Almost two weeks ago, the writer asked readers to comment on President Donald Trump's foreign, commercial and defense policy: How do you judge these first two years? What is to be expected in the second half of the presidency? Really with the yellow-green majority in the Washington government will look with more sympathy to Italy? China or Russia: new and ancient enemy of Washington. What will happen in the next two years?
Now, the time has come to give voice to the most significant of the many analyzes received via e-mail. This is not an easy task: the number of responses has been three times greater than the previous ones. I apologize right now if I can not really speak to everyone and thank for the love and attention. At the end, the colleague Gino Lanzara will expose his very interesting conclusions.
From the reader Lorenzo Pasturenzi: a realistic analysis of the first two years with a focus on the two "Great Enemies": China and Russia
The analysis of Donald Trump's work can only begin with the foreign policy pursued in these first two years, a real test for every American President. The most decisive actions have been taken against the two great adversaries that challenge the American leadership: China and Russia.
Towards Beijing, two were the paths followed by Trump:
1) The containment of Chinese "maritime" expansionism, pursued by strengthening alliances in the Pacific. Joint military exercises in disputed areas and the attempt to solve the "North Korea problem" have served to demonstrate to the Allies the American commitment to defending their security. As if to say: "of the USA you can trust". It is therefore about the creation of a belt of friendly countries around China to try to counter the Chinese "projection of power", at least in the Pacific. The aggressive politics wanted by Xi based on the construction of extraterritorial military and commercial maritime hubs (Africa, disputed islands in the Pacific ...) is in fact fundamental to wrest the dominance of the seas (and therefore the control of a large part of world trade) to United States.
2) economic duties, resulting in a trade war, so as to be able to limit Chinese investments in specific American companies (through which Asians have been able to acquire know-how in various strategic sectors, electronics and aerospace) and try to reduce the trade deficit in excess of 50 billion dollars.
With regard to Russia, American action has focused on reducing the damage of the "Syrian defeat" to avoid a definitive loss of influence in the region. This desire manifested itself in the total political support offered to Israel, the true American "Trojan horse" in the Middle Eastern chessboard.
The economic sanctions against Moscow, on the other hand, are more likely to refer to the Russophobe American "deep state", to which Trump had to give something in return for having the freest hand in other matters.
With regard to internal politics, the President's work has focused on keeping the "stronger" electoral promises, therefore, a wall with Mexico to contain the arrival of migrants and the cancellation of the "Obamacare" (in my opinion a huge mistake, the State should always take care of the health of its citizens!). Further measures have been taken to boost the economy and above all employment and domestic production, for example, reducing the tax burden on companies. Indeed, there were some results, but it is almost impossible to distinguish the contribution made by Obama's economic reforms from the Trumpian contribution.
Another negative factor in the Trump policy, in my opinion, is the lack of restriction on the sale and circulation of arms (perhaps due to the fear of antagonizing the very powerful arms lobby), the scourge, which has cost thousands of deaths in last years.
Regarding the future, in the next two years the President's agenda will continue on the path of maintaining the economic and political supremacy described above, which, net of inevitable errors and the much stubborn opposition of the Democrats fresh conquerors of the House, well represents the '"America first".
For the Sergio Pession reader, often a columnist in this column, Trump does it, but (maybe) there is not: anyway, he follows a script written by others
Despite strong personalities, US presidents have always been tied to invisible leashes pulled by those who do not need elections to hold power. Those who have pulled this leash too much, are now remembered as heroes in the light of a beautiful torch. Donald Trump, who is no exception, is the product of a difficult moment of profound change for the United States. For a transition that will dissatisfy at least half the country, a new face is needed: the man of change. The future of the United States, more uncertain than ever, must be faced with a character with multiple faces that embodies its essence. Let's leave behind the determined gaze of Roosevelt, the clean face of Kennedy, the disarming smile of Reagan or the athletic ease of Obama. Now we need a man capable of saying everything and the opposite of everything, even passing through a lunatic cretin in order not to unveil the true route of a nation that seems to navigate on sight.
In the first two years, Trump, having talked about himself in every way, re-establishes relations with Israel, demolishes almost all of Obama's work, and finally raises barriers and voices with half the world. Thus making it clear that the US today is capable of everything. Man out of control, the bluff genius or neither, it does not matter; every road must appear open with the modern USA, we are all warned. With the complex Europe and specifically Italy, Trump maintains high ambiguity by blowing conflicting winds; it's good, especially with the Italy weathervane. Especially now that Libya seems to be reclaimed in the "old love" for the neighboring peninsula. Italy, I think it is for the US as one of the many flames for a sailor, to whom today give a flower, tomorrow a slap, which at the end, before leaving, you always end up in bed.
