Trump needs to be deterred not Iran by Robert Fisk

Trump is powering the UK’s preparations for war – it is he who needs to be deterred, not Iran

Let’s stop pretending that Middle East sanity can emerge from the current inhabitant of the White House
By Robert Fisk

July 30, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  It’s about time we wised up to what is going on in this utterly farcical “crisis” in the Gulf, this charade of lies and pomposity which Trump and his doggies in London are presenting to us. 

An American president who is a racist, misogynist, dishonest and psychologically disturbed man – assisted by two vicious and equally dishonourable and delusional advisers – is threatening to go to war with Iran while a kipper-waving and equally serial-lying buffoon, who is probably the future British prime minister, prefers to concentrate on the self-destruction of his country rather than the hijacking of his ships.

The Iranians, ever the scheming Shia “terrorists” of the Gulf, have dared to give two fingers to the crackpot president who ratted on his country’s international nuclear agreement with Iran, and now play motor-boats in the Strait of Hormuz to remind both Trump and Johnson – and poor wee Jeremy Hunt – that the Middle East is the graveyard of empires both real and long dead. What mischief! What brazen terroristic crimes will the Persians be up to next?

And we take all this garbage seriously? Perhaps we must blame ourselves. Our commentators and our correspondents, our mighty media empires, gleefully take down the sleazy characters in Washington and London and then – the moment they sniff war – their faces freeze in righteous and patriotic lockjaw as they speak disingenuously of Trump’s “Mid-East policy”, his “Gulf policy”, his close friendship with his blood-boltered Saudi “ally” or his land-grabbing Israeli ally. What tosh. There is no Trump policy on anything. Nor is there a Boris Johnson policy, nor a Jeremy Hunt policy – save, perhaps, a plaintive Gilbert and Sullivan bleat about Iran’s “totally and utterly unacceptable” behaviour in nicking the Stena Impero.

“Impero” was the right word. Indeed, there was nothing sadder or more pitiful than the sound of the commander of HMS Montrose – or “Foxtrot 236” as the Iranians addressed him by the frigate’s bow number – reading his Victorian rulebook to the Revolutionary Guards on Friday. “You must not impair, impede, obstruct or hamper the passage of the MV Stena Impero,” he quoted. Oh but the Iranians could and did impair, impede, obstruct and hamper the passage of the British-flagged tanker.
For they knew that the only British naval vessel swanning around in the entire 251,000sq m of sea which is the Arabian Gulf – or the Persian Gulf, take your pick – was a 436ft-long frigate far too far away to prevent such “impairment” and “obstruction”. Long gone are the days when 15-year-old Horatio Nelson imperiously sailed the Gulf up to Basra in the 18th-century 20-gun frigate Seahorse under the captaincy of his uncle Maurice Suckling. If HMS Duncan, named after the 18th-century victor of the Battle of Camperdown, comes to the relief of HMS Montrose, named after the 18th-century duke, they can only spend a few weeks together. Then Montrose will head home.
In Nelson’s day, the royal navy possessed more than 600 warships. Today, we have fewer than 20 to stop the Persian hordes – or Chinese hordes or any other hordes – from impairing, impeding, 
obstructing and hampering what we like to call “our vital oil supplies”. It was somehow fitting that the kidnapped tanker was running empty on its way to the dictatorial kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Trump’s loveable ally, when it was hijacked. No wonder Jeremy Hunt wants to cool the waters of the Gulf rather than order his tiny ship to play escort with America’s mighty fleet.

Yet, it was truly fitting that on the cusp of a new era of British self-delusion and imperial mysticism, the Brits should have embarked on the Monty Pythonesque seizure of the Iranian tanker at Gibraltar. We were given to understand – and here the blanket of bombast was richly embroidered – that the Grace 1, boarded as elegantly by the royal marines as their masked Iranian opposite numbers were to rappel onto the Stena Impero, was seized because she was carrying oil to Syria. The EU, supposedly all too keen to exercise such sanctions, said nothing. And then Jeremy wanted to chat to the Iranians, to receive assurances that their tanker was not headed to Banias but – who knows? – to the Greek Islands, perhaps, or the Costa del Sol.

