You can’t make this stuff up: When the president of the most powerful nation in the world, nuclear armed to the teeth, announces that he will save the world from obliteration by partnering with the heads of the two nuclear countries that America sees as enemies, the media rakes him over the coals.
The same media that facilitated — much more so than the Russians allegedly did — Donald Trump’s accession to the White House — is so desperate to make up for their mistake that they accuse him of treason for rejecting nuclear war with countries whose only sin is being led by authoritarians.
No longer able to condemn China and Russia for running Communist economies, the press faults them for their socialist principals with respect to war and peace. Pundits retain all manner of complicated facts, but these do not include the best ‘liberal’ principals that Americans learn in fifth grade, and which since the storming of the Bastille have been those of socialism, as well as Islam’s injunction that individuals treat each other with ‘dignity, equity and respect.)
Socialists don’t label ‘the people’ as ‘mobs’, but as majorities entitled to be heard as part of the social contract. Though not yet a factor in 1789, the right not to be killed in a nuclear inferno is paramount in the twenty-first century. If the US had concrete disagreements with the Russians and the Chinese, they could be worked through, avoiding Armageddon. In reality, the standoff is about ethics, which doesn’t tend to make headlines, except when the American President demonstrates a lack thereof in his relations with others. Although Trump doesn’t read, he knows that deals can only be made in peacetime. He may not have met with the Russian President at the G20, but apparently he did meet with Putin’s ally, Chinese President Xi, with whom he had already forged a relationship at Mar a Lago during the early days of his presidency, and which he nurtured by reaching out to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Apparently, as the two were diffusing the tariff war in Buenos Aires, President Xi pointed out that as in business, the smart thing to do in international relations is to negotiate until you reach agreement — which the Chinese call pursuing a win-win outcome.
As children, Americans are taught to resolve differences through negotiations, however by the time they reach voting age, they have come to view all ‘others’ as potential enemies. That is why American alliances are always built on the premise that the US is ‘top dog’. In today’s fraught environment, we can only hope that Trump, for all his faults, will stand up to the Pavlovian dogs on the Beltway.
Deena Stryker is an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.