The impression is that the US suffers war winds with China (more than Russia); actually, the more you expect, the more the young superpower grows. Imperative is a valid excuse that justifies this umpteenth intervention. In perspective, with an increasingly hot world (in every sense), it is difficult to imagine the US as strong as long ago or timidly contracts on national soil. To this servant ORA Donald Trump. Then, in the future, we will see. After all, when (and if) our great-grandchildren will study the candlelight story, in seeing the smiling face of Trump on the book, they will be able to say serenely: "Well, from one with a similar face, what could you expect?". But in hindsight ...
For Luca, also a "veteran" of this column, the opposite is true: Trump is a foreign element to the "system" and represents the American answer to the "yellow danger"
Agent 45 From Russia with love
By letting Donald Trump lose our hero as a human being, let's consider him as Agent 45, the forty-fifth president of the United States.
Agent Trump was born in 1992: on that date the wealthy billionaire Ross Perot founded the Reform party, a novelty for Americans accustomed to Republicans and Democrats.
Agent 45 Trump is formed within this new party, Reform Party, but unlike the founder Perot, his mysterious agency has the cunning not to let him run against the two beasts: Republican elephants and Democratic donkeys, these are the symbols animals of the two major American parties because it would be impossible, (I dare not think that animals would choose the PD and Forza Italia ...), but to infiltrate one of them, in the Republicans, it mixes and blends. Few like Paul Ryan understand that something is wrong, but when they do, Agent 45 has become the Donald !!!
Understanding Donald Trump is like trying to understand the world. Many argue that the Russians sponsored the electoral campaign, many say that Wall Street loves him, many say that the Jewish lobbies have given their consent, he has given him a daughter and a capital. So are Russians, Wall Street, and Jewish lobbies friends?
Who are the enemies? Definitely the Republic Democrats, practically the two sides of the same coin. They unleashed everything they could and had absolute control of them against: the Press. I'll explain and translate you: it is as if you were alone in a 50-storey skyscraper, with a gun in your hand, and that at the entrance there were a hundred Afghan warriors, a hundred Navy Seal and a hundred coalitioned GOI operators who want to scalp you, do I give the idea? Very similar scenario in our mother country. Another question: do you think it is a coincidence that a mass of desperate people marched from South America to reach the North? The paranoid conspiracy theorist would say that there is someone behind it. What do you think?
Other bitter enemies are the Chinese, the hard-working Chinese. They continually create aircraft carriers to take their planes on vacation to the islands they built with the arrogance that was once American, they buy more and more African states to have more and more resources and influence, they pillage Europe as they could not. Mongols of Genghis Khan in the past. The question arises: isn't it that the Republic Democrats' campaign was paid for by the Chinese?
In conclusion: America needs Trump, it is the American answer to the creation of the Chinese islands and aircraft carriers. The world needs Trump and old America, not out of nostalgia but out of democracy: in China it doesn't exist, the system doesn't contemplate it, it doesn't contemplate diversity and equal opportunities. Go see what happened to the poor Uighurs.
If there was no China, would Trump exist? If only China existed, would the Democrats exist?
Only Trump seems to prove he is against the Chinese.
Reader Andrea Ciccone (like many others) appreciates Trump's consistency, bulwark of the free world. At the expense of China.
The first two years of D. Trump demonstrate coherence and loyalty with their constituents but also a meticulous and committed work for the interests directly of the US and indirectly in favor of the free Western world and democratic. Commendable defense of the only democratic reality of the MO: Israel (Trump's stance in this case was a statesman and will go to history).
In the second part of the presidency of Trump I expect a further increase in the American GDP and a strengthening of the American influence in Asia, Middle East and Africa with an extraordinary rebirth of the Commonwealth.
China's influence will be curbed due to a profound Chinese financial crisis. Russia will have to choose between allying itself to Western princes or playing opposition. In my humble opinion, I will financially lose the military confrontation with the US and then reposition itself as one of the main US allies in a joint exploitation of the north of the planet.
According to the reader Elio Di Croce, Trump has done better than Obama (it was not difficult, say the evil) but will not offer shores to Italy
These first two years have been good, but not excellent. Many insights, such as the modernization of US infrastructures (airports, roads, etc.) frustrated by the lack of concrete ideas. He is an opponent of "politically correct" and is not anti-Christian as Obama was: excellent. Negative element: its tendency to dismiss employees and brutality in the way of expression that goes beyond frankness. Less action on Twitter and Facebook: everything that says / writes can be used against him.
In the second half of the Presidency, there are to be expected difficulties in the action of government for having against the House.
With the Lega-5 Stelle government, Washington will not look more sympathetically at Italy: the yellow-green majority is just a group of seat warmers, such a government cannot stand up in a serious country. The Grillini are a structurally anti-American party. The US will keep an eye on our defense spending and the willingness to support them in their efforts. American benevolence is due to the fact that it prevents Italy from being economically and politically subjected to the fourth Franco-German Reich. Without American and Russian support, the rating agencies would have already destroyed our country.
