Trump, a Middle East wild card
AN AUTOCRAT? President-elect’s Middle East policy may eliminate any lingering emphasis on democracy, human rights or good governance
by irate public.
The government’s motives are being questioned. Anger multiplies when critics are told that they are working against “national interest” and that they are sympathising with, if not in league with, the black marketers.
Reports that 70 people have died at ATM queues across the country are termed as rumours spread by the opposition “politicising” the issue.
But “politicising” is inevitable when key state assembly elections are but four months away. All political parties using cash to conduct polls campaigns have overnight turned pauper. Accusations abound that money managers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) acted on prior knowledge of the measure.
The gladiatorial posturing by many ministers, lawmakers and BJP officials has rubbed the proverbial salt on festering wounds of those who slept in the open with autumn changing to winter to get their own money.
Only the black marketers need worry, not the common man, Modi told the public. But the former need not worry about how to pay the next food or medicine bill.
The crisis has united the entire political opposition for the first time since Modi took office. Parliament’s work is stalled. Everyone says the objective is good, but the way it is sought to be achieved is not.
The prime minister wept in public to remind them that he had “left my family to serve the nation”. At another meeting, he smiled away, declaring that his decisions were hard — like the strong cup of tea he served as a teenager — and more are in the offing.
The contrast in perceptions is painfully amazing. From India Inc to economic experts to financial institutions, all support “Rupee reform” as “the death of India’s black market.” You wonder who is wrong: they or the suffering public.
Singapore’s The Independent declared: “Modi does a Lee Kuan Yew to stamp out corruption in India.”
Bill Gates has said the demonetisation would help quicken digitisation and the “temporary pain” is worth going through. Working numerous projects, he ought to know India well. Digitisation is bound to take long when banking has not reached 40 per cent of the country and many in rural India work on barter, untouched by currency economy.
Unlike Gates, I belong to the generation of Indians who witnessed currency conversion from the old British-era ‘anna’ and ‘paisa’ and measurement from inches, feet and yards to metre. The rupee was devalued in 1966 and in 1991.
There was suffering on each occasion, but no jingoism. The present dimensions are multiple and the extent, gigantic. The 1978 demonetisation of the one thousand rupee note concerned just Rs1,680 million.
Black money in India is estimated anywhere between $400 billion and $1 trillion. Nobody is clear how much is in domestic circulation and how much stashed abroad.
Nobody in the government explains why Rs500 was considered high denomination currency when it cannot buy more than a day’s provisions for a family of four.
Nobody explains why the new currency notes printed in great secrecy and haste were of Rs2,000 (US$32) denomination that is difficult to change.
Nobody explains why new Rs100 and Rs500 notes were not printed to meet the demand post demonetisation.
And none bothered to estimate the time the vendors engaged by the banks would take to service 250,000 ATMs. The bankers will have to recalibrate each ATM for the new notes they will dispense.
There are fears of a recession, while not entirely addressing the black economy. It is also feared that by the end of 2017, even the newly printed notes would have entered the black money economy.
Assuming those targeted have been maimed if not eliminated, that inflation might reduce, real estate sharks will be forced to deal in white money, a lot more needs done.
Till then, as consumers of money, citizens will have to bear the pain, with or without grin.
DIVINING United States presidentelect Donald Trump’s likely policies in the Middle East is hazardous. He has not yet named his full cabinet or set out coherent plans, if he has any. On the campaign trail he blurted out suggestions which, if they were all acted on, would shred the diplomatic rule book and plunge an already desperately unstable region further into chaos.
He has threatened to return to confrontation with Iran and unpick the international nuclear deal with Teheran, the main foreign policy achievement of outgoing President Barack Obama.
On Syria, he apparently approves of Russia’s military intervention to prop up President Bashar al-Assad in the name of fighting Islamist terrorists.
However, this would effectively align Washington with Assad’s allies, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, whose manpower complements Russian air power and the depleted Syrian army.
Trump has not explained how these putative policy shifts could be reconciled. Maybe he will change his mind. It is hard to tell how seriously to take his aggressive one-liners, many of them laced with suspicion of Arabs and Muslims as part of a conspiracy labelled “radical Islam.”
