(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: Dankzij Trump verandert alles op het wereldtoneel. Behalve onze klompendiplomatie)
Donald Trump will not be sworn in for another month and a half, but on the political stage all the players are taking up positions, or shifting them. The White House is a rest home for sitting president Joe Biden, and nothing more has been heard of vice-president Kamala Harris, except that she leaves a hole of millions in an election war chest of around one billion dollars. For the world that is not interesting. Gone is gone. What counts is who is coming.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Florida, has meanwhile grown into a new center of government, with parties at set times. Trump is meanwhile governing with shots across the bow, the measures he wants to issue on ‘Day One’. He is waiting for the inauguration of 20 January, but is already kicking the ball onto the field. Such as import duties on products from Mexico and Canada, the two neighboring countries with which the US has a free trade agreement: USMCA, the former NAFTA. Trump uses import duties as a means of pressure, also in areas other than trade, such as migration.
During the administration of president Biden around 10 to 12 million migrants entered the US illegally via the southern border. They were subsequently transported to large cities, such as New York. There untenable conditions arose. Under Trump the wall will be completed and Mexico must stop the influx of migrants, the ‘caravans’. If not, import tariffs of 25 percent. The intention had barely been announced before the Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum called Mar-a-Lago. According to Trump, Mexico will close the border; according to Sheinbaum, that interpretation was too abrupt but Mexico will take measures. The agenda is set.
With Canada it is the same story, though Trump’s irritation was greater. Canada, under prime minister Justin Trudeau, had lifted the visa requirement for Mexicans, creating a ‘northern route’ for people to travel from Mexico to Canada and thus to the US. The announcement of an import duty led to a shock for Trudeau. He has elections next year and his popularity is waning. Trudeau even traveled to Mar-a-Lago to improve relations with Trump and to avoid import duties. That costs Canadian jobs.
The two never got along. Trump pointed out that Trudeau’s mother was a big fan of Fidel Castro, regularly visited Castro and that Justin may be their son. ‘Look at his hair’. Trudeau just stepped over those remarks; avoiding import duties was of greater importance.
The coming presidency of Trump is also making itself felt indirectly. In Ukraine president Zelensky made a remarkable statement. He said he was prepared to give up the territories occupied by Russia, if Ukraine becomes a member of NATO. Whether that becomes the ‘deal’ is certainly not settled, but Zelensky is preparing for negotiations in which America plays a leading role. Russia too is running into limits and is even calling on support from North Korea, which is supplying 10,000 soldiers. For Moscow, however, the panels are also shifting, because another front is flaring up: Syria.
In the Middle East the balance of power has shifted through the actions of Israel and the stance that Trump will take. He stands fully behind the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was still regularly rapped on the knuckles by Biden. Among Republicans support for Israel is virtually unlimited. For them Israel is ‘us in the Middle East’. In his first term Trump moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The opponents of Israel have been warned.
Israel was contending with three opponents at once: Iran, the architect of terror, with Hezbollah and Hamas as the executors. Israel has considerably weakened all three; Hezbollah and Hamas have been practically decapitated by the elimination of many top figures. The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was even blown up by Israel in the Iranian capital Tehran. An enormous humiliation for the ayatollahs. Moreover, Israel has severely weakened Iran’s positions in Syria. The axis Iran-the Syria of president Assad-Hezbollah-Hamas resembles a bombed-out building.
That has two consequences. Iran sees the arrival of Trump as a reason to change course. Biden tried to cozy up to the ayatollahs, but Trump takes the whip out of the cupboard with numerous sanctions. Meanwhile Iran is beginning to seek support in Europe to talk again about the ‘nuclear deal’. The EU always wants to talk, even when it is utterly pointless, in order to place itself on the chessboard as a ‘diplomatic factor’. The announced Iranian ‘retaliatory actions’ against Israel fail to materialize, because Trump is on his way. Tehran fears that Israel will advocate a daring action with Trump: the blowing up of nuclear installations in Iran. These are hidden deep underground and for an effective bombardment American weapons are needed, plus the president’s assent.
The weakening of the axis Iran-Syria (Assad)-Hezbollah-Hamas led to a vacuum in Syria. In politics a vacuum is usually filled quickly: witness the terror group Tahrir al-Sham – founded in 2017 as a bundling of Salafist jihadists – that launched an offensive against the government army of president Assad to the northwest of the city of Aleppo. Tahrir al-Sham meanwhile controls Aleppo for the most part and receives support from Turkey, which at the same time fights the Kurds, while Assad counts on Russia. In short: the Syrian civil war is flaring up again.
For Russia the presence in Syria is more than symbolic politics, because the port of Tartus is unique for the Russian fleet: a Mediterranean port. It is formally a rented facility for the Russian navy, but de facto a military base and the only one outside the area of the former Soviet Union. As soon as Tahrir al-Sham has taken Aleppo, Tartus could well be the next target.
Moscow has more on its mind than Ukraine. The allies Iran and the Syria of Assad are in a bind, and Tartus is in danger. The ruble is falling because too little hard currency is coming into the country: China pays in ‘yuan’ and India in ‘rupees’. And Trump takes office on 20 January. Quite a to-do list.
The world is reorienting itself. The only country that shot itself in the foot in advance was the Netherlands, by being the first to note that it would arrest Netanyahu if he were to appear here. This as a result of a ruling by the International Criminal Court. Israel has appealed. Most of the Netherlands’ allies took a more cautious stance. The guide nation ‘in splendid isolation’ no longer plays any role in the Middle East, if it ever did. Israel is angry and the US will laugh off the clog diplomacy because the Netherlands has not understood the signs of the times.
Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.