Did South Africa show Canada how to resist U.S. belligerence?

Trump's tweets may sound like he's the Emperor of Everything, but you only run things when people think you run things — and the limits on U.S. power are becoming clearer by the day

Did South Park show Canada the way, or is it just following South Africa’s lead?

Canada stepping up to confront the U.S. acting outside of international law and the collapse of the “rules-based order” it had built after World War II has prompted many to point out the colonial hypocrisy: Neither Canada, nor France, Germany, the U.K. and other U.S. allies comprising the “West” had any problem with U.S. and its progeny violating international law to direct epic, criminal violence against Iraq, Palestine, or Venezuela. It is only once Canada and European powers have, themselves, become targets of imperial belligerence and coercive economics that those Western allies now decry violations of the “rules-based order”. Yes, of course, many of the rules of that order were made by, and for the benefit of the erstwhile colonial West, and were routinely violated when the West demanded it. Now, they’re in the throes of a ghastly realization that they’re but satraps to a volatile, gluttonous, emperor — the proverbial “mad king” of so much literature — who requires obeisance not to rules or norms, but to himself and his acquisitive appetites, and makes no pretense, even, of acting for some greater good.

The U.S. wants Greenland for itself, and that’s that; others will bend the knee or else. (Oh, and note to naïve long-term allies of the U.S. – it would take spectacular naivete and ignorance over how the U.S. is ruled to imagine the U.S. electoral system restoring the ancien regime in the foreseeable future.)

So, Canada’s tardy awakening is arguably reminiscent of the “boomerang effect” cited by Aime Cesaire, who argued it was European acceptance of their own genocidal violence against the colonized peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America that paved the way for that same violence to be unleashed on Europeans. A Western-dominated world order that has been willing to tolerate, enable and support genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine now finds itself subject to the same lawless aggression by the lynchpin of Western power.

Who among us doesn’t love a schadenfreude bonbon? But focusing on the hypocrisy is a social-media sugar high. It’s more important to see the deeper significance of Canada’s move, which is more than simply a strongly worded speech: PM Mark Carney’s words have been backed up by a once unthinkable move to shift the priority in Canada’s trade relations away from the U.S. and its coercive mercantile imperialism — it has said no to the U.S. and opened a strategic partnership with China, and its trade figures suggest it is thriving as a result of diversifying its portfolio of economic partners. China is also doing rather nicely.

But it’s the very fact of Canada’s status as a longtime U.S. partner in crime that makes its defiance of Trump and declarations of an end to the U.S.-led global order so significant. Trump’s Wrestlemania saber-rattling looks increasingly unable to command compliance even from its closest longtime allies. Would you bet on Trump acquiring Greenland in a territorial expansion of the United States? Trump insists that’s inevitable. I have my doubts.

Gaza and Board of Fleece

Trump’s grotesque “Gaza Peace Plan”, which is clearly nothing more than lipstick on the pig of continued genocide, ethnic cleansing and colonial erasure of the Palestinians, and his bizarre “Board of Peace” (which looks more like a Board of Fleece given the $1b annual pay-to-play fee) should now be a source of profound embarrassment to all who have enabled it, and to those on the United Nations Security Council who somehow failed to block it. The Gaza genocide continues; the proclamations of “Phase 2” while the killing continues notwithstanding, there appear to be no takers for the international force the U.S. wants to send in to disarm Hamas. The monstrous spectacle simply reminds us that the Palestinians will not be saved, much less freed, by the workings of the current system of nation states. The gulf between power and legitimacy has never been wider; Palestinian suffering and struggle will continue, supported by global civil society putting pressure on their governments.

Many of those governments who went along with the toxically flawed Trump plan believed they had no alternative but to let Trump’s son in law and his Israeli partners dictate the terms of Palestine’s future. Perhaps the unfolding dynamics elsewhere will tell them their choices have been based on a premature conclusion?

Does Trump Control Venezuela?

Not if you ask John Bolton, his uber hawkish Cold Warrior former National Security Adviser. Those who see the world through Trump’s twitter output may have been terrorized by his claims of victory and colonial extractive control of a sovereign country but things are far more obviously complex. But Bolton begs to differ: Trump has removed the head of its Chavista regime, but he has left the rest of that regime intact, and he’s making a bet that the threat of further criminal violence will extort that regime to do his bidding. Hmmm. It’s obvious why acting President Delcy Rodriguez would make gestures of compliance, but her regime’s interests and the people she represents, and those of Trump, are clearly fundamentally at odds. And it behooves the Venezuelans to gather their strength, and hone a strategy to protect and maintain their independence from criminal imperial intervention. As the late Hugo Chavez said standing his forces down after a failed attempt to gain power in 1992, retreat was in order “por ahora” (for now). Duh! That’s why the implacably hawkish Bolton says leaving the regime intact was a catastrophic mistake.

We had the opportunity to help the opposition remove these leaders, but retreated from the challenge. Combined with the inevitably discouraging effects of Mr. Trump’s disdain, the opposition is certainly demoralized and unlikely to take significant steps against what remains of the government, although perhaps Thursday’s scheduled Trump-Machado meeting will present an opportunity for Mr. Trump to turn things around. [Doesn’t appear so…] Now, Washington is effectively responsible for every act of the continuing dictatorship.