So, just to complete the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, the matter was handed over to the chief justice of the Gibraltar Supreme Court whose political jurisdiction – we are now supposed to believe – embraces great affairs of state from Washington and London to Tehran, even though the rock’s population is less than 35,000 souls. Oh but yes, we are told, the Gibraltar Supreme Court has ordered the Grace 1’s detention for another 30 days. Well, well, we must do what this almighty judiciary wishes. Truly, this is only one step away from Trial By Jury, the comic opera which our probable future prime minister must surely adore.

Had the Americans not – as increasingly appears to be the case – urged, told or instructed the British to grab the Grace 1, be sure they would not have done so. And be sure that if Jeremy had declined to involve himself in this nonsense any longer, the Gibraltar Supreme Court and its chief justice and its three other judges would have forgotten their legal mumbo jumbo, graced the Iranian captain with their favour and wished him God’s speed. But no. The moment we got involved in this incendiary action, it was utterly inevitable that the Iranians would do the same. As I’ve often reflected, those Persian chaps understand us much better than we understand them.

Come with me for a moment, then, to Tehran. Do we really think that the Iranians – haughty, vain, cruel and vindictive though they can be – are not aware of Britain’s imminent Brexit self-immolation? Do we imagine for a moment that they have not grasped the intricacies of the Johnson-Hunt battle, its outcome decided by a cabal of Tories whose decisions make Iran’s parliamentary and presidential elections look like a model of international democracy? Be sure the Iranians noted Boris Johnson’s kipper. But they have bigger fish to fry in the Gulf.

And do we seriously believe that the Iranians have forgotten the last “tanker war” in the Gulf in 1987? I remember it very well. I reported the whole wretched affair, literally flying over the steaming Gulf on helicopters, day after day. The climax came when the Americans decided to flag Kuwaiti tankers with the Stars and Stripes and give them a US naval escort to protect them from Iranian air attacks. Today, it sounds familiar. We were, at the time of course, allied with that fine and democratic Arab warrior Saddam Hussein who had invaded Iran in 1980 (at an ultimate cost of more than a million lives). Well, the very first escort mission went disastrously wrong – although Trump, Hunt and Boris Johnson and Humpty Dumpty have forgotten all this – when the Kuwaiti tanker al-Rakkah, now nominally blessed as the US tanker Bridgeton and accompanied by a clutch of US naval vessels, hit an Iranian mine on 24 July 1987.

It was able to continue its voyage, but the literally thin-skinned American warships – whose sides were so fragile that a mine could have sunk them – spent the rest of the journey in line astern behind the Bridgeton like a gaggle of chicks, using the vast carrier’s bulk to protect themselves. The Iranians, as I say, will not have forgotten this American humiliation. They are, after all, specialists in humiliation when they believe they have been humiliated.
But do we think that Trump’s ridiculous “Gulf Protection Force” would fare any better? There are few volunteers, but since Boris Johnson was prepared to sink a British ambassador, I suppose he might as well risk a British frigate or two.

The Iranians, again, will have worked all this out. Their nuclear treaty, honourably signed with the American president of the time, has been torn up, eviscerated and most shamefully destroyed by Trump. So after being ratted on by the Americans, and force-fed more sanctions by the culprit, why shouldn’t the Iranians play a few super-power games of their own, using Her Britannic Majesty’s innocent vessels on their play station? We still haven’t grasped the true import – but again, be sure the Iranians have – of Trump’s outrage at Sir Kim Darroch’s diplomatic reporting on the US destruction of the nuclear deal. Trump’s anger was clearly intended to defenestrate the British ambassador. He was saying “send him back” – as surely as he wanted to send a US congresswoman “back” for being rude to him. And our probable future prime minister actually went along with it.

