Trump Re-election Would Spur International Uncertainty
President Joe Biden vowed last week to continue supporting NATO in defending Ukraine from Russia’s ongoing, bloody invasion while trump told MAGA followers that before he was elected president he “didn’t even know what the hell NATO was.”
“NATO was founded 75 years ago, and it’s — I think the lessons we’ve learned then and about standing together to defend and deter aggression have been consequential,” Biden told world leaders at last week’s NATO summit in Washington, D.C.
In the darkest contrast, trump has said he would “encourage” Russia to attack any NATO member that fails to pay its bills as part of the Western military alliance.
And while Biden was reaffirming U.S. support of Ukraine and NATO, trump was meeting with the autocratic leader of Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who with trump have questioned NATO policy toward Ukraine and Russia.
Biden led the successful effort to gain NATO military support for Ukraine while trump has had multiple foreign policy disasters during his four years in office.
Among those black marks, trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran deal. The withdrawal did not make the U.S. safer and instead it prompted Iran to speed up its nuclear weapons program.
Trump pulled the nation out of the Paris climate accord and the calamity of climate change accelerated.
He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, further inflaming the Arab world and smashing the ever decreasing possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
His bombastic attempts to threaten and then woo North Korean dictator Kim Jon-Un into reducing its nuclear stockpile have failed as North Korea has sped up development and testing of long range nuclear missiles.
Trump’s so-called middle east peace plan had the oxymoronic official title of “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.” The plan was written by a team led by trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a real estate developer with no prior experience in foreign relations. Palestinian officials were not invited to the signing ceremony and opponents called it a “smokescreen” for annexation. It called for total demilitarization of the occupied territories and Israeli development of further settlements in areas that had been left to the Palestinians.
Trump points to the so-called Abraham Accords as his hallmark foreign policy success. The accords normalized relations and boosted trade between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. But they have done nothing to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Not surprisingly, trump left a mess for the Biden administration to try to clean up similar to the situation he left in Afghanistan.
The U.S. completed the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, marking the end of the 20-year long war.
In February 2020, the trump administration and the Taliban signed an agreement which set fighting restrictions for both the U.S. and the Taliban,. In return for the Taliban’s counter-terrorism commitments, the agreement provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. Crucially, the Afghan government was not a party to the talks.
Following the deal, the U.S. cut the number of air attacks on the Taliban and the U.S. stopped supporting the Afghan military in its offensive operations, forcing it to take mostly defensive positions around the country. The Taliban was emboldened and strengthened by the trump agreement. Biden ordered that all U.S. troops pull out by September 2021 but trump’s moves made the Taliban stronger and weakened the Afghan military. The Afghan National Security Forces fell, leading to the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, 2021.
Equally in shambles after trump’s rule, were the situations regarding Israel and the Palestinians and the tumult in Sudan.
A week before the 2020 election day, trump announced that the U.S. was lifting sanctions on Sudan after the African nation had supposedly reached agreement with Israel as part of the Abraham accords. The proposed agreement was of critical interest to the Sudanese government to aid in its bloody civil war. Israel also saw the agreement as vital because the Sudanese Red Sea coast is essential from a security and economic perspective. Sudan has deep extensions into the African continent because of its location, large geographical area and expansive borders.
In return for agreeing to normalized relations, the U.S was to loan $1.2 billion to Sudan. Sudan also would be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsored terrorism, opening up potential aid and trade with the U.S. The African country was the first to be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism three decades ago.
“Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi?” trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a speakerphone, referring to then-former Vice President Joe Biden the morning after their last debate. “There are many, many more coming.”
Trump went on to say that “Today, a great people of Sudan are in charge. New democracy is taking root.”
He could not have been further from reality as there was no signed, formal agreement until 2023 while no other nations joined in the Abraham Accords as promised by trump. And in recent months, Sudan has broken out in yet another deadly civil war.
As part of the Abrham Accord, Sudan’s transitional government agreed to pay $335 million to the victims of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, victims of the USS Cole attack, and the family of murdered USAID employee John Granville.
But none of the money was to be paid out until lawmakers resolved Sudan’s “legal peace,” a legal term that means as a sovereign country, Sudan could not be sued. The term was necessary to protect Sudan from lawsuits by survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Without such protections, foreign investors would be reluctant to do business with Sudan for fear they could end up financing billions of dollars in compensation to terror victims. And without foreign investment, Sudan’s transitional government had little hope of pulling its country out of widespread poverty and instability.
