JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: JOURNALIST PATRICK COCKBURN'S INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS ON A WORLD HE REGARDS AS DISINTEGRATING - BUT HE LEAVES OUT AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION - THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS ANGRY REACTION AGAINST CHANGE HAVING SENT SHOCKWAVES THROUGH THE PLANET - AMERICA AS A SLOW AND BRUTAL LEARNER

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE INDEPENDENT


"We live in a disintegrating world – and that only makes it a more dangerous place

“In many senses, we have long been living in an era of disintegration without quite realising it, as multinational federations break up and international organisations, such as the UN and World Trade Organisation (WTO), fragment or become moribund”

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-leave-eu-trump-scotland-ireland-a9312016.html


An interesting and thoughtful column, but I think the author has missed a key element in what he terms the disintegration of things.

And that is the aggressive posture of the US in trying preserve its privileges and expand them and to avoid its continuing relative decline.

Trump’s approach to almost all international organizations has been ugly. And it does not come from any sense of these organizations having failed, but from the sense of their failing to put the US first. It is, if you will, the most rudimentary selfishness.  Just like his Mideast policies of giving away other people’s things in return for all the campaign contributions he could ever hope to spend.

Because of its imperial status, when America does something completely selfish in international affairs, it sends shockwaves through many places.

Trump is, though, only the bellowing rude end of the American political spectrum. He couldn’t do what he does if he had serious opposition from the rest of the American establishment, including the Democratic Party.But he has none. No defenders of civil relations with China, and certainly none for Iran or Venezuela or Russia.

No defenders of the UN – to whom the US owes one billion dollars in back dues – or of UNESCO or of the ICC or of the WTO.

No one, of course, defends the EU interest against the fragmentation of Brexit. America’s glad to see the EU weakened, and it will now, to some degree, have Britain at its mercy. From the American point of view, none of this is disintegration. It is new opportunity.

No prominent American politicians or public figures speak out against any of Trump’s outrages abroad.

The missing opposition reflects the aggressive posture of the entire American establishment in trying to reclaim what it regards as its lost place in the sun.

But Trump has failed at virtually his every international trade and affairs effort. Even his much-vaunted China deal amounts to remarkably little. It could almost be described as a tactical ploy by China rather than the beginning of any startlingly new relationship.

His international affairs pressures against Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Iraq are all failing, although, they do hurt a lot of people. His “deal” for Palestine is a nasty joke, a schoolboy prank, although it will bring him all the campaign contributions anyone could dream of having for the election. Self over international interests and fairness.

America’s effort to regain its place of 1959 and to avoid the inevitable multi-polar world emerging is without a doubt doomed ultimately to fail, but it can, and will, cause a good deal of pain in the meantime.

Look how long American pounded its head against a wall in Vietnam, creating literally a holocaust. And its now eighteen years of bombing peasants in Afghanistan. And its bloody, pointless invasion of Iraq which actually had side-effects working against America’s own interests.

America is slow learner, a very brutal one.