President Trump’s Foreign Tour

The Presidential 9-day foreign tour of Donald Trump has been perhaps the most successful first such tour for any US President. Not only has he visited a friendly country but also countries which many thought were his adversaries, and he redefined the relationship with the European allies. This post is a brief comment on this tour with some comparisons with his predecessor Barak Obama.

On the first leg Trump visited Saudi Arabia the home of Islam. Given what Trump had said about Islamic terrorism many awaited a rebuff from the Saudi kingdom, the very birthplace of Islam. But from the moment that Trump stepped from the plane to be greeted by the Saudi King it was a cordial visit. The economic achievement of the visit was the Saudi commitment to make the largest foreign investment in the US. This guaranteed many jobs especially in the advanced technology and engineering areas for the US and security for the Saudi Kingdom in the face of an aggressive Shia antagonist. This was a typical Trump deal.

But more than this it gave Trump the opportunity to clarify his views of Islam before a gathering of Islamic heads of state. It invites comparison with the speeches on Islam made Obama in Cairo and the UN in which Obama tried to whitewash Islam. Obama had said that Islam and the US shared the “principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings” ! He openly said said “it is part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear”. Despite this pro-Islam rhetoric he did not justify them in terms of terms of what the Koran and the Sharia actually say. The only quote from the Koran that he gave was “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” Even if we ignore that fundamentals like God (Allah). Paradise and Hell are myths and not ‘truths` because they are asserted in all theistic religion, there is the explicit al Tequiyya doctrine which is asserted in the Koran as well as in Shia and Sunni doctrine in which dissimulation and untruth are approved where appropriate. In contrast to Obama Trump did not preach any theological argument. Instead he reminded those who heard him that they have to fight terrorism wherever it appears. He did not have to spell out that all terrorism we see today is Islamic terrorism.

Trump was next received enthusiastically by Ben Nettenyahu in Israel and politely listened to by Mahmud Abbas in Palestine. With the former he corrected the anti-Israel bias of his predecessor. Abbas is only the nominal head and it would not have been possible to make any common cause with Hamas the real power in Palestine. This section of his tour ended with the visit to Pope Francis at the Vatican. It will be recalled that the Pope had come to the Mexican border to preach against Trump’s proposed Wall but the US voters had already rejected what the Pope had said then. So this visit was purely formal to compete his visit to the territory of the three Abrahamic religions.

Trump’s last leg to meet the NATO leaders in Europe was equally as important as his first one. NATO had originally been formed to counter the USSR. But Russia today is a far cry from the USSR. It is no longer promoting worldwide Communism but looking after its national interest like other countries. Moreover it has no animosity with the US and had cooperated with the US in space exploration and has a common interest against Islamic terrorism. So Trump wanted to reform NATO, particularly the US financial contribution to it. European nations have advanced considerably and if they have problems with Russia they should take the lead in facing them. This may not have pleased some European leaders but it was a bold move to make NATO adjust itself to current international reality.

The Manchester Islamic terrorism event gave urgency to Trump’s message. It showed that the danger from unlimited Islamic migration is not only from the first generation but also from the second and possibly later generation. Trump argued that issues like global warming or human rights were too complicated for organisations like the UN or the NATO to deal with in a piecemeal way. These issues cannot be discussed here in this short blog.

In her Convention speech Michelle Obama is reported to have said: “While they go low we fly high”. In holidaying after her First Lady days she has been seen wearing expensive designer clothing while Obama has been charging similar money for speeches given to Wall Street supporters. This is how they fly high. Most of their income has come from Government stipends and political donations. By contrast Trump has built his fortune in competitive private enterprise and is giving his salary (the highest for any Government leader in the world) to charity keeping back only a dollar. This is what Trump means by ‘Draining the Swamp’ while his adversaries are desperately trying to stop him from doing it.

What Trump returned to in the US will have be considered in a different blog.

657 Viewers