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Despite the establishment media’s continuing hostility to the president, including attempts to paint him as radical and unpredictable, Trump is far more traditional than were his immediate predecessors. That tradition, simply put, is one of acting in his own country’s interests.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” reflects the Roosevelt foreign policy. It was described by past US president Theodore Roosevelt as “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis.”
Amir Farahi of the London Institute and Western University’s Associate Professor of Political Science Salim Mansur join us to share their assessment of what Trump’s early days in office have revealed – both about the president’s foreign policies and about some of the major crisis’ brewing around the globe today.
From America’s actions taken against Assad in Syria, to the bomb dropped in Afghanistan and to movements against North Korea, our conversation connects the dots between what most believe are isolated and unrelated conflicts in distant parts of the globe.
“There is no doubt that the Americans have an interest in wanting to protect South Korea and Japan,” says Amir. “Destabilization is not good for any of the states in the area, especially China, because North Korea is unpredictable. We need to take action now… or else it’s only going to get worse.”
“(Korea’s nuclear ambitions) are all about extortion,” adds Salim, who cites the Cuban missile crisis as another famous example of the same strategy in action. “The matter of North Korea is not limited to the Korean Peninsula. It’s Iran, Pakistan, other Middle Eastern countries, and we have a great mess on our hands. The elephant in the room is the Islamists. They’re not being squeezed or curtailed. In fact, they are being appeased.”
To illustrate this global trend, newly elected French president Macron (falsely described by the establishment media as an “outsider”) favors the continued “Islamization” of France. And North Korea’s connections to Iran, Pakistan, Libya and other Islamist nations are key to that country’s growing nuclear capabilities and threat.
To any country established on individual rights and freedom, these developments are clear threats to the world’s only true culture of peace: Western civilization and Western values, continually under attack both externally and internally by those with sinister intentions.
Wikipedia notes that “The idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the “big stick”, or the military, ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies a pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals.”
No doubt, Trump will continue to be described as a political “strongman” and bully by those who would paint his “America first” policies in a negative light. So far, efforts to produce any credible evidence of such a claim have been falling far short of the mark.
Reflecting on his first few months in power, Trump’s decision thus far to stick to America’s ‘big stick’ tradition appears to be Just Right.
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