The world is nothing without chaos for Trump and his team

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Europe

Editor’s note: Ghanbar Naderi is an Iranian columnist and political commentator. The article reflects the author’s opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In the land of take-what-you-want, the world is nothing without a little chaos for US President Donald Trump and his White House team of karmic calamity.

Perhaps, they want to make it interesting and under control. Perhaps, their so-called global dominance is even defined in terms of control or that in chaos there is fertility.

But this manic stage they are in also shows that the control the White House policymakers believe they have is purely illusory, that every moment they teeter on chaos and oblivion.

Instability is the new stable

June 1, 2017: A White House staffer holds the speech President Trump delivered in which he stated that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, in the Rose Garden of the White House. / VCG Photo

The only stable thing in this swirling bedlam, however, is that when they engage in diplomacy, they engage with threats, looking at the world through different ends of the telescope.

Here, there are only patterns to be had. Patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns, patterns hidden by patterns, and patterns within patterns. If you watch closely and spare a thought on their unprepared, unprofessional, folksy, buffoonish diplomacy, such patterns, which the Trumpsters claim are bereft of prejudice and menace, are poison to any living goal:

- Trump tears up the Trans-Pacific trade pact

- Trump withdraws from the Paris climate accord

- Trump voids the Iran nuclear deal

- Trump damages close relations with NATO allies

- Trump freezes diplomatic relations with Cuba

- Trump escalates the war in Syria

- Trump refuses to end the Afghan war

- Trump forgets all about the diplomatic pivot to Asia

- Trump cancels North Korea (DPRK) summit, then says "could be back on"

It’s hard to believe the above is coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else – and it looks ever more eerily accurate as the Trump era progresses day by day, tweet by tweet on this global stage of madness and blood – and the hunger to win.

Just for the record, those covering the US-North Korea (DPRK) pow-wow are always prepared for one surprise development after another: Kim Jong Un’s offer of a summit with Trump, his surprise meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in; US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s missions to Pyongyang; hostile "Libya" rhetoric from Washington; harsh message from Pyongyang; Trump’s sudden U-turn on the summit; White House saying Singapore summit is "expected."

US declining, at huge cost

US President Donald Trump addresses a rally at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, May 29, 2018. / VCG Photo

This is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion. If this is not American decline on a planet in its own kind of decline, we don’t know what is. In these last few weeks alone, the urge by Trump to blame outside circumstances for his inside chaos has continued at an extraordinary pace and with unanticipated and unpleasant costs.

Week by week, tweet by tweet, Trump has made it clearer than ever that the United States is without the mandate of bilateral or multilateral treaties or in violation or defiance or rejection of such treaties, and hence not fit to lead the civilized world.

This might be welcome news for peace activists and human rights groups who have grown tired of American exceptionalism, endless wars and humanitarian disasters in the Middle East and beyond.

But there are other ways through which pro-Trump populists and allies alike can continue to cheer: Trump’s cancellation of one international accord after another, imposition of sanctions against Iran, Russia and Syria; and support for the idea of focusing on Israel and Saudi Arabia and their actions in Gaza and Yemen – despite criticisms from the United Nations and the European Union.

Given this basic imbalance, the acceleration of the US decline amid Trump’s inconsistent one-man style of diplomacy is indeed underway, albeit with some unanticipated and unpleasant costs for the civilized world.

A new world worth fighting for

US President Donald Trump speaks before signing into law the S. 204 on access to experimental drugs for terminal patients in the South Court Auditorium, May 30, 2018, in Washington, DC. / VCG Photo

This is where multilateralism, the gears, the workings, the ending of so much American chaos comes in as well. Trump’s diplomatic dysfunction might have offered him a few “wins” here and there, but it has also degraded Washington’s global stature with some profound costs.

After surveying 134 countries, Gallup’s pollsters recently reported that worldwide approval of US leadership has plunged from 48 percent in 2016 to a record low of 30 percent this year.

This is all common sense. America is openly challenging the world through military conflicts and economic warfare and the world is fighting back despite having diverging views about the merits of multilateralism.

In consequence, America’s global clout is being reduced slowly but surely, potentially opening the way for the rise of a multilateral world that’s all-inclusive and balanced.

Given that basic balance, America will continue to decline, and the civil society will continue to relish the opportunity this isolation opens to make political statements and figure out how to achieve the objectives of a world that’s based upon the principles of multilateralism and of international law.

Further on, the global community favors a multilateral world order and it is willing to shackle the dominance of America and its moral imperialism with treaties and multilateral organizations in order to resolve unsettled geopolitical disputes.

In this game, this greatest asset must be fought for and preserved through collaborative, rapid and universal responses.

In this game, the global community can no longer accept either a politically unipolar world or the unilateralism of a self-righteous superpower with global economic interests and geopolitical objectives.