TRUMP SEEMS TO VIEW FOREIGN POLICY AS A BUSINESS INTEREST
His most outrageous ideas, such as stealing Iraq’s oil, will feed antiAmerican sentiment in the Middle East, even if he forgets them. He may also row back on domestic calls to ban all Muslims from entering the US, torture terrorist suspects and kill their families.
But the propagandists and recruiters of Islamic State (IS) and alQaeda will avidly recycle his utterances to promote their narrative of the West as the relentless enemy of Muslims everywhere.
Some of Trump’s other promises might go nowhere once his briefers have informed him, say, that the US military is already “bombing the shit out of” IS and helping shrink its territory in Iraq and Syria. Or when they have explained the diplomatic implications of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Trump, who often lets his gut do the talking, seems to view foreign policy as a business interest. He believes allies should pay for US protection, not treat it as a free ride, although Saudi and other regional arms buyers may feel they are already doing their bit for the American defence industry.
Above all, Trump admires ruthless autocrats, notably Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is flexing his muscles in the Middle East, a region not short of strongmen and dynastic rulers.
They in turn perceive Trump as a kindred spirit. It is safe to assume his Middle East policy will eliminate any lingering emphasis on democracy, human rights or good governance.
TRUMP WILL SOON COLLIDE WITH EXISTING REALITIES
Assad, Syria’s blood-soaked president, has said he views the next US leader as a “natural ally” against terrorists, meaning all his opponents.
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and royal families in the Gulf and elsewhere can expect soft treatment from Trump, at least for a while.
The Saudis will be glad to see the back of Obama, architect of the Iran nuclear deal they saw as a betrayal that further empowered their archfoe in the region. But they may have misgivings about Trump’s possible policy change on Syria, as well as his anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Similarly, some Israelis worry about anti-Semitic currents in the nationalist tide that swept Trump to
Turn to
office. Government hardliners, however, are hailing his presidency as an opportunity to accelerate settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and bury any notion of a Palestinian state.
Israel can always count on firm US support, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose ties with Obama were icy, will be looking for a friendlier vibe with his successor, even if the US embassy stays put.
Trump’s isolationist instincts might incline him to wash his hands of the Middle East’s complexities, or outsource them to others. He may give Russia an even freer hand in Syria, leave Yemen to the destructive mercies of Saudi Arabia or perhaps encourage Egypt to tackle the mess in Libya.
But he will soon collide with existing realities, let alone the region’s trademark surprises.
HE RISKS ENRAGING SAUDI ARABIA AND INFLAMING SUNNI GRIEVANCES
If Trump approves Russia’s bombing of Syria, he would be abandoning the Syrian rebels backed until now by the US and its partners, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Any such outcome would enrage Saudi Arabia, self-appointed guardian of Sunni Islam, and inflame the Sunni grievances that fuelled the rise of IS in the first place.
And tilting towards Assad and his allies would be hard to square with Trump’s enmity for Iran.
He might be unable to scrap the nuclear treaty signed by Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, as well as the US and Iran. But he could reinvigorate US-Iranian animosity, which would perhaps suit the hardliners in Teheran who always disliked the deal.
If the agreement unravelled, it would revive the colossal risks it averted — an Iranian nuclear breakout, an attack on Iran by the United States, Israel or both, and regional nuclear proliferation.
TRUMP HAS QUESTIONED US’S ENTIRE POST-WAR GLOBAL ROLE
Any heightened US-Iranian tensions would reverberate across the region.
For starters, they would complicate the struggle against IS, whose Iraqi stronghold of Mosul is now under assault by an array of unlikely allies, including US forces and Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militiamen who were once blowing up American soldiers in Iraq.
Trump may have little patience for such devilish details and for the whole thankless business of trying to achieve anything in the Middle East.
He has, after all, questioned America’s entire post-war global role, defence alliances, trade deals and international commitments.
Yet like his predecessors he might be sucked back into the agonies of a region that has commanded a disproportionate share of US presidential attention — and often misguided intervention. News-Decoder
The writer is former Middle East diplomatic correspondent for Reuters. During three decades at the news agency he covered conflicts as well as political and economic news in the Middle East and beyond. He began in Lebanon and headed bureaus in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan/Afghanistan and Egypt/Sudan. He spent five years in London as Middle East diplomatic correspondent and five in Beirut as special correspondent, Middle East.
(News-Decoder is a not-for-profit organisation that publishes unbiased articles on big international issues)