RNA - The global backlash against President Donald Trump’s recent declaration that Jerusalem Al-Quds is the capital city of Israel did set the stage for a major showdown at the UN General Assembly on Thursday, December 20, a vote which was overwhelming opposed to Trump’s statement.
Even US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley made her own vague warnings of punishment for nations - and the UN - that resist the US on the matter, and President Trump likes that idea so much that he overtly threatened to cut off foreign aid (if any) to any nation that voted against him at the General Assembly.
Guess what? The Trump Administration threats didn’t lead to massive capitulation worldwide, as the resolution passed by unanimously. After all, voting for the US, and by extension, Israel, is unthinkable across the Muslim world, and it’s also hard to imagine that any of the Security Council nations, who already voted against the US, would willingly change course, when it would be so transparently a reaction to US threats.
However, President Trump can still make good on his threats in other ways, since it would mean effectively ending American hegemony over the world - something that won’t go well with the War Party:
- Trump's flagrant bullying - much denounced by everyone at the UN, is no sign that he will give the marching order to US occupying troops to withdraw from the Middle East. The dirty secret is that some Arab dictatorships secretly admire and envy his power as a bully. Worse, Trump's bullying resonates not only with his hardcore supporters, but also to many in the European Union and much of the Western hemisphere.
- As the United States debates going it almost alone against Syria, the question of whether anti-US views are on the rise is more than academic. State Department officials are sufficiently concerned about growing anti-American sentiment in Europe and Russia, as well as the Middle East that they continue to invite select groups of scholars to address the topic at private conferences.
- As new polls suggest, some consistent themes have emerged. Chief among them is concern, even resentment, over the Trump administration's willingness to act on the Al-Quds declaration without consulting the United States' friends - old ones or new ones. What is of most concern to Europeans in American policy is the desire seen that US always wants to have the American way, desire to always be on top, to be the only leader, and actually to have partners not allowed to disagree. This makes Europeans nervous.
-The question of Jerusalem Al-Quds in European foreign policy is much more a question of European attitudes toward the United States. Will the US once again take unilaterally the power to decide which country has to move its embassy to the Holy City and which country should not? (The US has gone too weak, otherwise a second question could now be if Washington would take another time the right to decide whether to start a war against a sovereign state that voted against it?)
It is time for the US and its bully-in-chief to pay attention to the world's interests, not just their own. The US is seen as a bully and dangerous to the world. There will always be some bemoaning of Trump as a bully at the UN. Much of this misses the key point and is hypocritical, for Trump's bullying is largely a reflection of the establishment's own bullying and the centrality of bullying in American culture and society.
The truth is that Trump's bullying is a deep part of US culture. This is especially true of the political and media establishments, who present themselves as being civil and anything but bullies. The inconvenient truth is that bullying, disguised as a legitimate practice, is embedded in American culture, American governing elites, and America’s most powerful institutions: the military, the corporation and the state.
But the international civil society won’t be intimidated: By voting against Trump’s controversial and dangerous Al-Quds decision, the UN member states called for an end to US militarism and rejected the authoritarianism of its bullying foreign policy. The bully-boy loner of the Security Council failed to win any power or vote at the General Assembly. What a disgrace.
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