The Fragile World

 

By David K. Shipler                 

                As ofJanuary 20, when Donald Trump is inaugurated, the world’s three strongestnuclear powers will all be led by criminals. Only Trump has been convicted, butVladimir Putin faces an outstanding arrest warrant from the InternationalCriminal Court—for his war crime of abducting children from Ukraine to Russia—andXi Jinping should face one for his genocide against the Muslim Uighurs in China.Trump has obviously been found guilty of much less—mere business fraud—althoughhe was justifiably charged with mishandling classified documents; obstructionof justice; and attempting, in effect, to overturn the linchpin of electoraldemocracy.

                Theworld is in the throes of criminality. Where government is weak—orcomplicit—organized crime or terrorism often fills the vacuum. In Mexico,cartels manufacture drugs freely and now control the conduits of illegalimmigration into the United States. In areas of Myanmar ravaged by internalcombat, narcotics producers are in open collusion with Chinese traffickers, andkidnap victims are forced onto the internet to scam the unsuspecting out oftheir life savings. And so on, amid a sprawling disintegration of order.

    Moreover, warfare has widened farbeyond the familiar headlines. Not only in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan,but in 42countries total, wars are raging: invasions, insurgencies, ethnicconflicts, and militias fighting over precious resources. Combined with droughtand storms fueled by the earth’s unprecedented warming, the wars are uprootingmillions in the most massive human displacement of modern history. As of lastJune, an estimated 122.6million people were living as refugees worldwide after having been drivenfrom their homes by violent conflict, persecution, and human rights violations,according to the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Another 21.5million people each year, on average, are forced out by droughts, floods,wildfires, and stifling temperatures.

                  Intothis maelstrom come Trump and his eccentric minions with their wrecking ballsand decrees, soon to be taught the inevitable Lesson of Uncertainties: Theoutside world can be neither controlled nor ignored by Washington. It intrudesin unexpected ways, defies prediction, and resists domination. It pushespresidents around.

    Therefore, while some sure things areprobably in store, it’s more useful to examine questions, not answers,regarding what the new year might bring.

    First, will Trump’s bluster andimpulsive promises to end wars with his social media rants bear fruit? He likesto think of himself as a dealmaker, as we’ve been told endlessly by  people who know him. But he is a bully, not achess player, and he seems less canny than his opponents in Beijing and Moscow.Most of the ideologues and acolytes he’s naming to his administration lookill-equipped to deal with this fragile, threatening world.  

    A modestly hopeful scenario rests intwo wars most susceptible to resolution: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas, whichare both approaching a turning point toward diplomacy.

    If Trump proves skilled enough tonavigate through the various parties’ maximalist demands, both Russia andUkraine might be ready for a halt. After nearly three years, the fighting ispractically a stalemate, even as Russia gains some ground and exhausts theUkrainians.

    On the one hand, Russia has paiddearly in lives, military hardware, economic security, and its own domesticfreedoms. It has revealed its weaknesses as Putin has damaged its globalstanding by his humiliating dependence on Iranian drones, North Koreanammunition, Chinese technology, and  evenNorth Korean troops. Far from dividing NATO, his invasion added to its ranks byscaring Finland and Sweden into joining. A rational, non-messianic leadershipwould look at the debit side of the balance sheet and see Putin’s war as adeterrent to future adventures.

    On the other hand, Putin is, infact, a messianic leader devoted to reestablishing the Soviet empire, whichbroke apart into 15 countries in 1991. He is also patient. He plays the longgame. And his vision might pay off if Trump makes good on his anti-Ukraine postureand curtails aid. Europeans see the risk of an emboldened Russia and a widerwar, which Trump may not recognize.

    In diplomacy as in warfare, timingis key. Back in November 2022, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the JointChiefs of Staff, urgedUkraine and Russia to negotiate, because he thought that total military victorywas unlikely for either side. Obviously, he was absolutely right. “You want tonegotiate from a position of strength,” he declared. “Russia right now is onits back.”  He might have been channelingCarl von Clausewitz, who noted that war is diplomacy by other means. Flipping thataphorism around, it’s clear that negotiating strength at the bargaining tablereflects the reality on the battlefield.

               TheGaza war, after 15 months of atrocities, might also be close to a pause,although certainly not a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. UnlessTrump undergoes a conversion, he is likely to be the worst possible presidentto help Israel and the Palestinians toward a lasting settlement. At best, he mightget a temporary truce. The remnants of Hamas are trying for a ceasefire thatwill keep alive the embers of their presence in Gaza, which Israel isdetermined to extinguish permanently, even by bombing massively, killing andmaiming innocents, disrupting food and medical supplies, and obliteratinghospitals and schools.

