In 58 posts with close to 100k words, we shared a lot in 2024! Explore 2024’s biggest geopolitical shifts, cultural battles, and bold insights with Drishtikone’s year in review. See you in 2025! Happy New Year! Be safe!
When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
One doesn’t know whether Trump is just a dangerous joker who thrives on and lives off of juvenile naivette of some disgruntled idiots or does he have a plan which he is camouflaging with his rather amateurish and stupid behavior.
After China took the US drone out of the international waters and escalated the already tense situation, Trump tweeted this:
“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act,”
Bigly Stupidly! He not just needs some rather quick diplomatic lessons but also some in basic English! He of course, in an embarrassing situation, changed the tweet to this –
He, of course, followed it up with another High-school-Juvenile tweet reminiscent of – oh, you will take my bat? You know what, I don’t need it back. Keep it! – variety of verbal duels.
Update:
Here is the rub – Before Donald Trump, the President-elect sent his “unpresidented” tweet, the crisis was already over. But he didn’t know. He would have, had he been attending his intelligence briefings.
But even his first version came four hours after U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus was informed that the Chinese navy had agreed to return the “underwater unmanned vehicle,” The Huffington Post has learned.
That information would have been known to Trump had he taken the “Presidential Daily Brief” prior to posting his first tweet. Whether he did that Saturday, or whether he or his staff even bothered to check with the State Department or the Pentagon about the status of the matter before weighing in, is unknown. Officials in Trump’s transition office did not respond to queries from The Huffington Post.
Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-run tabloid Global Times said in an online video –
“I don’t know if he is playing the psychological card with China or is in fact just unprofessional … China should teach him some lessons so he might learn to respect China after he is sworn in.”
The paper wrote this in an editorial:
Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month. He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower.
Diplomacy and world affairs are not run on Twitter. And that too with childishly bad spellings! Hate to say this but the state-run paper from China is quite right!
For Obama and his team – it must be nerve wracking with someone out there who is yet not in the office to start a full fledged confrontation with arguably one of the top 3 powers in the world today.
Bill Bishop, one of the top China expert in Washington DC, says this mocking Trump for his bad politics and equally bad English!
“This is ‘unpresidented’ behaviour by a precedent-elect. It would be funny if the stakes weren’t so high. This is not a business deal. This is a political relationship between nuclear powers who are already on the path towards conflict in several dimensions”
It is not as if China has done things right by the US or anyone else. It is also not much of a case that US needs to handle China with a strong hand and be tough. But such things are done behind closed doors and in the confines of diplomatic teams. Not on Twitter!
This urge to run diplomacy on Twitter showes a remarkable sense of need to show off in Trump’s case. He wants to show that he is tough, to help with the
in 2020. Whether he is or not is another matter. In fact, given his pronouncement during the campaign and later stance on Hillary etc, it is clear that he cannot carry out most of what he says anyways. Those slogans and rants work with the followers simply because they are completely devoid of logic and information. For example, any attempt to reverse the deal on Iran will have to face tough questions and stance from none other than Russia itself. Apart from other European allies.
The Paris Climate Agreement cannot also be just left unilaterally as by rule no country can just leave the agreement signed before 4 years – which is November 2020. That’s when Trump will be running for his second term, if he isn’t impeached earlier!
Similarly, anyone who thinks that manufacturing jobs which left US can come back is either smoking pot or an idiot.
So as juvenile and idiotic as Trump is, it is his supporters who have believed in Santa Clausian type of utter lies and hallucinatory rants to be gospel who baffle one.
America's Justice Department and SEC have targeted India's Adani Group with a bribery case. Using Nationalistic sentiment doesn't help. Yes, law has been weaponized and India's sovereignty compromised but not how they think. A definitive guide to understanding the case.
There was a clear warning from Putin on provision of long range missiles that could hit deep into Russia to Ukraine. It would be consider as a direct attack by NATO on Russia. Biden has done just that!
The premise and the mindset apparent in the new Trump team points to an interesting world out there. Things will not be rosy, but they will be very different. Very, very different.
The US, and indeed the world has seen a watershed event of Donald Trump's victory. It will change the US direction and may have pushed a World War by at least 3-4 years.
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