World War Trump: The Risks of America's New Nationalism - Couverture rigide

Gardner, Hall

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1633883957 ISBN 13 : 9781633883956

Editeur : Prometheus Books, 2018

Synopsis

An expert on global politics details the dangers of Trump's nationalist agenda and its destabilizing effects on the world.

How will Donald Trump's "America First" policy impact international stability? This sobering book argues that it will put the country on a path toward war. International relations expert Hall Gardner analyzes the twists and turns of our president's foreign policy pronouncements from the beginning of his campaign to the present. He argues that Trump's proposed economic nationalism and military buildup--if implemented--will alienate America's friends and rivals alike. The unintended and perilous consequence could well be to press Russia, Iran, Turkey, and China into a closer counter-alliance versus the United States, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Gardner has long warned that the uncoordinated NATO and European Union enlargement into former Soviet spheres of influence and security would not only provoke a Russian revanchist backlash, but could also encourage Moscow to forge a Sino-Russian alliance. That Russian backlash has already taken place since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 during the Obama administration. Now Trump's seeming contempt of trade pacts and multilateral relations, plus his confrontation with both Iran and North Korea, could push Russia to construct closer ties with a more assertive China to form a polarizing alliance. At the same time, "America First" trade and monetary disputes with allies could tempt some of those states to move into neutrality or else drift into the Russia-China orbit.

Against this dangerous and destabilizing unilateralism, Gardner makes a convincing case that the only workable means of maintaining a peaceful world order is through patient and thoroughly engaged diplomacy and a realist rapprochement with both Russia and China.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Hall Gardner has been the chair or co-chair of the Department of International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Paris since 1992. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of twelve books on global politics, most recently, Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History and The Failure to Prevent World War I: The Unexpected Armageddon. His research blends a historical and theoretical approach with contemporary international affairs, concentrating on questions involving NATO and European Union enlargement, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its impact on China and Eurasia in general, as well as the global ramifications of the "war on terrorism"--with an eye toward conflict resolution. He is additionally an internationally published poet. He completed his BA at Colgate University and both his MA and PhD at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

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From the Introduction: "A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"

World War Trump argues that the new “America First” nationalism — coupled with Trump’s largely unexpected and erratic foreign-policy flip-flops and willingness to use force — will provoke even greater regional sociopolitical-economic instability and interstate disputes than those that already exist. In essence, Trump’s threatening actions and the general militarization of American policy could soon polarize much of the world into two rival alliances.

Trump’s impatience; his Nixonian “madman” behavior; and his wild, unstatesmanlike foreign-policy flip-flops make both rival states and present allies automatically assume worst-case scenarios — as leaderships fear that the United States will not keep its promises or that Washington will radically alter its policies. Trump claims that he wants to bargain from a “position of strength,” yet the United States is already seen as the predominant global power by far. America is already great and does not need to be “made great again”—at least not in Trump’s militaristic manner of thinking. The risk is that Trump’s “Peace through Strength” approach could soon spark a number of potential military confrontations—if his foreign policies are not accompanied by a sincere effort to seek out compromises and even make concessions through intense bilateral and multilateral negotiations. In this respect, Trump missed a major opportunity in his address to the UN General Assembly on September 19, 2017, to formulate a concerted path toward global peace that would involve the United States, the Europeans, Russia, and China, among other concerned states.

