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The National
9 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
Will he, won't he? The world waits as Trump considers attacking Iran
In a speech while visiting Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump attacked America's foreign policy record in the Middle East, saying the neocons who had tried to 'nation build' had wrecked far more countries than they had constructed. 'The interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand,' he told the Arab Islamic American Summit. The President's remarks found a receptive audience from Arab observers, who hope America's future ties to the Middle East will be based primarily on investment partnerships rather than destabilising military entanglements. But barely one month later, Mr Trump appears poised to let loose America's dogs of war and intervene in a complex society, by joining Israel as it strikes Iran. For now, Mr Trump is maintaining a degree of strategic ambiguity, saying he ' may or may not ' strike Iran. But he has dropped some very heavy hints that the US will be helping Israel as it strikes suspected Iranian nuclear sites. On Tuesday, he demanded the ' unconditional surrender ' of Tehran's government and said the US could kill supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – but prefers not to, 'for now'. Mr Trump has consistently said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, but his increasingly bellicose tone marks a departure from his previous insistence that a deal could be reached with Tehran over its nuclear programme. On Wednesday, he said it was 'very late to be talking' and seemed to rebuff what he claimed was an Iranian attempt to restart talks. The vibe in Washington definitely feels more war-war than jaw-jaw. Iran denied it had asked to 'grovel at the gates of the White House', and the Ayatollah has called Mr Trump's remarks 'unacceptable'. Much has been made of another potential restraining factor ahead of a war announcement, namely Mr Trump's Make America Great Again base, which has long insisted the US must not enter another costly overseas conflict. Maga maven Marjorie Taylor Greene said this week that anyone wishing for war with Iran was ' disgusting ' and lamented America's previous military engagements in the Middle East. 'Anyone slobbering for the US to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/Maga,' she wrote on X. 'Wishing for murder of innocent people is disgusting. We are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them.' Although he has said he wants to be remembered as a unifier and peacemaker, Mr Trump seems to be leaning into joining Israel's war – and to an extent already has. The Pentagon has assets positioned across the Middle East and is helping to defend Israeli skies from Iranian missiles. And as we saw during his military parade at the weekend, which depending on your viewpoint was either a badly attended embarrassment or a patriotic triumph of military might, he loves looking at American materiel in action. 'Nobody does it better than the good ol' USA,' he said on Tuesday when extolling American military gear, saying that 'we' had complete control of Iranian skies, hinting at close co-ordination with Israel as it bombs Tehran. When asked whether he was concerned a new war would alienate his Maga base, Mr Trump shrugged it off, rightly surmising that there is very little he can do to upset his true believers. 'My supporters are more in love with me today, and I'm in love with them more than they were even at election time,' he said. Some members of Congress have also begun to assert that they should have a say in whether America goes to war, with bipartisan legislation being introduced to force a vote on military action. But any prospect of the rubber-stamp Republicans opposing in a meaningful way is remote. For now, it appears Republican hawks and Israel have more of the President's ear than the Maga wing of his party. 'I'm not looking to fight. But if it's a choice between fighting and having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do," he said in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Donald Trump sounds more like a Chinese leader as he rejects the liberal world order
Donald Trump's speech in Riyadh last week was noteworthy in a number of ways, including the fact that it ended with YMCA, the 1970s gay anthem he has adopted as a campaign song, blasting out to his Saudi audience. But the most remarkable moment came when he praised the cities and skyscrapers that stand as gleaming monuments to the triumph of commerce throughout the Arabian peninsula. 'And it's crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from western interventionists or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities,' he said. 