Trump's Actions Re Israel And Taiwan Have Already Made The World Less Safe
It will be a little over one month from now that Donald Trump will officially become President. But, already, the world has become a more dangerous place. Yesterday, Trump picked David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel. Friedman comes with what Trump would view as solid credentials – he’s a bankruptcy lawyer. Perhaps Trump has run across Friedman in the course of his multiple bankruptcies. As a diplomat, however, Friedman has no experience – absolutely zero. More disturbingly, Friedman has equated Jewish supporters of the two-state solution with Nazi collaborators and has said he will not even meet with J-Street, a more liberal Jewish lobbying organization in Washington. If that wasn’t troubling enough, he does not believe in the two-state solution but does believe that Jerusalem should not only be the site of the US Embassy but is also Israel’s “eternal capital”. To understate the situation, both of these positions are at odds with decades of US policy, will encourage and embolden the settler movement and the apartheid they are creating, and will certainly not be well received by the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. Assuming Friedman’s views reflect the intentions of the Trump administration, this will only result in less security for Israel and the United States. Iran has been a supporter of Hezbollah in Lebanon for decades and has been providing a large amount of support to keep Assad in power in Syria. If the US abandons the two-state solution, moves its embassy to Jerusalem, and allows Israel to create even more illegal settlements, the chances for Iranian proxies to attack from Lebanon and Syria are greatly increased. If the Israelis respond to attacks from Syria with air strikes, they run the real risk of encountering Russian air resistance, an escalation that could then require American engagement. And Iranian support in the form of money and weapons for the Palestinians will also increase accordingly.
Meanwhile, China is reacting to Trump’s abandonment of the one-China policy with increasing belligerence in South China Sea. Yesterday, satellite images revealed that China has put weapons, anti-missile, and anti-aircraft systems on seven of the artificial islands that it has been building over the last few years. This was hardly unexpected but it certainly seems that China has moved extraordinarily rapidly to militarize these islands since the elections. Today, a Chinese Navy ship literally stole a US unmanned underwater vehicle before a US oceanographic research vessel could retrieve it from the sea. Both these actions indicate that China is asserting its influence over the South China Sea and should indicate to the Trump administration that the Chinese take their claims to Taiwan with utmost seriousness.
Trump’s actions with Taiwan and Israel have already made both Asia and the Middle East less safe. And Trump is not yet President. Be afraid.
Update: I thought I was being sarcastic, but Friedman really did represent Trump during his phase of casino bankruptcies. You can’t make this up.