All and none of Donald Trump's wars – 17/05/2019

In the era of intransigence that is darkening the world today, two wars are under way. An effective, commercial, US against China but also against Europe as a whole and Germany in particular. And another of the words and trapeze wheels on the American void. against Iran. Both conflicts coincide in the urgent need for a negotiation that controls the space. The commercial, because it is a tool with which the United States seeks to revive a coercive hegemony that only correspond to the parameters of the first half of the last century. Capitalism has been modernized.

Clarin Bulletins

What happened today? We tell you the most important news of the day and what will happen tomorrow when you get up

Monday to Friday afternoon.

Unlike the East-West conflict with the USSR, it is necessary that the two largest economies tolerate each other in order to avoid the blockade of the accumulation system. In this sense, Trump's war is a dystopia. In other words, delay. It does not subscribe to the historical strategy of the dominant power, if not in the mold of the disputes between markets that have exploded the two great wars of this century, today an impossible destiny. This explains why much of the North American establishment is trying to contain the hand of the tycoon president and also wants a vast sector of the northern superstructure of the planet.

The other war, due to a state of acute conflict and economic harbadment like the one launched against Iran, produced the radicalization of the opposite; which is already perceptible in the Persian power. The notion of utility of the destructive shock posed by the military advisers of the White House entails the cost of amputating the power to inspect and stop if necessary the Iranian military scientific development. This has never been possible and will not be possible with North Korea's nuclear and missile defense advances.

Donald Trump's sympathy with the despot of Pyongyang is exclusive and has freed from any connection with this dangerous growth. The same gesture does not apply to Persian authoritarianism, even though there should be no formal difference. It turns out that North Korea, unlike Iran, is not part of a game of powers that defines the fate of a region. And that of its participants. Trump can smile at the North Korean autocrats with an increasingly sophisticated arsenal and at the same time repudiate the Persian autocrats who are very far from this potential.

Previous governments, Bill Clinton, the most Republican of the Democrats, but especially the very liberal Barack Obama, have sought to extinguish the Middle East fire and the powers of the region to balance. The equation should force Israel to approach its neighborhood, which corresponds to this, by rushing to create a Palestinian state whose absence is the trigger of the conflict. The Arab world would be the wall against expansive Iran.

The aim was to remedy this problem in order to meet the challenge of the future that we encounter in Asia and with China in particular, as history shows. The development of a free trade agreement that united the Pacific countries, excluding the armed forces of the People's Republic to create a counterbalance to their economic growth, was the foundation of the architecture of the Asian pivot or rebalancing. Counterweight without protectionist wars. But Trump destroyed this pact from his arrival in government and, consistent with the scene, has potentiated the intransigence of the protagonists of the duel of the Middle East.

A common mistake is to badume that this White House presence and manners are the result of the need for North American capitalism to rebuild its power after the 2008 economic and financial crisis and the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump is certainly a consequence of history, but he has appeared lately rather as a restorer of the failed neoconservative model of another presidency, that of George W. Bush, which relied on the notion of the United States feared and not needing alliances. With the American tycoon, the traditional idea of ​​American "exceptionalism" and the "American century" is recovered, which nourished this experience by supposing that the world is a model district with the strength of the guns of the time or with current rates.

Bush and his team, along with hawk John Bolton, placed Iran at the center of a future war, an aspiration that at the time liquefied Henry Kissinger – revealing his "public and private" contacts "with Persian power and former president more realistic George HW Father Bush. Bolton is today Trump 's national security advisor. From this position, he rebuilt this war sandbox with the rigid Chancellor Mike Pompeo, beyond the doubts and fears of the president himself, who had promised in the campaign to blow up his country from these military mishaps. .

USA He moved a powerful naval force to the region with an aircraft carrier, missiles, amphibious landing ships and bombers. The New York Times revealed a recent meeting at which the eventual dispatch of 120,000 men was being discussed to reinforce this contingent, few for a war with Iran, but enough to start it. The case of the war is being built with allegations of sabotage by oil tankers from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This is a puzzling novelty that, for many, mimics allegations that were later confirmed as false chemical weapons that justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The then President, Lyndon Johnson, had mobilized the North American army in Vietnam on tens of thousands to half a million men.

This sound of guns can go from fear to reality at any time because of the thin edge in which these things are happening, as Britain had warned. USA It has 2,000 soldiers in Syria and 5,000 in Iraq. In both countries, pro-Iranian militias are deployed against these contingents. It's a flame next to a powder barrel. Iranian hawks also have the impression of being confronted by the control of the country by the dialogue writer Hbadan Rohani.

The US long-term strategy is to contain Iran and slow down Chinese growth, but it is clear that something is becoming out of control. While the Iranian standoff is inflamed, the trade dispute with the People's Republic that has giant technology giant Huawei as the main target of Washington is also intensifying. These are different scenarios but they intersect. Not only because of the alliance that unites Beijing and Tehran. The chief financial officer of this Chinese growth and modernization emblem, Meng Wanzhou, is currently detained in Canada and about to be extradited to the United States, accused of violating US sanctions against l & # 39; Iran. Both cases share another similarity because of the alley format in which they occur.

It is clear that a conflict unleashed with Persian power would accentuate China's alliance with Russia and the collision of this bloc with the West. This is a zero sum result with aggravating factors. Beijing is the largest creditor in Washington. Hu Xijin, director of China's Global Times newspaper, said on Monday that his government was studying "the possibility of getting rid of US Treasury bonds" that the People's Republic accumulates in its reserves. They are $ 1.13 trillion in these newspapers.

That's a fraction of the $ 22 billion US national debt. but enough to generate global financial chaos if Xijin's forecasts are met. Difficult China is largely financed in dollars and the epidemic would touch it. But simply mentioning this alternative reveals the depth of the conflict or, more clearly, the undesirable extension it has reached. Like the one in Iran.
Copyright Clarín, 2019.