Since the end of the Cold War era, China walked in the shadows, but knew how to rein in the United States with its ideological, political, and strategic motives to seek a liberal world economy. This is characterised by a desireto promote its values abroad, to create a secure international order, and to strengthen political ties with its allies. For two decades following the Second World war, the United States, largely for political and security reason, subordinated sub-ordinated many of its parochial interests to the economic well – being of its alliance partner.
With certain notable exceptions, such as the economic containment of the Soviet bloc or demanding national treatment of American multinational corporations, in the early post-war years the United States eschewed the temptation to exercise its political and economic power for nationalistic ends. Indeed, the United States created an international economy of which others could take full advantage.
The rise of Donald Trump to occupy the Oval Office may change
the order of things, and comes at a time when Australia’s current status with Washington has evolved well beyond the situation that existed at the end of the Cold War. American policy in the region once translated into administration policy is expected to define the GOP nominee Trump’s campaign positions and may result in the suspension of America’s leadership of the post-World War II liberal international project. Originally, the project focused on global free trade, a rules-based system for the global commons, and a comprehensive Western alliance under a system of American extended deterrence. More recently, those priorities have been joined by an effort on nuclear disarmament and a coordinated response to climate change.
After the 100 days of a transition Trump administration, the underpinning of the US’s more militaristic approach to policy in the Asia–Pacific region will have implications for the responsibility to protect doctrine.
For instance, in the event that the Trump administration undertake a massive military build-up aimedat countering China and curbing its ambitions, the broader policy direction would indicate that under Trump US leadership on the liberal international agenda will be suspended while the commitment to enhance American military capabilities and economic power will accelerate. As part of the counter-measures, the proposition is reported to lead to a massive build-up of the US Navy from 274 ships to 350 with a strong Pacific Ocean focus. Trump plans to end sequestration in Defence spending and massively increase the defence budget, and as the Trump administration evolves, the sum total of Navy and Air Force platforms as well as the capabilities they deploy both count. Thus, Australia will be in for a wild ride which will test its maturity and effectiveness, and ultimately it must decide if it is time to abandon the field.
As the swamp gets drained, the creation of an international economy of which others in the international system took full advantage comes falling apart. And, the United States sets in train a momentum to become great again at the expense of throwing away the Asian Century.
The Responsibility to ProtectDoctrine(R2P)
According to Donald Trump, to make America great again means to drain the swamp. It would mean also that the creation of an international economy that brought with it baggage including mass atrocity crimes in the wake of the focus by the United States in the post – Cold War era on ideological, political, and strategic motives to seek a liberal world economy in which it desired to promote its values abroad, to create a secure international order, and to strengthen political ties with its allies must be reformed in the process of draining the swamp.
“Never again!” the world has vowed time and again since the Holocaust. Yet genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other mass atrocity crimes continue to shock our consciences—from the killing fields of Cambodia to the machetes of Rwanda to the agony of Darfur. Since the United Nations peace plan for Cambodia was activated to prevent and resolve of scores of conflicts and crises worldwide, the Responsibility to Protect (“R2P”), has become a new international norm that can once and for all prevent a return to the killing fields.
The Responsibility to Protect captures a simple and powerful idea.
The primary responsibility for protecting its own people from mass atrocity crimes lies with the state itself. State sovereignty implies responsibility, not a license to kill. But when a state is unwilling or unable to halt or avert such crimes, the wider international community then has a collective responsibility to take whatever action is necessary. R2P emphasizes preventive action above all. That includes assistance for states struggling to contain potential crises and for effective rebuilding after a crisis or conflict to tackle its underlying causes. R2P’s primary tools are persuasion and support, not military or other coercion. But sometimes it is right to fight: faced with another Rwanda, the world cannot just stand by.
R2P was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit.
But many misunderstandings persist about its scope and limits. And much remains to be done to solidify political support and to build institutional capacity. Evans shows, compellingly, how big a break R2P represents from the past, and how, with its acceptance in principle and effective application in practice, the promise of “Never again!” can at last become a reality.
With the rise or ascendancy of Donald Trump to be president of America, the failure in moral leadership of the world by the United States could be redeemed. This writer has elsewhere analyzed, and therefore pointed to evidence that tend to validate this proposition.
