Kamal Ghorui
It must be said to the credit of President Donald Trump that he is a pastmaster in making somersaults. He does so because it becomes necessary when he gets entangled through his own miscalculations and misadventures. He then resorts to self-delusional bombast though the world is not bamboozled and can see through his facade. It’s a bit like what is called dramatic irony in literature, wherein the audience can see the impending catastrophe for the protagonist but he goes on whistling and dancing, unaware of the dire consequences of his actions.
The ongoing war with Iran has put Trump in such a quandary. The world suspects repeat of the outcomes in the Afghanistan and Vietnam wars from which America got singed and had to withdraw in disgrace. However, as is Trump’s wont, he won’t ever own up his mistakes. Even if Iran has given stiff resistance to America and denies having agreed to hold talks with America, Trump goes on repeating the claim, just as he did in case of India-Pakistan four-day war.
A real somersault had happened when Trump’s claim to Nobel prize did not fructify despite the constitution of the Board of Peace. It was quite generous of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Machado for having presented her Nobel given in recognition of her “struggle for freedom” to President Trump. To most people in the world, it appeared like persuading an unruly child with a toy! But Trump was not satisfied. If his ‘record of settling wars’ did not impress the Nobel prize committee, he fantasied getting it by first starting a war and then calling for peace! Reminds one of the Charlie Cahplain-starrer The Kid, which showed Charlie as a fixer of windowpanes. He would first send a kid to break the windowpanes of houses, and then present himself as the handyman with the solution!
Somersaults require the tactic of “Blow hot, blow cold” and doublespeak, which is too obvious to miss in Trump’s character. The flip-flop over policy to tackle the Hormuz blockade by Iran has once again shown his mercurial temperament. Right now, while VP Vance talks of imminent American withdrawal, the news of 3500 US marines arriving near Iran is also getting disseminated. This kind of flip-flop was evident from the days when, like a schoolmaster teaching tables to pupils, he held up the black tablet, writing, re-writing, revising and retracting tariff rates for many countries in the world which had the temerity to sell goods in the US. The world watched with awe as if a horror film was being screened. He could even rebuke an erring pupil in another instance right in his office! All of us visited our school days in our imagination!
The two images – of a kid wailing over not getting a toy, and of a teacher schooling the kids have stuck in public imagination. His record of threats to Iran followed by revisions and retractions has badly shaken international diplomacy and deals. Trump’s audacious capture of President Maduro of Venezuela combined with his menacing intentions towards Canada and Greenland, and open denunciation of Europe for not obliging him in the war against Iran have impelled Europe to act wisely and distance itself from Trump’s unilateral moves on the global chessboard. Ditto for Australia and Japan. In this global slugfest, India has rightly kept its cool and charted own course to safeguard its interests. So far, the fine balancing trick has worked well and the public in India is largely appreciative of the governmental actions.
So far as the American public is concerned, it had grown weary at the time of the tariff game also as it tore a hole in their pocket, and now the war with Iran not seeming to end anytime soon means loss of American life, as also money too which is in short supply. There have been protests in America which Trump dismissed as Democrats’ dirty game, but which are till date happening. The ghost of De-dollarization move by leading groupings in the world seems imminent. When it happens, it is sure to cause upheaval in American economy.
It is time the American public asserted itself forcefully to check the eccentric moves of the president. Granted that in the past, America has overthrown many regimes like it did this time in Venezuela, but America is not strong economically as before. The smokescreen of narcotics or nuclear bomb used by American administration to grab resources in the world is making an irreparable dent in Trump’s credibility, and it’s not just the credibility of President Trump, but of America as a nation which is at stake. It’s only the American public that can check the downslide, and it must act soon before America gets sidelined in the global arena.
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