'In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves. Peace, prosperity and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly.' These words, which could have been spoken by a Chinese leader, were Trump's most emphatic rejection to date of liberal interventionism and interference in the internal affairs of other countries. And they should banish any doubt that the United States, the architect and arbiter of the 'rules-based international order', has turned its back on it. READ MORE Critics of that order, including many in the Global South, argue that it was never more than an instrument of American foreign policy and that its rules seldom bound the hegemon itself. But European policymakers are eager to keep it alive, fearing that the only alternative is great power rivalry, spheres of influence and the law of the jungle. Trump's threat to annex Greenland and his relaxed approach to the use of force to change internationally agreed borders reinforces such fears. And many Europeans see Vladimir Putin's Russia as a potentially existential threat unless it can be kept in check. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown is among those who have called for a new multilateralism, led by a 'coalition of the willing'. Reacting to Trump's humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office in February, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had another idea. 'Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It's up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge,' she said. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. Photograph: Carlos Jasso/Pool/AFP via Getty Without the US, what Kallas calls the free world is a greatly shrunken and less powerful coalition and the rest of the world does not recognise the EU as a moral leader. The contrast between the EU's approach to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and to Israel's actions in Gaza has done nothing to diminish this scepticism. While Trump was trashing liberal interventionism in Riyadh, the EU delegation in Beijing was hosting a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the EU. In a world that is becoming more multipolar and less multilateral, the EU and China share an interest in defending multilateral co-operation and the United Nations system. But while the EU champions the 'rules-based international order', China advocates what it calls 'true multilateralism'. Beijing says it is committed to keeping the existing multilateral institutions centred on the UN but it wants to make them more representative and democratic. Much of the Global South shares China's ambition to reform institutions that still reflect the balance of power at the end of the second world war, leaving Europe and the US massively over-represented. The EU is open to discussing such reforms, and it welcomes China's regular expressions of loyalty to the UN Charter. The problem lies in their competing interpretations of the charter and the emphasis each places on various elements of it. There is widespread and growing scepticism about the EU's bona fides on human rights At the heart of China's foreign policy are the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence first formulated in an agreement with India in 1954. They are: mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual nonaggression; mutual noninterference in each other's internal affairs; equality and co-operation for mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. It is the third principle, of noninterference in each other's internal affairs, that creates the sharpest tension between China and the EU, particularly in the area of human rights. China's view, shared across much of the world and echoed by Trump in Riyadh last week, is that states should govern themselves more or less as they choose and other countries should mind their own business. The EU, like the rest of the West, has always placed greater emphasis on civil and political rights than economic, social and cultural rights. When the EU published its human rights priorities for 2025, only one of its 48 sections dealt with economic, social and cultural rights. For China, of course, the emphasis is the other way around with the main focus on economic and development rights and little more than lip service paid to civil and political rights. Elsewhere across the Global South the picture is differentiated but there is widespread and growing scepticism about the EU's bona fides on human rights. This is not only on account of the weaselly response to the atrocities in Gaza but because of the EU's own treatment of people fleeing war, famine, oppression, destitution and the impact of climate change. Rather than protecting their human rights, the EU treats them as criminals, incarcerating thousands in detention centres along its borders and across the Mediterranean. The EU's commitment to defending the rights of minorities and political dissidents in countries such as China is commendable and important and should not be abandoned or weakened. But to be a more effective human rights champion, the EU must look more closely at its own record and rebalance its approach to take more account of economic, social and cultural rights. Instead of clinging to the idea of a contest between democracies and autocracies, the EU should focus on strengthening the UN institutions, working with China as well as middle powers such as Brazil and South Africa to restore authority to the multilateral system. Making progress through consensus is a slow and frustrating process, but it may prove to be more effective than confrontation and condescension in raising human rights standards across the world.