In the coming years, the US will see Russia as Russia more easily as an adversary due to its expansive policy. With Russia we will look for a modus vivendi.
Andrea Sapori, another reader, expresses the most pessimistic (and perhaps most true) analysis regarding the future of the world. Compared to which, Trump looks almost like a dot.
In these first two years the rate of economic growth has been good, but it was also good with Obama. Protectionist policies in the US always give a good sign in the short term. In the medium / long term, however, they usually result in a conflict, since they generate economic tensions in the countries transforming raw materials of others (Japan and Germany yesterday, China today and tomorrow). This has always happened, however, with Democratic presidents at the White House, and therefore I do not make Trump responsible, which in any case will be used as a scapegoat in the future.
In the next two years the easy "stick and carrot" strategy, to be applied in this case to Iran, will not change. It is not said, however, that the ayatollahs have the same capacity and willingness to bargain as Kim Jong Un.
Speaking of Italy, it is not so much like Trump look at the yellow-green, but how they are and will be forced, given the bad relations with the EU, to look at Trump.
Nothing will happen in the next 2 years. So it will not be in the next 10, when Russians and Chinese think they have equaled US military capabilities. This will cost them dear, and by reflex also to us.
Therefore my judgment is neutral, tending towards the negative.
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God bless America. If we do not start from here, trying to quickly understand "The Donald" is difficult; wishing to proceed to an objective analysis, one could realize that the figure of the current President, aimed at combining the strategic US doctrine of the last 30 years with his America first, it's more complex than it looks. First of all, Trump is a Jacksonian nationalist who directs his politics towards the State Nation, military power, towards skepticism directed against international organizations and multilateralisms, seen as the bars of a cage in which to compel theamerican eagle (he left the Trans Pacific Partnership to face the Chinese challenge from an alleged position of strength). The universalist model Wilsonian, characterized by contradictory results, does not correspond to the trumpian mistrust in the forced exportation of a democratic model that is not always attactable to the contingent foreign political situations. Such as Jacksonian, Trump impresses anyone who cares about the safety of his community with determination; in short, a return to America of the origins, one that can not fail to recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, a country admired by the Republicans for its resilience, and not adequately considered by the previous administrations.
Wanting to judge Trump without understanding deep society could lead to inaccurate conclusions; maybe Europeanistically welcome but, from an American point of view, inaccurate. Trump is above all an entrepreneur who has never made a mystery of his "participants' vision"; already 30 years ago its best seller "The art of the deal"Meant contempt for a political class"all talk, no action", From which to distance themselves for the inveterate habit of not keeping the promises made: hence the exit from the Iranian nuclear agreement, the cutting of funds to the Palestinian Authority, the attacks on Syria accused of using chemical weapons, all expressions of a foreign political thought in the clearest groove of the republican tradition.
Trump has put aside rhetoric neocons who wants to export the US system of values, and has recovered the most deeply rooted of American conservative tradition; The Donald he cleverly interpreted social issues neglected by the Dem administrations, and boiled for at least 10 years, especially when he intended to take positions politically incorrect, as against migratory flows. Indicative, moreover, the elections of midterm which, contrary to the expectations of some, did not mark the expectation debacle Republican.
La National Security Strategy trumpiana, compiled according to the dictates of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, is based on 4 pillars: protection of territory and way of life, incentive of prosperity, preservation of peace through force, progress of global political influence, all aspects linked by links of cause and effect, and which make us understand how Trump does not want to disengage from the world, but desires a protagonist America.
The President is one star conflictual, as in the relationship with a recently disruptive UN and in a strategic contrast and overall vision, and consequently irrationally deprived of a significant portion of Yankee financial contributions; in the indo-Pacific area, in North Korea and in relations with the Atlantic allies, called for a credible commitment; waiting in the Middle East, where the Obama administration has already failed to give clear signals of consistent continuity to a credible policy; strictly non-concious towards a politically non-existent EU and of which the French President was awkward and embarrassing in recent talks; assertive and decided with the riotous and revanching allies like the Turks, to whom, perhaps too accustomed to weak and unqualified counterparts, the salience of the interlocutor has imprudently escaped.
Finally, the commercial conflict engaged with China clearly indicates the confirmation of the will of an aggressive posture, together with an impossible appeasement with Russia, opposed by the Congress.
To understand Trump, we should learn to understand and contextualize the Americans, a difficult exercise for political subjects who see in the sovereignty and in the national sentiment of the evils to be eradicated. Accustomed to an excessive use of political cosmetics that has always shown only the "good" side of relationships, what we lack is a true contradiction with the whole of the American working class, the one that, in fact, is benefiting from an increase in employment without previous. God bless America.
Gino Lanzara
(photo: US Air Force / MoD the People's Republic of China / US Embassy Tel Aviv / US Army / Xinhua / presidency of the council of ministers)
