Trump-Putin-Xi The Untold War Story
February 28, 2022
Wars don’t start in a day or even in a few months; it often begin as untold war story rooted in an idea within a leader or government. Such conflicts evolve through layers of treachery, falsification, and sub-stories of self-justification. The ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict exemplifies this tale of untold war story, demonstrating years of development and high-handedness.
When President Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 from Ukraine, President Obama was in charge at the White House. Years later, President Trump had an interesting comment to make on President Obama. According to Trump, Putin outsmarted Obama and annexed Crimea from the USA. This was a telling comment on an ex-President like Obama. The United States also had no duty to intervene, given Ukraine is not part of NATO and doesn’t benefit from its Article 5 (or “collective defense”) protections, but still, the incident stood out like a blot on America’s foreign outreach, given Ukraine was cajoling up to NATO. Cut back to 2022, eight years on, President Biden is stuck on a similar sticky Pitch, USA has again been checkmated by their old nemesis, Putin.
The shrewd strategist in Putin, realized very early that to achieve a goal of a weakened America, Russia has to deep dive into USA’s internal affairs and influence policy making. Putin’s honeymoon with USA’s internal affairs started with the famous leak of Hillary tapes, that swung a tightly contested election towards a maverick businessman and political novice like Trump. In terms of business and glamour, Trump had achieved all he wanted in his life. If he was thirsting for anything, it was for recognition of a great world leader. Trump, like many other hardliners in different parts of the World, wanted to be known as a leader who changed the discourse of World history or at least had the potential to do so. Putin was swift to recognize this. From the meetings with another maverick leader Kim Jon Un in North Korea to the gun-totting Taliban in Afghanistan, Trump was relishing making History, while Russia and China pulled strings deftly in the background. Trump became the first sitting US president to step into North Korea and also the first US president in two decades who inked the peace deal with the Taliban in Doha. In this race of firsts, the US was slowly getting caught in a quagmire where it would start being seen as only one of the leading World powers and not the sole and might leader of a mono-polar World, it was decades ago.
When Covid 19 first broke out in China, Trump laughed it off as just another virus and was at the forefront of the no-mask theory. While China was quick of its foot in putting in containment measures in Wuhan and elsewhere and Russia was off the blocks in the search of a vaccine, the USA was still in an imaginary world where Covid 19 was dismissed as a Chinese flu. Despite dire warnings of a Pandemic from notable virologists like Anthony Fauci, Trump laughed at the threats, and taking a cue, his administration remained oblivious to the threat that had almost reached its borders. Was it an act of deliberate sabotage? History will judge it from the consequences the USA had to face. Duly considering the under-reporting and data manipulation carried out by various Nations, still, the USA recorded close to 1 Million deaths, while China registered 4.46 K deaths and the official figures from Russia were 0.3 million. For a country boasting of one of the best healthcare infrastructures in the world, the sight of hundreds of bodies rotting in parked freezers at street corners was huge damage to its psyche. The entire world witnessed the collapse of the US health infrastructure while China came up with visuals of hospitals being set up in a week and again folded off as fast as they had been created. In terms of research for the vaccine, Russia worked at a lightning speed and on 11th August 2020, Russia announced the World’s first Covid vaccine supposedly given to President Putin’s daughter. The USA was battered and bruised and still debating whether to use masks or not. In the eyes of the World and even its citizens, the Government was a huge failure and faltered at every step of protecting its citizens. The World got a message; A country that could barely protect its citizens from a health pandemic, could now ill afford to wade into the messy World affairs, let alone dictate terms. The triumvirate of Trump-Putin-Xi was successful in phase one, although their individual goals may have been different.
Not only on the healthcare front, but the pandemic also created a demand shock, a supply shock, and a financial shock all at once (Triggs and Kharas 2020). The US economy lost over 22 million jobs, just from February to April 2020. Covid 19 created the worst recession since the great depression as the economy shrank a record 31.4% in the second quarter of 2020. Amidst a nationwide shutdown in businesses, Government stimulus totaled more than $5 trillion, sending the deficit to record levels. In comparison, China’s economy grew at the slowest pace in more than four decades in 2020, official figures show, but remains on course to be the only major economy to have expanded in 2020. China was always better prepared than any other country in the world to tackle the crisis. Russia’s GDP contracted by 6% in 2020, followed by a moderate recovery in 2021-22. More than the Covid triggered global depression, Russia was hit by the plummeting crude oil prices that dropped by 53% between January and May 2020. In terms of taking a hit on the economy, the USA again stood as a major loser in the post-Covid World. With ever-decreasing economic clout, Captain America’s shield had already developed some major cracks visible to the World.
With Trump out of power, Biden again had to face the ignominy of fleeing from Afghanistan with tails between their legs in the face of a simple walkover given to the Taliban by the Afghan Government. Forget foreign citizens working in liaison with the US Government and thousands of local spies and informers, the US Government had to beg with the Taliban to even take its citizens out of the war-ravaged nation. With the economy paralyzed the USA could no longer afford to fight a war of diminishing returns that imposed a big drain on the economy. Russia and China again watched silently in glee as the impacts of a messy deal signed by Trump slowly began to unfold. Both China and Russia have huge economic interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan too could be seen cajoling up to Russia in the face of straight talk and funds crunch from the USA.
In this entire saga, while Trump played with aplomb the role of a joker, Putin and Xi collaborated to choke the USA in the stage of World Affairs with deftly calculated moves. With over a million deaths and a devastated economy, the USA is simply in no position to call the shots anymore. Be it Chinese aggression on Indian territory or Russian aggression on Ukraine, the USA’s scope of maneuvering has been severely constrained. USA’s weapons export has decreased 21% to $138.2 in fiscal 2021. Public support for sending troops to fight foreign wars too has drastically decreased in the post-pandemic world.
What does this signal to the World in general? The hegemony of the US military over the world is now a thing of the past. Every country should now take its responsibility in fighting off their big brotherly neighbors. Whether it will trigger a new era of arms race is to be seen in the coming days. Although it may sound overly pessimistic, the days of disarmament talks are truly over. Even the smallest of counties would now seek to be a nuclear power to have the bargaining chip at the high table of discussions. Will this result in the diversion of development budgets towards the military? Only time and trade relations can tell whether more wars are looming in the air. But one thing is certain, the USA has been checkmated in the post Covid World. Whether it manages to rise back will be another story in the making.
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