In order to defuse a truly critical state of affairs, World War Trump proposes that Washington find ways to work with both Moscow and Beijing, in addition to other major and regional powers, through bilateral meetings and through multilateral Contact Groups, backed by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in the diplomatic effort to ameliorate political-economic tensions and disputes in key regional “hot spots” throughout the world. These multilateral Contact Groups need to prevent the global geopolitical system from polarizing into essentially two hostile systems of alliances, by seeking to better manage, if not resolve, key regional disputes that could potentially draw major and regional powers into direct conflict.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Before we move forward, I want to present to you the general structure of World War Trump. As you have seen, this introduction, “A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” argues that the Russian backlash to the uncoordinated NATO and the European Union “double enlargement” represents a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Chapter 1, “The Perils of the New ‘American First’ Nationalism,” outlines the general arguments of the book and argues that Trump’s “America First” nationalism and his often-contradictory foreign policies and policy flip-flops will prove destabilizing and provocative. The chapter discusses multiple tactics of the “hybrid warfare,” including cyber-sabotage, “democracy engineering,” and Russian “nationalist engineering.” It argues that Trump-Pence policies, geopolitical rivalries between major and regional powers, and the new US-Russian arms race could lead the global system to polarize into two contending alliance systems. And that new techniques of hybrid warfare and acts of “terrorism”—which impact both the domestic and the international relations of differing states—could help spark a major power war.

Chapter 2, “Inauguration Tremors: Rifles, Tanks, and Nuclear Weapons,” critically examines Trump’s “Make America Great Again” budget and discusses the real social and political-economic costs of his proposed military buildup and the perverse impact of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial” (and congressional) complex on the American political economy and society.

Chapter 3, “The New Bogeymen: Russians, Immigrants, Muslims—and the Question of Impeachment,” examines the domestic political impact on the United States of both the alleged Russian cyber-tampering and the accusations of Trump complicity with Moscow on the US presidential elections. The chapter critically discusses Trump-Pence policies and the apparently growing popular sense of alienation from the American system of democratic governance. Issues include the US electoral college system; the growing gap in wealth; Trump’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”); domestic violence, terrorism, drugs, and gun control; and Trump’s controversial policies toward Mexican immigration and toward immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the prospects for Trump’s impeachment.

Chapter 4, “Risks of the New American Nationalism for the European Union,” discusses the impact of Trump’s strong support for the British exit from the European Union (“Brexit”) and for nationalist movements in general. The chapter examines Trump’s approach to Germany; the impact of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of its annexation of Crimea in 2014; the rise of anti-EU and anti-NATO movements in France and throughout Europe after Brexit and plans for strengthening the European Union; Russian and US attempts to influence elections in Europe; and Moscow’s negative reaction to EU efforts to bring former Soviet bloc states into a closer political-economic partnership with Europe.

Chapter 5, “The Risk of War over Crimea, the Black Sea, and Eastern Europe,” examines why Trump suddenly flipped from opposing Ukraine’s efforts to regain Crimea after the Russian annexation in early 2014 to supporting Kiev’s efforts to regain Crimea, and why Trump no longer calls NATO “obsolete.” The chapter discusses the sociopolitical ramifications of Trump-Pence efforts to press all NATO members to boost their defense expenditures in the effort to counter Russian military pressures in the Black Sea region and in eastern Europe in general. Given the rise of the authoritarian Erdoğan regime in NATO member Turkey, plus an authoritarian leadership in Hungary, NATO has begun to lose its “democratic” credentials. While Washington has begun to fear the potential breakup of NATO due to a potential Turkish defection, Moscow has begun to fear the potential defection of Belarus from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). These fears are leading both Washington and Moscow to attempt to tighten their alliance relationships against one another.

Chapter 6, “The Global Impact of the China-Russia Eurasian Alliance,” explains how US defense and alliance policies have been pushing Russia and China into a closer alignment, not only in Eurasia but also throughout much of the world, including Mexico, Venezuela, and much of Latin America, where they intersect with the ongoing War on Drugs, thus impacting regional US and domestic interests. In analyzing the growing influence of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on Pakistan and on other states throughout the Indo-Pacific region, the chapter argues that India represents the key “pivot” state that could either move closer to a Russian-Chinese-Iranian Eurasian alliance or else toward a US-European-Japanese alliance—if New Delhi cannot remain neutral and become a potential mediator.

Chapter 7, “China, North Korea, and the Risk of War in the Into-Pacific,” analyzes the regional implications of Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese disputes and conflicts over the South China and East China Seas for the United States and Russia. The chapter then focuses on the real threat of nuclear war with North Korea, which could engulf the entire region—if the Trump administration does not soon engage in real negotiations involving the six powers most concerned, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, as well as North Korea.

