By Palladium
United States president Donald Trump is an ominous example of how empires and kingdoms begin their precipitous fall. His general and contemptuous disregard for the US constitution, rationalisation of $400m Boeing 747-8 aircraft gift from the government of Qatar, ongoing development of his $5.5bn luxury resort in the same Qatar, flip-flop over Iran, Gaza, Syria, and the three-year-old Russo-Ukrainian War, not to talk of the dizzying somersault over tariff wars with friends and enemies alike, all show both the unpredictability of his administration and the greed that has become the fulcrum of his policies.
President Trump and his advisers have tried to defend the Qatari gift, but the US constitution stipulates congressional approval to receive such gifts. He has waffled considerably over Iran, annulling agreements and whimsically restarting negotiations, has welcomed the Sunni-led Syria perhaps on the prompting of Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States from which he is receiving gifts, and has left Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu apoplectic over the Gaza War as he mildly berates him for the continuation of the war, just stopping short of blaming Israel for undue exuberance. And after months of pampering Russia and falsely blaming Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky for igniting the war, he has seemed to lose interest in the instant peace deal he initially fantasised.
Other than some Americans, few global affairs analysts expected anything stable and progressive from the Trump administration. But the US president has exceeded even his own inconsistencies, upending and endangering the global security and power balances, and redefining the ethical structures upon which relations between countries as well as global politics are built. The Gulf States have become Mr Trump’s Kryptonite, after recognising how easily they can deploy hundreds of billions of arms deals and investments to get him to do their bidding. And he has wiped the self-satisfied smirk from the faces of many of his admirers and early supporters, like Mr Netanyahu, while the rest of the world waits with bated breath, if not disgust, to see what unprincipled moves he would make next. It was said of the Army of Frederick the Great that it could not be bought or sold. It is sad that Mr Trump has turned America into a mercenary nation available for hire.
Culled from The Nation