At the time of writing, America is confronted with chaos of such nature in modern times that may be termedas manufactured domestic political terrorism disguised as civil unrest, masking a coup. This ongoing “post - election coup” marked by engineered “protest movements” and corporate media propaganda constitutes a treasonous direct attack on American democracy guided by operatives and various influential corporate fronts supportive of Hillary Clinton. The goals appear to be immediate as well as long-term, and include whipping up anti-Donald Trump hysteria and reverse the election win of Trump.
It derives from arguments over the validity of the requiem for the American dream which defines the challenge for America to do something about the characteristics of our time - the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few and the majority who find themselves at the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality.
The US presidential elections which Donald Trump emerged victorious against all odds may well be about the lasting legacy of our time - the death of the middle class, and the swan song of functioning democracy. It is a reminder that power ultimately rests in the hands of the governed, that the majority are behaving in such a way to maintain hope in a shared stake in the future.
It is the bigger question, apart from the rights of the minority to be heard through the protest movement and corporate media propaganda that is whipping up anti – Donald Trump hysteria in the post – election coup, is about whether or not the world which the US leads by the moral imperative has benefited from Clinton’s policies: US foreign policy emboldened autocrats, emboldened corruption, brought about collapse of state, created the Jihadist boom, and the migrant crisis.
We know it torments the Democrats, as opposed to the Republicans, that the lasting legacy of our time - the death of the middle class, and the swan song of functioning democracy will be a casualty as the swamp gets drained by the new US president Donald Trump. We also know the fraud of West Papua and therefore the collapsed state set up by the Dutch in the 1960s took place when Democrats were in power, and it adds up that the ‘bunch of rock – apes who cannot come to terms with science and technology’, as US president at the time J.F. Kennedy called Papuan nationalists putting their case for self – rule would be the swan song of functioning democracy in the former Dutch colony as the last bastion of the free world. Since then, to break away from inequality was the swan song of the middle class in America.
And, within the same period West Papua burned in the vortex of a global armed conflict.
At the time of writing, America is confronted with chaos of such nature in modern times that may be termed as manufactured domestic political terrorism disguised as civil unrest, masking a coup. But, the bigger questions are still there.It includes this one. The US is responsible for the failed decolonization thesis across the border.
A re – cap of the salient points on the US’s responsibility to protect the people of West Papua is necessary.Firstly, the rise of Donald Trump to be the president of the most powerful country in the world is about the Oval Office that must come to terms with US’s foreign policy that stands to be revisited, a revisionism that could better take stock of previous policies by both Democrats and Republicans which emboldened autocrats, emboldened corruption, brought about collapse of state, created the Jihadist boom, and the migrant crisis.
Secondly, Indonesia is a product of US foreign policy that failed and drove the security approach in its handling of West Papua where Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights cannot co-exist, even though the story may be true in other parts of Indonesia. During President Barrack Obama’s term in the Oval Office, the US’s foreign policy greatly contributed to the creation of the Islamic State, a jihadist group actively courting Indonesian recruits. Since the 1960s, Indonesia became an example of an experiment by the US to install a liberal democratic state that both thrived and languished in the shadows of a liberal world order or neo- liberal world order.
Thirdly, under Donald Trump’s administration, the US is set to sanitize its record on the fraud of West Papua, and therefore put Indonesia on notice because it has yet to demonstrate and get it right as to a sensitivity to the R2P Doctrine in which since the 1960s, the internationalization of the independence struggle by indigenous Papuans shows the Indonesian state has failed to meet the bar and watch of the international community as to its primary responsibility to protect its own people from mass atrocity crimes.
Come down to the wire, state sovereignty implies responsibility, not a license to kill. In the region which Australia is a part of, may be it is also time to find the swamp.Donald Trump’s rise to be US president is a vote to re – visit the basics of post – Cold War internationalism, and for the US to provide the moral leadership of the world. His rise has validated the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine or R2P.
China stands to agree. And, Russia already showed up to support Donald Trump’s shock victory over the establishment, and in so doing lead the free world.
