Original Coverage & Source Attribution: thearabweekly.com
Francis Ghiles
President Donald Trump’s decision to lift the sanctions on Russia and Iran that the US Congress had passed and that he signed off a month ago seemed to catch observers by surprise. Trump has stabbed Ukraine in the back for what he believes is a few cents off the price of diesel. This marks Trump’s latest effort to douse fuel prices before the mid-term vote which will decide the control of Congress. There is no limit to how low this president will go to betray allies.
The president has also made an abrupt turn more favourable to Moscow as the US Administration seeks to unfreeze Russian sovereign assets, which have been frozen since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukrainein 2022. He is also throttling Ukraine by denying it access to the Starlink satellite crucial to the latter’s defence against Russia drone and missile attacks. Donald Trump’s contortions must be set in the context of the US mid-term vote which will decide the control of Congress. Polls suggest risinginflation triggered by the war the US and Israel launched against Iran last February is turning many voters against Trump’s Republican Party.
The abrupt turn in US policy more favourable to Moscow underlines the extent to which the European Union is the historical loser of the war in Ukraine. Although the EU is providing considerable financial aid to Ukraine it cannot provide the vital military intelligence that only US Patriots and Elon Musk’s Starlink can. Its most economically powerful member Germany not only opted after 2010 to buy ever more Russian gas but closed down its civilian nuclear power stations after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. The result is that the EU is now swinging in the wind awaiting the evolution of the contradictory US policy towards Russia and Iran. The EU is simply invisible at the table.
The wrecking ball of Trump’s international policies are hastening the decline of what was, at least until 2003 a relatively benign international rules-based order. The “might is right” order which dominates the world was launched by the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, allegedly because that country’s leader Saddam Hussein had WMDs. It was a lie and denounced as such by the leaders of France and Germany. Today’s world is centred around three countries – the US, Russia and China and their authoritarian leaders. Middle ranking powers, most notably Iran, India , Brazil, South Africa, the UAE and Saudi Arabia play a greater role than hitherto although there is more than an element of optical illusion in the case of the latter two because they depend on mercenaries to defend them and US protection, which has not been forthcoming for Saudi Arabia either against Iran or the Yemeni Houthis.
Beyond the international confusion which is unprecedented since 1945, Europe and the US have fallen into two traps. From the start of the war in Ukraine, European leaders have expressed surprise that such a conflict could have happened in “civilised” Europe as opposed to the world beyond. The same people seem to fell sympathy for the Ukrainians because they “look like us”. The civilisation way the war in Ukraine was framed in Europe from the very start helps to explain why much of the world simply has no dog in this fight – it sees it as a fight between Russia and the EU (and until Trump’s arrival at the White House) the US. Non Western powers took note that Europe and America had done little to protect the Palestinians – a view amply confirmed by their lack of condemnation of Israel in the three years after the Hamas attack of October 2023. By framing the war in Ukraine as “civilisational” European leaders forget that this was exactly what President George W. Bush did after 9/11. Islam and the Arab people ended up being the “Other”, which had to be fought by means fair and foul. The “War Against Terror” marks the beginning of a precipitous decline in US capacity to influence world affairs.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, Europe misread Vladimir Putin and arguably did too little to oppose Russia. After February 2022, the risk was doing too much. The economic sanctions against Russia agreed three and a half years go stand as little chance of stopping Russia as they have, for more than 40 years, Iran. The latter country has been subjected to a harsh regime of sanctions imposed by the US and, to a great extent by Europe. That has not stopped the Islamic Republic from inflicting huge damage on America and the Arabian Peninsula monarchies it was committed to defend these past nine months. Not only does Iran produce as many engineers every year as France, the UK and Germany combined but their ingenuity knows no bounds. China and Russia help Iran as Iran and China have helped Russia. Might is right – these countries have borrowed from the American imperial rule book.
Shadow fleets are but one expression of Russian and Iranian savvy. Bypassing US controlled systems is another. In a globalised worlds where western companies are adept at avoiding taxes by setting up “subsidiaries” in fiscal paradises, where drug barons launder huge amounts of cash through bona fide international banks, where wealthy oil states buy influence in universities and the media, the US and Russia are following well-trodden paths. Weaponising the financial system will destroy the trust world nations have in western banking rules: why sanction Russia and Iran and not Israel, or for that matter the US for abusing international law and inflicting death on millions of innocent people?
The EU is currently discussing how to take control of hundreds of billions of Russian central bank assets blocked in the EU. Most of it is stuck in Euroclear, the Belgian central security depository system. Belgium has resisted EU proposals to unlock the money for fear of shouldering all the riskof doing so alone but Russian related assets and liabilities could be split off from Euroclear’s balance sheet and put in a new unrelated bank, thus allowing Euroclear’s market critical role of clearing house to continue. There is little doubt that the EU must prevent Trump from gaining control of this money. But that in no way diminishes the manner in which Euroclear has been politicised: non-European nations will think twice before using it. The sanctions against Russia, since 2022 and Iran for much longer are helping to destroy trust in the international rules based order. As with gas, when trust breaks down, chains of value – energy, finance etc are brake. That spells less economic growth, more expensive inputs – from sulphur which Morocco needs for its fertiliser industry and whose price has increased fivefold since February, to wheat where Russia and Ukraine are major world suppliers.
How long it takes for enemies to start talking again is anyone’s guess. Agreements, however fragile will have to be reached on a regional basis – ie Iran versus Gulf States and Saudi Arabia and Europe versus Russia. The US will continue to be an important player but its constant resort to warfare since 9/11 and increasingly erratic behaviour has handed Russia and China huge leverage and weakened Europebeyond what its leaders can have imagined in their worst nightmare. The Middle East will have to draw its own conclusions as will North Africa where the cost of No-Maghreb grows every year. The confrontation between Algeria and Morocco has not led to war but is impoverishing the region. In a longer historical prospect, it appears grotesque.