Yet amid this chicanery, we are still supposed to spoon up the gruel that our imperial messengers write for us, pretending yet again that there is a Trump policy in the Gulf, that Middle East sanity can emerge from the inhabitants of a mental institution. Hence David Ignatius, an old colleague of mine and a friend in the days of Lebanon’s civil war, is now writing the following codswallop in his US column: “As the United States’ confrontation with Iran deepens in the Persian Gulf ... the grim but necessary task is to deter Iran and prepare for war, if deterrence fails.”

To do this, Mohammed bin Salman, according to the aforesaid Ignatius, must take responsibility for the butchery of Jamal Kashoggi and close down the criminal Yemen war – as if the crown prince would contemplate the second, let alone the first – because “the US-Saudi relationship is important for both countries’ security – especially as the confrontation with Tehran edges closer to war ... resetting the US-Saudi relationship on a more honest basis is urgent now, as the danger of regional conflict grows.”

So forget the fact that Trump is a lunatic and that the crown prince appears to be a deeply disturbed young man and runs a psychotic state. The White House is a mad house, but according to Ignatius we must prepare for “the grim but necessary task” of “deterring Iran” – rather than deterring Trump – as “the danger of regional conflict grows”. How can we go on taking this twaddle? Is there not a switch-off button to allow us the silence of reflection – at least a few moments to contemplate that insanity is powering our preparations for war?

It might be a good idea, right now, to remember what it’s like to patrol the Gulf off the Iranian coastline. Just over 30 years ago, I was aboard one of theMontrose’s older sister ships, the frigate HMS Broadsword, as it escorted British tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and under the gaze of the Revolutionary Guards. To give readers a touch of reality – real reality, so to speak – this is what I wrote at the time: 

“What afflicted most of the seamen in the Gulf was the heat. It burnt the entire decks until they were, quite literally, too hot to walk on. British sailors stood on the edges of their shoes because of the scalding temperatures emerging from the steel. The depth-charge casings, the Bofors gun-aiming device, were too hot to touch. On the helicopter flight deck, the heat rose to 135 degrees, and only a thoughtless leading hand would have touched a spanner without putting his gloves on. It created a dull head, a desperate weariness, an awesome irritation with one’s fellow humans on the foredeck. Inside the ship … the heat shuffled through the vessel faster than the seamen. The officer’s mess was a cool 80 degrees. One glass of water and I was dripping. Open the first watertight door and I was ambushed by the heat … After the second door, I walked into a tropical smelter, the familiar grey monochrome sea sloshing below the deck. How can men work in this and remain rational?”
Yes, I guess “reason” is what it’s all about, but our masters no longer possess this faculty. Broadsword was sold off to the Brazilians, by the way, almost a quarter of a century ago, in 1995. The Bridgeton was scrapped in India seven years later. And that’s where our crazed leaders belong today: in the breakers’ yard.

This article was originally published by "The Independent" - - 

Trump's Trade war with China

Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - 12:00am

Trump’s Trade War Is the Wrong Way to Compete With China

Focus On Renewal, Not Protectionism

Tom Donilon

TOM DONILON served as National Security Adviser from 2010 to 2013. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The rivalry between the United States and China is here to stay. But the Trump administration is bringing the wrong tools to the contest, applying blunt trade-war tactics reminiscent of the nineteenth century instead of crafting a strategy to keep the United States the world’s economic and technological leader in the twenty-first. Defensive protectionism will not meet the China challenge; only domestic revival can do that. Restoring the United States’ global standing and revitalizing its economy will require an ambitious strategy that doesn’t rely solely on changing Chinese behavior so much as on preparing the United States to compete.

After a pause in the trade war earlier this year, the cycle of escalation has resumed. In the last several months, the White House has hiked tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports and announced sanctions on the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. China has retaliated with tariffs of its own and is now preparing [1] for a protracted economic conflict.

The Trump administration is right that China’s high-tech mercantilism threatens U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. China aims to replace the United States as the global leader in several high-tech sectors. The Trump administration is also right that the United States should push back. But so far the United States has not responded with nearly enough ambition.