President Biden and his staff haveworked hard on a ceasefire, have come close, but have not been able to get Hamasto release all the Israeli hostages it seized on October 7, 2023, or to getIsrael to withdraw its troops. Biden hasn’t put the screws to Israel for itsdevastating military onslaught, and Trump is poised to give Israel carte blancheto “do what you have to do,” as he reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu. Trump’s prospective ambassador to Isdrael, Mike Huckabee, supportsIsraeli annexation of the West Bank, which would finally close off the optionof a Palestinian state as a means of resolving the conflict. Ending wars is thefirst of Trump’s challenges.

Second, Iran is a question mark.Since its two failed missile attacks on Israel and Israel’s near demolition of Iran’sair defenses and proxies—Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon—the Tehran governmentappears vulnerable both internationally and domestically. But militantauthorities that are backed into a corner can go in different directions. Iran’scomplex society, with pro-Western yearnings, might produce more conciliatoryleadership. Or, the government, temporarily debilitated, might race to build anarsenal of nuclear weaponry.

One of Trump’s most thoroughlystupid acts as president was withdrawing from the intricately negotiatedagreement that halted for a time Iran’s progress toward nuclearization. Thecountry is now on the cusp of becoming as untouchable as North Korea.

The short-term military answerwould be an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the help of USaircraft and bunker-busting bombs that are beyond Israel’s capability. Israelappears to have laid the groundwork for such an attack. Would Trump give thegreen light? Would he commit US forces? He’s made a point of wanting out ofwars abroad. But perhaps he knows that a nuclear Iran would generate aregion-wide nuclear arms race to include Saudi Arabia and other Arabpetro-states.

In summary, the developments arisein an era of remarkable instability. Syria, a keystone in the Middle East,teeters on the brink of failed statehood after the fall of the house of Assad.Yemen collapses into civil war. A traumatized Israel lashes out violently at widespreadtargets of opportunity with no conceptual framework achieving a future withoutwarfare.

Third, China’s economic andmilitary expansionism raises critical questions of how to manage a relationshipthat ought to include cooperation as well as competition. Symbolism andlanguage, always woven into international affairs, are not Trump’s strong suit.He likes insults and threats, which might work with allies but rarely withadversaries. He and the militant China hawks he’s appointing, such as Senator MarcoRubio as secretary of state, seem ready for confrontation through tariffs and forwardmilitary deployments.

But China doesn’t have to retaliatein kind. It can counter American interests in asymmetrical ways, perhaps byblockading or even attacking Taiwan, the world’s dominant chip manufacturer.How would Trump respond? What military posture would he adopt? Is he ready tosend the Seventh Fleet to Taiwan’s rescue? If not, and if he really wants toavoid tripping into a war, he needs some advisers who know China and can thinkclearly.

Fourth, what is to become of pluralisticpolitical systems in the US and abroad? How much stress can they take withwannabe authoritarians at their helms?

The question is especially acutefor the United States, but Italy, France, and Germany also face this challenge.For their part, Americans have entered a Faustian bargain by selling the soulof their democracy for lower grocery and gas prices. The test will be critical.Trump pledges to round up undocumented immigrants in massive sweeps that wouldchill many communities nationwide.  Hepromises to pardon white supremacists who were duly tried, convicted, and imprisonedfor attacking Congress in its most sacred duty of certifying the electionresults of 2020. That would unleash on ordinary Americans an extraordinaryonslaught of armed militants beholden to Trump and hostile to the basis of alegal and democratic order. He has nominated as secretary of defense PeteHegseth, a “Christian nationalist” who promises to purge the officer corps. He islikely to be a gateway for white supremacists to enter the upper ranks.

Trump plans to turn his JusticeDepartment and the FBI into tools of revenge against his legitimate politicalopponents—an assault on more than two centuries of democratic values. And hemight be able to do it, because he is surrounding himself this time withsycophants who seem ready to display fealty to him, as if to a dictator, and toride with his passion to amass personal authority in a vacuum of moral and ethicalrestraint.

Trump has inflicted terror on membersof the Republican Party, who don’t dare oppose him and purge those who do. Heoperates very much like a mafia boss and so will strain the ligaments of theconstitutional order. He has managed already, just in his first term, to packthe Supreme Court with compliant justices who have taken the dangerous step ofgranting him immunity from criminal prosecution for so-called “official” acts.

In his first term, some observerspredicted that the weight of presidential responsibilities would make Trump responsible.It did not happen. Yet some are grasping at straws again, hoping that Trumpcares about a more dignified legacy, that his draconian campaign promises willprove as empty as most politicians’ electoral flamboyance, or that the checksand balances woven so ingeniously into America’s governing fabric will somehow foilthe coming autocratic agenda.

As Trump likes to say, we’ll see whathappens.