Critiquing Certain Aspects Of A Pending President Trump’s Foreign Policy....

Critiquing Certain Aspects Of A Pending President Trump’s Foreign Policy….

During the Presidential campaign, President-Elect Trump caused much angst and was castigated by many for certain aspects of his purported Foreign Policy stances; now that there is indeed going to be a President Trump - notwithstanding the deluded cry-babies still out there marching - it is an apt time to objectively critique his take on aspects of America’s Foreign Policy. Let us take for instance - and address - what President-Elect Trump had to say about our relationship with Japan… incidentally, I chose Japan because, as I write, the Japanese Prime Minister is visiting President-Elect Trump at his hotel in Manhattan.

President-Elect Trump has suggested that, perhaps, it would be ok to allow one of our allies, the Japanese to seek and acquire a nuclear arsenal, as deterrence against the hostile North Korea. I personally see nothing alarming about the Japanese acquiring a nuclear arsenal, especially, since there are countries that are far less ‘stable’ than Japan that have acquired these weapons. The nuclear genie for a long time has taken up residence in North Korea, which is governed by a dictator - surely, if the Hermit Kingdom can have a nuclear arsenal that is being controlled by a seemingly ‘mad-boy,’ then surely, the Japanese and its Democratic elect National Diet representatives should not be causing any angst for anyone, if they so choose to seek and acquire a nuclear arsenal.

To reiterate, there are other players on the world stage who have acquired a nuclear arsenal and they are not as reliable, vis-à-vis Geo-policies or as close as an overall ally as Japan is to us. India and Pakistan are some of these countries that have nuclear weapons and Pakistan, in particular, has been and continues to be a malignant thorn to the United States because it is a hotbed of terrorism. However, one can make a cogent case by saying that both nuclear armed India and Pakistan provide a mutually assured deterrence/destruction against each other, given their internecine conflict over dueling religions, or moreover, the Kashmir territory.

Granted, President-Elect Trump has other salient issues with our Japanese ally, which, mostly, has to do with economics. To that fiscally responsible end, President-Elect Trump wants the Japanese to contribute more to their defense because one could also make the case that if Japan were to acquire nuclear weapons that this new defense posture would curtail the expenses used to defend Japan with all of the thousands of troops and the conventional munitions we have presently stationed there. Lest we also forget about the other refrain of President-Elect Trump’s vexation over the Japanese alleged manipulating… of the Yen.

I can further argue that if the Ukraine were armed with nuclear weapons, this might have prevented Russia’s President Putin from literally stealing the Crimea… this is why, I think that, Poland would like to acquire a nuclear arsenal as a buffer against Russia’s aggression and why so many of the smaller states in that part of the world are yearning to join the protective umbrella of NATO, if they cannot pursue having the deterrent of nuclear weapons. In that same deterrent vein, it why it is of utmost import to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; this is so important that the Saudis - sub-rosa - would give their assent to Israel to militarily thwart the efforts of the Iranian Mullahs to gain these weapons… by the way, can you imagined if the Israelis did not have nuclear weapons?

President-Elect Trump’s posture vis-à-vis a nuclear armed Japan could be said that it is actually life imitating art. This is so because if anyone is privy to the science fiction, Star Trek series, the creator, Gene Roddenberry, introduced the concept of the Prime Directive, which meant that a Hegemon should not interfere with the lesser powerful states - in the case of Star Trek, planets; however, the industrious Captain Kirk breached this Prime Directive by ‘equaling the killing fields,’ by making sure that the less powerful planets (countries) have the same ability to protect themselves from each other. Captain Kirk made sure that the weapons each lesser planet (country) had were not superior to that of its counterparts. Once again, one could make a cogent foreign policy argument that allowing the Japanese - or others - to acquire nuclear weapons is akin to ‘equaling the killing fields’ since North Korea already has these weapons in that part of the Geo-Political quadrant.

I have used Pink Floyd’s song, Mother, to assist me in fleshing out the themes of this blog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe3NUKCnZp4