It is worth the trouble to see how the other side
thinks. It’s even worth the trouble to examine the conventional wisdom. Today, Steven Erlanger offers a good conventional analysis of President Trump’s action on the Iran
nuclear deal in the New York Times.
His is news analysis. It is not reporting and is not
editorializing. He suggests, in particular, that Trump has just humiliated the
leaders of France, Germany and Great Britain. I know that this will make you feel bad, too.
Note Erlanger’s analysis:
It is
by now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg,
trying to persuade President Trump to change his mind on a vital issue for the
trans-Atlantic alliance. Mr. Trump appears to enjoy the show, dangling them,
before ultimately choosing not to listen.
Instead,
he demands compliance, seemingly bent on providing just the split with powerful
and important allies that China, Iran and Russia would like to exploit.
Such is
the case with the efforts to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear pact.
Both the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela
Merkel, made the pilgrimage to Washington to urge Mr. Trump not to scrap the
agreement. Their failure is very similar to what happened with the Paris climate accord, and
to what is happening now with unilateral American sanctions imposed on steel and aluminum imports,
and to Mr. Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Erlanger imagines that the leaders of
these nations are the equals, even the betters of the President of the United
States. Truth be told, Barack Obama bought into their favorite theories because he wanted to
be a citizen of the world. He wanted to treat them all like equals. And yet,
when you treat a subordinate as an equal, you diminish yourself. This made
Obama wildly popular in those nations, but he was selling a lie. America is the
leader of the Atlantic alliance. France is not. Germany is not. Great Britain
is not.
True enough, some of our European allies felt humiliated.
But that was because Obama had been feeding them false pride. Trump merely
showed them which nation was the leader of the alliance.
Why didn’t Erlanger suggest, even hint at, another version of
events? Donald Trump tried his best to persuade these leaders that the Iran
nuclear deal was a calamity, but they, wallowing in their own cowardice, their
fear of the Muslim populations in their midst, could not accept his leadership.
Besides, Europe has already been divided against itself by
Merkel’s immigration policies. As of now, Eastern European nations have
rejected open borders policies and are about to come into conflict with the
European Union.
An America that takes the lead can better deal with its
great international rivals, like Russia and China. An America that cowers in
the corner and that allows itself to be humiliated by Iran—remember the sailors
who were captured by Iran after the nuclear deal was signed—cannot be an
effective leader on the world stage.
As has been noted here, Trump’s good relations with the
president of China are the behind-the-scenes reason for the thaw on the Korean
peninsula. I suspect that Xi Jinping did not think less of Trump for standing
up for America. We know that China thought less of Obama for failing to do so.
While Europeans, as reported by Erlanger, think that they are
being treated like wimps, it would help them if they would stop whimpering and
start cooperating with the United States. They are especially torqued that
Trump walked out of the Paris Climate Accord. They refuse to fight Islamist
terrorism but are all-in in the war against the weather!
If, as some suggest, the Paris Climate Accord is a complex
mechanism for redistributing money from rich to poor nations, and if America is
singled out for the largest contribution—because it is most guilty of having
befouled the planet—why should an American president accede to imperious
demands from European Lilliputians.
Of course, the Europeans are also very upset that Trump is
moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem. Since they are living in the past,
not the present, they still see Israel as the problem, not the solution, to the
Middle East’s problems. Does anyone think that Trump would command respect by
bowing down to European demands that America not move its embassy to Jerusalem.
Whose embassy is it anyway?
While Trump understands well that the current threat in the
region is Iran, not Israeli settlements, European leaders do not. Yesterday, on
Town Hall, Katie Pavlich offered the perfect rejoinder to the sophisticated
whining of the elites (via Maggie's Farm). She listed the nations that supported the Trump move on
Iran. Among them, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
As has often been noted, this new alliance is fighting the present war against Iranian hegemony. The
Europeans, military weak to the point of being nearly ineffectual, is fighting
a war over ideas… where they believe that they can excel.
One notes the cries of anguish over the Iranian missile
attack against Israel and the massive Israeli counterattack. Those who believe
that cowardice prevents war, should think again. In the first place, the
Israelis, with the support of many of their Arab neighbors, have been awaiting
a chance to eliminate Iranian military installations in Lebanon. This is a positive outcome. As noted yesterday, the foreign minister of Bahrain declared that Israel had a
right to defend itself. This tells you the true story.
In the exchange, Iran was humiliated and shown to be far weaker
than our foreign policy elites imagine. Isn’t it better to reduce the stature
of Iran than to exalt it?
We can say that the Trump foreign policy team did not offer
the best leadership in the Syria conflict. But, it did eliminate ISIS from Iraq
and Syria. And it did restore America’s alliances with the Sunni Arab world,
alliances that the Obama presidency had left in tatters.
[I regret not mentioning it, but given the fact that Israeli Prime Minister was in Russia this week, we may reasonably assume that Vladimir Putin did not object very strenuously to the attack on Iranian bases in Syria.]
[I regret not mentioning it, but given the fact that Israeli Prime Minister was in Russia this week, we may reasonably assume that Vladimir Putin did not object very strenuously to the attack on Iranian bases in Syria.]
"They refuse to fight Islamist terrorism but are all-in in the war against the weather!"
ReplyDeleteHa! There is another, older way to say that
"they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
Humiliation seems to be a theme in this post. It is a peculiar emotion, apparently arising when you discover you're weaker than you think in power or influence. Humiliation can lead to putting energy to finding new strength for the future, like Trump did after being mocked by Obama at the WHCD in 2011. Revenge can take years sometimes.
ReplyDeleteDavid Brooks today offered a similar argument, arguing basically Trump's approach as thuggish, and that it can work when you've got the power to back it up, and that the "country club" approach to trying to include thugs into status circles doesn't work, at least not before showing you can beat them down before you build them back up, like in the movies where two strong guys have a big fight before becoming BFF.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/opinion/donald-trumps-lizard-wisdom.html
Clearly the Europeans don't have the strength, mental, moral, and most importantly, military, to have equality with Trump. They do have mouths, but their words seem empty.
ReplyDeleteNot a dry eye in the house. Poor Iran. So unfair!
ReplyDelete