President Trump Blundering into War (News Review Week 11)

Over the past weeks, as President Trump’s foreign policy is taking shape, it is clear that the Deep State, China Hawks, and War Hawks are still in control. Despite claims otherwise, the repercussions for Moslem-Americans and Chinese-Americans are fueling Anti-Asian hate, which costs many Asian-Americans anxiety as open race-baiting is on the rise.

All China, China, China

While DOGE is trimming national departments, they are not likely to tackle the Department of Defense any time soon. In fact, the NDAA 2025 (H.R. 5009) Defense budget is almost $900 billion dollars. With so many dollars planned for appropriations, the savings provided by DOGE (planned for $500 billion in six months) will hardly scratch the surface in continuation of huge defense spending, contractors, consultants, offshore military, foreign military support, military exercises, military operations, base camp infrastructure upgrades, etc.

The odd thing about the NDAA 2025 is the number of times China is mentioned in the text, at least 89 times, with all kinds of planned restrictions on China imports, possible China interference in anything remotely military, and openly gearing up for planned offensives against China. Trump’s favorite populist incitement is “China, China, China.” This kind of childish psychobabble ensures that the public and the pundits have a scapegoat to blame all American misfortunes upon, despite the fact that half of our goods are made in China.

If Trump is serious about bringing manufacturing back, why not punish the manufacturing corporations themselves by directly by freezing their foreign accounts?

Because capitalists love their corporations like Nestle, Target, GM, Walmart, Amazon, Apple, and host of other manufacturers which have moved overseas. Trump knows we cannot really bring back manufacturing unless we offer all the support the Chinese have. Trump knows that as long as third-world countries pay $11 dollars a day for labor, manufacturers will never resettle in California where they must comply with all kinds of red-tape, regulatory licenses, union wages, lawsuits, lawfare, wildfires, crime, or drought. Now that China has established world-class factories that produce goods cheaper, faster, better than ever, and outsourcing to nations such as Vietnam, Trump may as well target all the renegade nations.

Or perhaps do things the old-fashioned way: As a knight of Hudson Bay, Sir Donald promotes open piracy on Chinese shipping and declares all goods for America confiscatable.

But the corporations won’t let Trump force their hand, because on American store shelves their profit markups are at least five-fold, more like ten-fold, the cost of production. What Trump is really after is destroying the goose that lays the golden eggs: Trump wants to destroy China as an independent sovereign nation. He wants to take over their high-speed rail and underwrite it as an American discovery and invention. He wants NASA to take over the China Space Program so they can study chipped animals in space. He wants to let the Transnational Corporations divide China into a mince-meat pie. Each corporation will rule a different province, fighting over domination, while the Chinese major in driving rickshaws.

Here is the perspective put forth recently at Geopolitical Economy on why the West needs to shame China:

“China has tried to challenge its subservient place in the world-system, to move up the global value chain and out of the periphery — so the US government has responded with aggressive tariffs, sanctions, and export controls, aimed at sabotaging China’s technological innovation and economic development, to keep the US at the top of the international division of labor, where it can continue to extract monopoly rents.” —Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy

Were China to be ruled by BlackRock Incorporated, her people will never be able to maintain, let alone advance robotics technology. All wealth, invention, and creativity will be stifled prematurely, still-birthed and owned by the predominant Western slavemaster of American land, space, and sea, financed by the Bank of England, owned by the Rothschilds, together with a conglomerate of mostly Zionist-Israel enthusiastic banksters. Private banks do not like to invest in infrastructure, as President Xi has done for China, because they have become accustomed to instantaneous rates of return on investment, quick returns such as in AI software and apps.

They eschew tunnels, dams, highways, bridges, even canal projects for the people!

War with Russia Continues, Conquest of Greenland, Iran

As seen in the past week, there are new tariff wars against a host of nations including China, India, Mexico, Vietnam, Canada, EU, etc. While President Trump administration claims the tariffs will be negotiable once foreign tariffs drop to zero, the sanctions against “enemy nations” may not be. The war is not retaliatory for foreign tariffs: they are imposed for policy reasons as well. With regard to Canada and Mexico, it is due to the flow of illegal migrants and drugs such as fentanyl. However with regard to Russia and China, the sanctions and tariffs are based on competition and enmity, whether it is the war in Ukraine or intolerance for the “Communist Party of China.”