Sudan has not been found liable for the attacks but the 9/11 Commission found that the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, had a vast business empire in Sudan and left the nation in 1996.
Located on the Red Sea, Sudan is Africa’s third largest country, with a population of about 47 million. It was a decades-long opponent of Israel and fought with Arab countries during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 and Six-Day War in 1967. Sudan has facilitated weapons transfers to Hamas and hosted the 1968 Arab League summit, which ratified the infamous “three no’s” to peace with Israel, recognition of Israel and negotiations with Israel.
It was unclear if the Abraham Accord meant that Sudan would formally recognize Israel.
Ilan Goldenberg, the director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security, told the N.Y. Times that the trump administration had rushed efforts to score a foreign policy victory ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
“The whole thing felt forced all along by an administration that wanted to use a terrorism designation as a political tool to try to get normalization with Israel,” Goldenberg said. “When you cook up these kinds of very transactional deals with unrelated items that don’t make much sense, this sometimes happens.”
Sudan’s prime minister Abdalla Hamdok had resisted relations with Israel. Hamdok shared power with Gen. Abdel Fattah al Burhan, chair of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council, after the military ousted Omar al Bashir, a murderous dictator who led the country from 1989 to 2019. After mass demonstrations ousted Bashir, the military seized power, but agreed to a transition to democracy that is still unrealized.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, trump won kudos from some very unsavory people, including Sudan’s then-President al-Bashir, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. In an interview, Bashir suggested dealing with a trump administration would be more “straightforward” and “much easier” than his predecessors. Bashir said that trump would be less likely to lecture about human rights and civil liberties.
Bashir had ruled Sudan since 1989. His government suppressed dissent and fought a 13-year conflict in the impoverished Darfur region. The United Nations estimates the genocidal violence in Darfur in the early 2000s led to around 300,000 deaths and displaced more than 2.5 million people.
Since it achieved independence in 1956, Sudan has been torn by bloody internecine conflict, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of people who were either dispossessed or fled to neighboring areas. The first Sudanese civil war lasted from 1955 to 1972; the second civil war dragged on from 1983 to 2005; the South Sudanese civil war took place from 2013 to 2020; and now the nation is in the bloody throes of the 2023 Sudanese civil war.
And now with the western world’s attention fixed on the Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, another genocide may again be brewing in Darfur and Sudan. After a period of relative calm, the Sudanese people have been terrorized in for the past year in fierce fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). More than 14,000 people have died, and 8 million more have been displaced. Among the fighters aligned with the Rapid Support Forces are Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group.
Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the violent Janjaweed Arab militias, against populations that identify as Central or East African. The RSF was formed from Janjaweed fighters by former Sudanese President al-Bashir. The Janjaweed militia spearheaded led genocide of the early 2000s, killing an estimated 300,000 people.
As the current violence has spread, aid workers said civilians fled west and to other parts of Darfur and have walked up to 180 miles in search of safety, often in temperatures reaching more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Fighting has concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region. The war began with attacks by the RSF on government sites. RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and Sudan’s de facto leader and army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan have disputed control of government sites. Reports indicate widespread atrocities, including mass killings, sexual violence, and the systematic destruction of villages.
The uninformed, brainwashed MAGA world can be excused but every member of Congress who backs trump should be utterly ashamed of their actions in enabling such an ignorant, petty, dishonest, vindictive man to rise to power.
The challenges of the world are simply beyond the intellectual capabilities of trump. The ramifications of giving power to a functionally illiterate narcissist will be felt in the real world, with deadly ramifications.
Trump has already outrageously said he would end the Russian war in Ukraine by threatening to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine if the nation doesn’t agree to relinquish territories conquered by Russia in return for peace.
Regarding the Israeli war in Gaza, trump simply does not have the brains to understand the nuances of the middle east. His plan is to bolster Israel to continue destroying Gaza, until Hamas is evaporated. Trump fails to grasp that Hamas popularity is imbedded in the occupied territories and that eliminating Hamas will only breed a new and potentially even more dangerous anti-Israeli movement.
A second trump administration would be faced with dealing with complicated world issues that cannot be solved through his bloviating and distorted world views.
In particular, he is predisposed to ignore another “shit hole country” like Sudan, where ongoing bloodshed and upheaval threatens another genocide in a nation that is geopolitically important in the U.S. efforts to stem terrorism. If trump is returned to power, he will most certainly abandon any efforts to provide humanitarian aid or to broker peace between warring factions.