President Trump hands over the world to vultures
Autocrats like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin wait in the wings to swoop on his destructive policies
China is getting its ‘dragons’ in a row if American President Donald Trump caves into Russia’s demands on the third anniversary of Moscow’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Supreme leader Xi Jinping has already increased the presence of the People’s Liberation Army Navy in the South and East China Seas during the past four years.
Last week, he even sent a flotilla known as Taskgroup 107 to conduct live-fire exercises 280 nautical miles, or 518 kilometers, east of Tasmania, between Australia and New Zealand.
As cracks appear in Pax Americana and the rules-based order, vultures such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Xi are starting to circle overhead.
“American global leadership is ending. Not because of ‘American decline’ or the emergence of a multipolar world, or the actions of US adversaries. It’s ending because Trump wants to end it,” Michael Schuman at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub wrote.
“Just about all of [his] policies, both at home and abroad, are destroying the foundation of American power,” he said in a commentary last week for the Washington-based think tank.
Xi has been planning for the moment when Washington stumbles.
Michael Schuman at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub
Trump’s doctrine:
- His “capitulation” to Putin has been branded a “betrayal of Ukraine and terrible dealmaking.”
- Excluding Kyiv and the rest of Europe from initial “peace” talks in Riyadh last week, as well as parroting Moscow’s propaganda, has shown “weakness, not strength.”
- Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal stated, “The president’s surrender is pathetic.”
Delve deeper: “This is the right language to use,” Jonathan Freedland, an author and commentator, wrote in The Guardian newspaper.
Between the lines: “Trump may be the greatest showman, but he is the weakest strongman the world has ever seen,” he said in a scathing criticism of the White House’s foreign policy.
Bottom line: Yet the “main beneficiary in this seismic shift will be Chinese leader Xi Jinping,” Schuman at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub warned.
Big picture: “Xi has been planning for the moment when Washington stumbles and allows China to replace the United States as the world’s superpower,” he said.
Endgame: “That Trump is willing to hand the world over to Xi – or doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s doing – shows that his myopic worldview, admiration for autocrats, and self-obsession are [threatening] security and, with it, America’s future,” Schuman added.
China Factor comment: Make that the world’s future. “I think we are in a new era where international relations will be determined by strong men,” Sir Alex Younger, the former head of Britain’s secret intelligence service MI6, told BBC’s Newsnight. Well, that rules out Trump.