AMERICAN President Donald Trump has become an outlaw. In his own country since arguably the campaign leading to his election in 2016 and, in the world, he has become increasingly dangerous, acting as if his word is law — if law ever mattered to him.
The assassination of Iranian leader commander Qassem Soleimani is a phase in that escalation which risks an outbreak of conflict, especially in the Middle East (West Asia), increase in terrorist acts in retaliation (weapon of the aggrieved powerless), and a cycle whose end it is difficult to foretell.
The separation of powers and the checks and balances much lauded by Americans in their democracy and system of government have under Trump become ineffectual.
In the administration, he listens to nobody and has made sure there is nobody worth listening to.
With the Supreme Court, he is in contempt of its decisions, and circumvents them with executive orders not capable of challenge, as with his refugee policy.
Congress is in his pocket, all those Republican senators hoping to ride on his popularity and scared of incurring his wrath.
Thus, after having been impeached, the majority Republican Senate is conspiring not to have a proper trial — plotting a trial without witnesses! There is no point Democrat senators like Bernie Sanders declaring America cannot go to war without the approval of Congress. If Trump goes that route, he will get it before or after the event.
What we have is an American presidential dictatorship. The American Constitution is no more. If, and it looks like when, he is re-elected on Nov 3 this year, the American people would have shown that they too do not have a shred of care for their own Constitution, that they support his America First madness — and therefore are complicit in his international crimes.
At various turns in the last 70 years the US has violated international law. To name justafew, Nicaragua and Guatemala (both in 1954), Lebanon (1958), Iran itself twice (1953 and 1979-81, the hostage crisis), Vietnam (1954-73) and Iraq (2003 till today) — but they were largely let off as huge policy mistakes (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of other people’s lives).
Now under Trump it has become intentionally unmitigated and endemic. America has become an outlaw nation. We have the finger of an American presidential dictator on the nuclear button. Strange this, as for the longest time the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (1968) was signed on the supposition that mercurial madmen in tinpot countries should never be allowed to have control of nuclear weapons.
Indeed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement with Iran was precisely based on this sense of exclusiveness. America’s (and its allies’) superiority in nuclear weaponry had to be maintained.
But the responsibility on its non-use has gone. The world is standing on its head.
Sadly, unlike the Americans themselves nobody in the world can do anything about this dictator. EU foreign ministers are meeting on Friday apparently mainly to discuss what should be visited on Iran for moving away from some of the major terms of that nuclear agreement, a piddling consideration against a spiralling and worsening world situation created by Trump.
Gosh, surely the EU can do better than that. As for the Muslim countries they are hopelessly divided, with Saudi Arabia particularly doing the American bidding. The stupid division between Sunni and Shia — of which there is more than a trace in Malaysia — is a curse. Just as oil in Saudi Arabia is a curse.
The Saudis would not get the time of day from the Americans if they did not have it.
But at the very least Islamic (sic) states should meet to discuss the gathering storm.
To make a statement of solidarity. A statement against attacks on religious and cultural centres, an attack on Iran. What is the OIC doing? The Malaysian prime minister has called on Muslim countries to show unity. When he held the KL Summit last month the spectre of this disunity haunted it.
However, at this dark moment of Trump running riot, turning his guns on Muslims, they must show some guts.
Back to America, it has lost the plot. It is definitely in decline. More than that, it is absolutely no role model.
The writer, a former NST group editor, returns to write on local and international political affairs. He is also a member of the Economic Action Council chaired by the prime minister