[An edited version of this article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 14th August, 2018: "Trump risks creating an unholy 'axis of the sanctioned' between Turkey, Iran, China and Russia": https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/13/trump-risks-creating-unholy-axis-sanctioned-turkey-iran-china/]
Axis of the Sanctioned
“Trade wars are easy to win, “ President Trump reassured
Americans when he launched stiff tariffs on Chinese exports. Then in rapid fire
he re-imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran, ramped them up on Russia and sent
Turkey’s currency into a tailspin with tariffs on steel and aluminium exports.
So far first blood to the United States. Even China has
found that its huge trade surplus makes it more vulnerable to American measures
than the US economy is to any
counter-measures from Beijing. The sharp falls in the rouble, Iran’s riall as
well as the Turkish lira are all testimony to America’s status as the world’s
financial heavyweight.
Yet maybe things have gone too easily. For all the economic
costs inflicted on Trump’s targets, the primary reasons for his measures have
been political not economic. Just as the US President had seemed to bring North
Korea to heel with a potent mixture of threatening “fire and fury” plus
tightening the economic noose, so Iran’s mullahs and the Kremlin were supposed
to concede to Washington on the policy front as their currencies and economies
were tipped into recession. Turkey too was under pressure to release a US
citizen held for alleged collusion with the 2016 coup there as well as the
Kurdish PKK guerrillas.
But isn’t the point of economic sanctions to isolate a
state? Creating a swathe of sanctioned pariahs from the Bosphorus to Beijing could
backfire. Donald Trump’s scatter-gun approach to sanctioning rogue rivals risks
creating an axis of the sanctioned.
Taken individually, Iran, Turkey, Russia and even China are
vulnerable to American economic pressure, not least because everyone else’s
banks can’t afford to flout the role of the almighty dollar in international
trade. But if these countries are pushed together, then their mutual support
and capacity to cause geopolitical turmoil could make Washington’s measures
counterproductive.
Maybe a coalescing of Iran and Turkey under dire financial
pressure for mutual support could be dismissed as no more viable than two
drunks leaning on each other under the illusion that they’ve found a lamppost
for support, but with Russia and China they suddenly have a new geopolitical
hinterland.
Turkey’s President Erdogan more than hinted at geopolitical
reorientation when he reacted to US tariffs by saying his country could find
new friends and got on the phone to Putin. Even before the sanctions spat,
Erdogan had been reviling Washington for not extraditing his foe, Gulen, for
alleged coup plotting in 2016. Turkey had been cosying up to the Kremlin
ordering the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile system in a clear departure
from NATO’s integrated air defence.
Turkey is the linchpin because until now it has been inside
the US-led NATO tent. Its position at the junction of Europe and Asia,
bordering Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria was one reason why Washington always
wanted Turkey in NATO. It is also why Russia sees huge gains despite the
economic costs to Trump’s double-sanctioning of both Moscow and Ankara.
Both Turkey and Iran face domestic turmoil as their urban
populations see the value of their savings evaporate with sudden plunges versus
the dollar, but their governments have shown that they can face down protests.
Iran saw off the Green Revolution in 2009 and Erdogan squashed protests in
Istanbul in 2013.
With Russian and Chinese backing as well as ideologically
reliable security forces both Iran’s Rouhani and Erdogan probably judge that a
mixture of the riot police and anti-American rhetoric will see them
through.
Unless one of Donald Trump’s targets blinks quite soon, the
pain threshold might be passed through without either regime-change or a regime
reversing course.
Already Imran Khan’s Pakistan which is so dependent on
Chinese inward investment has announced its support for Turkey vis-à-vis
America – and it has received an offer of Russian military assistance to
replace blocked US training and supplies. That could put another geopolitical
piece onto the board linking Turkey and Iran to China.
It could well be that Donald Trump’s simultaneous
confrontation of the axis of the sanctioned is bringing clarity to
international relations. The US President is making everyone choose where they
stand.
But he is forgetting the wisdom of his great predecessor,
Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, his secretary of state, Charles Seward, suggested the Union
should invade Canada to punish Britain for its sympathy for the South. “One war
at a time, Mr Secretary” Lincoln admonished him and concentrated on beating the main enemy.
Donald Trump would be wiser to target his principal opponent
and stick to one trade war at a time. Afterwards he could find the others more
amenable when they have fewer friends.
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