Tariffs were always a poor choice to change Beijing’s behavior. At best, the administration’s punitive measures will shape China’s policies at the margin, earning U.S. companies a little more access to the Chinese market and slightly reducing the trade deficit. In the meantime, however, the tariffs are hurting U.S. businesses, consumers, and farmers. They are alienating U.S. allies. And, analysts warn, [2] they are increasing the risk of a global recession.

There’s a better solution. History offers a blueprint: the United States’ strongest response to external economic and technological challengers has always been to invest in itself. When, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, the United States responded by passing the National Defense Education Act, which transformed all levels of science and math education, dramatically boosted federal funding for basic research and development, and created NASA and DARPA, which supported the development of many of the technologies that power modern society. Today, China’s technological advancements—a more serious threat to U.S. primacy than the Soviet Union ever posed—should produce a similar response.

BATTLE LINES

The flaw in the administration’s strategy is that it has focused too much on China and almost not at all on the United States. The missing piece is revitalization at home. Rather than slapping tariffs on Chinese goods, the United States should be investing in science, technology, education, and infrastructure; restoring its voice on key values; strengthening U.S. alliances; and reforming the immigration system to bring in the entrepreneurs and skilled workers of tomorrow.

The right strategy would start by returning science and technology to the center of policymaking. The Trump administration, more than any other in modern history, has purposely reduced the role of science in government. When the federal government released its mandated National Climate Assessment last November, the president dismissed it. The administration has neglected [3] or disbanded long-standing scientific committees across the government, including JASON [4], the Department of Defense’s premier outside science advisory group.

These actions are short-sighted. The U.S. government has long played an essential role in developing new technologies, from groundbreaking medical advances [5] to the microchips [6] used in iPhones. As the economists Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson show in their new book, Jump-Starting America [7], public investments in science have produced big returns, fueling the strongest periods of U.S. economic growth. Every $10 million in public funding given to the National Institutes of Health, for example, has produced an additional $30 million in value for the private sector.

But amnesia about these achievements has set in. U.S. government spending on R & D has fallen steadily as a share of GDP, from around two percent in the 1960s to just 0.7 percent today. Trump’s most recent budget proposes to slash billions of dollars [8] in funding from scientific and medical research. In the past, Congress has wisely rejected similar cuts and last year approved [9] the largest R & D funding boost in a decade. But the United States needs a much greater leap in R & D support if it is to keep up with China. Between 1991 and 2015, China raised its R & D spending 30-fold, averaging [10] an 18 percent increase each year since 2000. As a result, the National Science Board estimates that China might have overtaken the United States as the world’s leader in research spending last year, and if not, it will do so soon.

Just as the government-driven space race sparked a golden age [11] of U.S. technological development, a new national program of basic research and development can reestablish the United States’ technological leadership. Acting alone, the private sector is simply unlikely to innovate on the scale and at the speed necessary to compete with China, which is devoting significant public resources to moonshot projects such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. Nor can private firms—naturally focused on more narrow commercial goals—be relied on to make farsighted investments in basic R & D—investments that might not yield a profit in the next decade, but that will form the foundation for the next generation of technology. Only with greater federal support, and by cultivating public-private research partnerships, can America lead in developing new technologies.

The United States should be making much greater long-term investments in education, too. Instead of running up deficits in the service of tax cuts that will exacerbate inequality, the federal government should focus on investments that bring tangible returns. As MIT President Rafael Reif has written [12], fending off Chinese technological supremacy requires sustaining the United States’ unique asset: its “large number of first-rate … universities pursuing advanced research with long-term federal support.” A forthcoming Council on Foreign Relations report wisely proposes investing an additional $10 billion a year over the next five years to support technological research at universities.

As well as developing cutting-edge technologies, the United States also needs to stay ahead of their disruptive effects. Robots and artificial intelligence are already beginning to displace workers and will eventually transform almost every sector of the economy, from health care to transportation. A recent Brookings Institution study found [13] that nearly a quarter of American workers face a high risk of losing their jobs to automation in the coming decades.

