Forum debates, Trump denies global threats
The good news is that some of the best and brightest minds in the so-called free world are wrestling mightily with seemingly intractable threats to global security.
The bad news is that the titular leader of that free world – U.S. President Donald Trump – denies the very existence of many of those same threats.
Russia’s unrelenting campaign of disinformation aimed at destabilizing western democracies; China’s threatening presence spreading from the Arctic circle to the streets of Hong Kong; and the devastating effects and rapidly escalating dangers posed by climate change were recurring themes at the three-day Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) that concluded Sunday.
Participants at the forum, representing more than 80 nations, may have come up short of solutions to those problems but their insights into each reveal a depth of understanding that generally precedes answers.
Yet, on each of those issues, President Trump has either cast doubt, or outright denies the authenticity of the threat.
During one HISF session, the moderator Nick Schifrin, foreign affairs and defence correspondent for PBS noted the claim that the Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computer network in 2016 is Russian disinformation.
The entire American intelligence community agrees it was Russians that did the deed, but as recently as Friday, Trump repeated the Russian disinformation. Schifrin asked the president’s new National Security Advisor – the fourth in 38 months – Richard O’brien why the president repeats Russian lies. Trump’s long shadow seemed to cast a pall over the room when O’brien, apparently intent on outlasting at least some of his predecessors, replied, “I think we should take the president at his word.”
The people of Hong Kong, thousands of whom have taken to the streets for months to assert their right to be free from Chinese Communist domination, received the John Mccain Prize for Leadership in Public Service during the HISF.
In presenting the award, Cindy Mccain said her late husband and former U.S. Senator would have been proud to witness thousands of “human hearts insisting on their own – and future generations’ – freedom and agency.”
Last week, the United States Congress, with overwhelming bipartisan support, passed The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, but Trump mused that he might veto the bill, saying he stands with the people of Hong Kong, but he also stands with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
The absurdity of that obviously incongruent position wasn’t lost on Professor Steve Tsang, Director of the China Institute, School for Oriental and African Studies, University of London, who said, ““The policies Xi Jinping has put in place will result in the destruction of Hong Kong as we know it.”
U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, told HISF participants that America’s allies have every right to be worried.
“America’s message should be: ‘You can count on us. And that’s not what’s being projected right now,’” Kaine said in reference to the president’s erratic foreign policy pronouncements.
One area where Trump is consistent is his denial of climate change or, when he allows that there may be some changes, he denies that it’s caused by human activity.
On the eve of the forum, HISF President Peter Van Praagh said China and climate change represent the two greatest threats to global security. But, while China figured prominently in discussions during the open plenary sessions, climate change was mostly relegated to smaller, offthe-record and closed sessions.
It did emerge and was recognized as a serious issue during discussion on the Arctic at a session titled “End of the Earth.” But even there, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer focused on the strategic military and economic importance of the Arctic as melting ice opens the ocean to marine traffic.
It took panelist and Norwegian MP Espen Barth Eide to assert that the melting Arctic ice fields and permafrost are themselves the most serious problem in the Arctic.
Secretary Spencer did try to reassure forum participants that, regardless of the state of the politics in international relationships between allies, “there is a military to military relationship that is strong … and ongoing all the time. Those relationships continue regardless of politics.”
Such assurances were empty rhetoric to the Kurdish representative at the forum.
Falah Mustafa Bakir, a senior foreign policy advisor to Kurdistan’s regional government, underlined the sense of betrayal his people felt after Trump withdrew U.S. military support from those parts of Syria that the Kurds controlled.
“We were left alone,” he said. “What does it mean to be an ally when this happens? Who can blame countries for turning to China, when they feel they can’t trust the United States?”
A year from now, at the 12th annual Halifax International Security Forum, the U.S. presidential election will be over, and America’s allies will have some sense of whether their trust in the U.S. may be restored, or if they’ll have to persevere through four more years of erratic leadership of the “free world.”