So why did Trump leave that regime intact, rather than install the traditionally U.S. backed opposition now headed by Maria Corina Machado? It’s obvious, really: Trump does spectacular made-for-TV military interventions, but always from a safe distance, and on a limited time-scale. He does not put U.S. boots on the ground or U.S. personnel in harm’s way in anything open ended, or which could go pear-shaped. Machado doesn’t have an army of her own to call on, so installing her against the wishes of the tens of thousands of heavily armed security Venezuelan forces would require deploying many tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Venezuela to protect her regime. Unlikely to happen. So, as Bolton warns — and some U.S. oil men seem to concur – Venezuela’s story is far from over.

As a former U.S. State Department official told the Financial Times, “What the Taliban had learned over time is that if you do not surrender to the Americans, they cannot beat you. I think this is the Chavista strategy. They do not intend to surrender. And as long as the regime is in place, they haven’t been beaten.”

Dignity vs. Debasement: South Africa showed the way

Maybe it’s because I’m in sunny South Africa rather than in the frozen wastes of Greenland, Davos or Minneapolis, but South Africa’s firm, dignified but unbending handling of Trump’s bullying may be instructive, precisely because it came a year earlier than Canada’s riposte. When I visited Cape Town a year ago, I found a country whose opposition-political and business elites were anxious: Trump had embraced the racist fiction of a “white genocide” in South Africa, spun by Israel advocates outraged by South Africa’s principled indictment of South Africa on charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, and also by the pique of white supremacist Elon Musk at South Africa’s efforts to compensate for the economic legacy of centuries of violent settler-colonialism. And, most importantly, the “White Genocide” fiction fit snugly with Trump’s efforts to roll back similar efforts in the United States to roll back the enduring legacy of its racist history through what’s called “Diversity Equity Inclusion” (DEI) policies. For Trump to be able to “show” that DEI was a direct route to “white genocide” was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed.

For many in South Africa’s business and opposition-political elites, this meant South Africa had to drop the ICJ case and its advocacy for Palestinian rights, and take whatever measures of appeasement were required to get onside with Trump. Despite the pressure, and a comical White House encounter where Ramaphosa fielded a collection of famous white South African golfers to counter Trump’s wad of photocopied images purporting to show “white genocide”, the South African government stuck to its principles, with grace, cordiality and firmness. And that was before the even more tragicomic spectacle of a handful of white South African farmers claiming refugee status in an America that once again venerated whiteness.

What’s become clear, though, to many of those same opposition-political and business elites, even some leading Afrikaans elements, is that there’s no reasoning with Trump whose animus is not grounded in any South African reality. Many of those who were pushing for a retrenchment of South African foreign policy choices opposed by Trump are now conceding that South Africa made the right choice in resisting Trump’s bullying. There’s more of a consensus now around resisting his political pressure, a view shared among political foes that Trump means South Africa no good.

South Africa has continued to go about its multilateral business in a world where middle powers have to bypass Trump and even Western powers have begun to see the logic of doing that. And it’s continued to articulate a principled view of international law via the Hague Group which it’s been instrumental in driving.

A consensus similar to the South African domestic one may be emerging internationally, now, among stakeholders of quite different and even opposing political stripe. Perhaps South Africa was a microcosm of the global trend in response to Trump grabbing Venezuela and Gaza, coveting Greenland and who knows what else. The threat to everyone’s independence and sovereignty is unmistakable, no matter where they’ve traditionally stood in relation to the U.S. and to one another.

Just as Trump retains the support of South Africa’s small far-right but is opposed by the majority, so might the U.S. now retain the support of Latin American and some central European far right leaders who identify directly with his domestic policy agenda and have no reservations about Israel genocide etc. But for many of the Western countries who don’t agree but have prioritized staying onside with the U.S. that’s becoming impossible. And for the Arab regimes, the lie of the ceasefire will be hard to avoid — following the U.S. path means their accepting humiliation by Israel.

The belligerence of the Trump Administration — both in relying on unprecedented levels of state violence against its own citizens on the streets of its cities; and in unleashing illegal acts of aggression abroad and threatening more, while deploying its consumer primacy as a weapon of economic coercion — are signs of weakness. The U.S. is today is unable to convince any of its G7 allies, much less most of the wider community of middle powers, that it acts for the greater good. Trump has done an impressive job of simultaneously antagonizing everyone that matters on a global scale.

South Africa’s dignified resistance to Trump’s bullying has set an example, even Canada is now following suit.

“You only run this town because people think you run this town,” goes a memorable line from the stylized Coen Brothers gangster movie Miller’s Crossing. U.S. military power doesn’t bring that kind of control, as Afghanistan and Iraq proved most recently. And Trump may be squandering some of the psychological value of U.S. economic power by overusing it at his whim, brandishing it as a whip. The bad news for Washington may be that people everywhere are beginning to see the limits on the U.S. ability to enforce its bullying.