Do We Love Donald? You Better Ask If We Understand Him Properly
© AP Photo / Evan Vucci
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There is a very familiar and very Indian situation with the Russian netizens, namely, people furiously debating, if we should like the current President of the US, or not.
It’s easy to see what has triggered the renewal of debate. That was a historic call of Donald Trump to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on February 12th. The event was of such magnitude, that the global media, not to mention the Russian one, has almost completely overlooked even the visit of Prime Minister Modi to the US, that had started the next day. And a small wonder it did, after all, there were no pan-European or pan-Asian hysterics after Modi’s meeting with Trump.
Incidentally, both events boil down to the same question – exactly what Trump is doing, what is his main strategic goal, and which other goals are secondary. Here lies the answer to the question of our liking or not liking him.
Speaking about that Russian debate, it’s only natural that a huge majority here is getting even more Trumpist than before. After all, when it was the last time when we heard any leader of the West virtually admitting the obvious, in this case admitting that Russia has won the war that has been imposed on it? That rational approach to reality is a miracle in itself, regardless of the outcome of the Russo-American talks in Saudi Arabia or the talks that will follow.
No, we should not love Donald, say the Russian ultra-left folks. Their best ideologist is, incidentally, Russia’s current best prose writer, Mr. Zakhar Prilepin. He says: Trump’s main task is to destroy BRICS, to annihilate Russia’s treaties with the “leftist communist regimes” like China, Vietnam, Brazil...
What was that? China, or Vietnam, or Brazil, are leftist and communist? But then, that’s how our ultra-left are seeing the world. While ultimately, says the brilliant Zakhar, Trump’s goal is to turn Russia into a “Western monkey”, make it betray everyone it has good ties with, including India and Iran, isolate and destroy us afterwards. It is easy to imagine that this is the way Zakhar is also looking at the essence of India-US relations, as in isolation and destruction. His views are in obvious minority, but still popular with some folks
While conservative people like me really, really love Donald, because he is about human normalcy. Trump is the symbol of the end of that endless fear-mongering and hatred-infused campaigns that the Western lefties were trying to impose on the whole world, be it the aggressive feminism, or anti-smoking, or virus-bashing, or the climate agenda. With Trump and other relatively normal people at power, we all are getting the chance to see for ourselves what is the real scientific and factual foundation of all the mentioned and other similar campaigns, filling societies with dread and hatred.
At the very least, Trump is the one calling a spade a spade, and that’s a true miracle for a leader of a Western nation.
Now, for a question of what he really wants to do, there is a story to tell. The story is about a book that I’ve pinched (sorry) from a bookcase of a small beach hotel, since it was there for anyone to purloin. That’s an old book, a classic, by the great American Michael Crichton. Called Rising Sun, it’s a Japanese-hating novel that tells us the story of how things went bad with the US 50 years ago.
You may say it’s not the best example of fine literature, since everyone in the book, instead of acting naturally, is habitually quoting, page by page, the author’s dossier on what was happening between the US and Japan in the 1980-s (the book itself has been published in 1992). But, today, these dull dossiers seem to be the best description of what went wrong with America and the West in general, and when did it start.
An Oriental nation and its business, acting like a thinking swarm, is buying up America, especially its hi-tech companies, and there is a huge drain of technologies and skilled engineers to Japan. America is losing its glorious industries, that are, essentially, moving out to the Oriental world. For the first time in history the US, instead of becoming a global creditor, begins to borrow money due to trading deficit. And everybody is afraid even to talk about it, since the Japanese would sure call that “racism”.
Crichton’s main weakness is in his obvious dislike to the Japanese. His strength is in telling openly that the main problem is in America’s political culture and business culture, or maybe in the principle of “free trade” taken too literally.
We all know by now that in the end the US has repelled the “Japanese invasion” with cunning financial games plus political pressure. And that would have been only a curious episode in the US or global history, save for the fact that the same pattern has repeated itself in the 2000-s, with another Asian nation, that’s China. To remind, there was no China as a powerful economy in 1980-s, but now there is.
And things are worse for the US right now. Everybody knows that there is no way out of national debt of $36 trillion. The deficit-ridden trade with all the main trading partners is driving that debt even higher every day.
There is no quick fix for the fact that the US has almost lost its engineering and technical potential, which has gone in the approximately the same trans-Pacific direction, where it began to go in 1980-s. While a typically Trumpist Sinofobia looks as ridiculous as Japanese-bashing looked five decades ago. It is pathetic to say “they are robbing us”, if you cannot stop that robbery unless you almost stop the trade itself.
And we know very well that the meaning of Trump’s Make America Great Again is about starting a long process of America’s reindustrialisation with necessary rebuilding of its hi-tech potential that was in place for a couple of decades after the Second World War (and before it). This is the goal, while everything that distracts the US from that goal, including a stupid attempt to contain Russia by a war with European participation, has to go as fast as possible.
So, for me, the problem of really loving or not loving Donald lies in the answers to the question: just how Making India Great Again, or Make Russia Great Again, is fitting into Trump’s ideas of arranging partners in the proper way around America, the ultimate global producer and trader.
After all, if the same thing happened to America, first, with Japan, and, second, with China, and that evolved in the most natural way, how about India becoming a blood-sucker #3, and about the principle of third time paying for all?
How about Russia, the world’s next economy after India (the fourth after the third), been suddenly viewed as an economic competitor rather than yet another collective fan of Donald’s ideology?
All in all, that means long years of careful and unemotional diplomacy. The kind of which India is conducting today, including the recent visit of Narendra Modi to Washington and the already announced plans of Indo-Russian high-level contacts for the year 2025.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