The government should work with the private sector and educational institutions to prepare Americans to weather the effects of new technologies on labor markets. Schools and universities should train students for the jobs that technology is least likely to obviate—according to the McKinsey Institute [14], those involving critical thinking, social interaction, and management. Getting this transition right will do far more for the U.S. economy and society than Trump’s trade wars ever could.

BRIDGING THE GAP

If the United States is to remain the world’s most attractive place to invest and innovate, it will need to revamp its infrastructure. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, the United States embarked on a vast public works project to build the country’s first national network of highways. The Interstate Highway System generated [15] economic dividends that strengthened the country over the long term. Today, the deteriorating state of American roads, bridges, tunnels, and airports threatens to roll back many of those gains. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated [16] in 2016 that a failure to repair U.S. infrastructure will cost the United States $3.9 trillion in GDP and 2.5 million jobs by 2025.

The United States is overdue for a twenty-first-century version of Eisenhower’s road-building project, one that upgrades the country’s infrastructure and prepares it for the era of high-speed rail, electric vehicles, and self-driving cars. As the Trump administration has fought to make cars and trucks less efficient, China is pushing [17] electric vehicles, encouraging Chinese drivers to buy them, and building a grid to support their use. China has also begun [18] designing infrastructure to better serve self-driving cars, potentially speeding up their development.  

Future generations of Americans will judge today’s leaders harshly for squandering this moment. The country desperately needs new and rebuilt infrastructure, the economy is entering the late stages of a long recovery, and interest rates are historically low, making borrowing cheap. As the economists Lawrence Summers and Jason Furman recently argued [19] in this magazine, “long-term structural declines in interest rates mean that policymakers should reconsider the traditional fiscal approach that has often wrong-headedly limited worthwhile investments.” There may never be a better time to undertake a large-scale infrastructure program.

The United States is also failing to capitalize on its status as a nation of immigrants. To compete with China, the United States needs to remain a place that talented immigrants both can and want to call home. The United States has long enjoyed a demographic advantage over China: in part due to the legacy of the one-child policy, China’s population is shrinking and aging [20] while the United States’ is still growing. But that demographic edge is eroding. 

According to Census Bureau estimates, U.S. population growth is at an 80-year low. The demographer William Frey projects [21] that as native-born Americans have fewer and fewer children, immigration will provide the main source of population growth in the decades ahead. Immigration boosts economic growth, too, since immigrants tend to be younger than the native population, more likely to work, and often more successful when they do. The longtime technology investor Mary Meeker recently found that more than half [22] of the country’s 25 most valuable tech companies were founded by a first- or second-generation immigrant.

The Trump administration’s hostility to immigration, therefore, threatens to undermine one of the United States’ most important advantages. A future administration should reverse course, enacting a set of reforms that will bring in more talented immigrants and restore the United States’ image abroad as a welcoming place for newcomers.

IMAGE PROBLEM

The United States needs to set its house in order, but even then, it cannot go it alone in a global economic, technological, and military competition with China. Trump’s trade wars have alienated the United States’ closest partners. A recent poll [23] in Germany found that the German public now views the United States as a less trustworthy trading partner than China. Regaining the United States’ stature in the world is essential, as only a collective front can pressure Beijing to stop stealing intellectual property and start granting foreign companies greater access to the Chinese market.

A good place for the next president to start would be by reviving U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. A stronger TPP with U.S. involvement would be the ultimate tool for checking China’s unfair trade practices. It would signal to Beijing that it can only shape Asia’s economic future by respecting intellectual property, dismantling bloated state-owned enterprises, and playing fairly with other countries. Trump’s decision to scrap the TPP, in 2017, conveyed exactly the opposite message, assuring China’s leaders that they could double down on the old ways of doing business without consequences.

The administration’s China policy reflects Trump’s belief that China has long taken advantage of the United States, especially on trade. Whatever the merits of that position, a response focused on changing China’s behavior is woefully inadequate. U.S. primacy was born not by defensive protectionism but by building the greatest economic engine in human history. Keeping ahead of China is much more about us than about them.