Over the past four years, US President Donald Trump has become a polarizing figure in the western world. His boisterous style of leadership, his braggadocious personality and lack of conformity have rubbed many the wrong way. Whether it be other world leaders expecting decorum and class to academics that worry about the degradation of institutions long-held sacred, Trump has alienated many. And he is unapologetic in doing so.
His style of leadership has become so polarizing that the default setting for many western commentators and news outlets is that anything Trump does is automatically wrong. From his domestic agenda to his foreign policy, Trump is the man that can do no right.
Yet for those of us living in the world outside the Washington/New York bubble, Trump’s foreign policy and plain-speaking style has struck the right chord. Well, sometimes. For example, when talking about Russian espionage and subterfuge, Trump rhetorically said, ‘you don’t think we’ve killed anyone?
While it was probably not his intention, it was refreshing to see a sitting American President acknowledge the crimes of his state instead of constantly treating the US like ‘the shining city on the hill.’
Those of us living in the developing world need no reminding of the crimes of the American state. The people of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam do not need any reminding of the crimes committed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger and his various presidential suitors.
China
But acknowledgement of past crimes aside, Trump’s confrontation with China and Xi Jinping is the issue that most resonates with the people of this region and this part of the world.
Tossing aside the appeasement policies that started with Clinton and Bush and calcified under Obama, Trump has become a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party.
While Obama’s Pivot to Asia amounted nothing more than placating China while trying to engage with regional partners, Trump has actually caused consternation in Beijing and done real economic damage to the world’s second-largest economy.
It is a confrontation, that for many in Asia, has long been coming and one that needed to be had.
Even forgetting China’s negligence and coverup during the coronavirus crisis, which Thai Enquirer has spent many paragraphs discussing, there are many longstanding issues regarding China that have the people of this region concerned.
To describe them would be another column entirely but here is just a few for starters:
- Xinjiang Concentration Camps for Muslim Minorities
- Belt and Road Initiative placing countries into debt traps
- Buying members in ASEAN that have effectively muted the bloc
- Efforts to suppress free press across Asia
- Military build-up in the South China Sea
- Invasion of India
These are all very real issues that make a mockery of China’s claim that it does not get involved in the local affairs of other countries. Ask the Maldives and Sri Lanka if that is true.
China, like the United States, the United Kingdom and all other great powers in history, cannot help but get involved in the affairs of others in the pursuit of self-interest. It may not be called imperialism, or colonialism, or the Truman doctrine, but China is just as belligerent – with perhaps a bit more savvy given the past lessons of history. It has even followed in the US and the UK’s footsteps in suppressing minority groups at home in the quest for homogeneity and a unified image.
What must not be allowed to happen is for the Chinese to enforce its version of the Monroe Doctrine and unilaterally declare the Asia Pacific and South Asia to be under its hegemony.
This is where Trump comes in and bully for him.
Liberal failure
Yet the anti-Trumpism emanating out of western liberal journalists and intellectuals fail to take into account this fact. They are missing the forest for the trees.
All they see is Trump, who has somehow morphed to become Satan incarnate. Surely anything that Trump does must be wrong?
Yet in the streets of Taipei, now under threat of forceful unification, and the streets of Hong Kong, where China is cracking down on democracy as we speak, the protesters march and shout Trump’s name.
Not because they share any ideological similarity to the conservative blowhard but because his policies are having a real impact on Beijing and because Beijing is afraid of him.
Yet the liberals at the New York Times and Washington Post do not see that still. They would have the United States and the ‘free world’ appease Beijing just to offer a counterpoint to Trump’s (admittedly) rambling and incoherent foreign policy.
Appeasement is a too-often thrown around word meant to evoke the cowardice of the leaders if the 1930s. But it is applicable in this case to the would-be foreign policy free thinkers of the west today. It is intellectual cowardice that they fail to see beyond their domestic agenda to see that Beijing is an ever-present and growing threat to the liberalism and democracy that they would see in the developing world.
The CCP has made no qualms about aligning themselves with despots and dictators as long as they tow the line and kowtow to the master. Just ask the dictators of Cambodia or Laos how much support they receive from Beijing. Just look at my country, Thailand. China was one of the first countries that the junta-leaders flocked to after overthrowing a democratically elected government.
Trump is not a perfect leader, hell he is far from it. He is not the figurehead the developing world wants or needs. But if he is the only one willing to stand up to Beijing, then more power to him.
Here is to a second term.