Chapter 8, “Syria and Widening Wars in the ‘Wider Middle East,’” critically examines Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian airfield with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in April 2017 after the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad allegedly used poison gas against its own population. The chapter argues that Trump’s strong backing for Saudi Arabia and his opposition to the Iran nuclear accord signed by the Obama administration will not only antagonize Iran but also divide the Europeans, and press Tehran closer to Russia and China—given the ongoing proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia that has enveloped most of the wider Middle East and that is spreading into new regions throughout the world.

Chapter 9, “Peace through Strength? Or World War Trump?” critically examines Trump’s “America First” policies and argues that they could lead to polarization of the world into two rival alliances. To prevent the latter, the United States, along with the Europeans and Japan, must engage with both Russia and China in the effort to resolve disputes and conflicts over a number of regional hot spots. In effect, it is argued that geopolitical tensions will not be abated until the issues of Crimea, Kaliningrad, Kashmir, Taiwan, and North Korea are fully addressed by the major powers themselves through UN- or OSCE-backed Contact Group diplomacy—in a geostrategic context in which countries such as India and Turkey could play major diplomatic roles. Concurrently, the major powers need to bring Saudi Arabia and Iran into a rapprochement over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Chapter 10, “Defusing the Global Crisis,” outlines ways to reduce, if not eliminate, nuclear weaponry. It argues for engaging in multilateral Contact Group diplomacy, backed by the United Nations and the OSCE, to help resolve a number of key regional disputes and conflicts. It emphasizes the need for NATO and the European Union to build effective peacekeeping forces that can work with Russia, China, and other major and regional powers under UN or OSCE mandates. In addition to arguing for implementing international legal norms to establish joint-sovereignty arrangements for territorial disputes, chapter 10 also critiques Trump’s decision to drop out of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) and argues that Trump’s antediluvian emphasis on fossil fuels will amplify the global environmental crisis and exacerbate the very sociopolitical-ecological problems that could lead to wider wars — while also isolating the United States in the world community.

And, finally, America cannot truly help to resolve many of the world’s problems unless it also engages in major social and political reforms at home—by reforming the electoral college system, by better controlling and reducing spending on the federally subsidized military-industrial-congressional complex, and by engaging in new approaches to the War on Drugs, gun control, and immigration reforms. If federal, state, and local debts (roughly $23.2 trillion in 2017) continue to skyrocket, more radical constitutional reforms of the US bicameral system of democratic governance and restructuration of the fifty-state system could be considered in order to reduce costs and provide fairer and more effective national, regional, and local governance that brings American leadership much closer to the needs and interests of the population. Most crucially, and in priority, the tremendous gaps in income need to be reduced through the implementation of practical and non-ideological systems of shared capitalism and workplace democracy in different kinds of enterprises.

World War Trump is primarily focused on reorienting American foreign and defense policy away from the pursuit of global America First hegemony and toward an omnidirectional peace-oriented diplomacy of interstate conflict resolution and inter-societal reconciliation intended to prevent a new arms race and the subsequent polarization of the world into two rival alliances. Nonetheless, the final chapter sketches a number of possible domestic US reforms that represent a practical alternative to those proposed by the Trump administration and that can hopefully be developed in greater detail in a sequel to this book. Given the depths of the global geopolitical and financial crisis now confronting the United States and the world, the point is that the prevention of major power war will also require radical reforms of the military-industrial-congressional complex, as urged by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his January 1961 farewell address. The United States will not only need to reformulate its foreign and defense policy but also radically reform its system of governance and its domestic political-economy — if it is to both achieve peace abroad and work to mitigate tendencies toward even deeper social, economic, and political polarization within the United States itself.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Prometheus Books
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1633883957
• ISBN 13: 9781633883956
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 399
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible