains unclear whether it could be a ground- or air-based system – or, more controversially, satellite-based like Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative, better known as ‘Star Wars’. First announced in 1983, Star Wars was intended to protect the US against Soviet aggression during the Cold War.

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Donald Trump, Government, Politics, Society, United States

Political animosity in the United States and the rapidly spiralling fear

UNITED STATES

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The U.S. intelligence agencies are sworn to defend America from attack.

Intro: From the outside, it must seem like a script-writer’s dream.

Salacious and unverifiable reports of Donald Trump’s private life have been circulating among US media outlets for some months. US intelligence agencies believed that many of these reports have been sufficiently credible that they chose to brief President Barack Obama and Mr Trump.

Understanding the nature of the accusations is important. The decision by US intelligence has largely been shaped by two factors. The first is the information and credence given to them by federal agencies. The second, that the man in question is the leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world, not a private citizen, and that his actions could have a direct impact on all of us.

Mr Trump has now blamed the intelligence agencies for allowing these uncorroborated reports to be leaked to the media, and has compared these actions as being like those of the Nazis in wartime Germany.

What has become a bit lost in the political storm and plethora of everything that is happening is the first admission by Mr Trump that Russia had been behind the hacking attacks on the Democratic Party during the election. Previously, the President-Elect had claimed the intelligence agencies had got these matters wrong and were directly involved in a political witchhunt against him. Sworn to defend America from attack, US intelligence agencies must be bewildered.

From the outside, it must seem like a script-writer’s dream. As the plot deepens – from what sounds much like the subterfuge within a spy novel – where should attention be focussed?

Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson told his Senate confirmation hearing that Russia probably was behind the cyber-attack, that it has pursued military action to further its own interests (in Syria), and that weak US leadership had allowed Russia to become dominant.

As chief executive of Exxon Mobil, the most profitable oil company in the world, Mr Tillerson previously sanctioned multibillion-dollar deals with Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft. He was duly awarded an Order of Friendship by the Kremlin.

Contrasting this against such language used by President-Elect Trump should seem more than trivial. Mr Trump denied all the allegations saying it was ‘phoney stuff’ and only ‘sick people’ could come up with ‘that crap’. He said that CNN was ‘fake news’ and described Islamic State as ‘number one tricky’.

The world would have noticed in President Obama’s farewell speech in Chicago the eloquent tribute he paid to his wife, Michelle. Mr Obama said: ‘You took on a role you didn’t ask for and you made it your own with grace and grit and style and good humour. You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody.’

We should know the difference between rhetoric that inspires optimism as against that of fear and loathing.

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Government, History, Politics, Society, United States

Barack Obama and foreign policy

UNITED STATES

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President Obama gave his valedictory speech on Tuesday 10 January, 2017. Despite critics, he has achieved much on foreign policy.

Intro: Critics of Mr Obama’s foreign policy also often fail to acknowledge some of the significant accomplishments the President has achieved

Barack Obama has given his farewell address as US president from McCormick Place in Chicago, the venue for his election victory speech in 2008. This is the first time in US history that a president has returned to his hometown to deliver a valedictory speech to the nation, and Mr Obama vacates office on a seven-year high approval rating of 56 per cent (according to a poll conducted by Gallup).

Traditionally, farewell addresses have represented a legacy-defining opportunity for presidents to set out their accomplishments and by articulating a vision for the future. In many cases, the outgoing head of state has focused in large part upon foreign affairs, especially in the post-war period of US international leadership. This, too, became a central point of Mr Obama’s speech.

Harry Truman, for example, used his address in 1953 to talk about the emergence of the Cold War on his watch. On his departure from presidential office he said not a day had passed which had not been dominated by the conflict between those who love freedom and those who would have us return to the days of slavery and darkness. President Truman also outlined his rationale for using atomic weapons in Japan.

George W Bush defended his foreign policy and wider national security legacy in 2009. Despite approval ratings of just 34 per cent on leaving the White House, Mr Bush included in his triumphs that Afghanistan was no longer ruled by the Taliban. He also cited changes to the US security apparatus that he said contributed to the homeland avoiding attack in the seven years after 9/11.

Referring to some of his controversial calls, including the highly contentious decision to invade Iraq, Mr Bush said that he hoped people would understand that he was willing to take tough decisions.

Mr Obama’s farewell speech has been given at a time when there is rising criticism of his administration after Russia’s successful intervention in Syria to shore up the Assad regime, and the unravelling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has caused angst with allies in the Asian Pacific. Critics have asserted that Washington has become significantly diminished on the world stage with weak presidential leadership responsible for the collapse of the TPP.

Others, however, will argue that this is too simplistic. For instance, while Mr Obama has not advanced his Asian “pivot” as fully as he would have hoped, it is actually President-Elect Donald Trump’s opposition to TPP that looks to have consigned the trade deal to history, not the Obama team (which has tried to cultivate it for years).

While Mr Obama has made multiple mistakes in the Middle East, his strategically political decision to downsize the US presence in the region was taken in the context of the mandate he perceived himself to have won after his election victory in 2008 – when a war-weary nation seemed to endorse his call that the Iraq conflict had been a costly mistake, and that the United States was militarily overstretched during the Bush presidency.

Critiques of the Obama doctrine on foreign policy also tend to omit that, whilst the United States is still regarded as the most powerful country in the world – certainly in a military sense – it is not by any means an all-powerful hegemonic power. This core fact has been demonstrated recently in Ukraine and Libya, but was also true of America following Somalia in 1993 and of Iraq and Afghanistan post 9/11.

Current geopolitical fault lines – where there are no easy, quick fix ways for the U.S. to enforce its policy preferences – are wide and varied. They include tensions with China over territorial claims in the South China Sea; the nuclear stand-off in the Korean peninsula that may yet intensify following impeachment proceedings of South Korea’s president; continuing instability in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; the bleak prospects facing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and terrorism remaining a significant international concern a decade and a half after 9/11.

Critics of Mr Obama’s foreign policy also often fail to acknowledge some of the significant accomplishments the President has achieved, particularly given the backdrop of the high-risk political and economic landscape in which he has operated. One big positive, for instance, was the leadership taken by the United States in tackling global warming. Mr Obama’s efforts led to the climate change deal agreed in Paris in 2015 which was signed by more than 170 countries. Crucially, the deal will form the basis of a new post-Kyoto framework, essential if global warming is to be properly tackled. The Paris agreement was ratified and came into effect last November.

Another example is the 2014 nuclear deal with Iran and six other powers. The agreement, which Mr Trump has criticised, could enhance global nuclear security, as well as constituting an important win for longstanding efforts to combat nuclear non-proliferation.

Despite the incoming president’s rhetoric, there are many senior Republicans on Capitol Hill, including the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who openly recognise the benefits the nuclear deal with Iran will bring. They are calling for it to be more strictly enforced, rather than being scrapped.

The resetting of relations with Cuba was also instigated on Mr Obama’s watch. In December 2014, the two countries announced they would restore diplomatic relations, and Mr Obama became the first US president to visit the country in 90 years. He announced a new suite of measures that further eroded the bilateral sanctions regime introduced during the Cold War era. The President-Elect has threatened to reverse all progress that has been made with Cuba.

In his speech on exiting the White House, Mr Obama robustly defended his foreign policy record at a time of growing unease and criticism. The outgoing president has achieved significant accomplishments, but, he knows much of his legacy now risks being rolled back. Mr Trump will have a very different vision and agenda to how he sees America shaping the world order.

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