Big Vladimir & Little Donny

Not that the world trusts any commitment made by or treaty the United States entered into in recent years, but we are faced with a new global landscape where (a) we considered completely unreliable, changing and reversing policy vectors without particularly deep analysis, (b) our president has a bizarre and somewhat perverse fascination, a veritable affinity for, strong men autocrats who pretty much operate as if unencumbered by legal restraints, (c) we make major decisions in deep reliance on “assumptions” and policies in defiance of well-accepted, heavily proven, economic and scientific facts, (d) we are an arrogant bully oblivious to other cultures and many religious practices, (e) we seem incapable of joining and functioning responsibly in multinational institutions that are necessary to solve problems that transcend traditional borders, (f) we betray and castigate our allies, abandon those who fought for our cause, while establishing ententes with brutal regimes who actually never deliver what we believe they will, and (g) we are a rogue, go-it-alone nation, unworthy of supporting in times of need. 

Donald Trump is not the cause, just a symptom and an accelerant. He represents a constituency, filled with rage and eager to find scapegoats, whose traditional life-vectors have been upended by globalization and automation during a period that, coincidentally and without direct connection, created a new American racial, ethnic and cultural diversity though immigration. Urbanization, requiring massive social coordination that is not remotely required in a rural-powered society, produced “liberal” mechanisms… and with few exceptions, all of our biggest cities – from Dallas to Atlanta, from New York to Miami – have turned blue. And Godless?

Easy to find scapegoats in all that. Easy to see “foreigners” and foreign nations as enemies. Easy to see the biggest mass media in the land, virtually all of which grew in big blue cities, as the enemy. The new “radical right” sees itself as the mega-successful America of the 1950s, built on the backs of blue-collar (ironic, right) muscle and hard work. We fought a litany of wars, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, without cutting back on butter while spending like crazy on guns. Deficits exploded. Investments in our own education, infrastructure and research imploded. But fault and blame became the political tools of the 21^st century.

So, what does this have to do with Big Vladimir and Little Donny? If the United States has been your traditional enemy, the king of the mountain you want to displace, and you have a dramatically incompetent American president promising his core constituency a world that no longer exists and that will never exist again, isn’t that exactly what you want to encourage, belittle and replace? So, when a vacuum created by an “America First” society futilely extracting itself from global realities occurs, it is so easy just to step in. You did not have to defeat the United States; America is taking itself out of the race. As the US withdraws financial aid, China steps in. As the US pulls out of multinational accords and attempts to apply pressure on other nations to fall in line, they begin to create workarounds and new multinational treaties that exclude the United States.

Big Vladimir and Little Donny. When you take a man, defined in one of the most repressive and brutal secret police forces on earth (the KGB of the Soviet era), savvy in global manipulation and funding like-minded autocrats to contain all things American, and put him against a world leader with no prior political experience, an aversion to learning and reading, who feels disdain for experts and experience and who is supported by a zealous religious movement that wants a return to yesteryear, guess what happens?

The most recent example is the Turkish debacle over Kurdish fighters who risked their lives for an American cause. Trump created the problem by giving Turkish autocrat Recep Erdogan a greenlight to attack Kurds in northern Syria, then “solved” the problem (“no one else could solve”) with his brokered 120-hour ceasefire, effectively giving the Syrian leader everything he wanted against our former Kurdish allies. Did that reestablish American credibility in the region?

Hell no! Not only had Turkey, a NATO ally, earlier accepted a Russian anti-missile defense system, but following that incredible American “ceasefire,” Erdogan and Putin met to define a new Turkish-Syrian border reality to push the Kurds farther back and to establish a new Russian sphere of influence that completely replaced the United States in the region. ISIS fighters, who escaped from Kurdish detention facilities, were already unleashing new bombing attacks in neighboring Iraq. US fighters were now being redeployed to Iraq.

What exactly did Erdogan and Putin decide? “The presidents of Turkey and Russia outlined a plan late Tuesday [10/22] to divvy up territory and control of large parts of Syria after the U.S. withdrawal from the region and the Turkish military’s offensive to drive out Kurdish fighters.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced their plan in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi as a five-day cease-fire arranged by the U.S. and Turkey between Turkish and Kurdish forces in Syria’s border zone expired. The cease-fire was meant to allow for the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from the area, a pullout demanded by Erdogan…

“Putin and Erdogan, after about seven hours of talks in Sochi, portrayed their agreement as a wider cease-fire and said it would involve Russian and Syrian government forces patrolling outside the so-called safe zone long demanded by the Turkish president.

“The deal augments Russia’s already extensive presence in Syria and further diminishes the U.S. role. Turkey, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s easternmost bulwark, cut the deal with Russia after President Trump announced the U.S. pullout, leaving the formerly American-backed Syrian Kurdish forces in a precarious position against their Turkish adversaries… ‘We want peace and stability in Syria,’ said Erdogan, who called himself a ‘friend of Syria.’ [After years of proselytizing for Syrian regime change.]

“The deal gives the Kurdish forces 150 hours, slightly more than six days, starting at noon Wednesday, to withdraw to positions 19 miles south of the border with Turkey… Russian military police and Syrian border guards will oversee the removal of Kurdish troops and their weapons. After 150 hours, joint Russian-Turkish patrols will begin in the zone.

“Under terms of the agreement, Turkey apparently gets to keep the expansive territory between the Syrian border towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, both of which are now under Turkish control… The zone — to which Erdogan wants to relocate some 2 million Syrian refugees residing in Turkey — will extend 20 miles deep into Syria along an east-west stretch of the border. Much of the Kurdish population of the area fled under Turkish attack this month.

“This territorial concession, demanded by Erdogan, amounts to a significant carve-up of Syrian territory — and a forced demographic overhaul of the area, since the refugees to be resettled there are mostly Syrian Arabs, not Kurds… Kurdish forces are also to withdraw from the towns of Manbij and Tal Rifaat, which are situated farther west, near the city of Aleppo. Some, if not all, Kurdish forces may have already pulled out of the two towns, replaced by Syrian government troops and Russian forces.” Patrick J. McDonnell and Tracy Wilkinson writing for the October 23^rd Los Angeles Times. 

Simply put, America lost, and Russia won. Trump’s policy failure embarrassed his own party and further diminished American power and influence worldwide. We have the biggest economy on earth and the biggest military the world has ever seen. We can withstand assault from the outside. So, instead, we are taking ourselves apart with a few nudges from those foreign powers who know what they are doing. We are building our own coffin and gathering up the nails.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and if we keep on “winning so much that we will get tired of winning,” we just might not need that massive military because there just might not be anything left of America to protect.