Donald Trump’s first foreign sojourn that began in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia moving on to Jerusalem and Vatican the bastions of the three theistic religions has clear implications for the resurgence of the US’ imperialist policy of religious rivalry and hatred, albeit with the rhetoric of peace and religious harmony. It has also been used to dupe the working masses with fake talk of interfaith harmony that creates a new religious and sectarian identity unfamiliar in cultural ethos of societies. It’s a historical irony that as far back as 1916 Mohammad Ali Jinnah, at a public meeting of the All India Congress Party in Bombay, had warned Gandhi of the catastrophic ramifications of the intruding religion into Indian politics in the garb of uniting people of different faiths.
The imperialists deliberately intruded religious ethos to impose its hegemony and to disrupt mass revolts in the neo-colonial world, particularly in the Middle East during the post-World War II period. The process nurtured and financed the modern political Islam and violent fundamentalist frenzy. The Suez War of 1956 and the subsequent revolutionary movements that were beginning to spread throughout the Arab world and far beyond this criminal and divisive policy of the US imperialism was deviously applied to break the unity and morale of these revolts.
Mark Curtis wrote in his book, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, “the US and UK governments continued to covertly support al-Qaeda-affiliated networks in Central Asia and the Balkans after the Cold War. Saudi Arabia functioned as the conduit for this Anglo-American misadventure. From around 1994, all the way until 9/11, US military intelligence along with Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supplied arms and funds to the al-Qaeda-harbouring Taliban.
In spite of his ravings, Trump doesn’t have any new foreign or domestic policy. Trump’s maiden foreign visit to Saudi Arabia indicates that he has no problem with the autocratic Saudi monarchy and other dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and other parts of the world as long as they are buying arms worth billions of dollars from US military industrial complex. The Saudi’s coerced and bribed over fifty-five head of states of Arab and Muslim countries to attend the ‘Islamic summit’ in Riyadh. However, this ‘unity’ has exacerbated the sectarian rivalries and hatreds between the Shias, Wahhabis, Deobandis Barelvis, Salafis and other Islamic sects.
Trump’s bashing of Iran and its allies such as the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah and other Islamic militias in Iraq and Yemen will escalate the sectarian divide and devastate the already crumbling harmony in these so called Muslim lands. The Muslim heads of states are clinging on to power seeking American help for their collapsing economies and sagging rulerships. The irony is that the imperialism is itself in the throes of an economic and historic decay. Iran and Saudi Arabia, both based on their own versions of despotic religious orthodoxy, have threatened to take the war to each other’s interior.
Trump had vilified the Saudi dynasty before he got elected. But after elections, Trump has been tamed by the Washington establishment and has retracted most of his campaign rhetoric. After all, he was and is from their ranks. Hence, in pursuit of Washington’s strategy of imperialist hegemony, he extracted massive sums from the Saudi and other Gulf oligarchies, was recklessly spendthrift in Jerusalem and reached Brussels with demands to cut US expenditures in the NATO’s aggressive wars.
Trump promised in his campaign to cut back foreign military adventures in Syria and Afghanistan. Now he has been forced to fire cruise missiles from US warships in the Mediterranean and increase deployment of the US troops in Afghanistan
After signing a joint “strategic vision” of US$350 billion that includes US$110 billion in American arms sales to the Saudis, Trump exclaimed, “It was a great day, tremendous investments in the United States…” Trump’s Iran bashing cost the desperate Saudi monarchy a fortune when their oil revenues are declining, and the monarchy is being forced to make cuts, endangering a social unrest threatening the regime’s existence.
In Jerusalem, Trump praised Israel, “… one of the great civilisations: a strong, resilient, determined nation.” Trump administration has raised Israel’s grants to $3.8 billion annually up from the $3.1 billion from 2018 through to 2028, while the foreign expenses and aid are being slashed. Even close allies such as Egypt and Jordan will suffer the cuts in US military and economic aid by 28.5 percent. The subsequent US regimes in the last few decades have been carrying out severe cuts and austerity measures against the US workers and the poor for years.
There is a simmering revulsion in American society against the system. Trump promised in his campaign to cut back foreign military adventures in Syria and Afghanistan. Now he has been forced to fire cruise missiles from US warships in the Mediterranean and increase deployment of the US troops in Afghanistan. The paradox of imposing imperialist hegemony domestically and globally with its dwindling economic power is haunting Trump.
Trump era will be faced with unforeseen convulsions caused by the crisis of an obsolete and redundant capitalist system. The oppressed working masses in these lands cannot to suppressed and distracted from revolutionary movements for long. When the Arab revolutions swept across the region in 2011 very few had foreseen the disastrous ramifications of its ebbing and recoil. But this situation will also change.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]