The stoking of war against China is accompanied with a failure to curb the interference of the EU in NATO and their blatant involvement in the war for Ukraine. As commentators have stated, Ukraine’s President Zelensky (who is ruling by martial law since he suspended elections last year) is such a chronic dishonest corrupt politician who routinely changes his tactics in diplomacy, that short of deposing the dictator, very little can actually be accomplished in terms of peace talks.

If one reads through the MAGA platform for Trump’s presidency, there was no mention of Greenland or Panama in his foreign policy promises. Trump came into office on the promise to close down the borders to the continuous illegal migration, end the Russia-Ukraine war, and seek peace in the Middle-East. Except for shutting down the borders, Trump’s policy is an unfolding disaster: there has been a buildup with up to (7) B-2 stealth bombers heading toward the island base Diego Garcia in the Arab-Indian Ocean, poised to attack Iran and Yemen.

His dismissive remarks on the world stage about Canada are insulting and coercive; while his belittling of human rights and embrace of genocidal murderer Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu is as craven as former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, or at least as obsequious as most of the AIPAC bought and influenced Congress.

Here is what the Middle East Eye suggests for President Trump in making a deal with Iran. First, observe niceties: demonstrate mutual respect, honor actions over words, diplomacy based on a reasonable scope, craft a balanced agreement, one which is also sustainable beyond one term of presidency. Second, by not focusing solely on disagreements, practical collaboration must take place in shared areas of interest:

“Major economic openings between the two countries could ease tensions and facilitate the resolution of broader disputes, including regional disagreements.”—Middle East Eye

Diplomatic specialist Seyed Hossein Mousavian also believes that mutually beneficial relationships can be fostered not only around trade but people-to-people exchanges, such as in goodwill common interests such as sports, science, academia, art, culture, and consular exchanges.

Afterall, has not Persia has been in existance since before Cyrus the Great in 550 B.C.? They have more culture to share than trashy Americans can dream of!

American military analysts Col. Douglas Macgregor and James W. Carden published “Iran: America’s Next War of Choice” in December 2024 and warned that what Israel views to its advantage should not be confuted with American interests. Being mired in new wars in the Middle East will drag in the Turks, and will ultimately also drag in Russia. It will create new financial debt and societal upheaval within the United States. Rather than allow Prime Minister Netanyahu to use Trump as his strong-arm puppet to bring unfolding calamity to more of the Middle East (besides Israeli war on Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Turkiye, Iran), the President should revisit multilateral peace agreements such as started by China between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, engaging nations on each side of the dispute.

“Just as no question of strategic security in Europe can be solved without Russian participation, Washington cannot create peace in the Middle East by unconditionally backing Israel’s territorial ambitions. An American failure to manage its own transition to multipolarity will create more chaos and ignite a major war in the Middle East, not to mention a full-blown war with Russia, and, eventually China. An outlook that prioritizes avoiding conflict, not starting new conflicts, must replace three decades of feckless leadership in foreign affairs. New thinking in defense and foreign policy should rank diplomacy and peaceful cooperation first over the use of military power.” —The American Conservative, Macgregor & Carden

However according to sources, the offensive forces believe the time to strike Iran is now hot, because keeping the bombers there is expensive, and there are aircraft carrier fleets headed toward the region as well. Whether they plan to strike Iran or Yemen or participate in joint operations alongside Israel in their strikes against Syria or Lebanon is beside the point. Short of negotiations, war crimes are being committed daily for the sake of resources and an augmented Greater Israel. In fact the U.S. has an estimated 60,000 military personnel in the Middle East spread over various air, naval, and military bases in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Afghanistan, UAE, and Oman.

Guarding the shipping channels through the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb into the Red Sea, and Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf, as well as the Arabian Sea is important. Collapsing Iran is central to the Greater Israel Project, according to most of the Israeli Knesset, where the Likud party and other reactionary parties predominate. Bolstered by tens of billions of dollars of U.S. military support and funding, everyone knows that America is Israel’s most powerful ally. As in the past, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (another billionaire realtor) plays a critical role for Israeli-American foreign policy, so no wonder Israel’s Prime Minister feels welcome to visit the United States this week.

Never mind that on April 7, 2025 with Prime Minister Netanyahu sitting beside him, President Trump seemed obsessed with “China, China, China” race-baiting with the press. At the White House press conference, Trump stated that of course there are top-level discussions planned revolving around Iran, but nothing can be disclosed yet.

Catching Up to the Tragedy of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya

In other words, Trump, who withdrew membership of the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and prohibited any future funding for UN Relief and Works Agency for the Near East (UNRWA) in early February, wants to ensure that no international organization does anything “anti-American.”

