Fernando Alcoforado*
With 10 months left to run for reelection to the US presidency and facing a congressional impeachment process in which he is accused of using the US diplomatic apparatus for personal and political benefit, Donald Trump personally made the irresponsible decision to carry out an air strike on Iraq’s Baghdad International Airport, which led to the drone assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, chief of Iran’s Quds intelligence force, last Thursday (2/1/2020). This Trump measure is irresponsible because it threatens to: 1) compromise the world oil supply and raise its prices affecting the global economy; 2) lead to the end of the nuclear agreement with Iran, paving the way for Iran to produce nuclear artifacts; 3) promote political instability in the Middle East region with the possibility of involvement of US ally Israel and major powers such as Iran’s allies Russia and China; and 4) at worst, with all this, contributing to the outbreak of a new world war.
Over the past three years of his presidential term, Trump has tried to make a mark of his own by engaging in a trade war with China, trying to promote denuclearization and the end of North Korea’s missile launch tests, overhauling the deal free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada and undo the nuclear agreement with Iran. With the exception of the reformulation of the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, the other actions have not been successful. US is not winning the trade war with China, has failed to impose its will on North Korea, and has failed to impose its conditions on the nuclear deal with Iran. All of this failure described above adds to the fiasco of US participation in the struggle against the Islamic State. To compensate for all these negative foreign policy outcomes, Trump created a factoid to strengthen his candidacy for presidential reelection by conducting the airstrike on Baghdad International Airport. Trump took a turn in the foreign policy of his administration, hitherto marked by economic sanctions and cyber-attacks on Iran to act violently.
The Trump administration has concluded that it will have to increase its strength and that in the Middle East, to be taken seriously, violence must be used. By then, Trump was using only economic pressure, and he realized that with that alone he was not going to be successful. Now he has made the decision to use economic pressure and violence. Faced with the threat of Iranian retaliation, President Donald Trump said on Twitter that if the Iranian government hits a US target in retaliation for the death of General Qassim Suleimani, the United States would respond by reaching 52 high-level targets of importance to Iran. Iran’s army said today that the United States would not dare attack Iran. To avoid being the scene of Iranian attacks on US targets in the country, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution calling for the expulsion of 5,000 members of US troops and soldiers from other countries of the foreign coalition headquartered there. The decision comes after the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Suleimani by the United States last Friday (3/1/2020). The Iraqi Parliament resolution specifically calls for the end of an agreement that allowed Americans to send troops to Iraq in 2014 to help fight the Islamic State. Today, Trump said he would only leave Iraq if the US government pays for US military installations.
It should be noted that the Iranian government has long been convinced that only true possession of nuclear weapons can free it from external attack, whether by the United States or Israel. Forty years ago, the major powers that developed nuclear weapons imposed restrictions on other non-nuclear countries, including Iran, limiting the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and preventing its use for military purposes. This was done through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1968, which legitimized the possession of nuclear weapons by the United States, the Soviet Union, England, France, and China and tried to prevent other nations from having access to nuclear technology. Iran said in a statement on 5/1/2020 that its uranium enrichment work will no longer respect the 2015 nuclear agreement, which limited the enrichment level to 3.6%, and that its production will be unrestricted. For Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, uranium would have to be enriched to over 90%. By contrast, the Tehran government said in the note that it would return to the nuclear deal if US sanctions against the country were removed and Iran’s interests were secured.
In addition to Trump’s opportunism to gain electoral advantage by fueling a US conflict with Iran, one fact is evident: the United States has expanded its empire too much to the point that it can no longer run it, as was the case with Spain in the seventeenth century and the United Kingdom in the twentieth century. The first two decades of the 21st century have shown the limits of US power on the world stage. The power of the United States is great, but it is no longer decisive as it was after World War II, and especially with the demise of the former Soviet Union in 1989. The world became more hostile to the United States due to its imperialist policy and also because other powers have grown faster, economically and militarily, and are becoming stronger, such as China and Russia. The relatively declining big power, like the United States, instinctively reacts by spending more than it can on “security” and thereby shifting potential resources away from “productive investment”. In this sense, US military spending will increase sharply as the conflict with Iran escalates. This further exacerbates its long-term dilemma.
Predictions about the future of the United States undoubtedly demonstrate its economic and military decay. By declining economically, the United States became the largest international debtor relying increasingly on Chinese capital, and by declining militarily, it lost its ability to dictate international politics as it did after World War II and the end of the former Soviet Union in 1989. Paul Kennedy states that the history of the rise and fall of the great powers since the advancement of western Europe in the sixteenth century, that is, of nations such as Spain, the Netherlands, France, the British Empire and now the United States shows a very significant longer-term correlation between its limited ability to produce and generate sufficient revenue on the one hand and the unreasonable increase in military spending on the other [KENNEDY, Paul. Ascensão e Queda das Grandes Potências: Transformação Econômica e Conflito Militar de 1500 a 2000 (Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Transformation and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000). Rio de Janeiro, Editora Campus, 1989].
Kennedy states that “when their productive capacity increased, great powers were usually more easily able to bear the burden of large-scale, peacetime weapons and to maintain and supply large armies and armed forces during the war. Wealth is generally necessary for military might. This, in turn, is generally necessary for the acquisition and protection of wealth. If, however, too large a proportion of the country’s resources are diverted from wealth creation and allocated to military ends, then it is likely to lead to the weakening of national power in the long run”. United States is living its end of time as great power. The conflict with Iran can help accelerate the definitive end of the United States as the hegemonic power of the planet.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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