by Marco Pondrelli
Trump’s first moves are starting to give us some elements to understand the White House’s policy for the next 4 years, even if they give us a picture that is still open and difficult to decipher. The first theme that has characterized the new presidency is that of duties, a measure widely announced during the election campaign and which fits into the policy carried out in the USA from Obama onwards. The United States has fallen back on protectionist policies, we can attribute to Trump a quantitative increase in these interventions and a more muscular approach but not a change of direction.
Without relegating any explanation to Trump as the representative of absolute evil, let’s try to understand the reason for these policies. The answer is not too complex, the United States has a negative trade balance and from Reagan onwards every President has tried, in his own way, to reverse the trend. The problems posed by this aggressive policy are two.
The biggest problem is that the US manufacturing industry has been decommissioned, rebuilding it will not be easy and above all it will not be free. If today the US consumes more than it produces it is because it has entrusted its development to finance, leaving others to become the ‘factory of the world’. In Trump’s first term, the duties against China limited the deficit towards Beijing but not the overall deficit of the United States, less was imported from China but more was imported from other countries.
The second problem is international, this policy transforms countries in the rest of the world into enemies, there is not only China, there is also Mexico, Canada and soon there will be the European Union. This risks limiting the ability of the United States to build multilateral (not multipolar) policies to contain Russia and China. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Matias Spektor wrote: ‘Developing
countries will continue treating both China and Russia as pivotal centers of power, seizing opportunities to extract economic, security, and technological concessions through platforms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a China-led multilateral group’, concluding that ‘the U.S.
government, whether under Trump or his successors, will find it increasingly difficult to ignore the growing political relevance of those countries once consigned to the margins. Trump’s bid to reassert American hegemony will run into a world that is far less pliant than he imagines it to be’. As Gianandrea Gaiani has observed, the risk for Washington is to move from MAGA to MAHA (Make America Hated Again).
Along with the tariff policy, Trump is engaged on two other fronts: Palestine and Russia. At the moment, both peace proposals are very vague but we can still have an idea of where the White House wants to go.
As far as the Middle East is concerned, the attempt carried out by Israel to rewrite the geopolitical balance is widely shared by Washington. After having severely hit the axis of the Resistance in Syria and Lebanon, now they are moving on to the main target, namely Iran. The signals that are arriving do not suggest a war against Tehran but rather an attempt to open an internal crisis, which could limit its external projection force. Most likely, they do not want the destruction of the country so as not to strengthen the Saudi side too much. Once Iran is neutralized, it will be possible, in Trump’s ideas, to proceed with the recognition between Saudi Arabia and Israel and also with the creation of a small residual Palestinian state under Saudi control that would allow Riyadh to gain access to the Mediterranean.
For the success of this ambitious project, which would stabilize the region under Israeli and US hegemony, the Saudi role is important. As already stated in the past, Riyadh has a very cautious attitude, if on the one hand it has approached BRICS, on the other it has preferred to remain on the threshold without formally joining. At the moment there is great caution also towards the historic enemy, Iran, and a continuous game of sidestepping with Russia on the price of oil. Finally, to support Vision 2030, or the attempt to free the country from oil dependence, the Saudis need first of all the support of China, the only country capable of supporting the development of small and medium-sized businesses, this is because it is difficult to imagine that the United States will open its market to Saudi goods.
Trump’s shameful proposal to turn Gaza into a holiday resort should not make us laugh, first because we are faced with the suffering and genocide of a people, second because the project behind it is very dangerous. The situation is different with regard to the Ukrainian conflict.
Peskov confirmed that the dialogue has begun, this is certainly a positive fact but substantial differences remain between Russia and the United States. Trump is thinking, according to rumors, of a ‘Korean’ solution to freeze the conflict and postpone the discussion on Ukraine’s entry into NATO, while Russia wants a discussion on a new security architecture in Europe, also discussing the missiles in Romania and Poland. Furthermore, Moscow has another problem, what guarantees does the West offer that has lied many times (NATO expansion to the east, Minsk agreements) and what guarantees can the United States offer? Trump proposes that the issue of Kiev’s entry into NATO be postponed by 15/20 years but if in 4 years a President with different ideas were to arrive what would happen? Are we so sure that Russia did what it did to have to face the same problem again in the near future?
Even if these doubts about the talks remain, they can only be welcomed as positive news, from which the European Union must obviously distinguish itself. More realistic than the king (therefore than Zelensky who said he was ready for the dialogue that he himself prohibited by law), in spite of everything and all these gentlemen and ladies still want deaths, their thirst for blood has not yet been quenched. After all, without an enemy, one wonders how the on. Picerno could spend his days.
To all these characters we remind the example of Theodore Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary to the Navy he was a fervent supporter of the war against Spain (in reality against Cuba), once President William McKinley decided to declare war Roosevelt coherently resigned from his post and volunteered. The Azov Battalion awaits you…
Join our channel telegram