Even if UNRWA or UNESCO are officially impartial, nonprofit, international governmental agencies, they provide much needed clothing, food, education, and resources which the Israelis have explicitly forbidden for the captive Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis have blocked food aid trucks, shut down border crossings, and allowed barely a trickle of any kind of aid through the Rafah crossing (in Egypt) since October 2023. They have ensured that the two million inhabitants either died by bombing, drone attacks, snipers, lack of food and electricity, lack of clean water, lack of access to water, limited access to fuel, and hardly any access to money.

In other words, Israel consigns Gaza to a worse state than the Middle Ages in Europe, but despite this, Prime Minister Netanyahu is able to travel about, heedless of the International Criminal Court at the Hague having issued a warrant out for his arrest, after having condemned him for war crimes. The genocide and ongoing rampage in the West Bank continues.

No one describes the situation better than the captive journalists stuck within occupied Gaza or locked into nearby war-struck regions in Lebanon. AJA+ journalist Bisan, still alive but looking distressed, reports on her return to North Gaza after fifteen months of wandering back and forth in Gaza Strip. She has to pass through various checkpoints to go from South to North in the 24 mile zone. She is lucky enough to travel by car at least partways, but due to fuel shortages, people are pushing their cars along while turning the engines off. There are long back ups along the route, and cars are laden with mats, carpets, and many belongings. Nevertheless people rather live among the rubble of their old home than in the windy camps near the ocean. As usual, wherever they go, people suffer from chronic shortages in food and water. Gaza City has been 74% destroyed by the IDF, from official estimates. Bisan was overjoyed to arrive in her grandparents old home, partially destroyed but still with some habitable rooms.

“At least we are here to rebuild,” Bisan and her friends say, as they hope to plant edible vegetables.

However this homecoming proved to be only a month-and-a-half hiatus. On March 28th, the IDF began bombing throughout the Gaza Strip once again and during the Holy Month of Ramadan, when Moslems make daily fasting for the sake of religious tradition. As usual the IDF dropped warning pamplets down from the sky to warn residents to evacuate. Bisan interviews an older woman from Beit Hanoun in Northeast Gaza, a pocket of verdant farmland, forced to flee on foot. Bisan explains that in just this week, 140,000 Palestinians were forced to evacuate once again. Somehow amid this travel from one village to another, Bisan still manages to capture the beauty of the spring season. They share with us an Iftar meal, and shopping in one of the small markets that offer fresh fruit and beans. However even amid this broadcast, the buzz of drones is audible and persistent.

“People are trying to adapt and live despite the pain and scarcity that exists,” the market owner states.

It is part of the ongoing tragedy that the IDF often targets anything that offers the Gazans any sense of community support, so this is why they have often bombed hospitals, schools, living quarters, community kitchens, and so forth. But the Trump administration is just as tone-deaf to the plight of the people of Gaza and the West Bank as under the Biden administration, if not more so. Right now, the Trump administration is commiserating with Netanyahu to commence new attacks throughout the region, whether it is incursions into southern Lebanon, stoking war against the Christians and Syrian-Alawites in Syria (former President Bashar al-Assad’s religious sect), or plotting air raids on Yemen.

Anyone beyond the periphery of Israel proper can report the reality of a region riven by war and violence; nevertheless, Trump’s Peace Deal has time and again consisted of emptying out Gaza, resettling the Palestinians, so that a new regional transport hub can be built, along with oceanview developments. The Greater Israel Plan is welcomed by traitorous nations like Qatar because they have lusted after an oil-pipeline running from their nation across Syria to Europe, something that Assad didn’t agree with. Trump and the Congress believe in an unquestioned loyalty to Israel, but a continued rambunctiousness and stoking of disagreements with many other nations.

Like a “Bull on the Loose Inside a China Shop” what good will one or two wins be on national policy when Trump’s foreign policy is running completely amok?

The world is not for a billionaire auction shop nor even for Make America Great Again. The religious perspective on peace is it must begin within oneself: we can make America great again by investing inside America, and this is the theme that the Peace and Prosperity Institute headed by Dr. Ron Paul often emphasizes. We must cut down defense spending, re-invest the savings back into our economy, and create public works programs and conservation jobs programs that help rejuvenate cities, rusting infrastructure, and communities all across America.

Community posts from Al Jazeera News

Written by Christine H. Kroll, M.A., P.E.