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Trump's ally issues stark warning about 'neocons'
Marjorie Taylor Greene sees a schism in the Republican party, and it's not between her and President Donald Trump, she told the Daily Mail in a sit-down interview, it's among 'neocons' and conservatives. The firebrand warned that congressional Republicans remain 'addicted to foreign wars' - despite the president running on a mandate to end America's involvement in conflicts overseas and bring peace to the world. Greene sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill last week when she wrote on X: 'I represent the base and when I'm frustrated and upset over the direction of things, you better be clear, the base is not happy.' The Georgia congresswoman clarified her long post was not about the president but 'typical Republican leadership' which, along with 'classic neocons' she accused of co-opting the MAGA movement away from Trump. Neocons are generally Republicans who advocate for U.S. intervention in global affairs, like the wars of Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and more. 'I'm not naming and names in particular, but everyone pretty much knows it's the same old, same old,' Greene said of the forces influencing the GOP. '[The] Classic neocon establishment in Washington. It's just an existence. It's a conglomerate.' An obvious example of this, she argued, is the Senate 's discontent with Ed Martin, Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The Trump nominee is currently opposed by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and because of that Martin's bid may not pass. Greene, therefore, blames Tillis, among others, for obstructing Trump's agenda. 'We have problems in Congress,' she told the Daily Mail. '[Trump's] agenda is not being passed in Congress.' 'Look at the Senate. We've got, what is it? Four or five senators that are saying 'No Ed Martin,'' Greene shared. 'Susan Collins (pictured) is one of them, and she's the Chair of Appropriations. Like these are powerful people that are refusing to pass the president's agenda.' Americans 'didn't vote for Susan Collins or Tom Tillis' to be president, she said. 'So why would Senate Republicans hold that up?' Greene asked. 'It's the disconnect between typical Republican leadership and control and Washington, D.C., and all the muck that comes with it.' With some of the neocons identified, the Georgian turned on some of her House colleagues, too. Greene chairs the House's DOGE subcommittee and said skeptical that many Republicans will have the stomach to cut the waste, fraud and abuse uncovered by the group led by Trump appointee Elon Musk. 'His executive orders, DOGE cuts, rescissions, those are the easiest things,' the Republican said, noting how DOGE's work identifying wasteful programs is pointless work unless Congress passes legislation to codify the reforms. Greene also pointed to the mountain of executive actions, 143 at this point, which she believes should be codified into law. Driving the point home, the lawmaker brought up her effort to enshrine the name change of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. The project is so dear to the president's heart that a poster of the name change has hung in the Oval Office and he had hats made with the new phrase. 'He literally keeps the map next to his desk,' Greene told the Daily Mail. Though with some Republicans reportedly upset over the measure, Greene dared any GOP lawmaker to jump out of line and 'stand with Mexico.' Overall, the congresswoman also vehemently warned against those advocating for foreign wars and status-quo Washington procedure, a prevailing wind forcing the president's White House wayward. 'The Republican establishment wants to do this like a speed bump,' Greene warned while leaning forward in her seat. 'They know that President Trump can't run again.' 'They would love to continue just steaming ahead in their same path, and try to get over him like a speed bump and keep going,' the Georgia congresswoman continued. 'And my voice is important to not allow that to happen,' she added. The Georgian has been a MAGA ally for a decade and wrote for conservative online outlets before becoming a member of Congress three days before January 6, 2021. Greene boasts one of the largest social media followings for any member of Congress on X, with a combined 6.3 million, 1 million on Instagram and over 500,000 on Facebook. When Daily Mail asked Greene why she thinks the 'base' is displeased, she immediately pointed to one thing, the same reason highlighted in her post from the week prior: war. 'Washington, DC, has an addiction to foreign wars,' Greene told the Daily Mail. 'President Trump is on record for decades being against foreign wars, saying that we need world peace.' Then she congratulated the president on striking a peace deal with the Houthis in Yemen, which have been bombing ships in the Red Sea, a critical shipping route. 'This is exactly one of the reasons why I've always supported the President is because he has worked for peace and stopping foreign wars,' the lawmaker said. 'However, we had been seeing people here in Washington pushing him towards one a war with Iran, which we do not want. American people don't want that. No one's no one's interested in a war Iran,' Greene stated. She then dove into the Ukraine war, the U.S.'s war in Afghanistan and other conflicts that the country lost so much in, which she blamed on 'neocons.' 'That's why I said, if you're losing me and I'm angry at you and I'm frustrated ... You're losing the base.' 'And you can read all the comments, I'm right,' Greene claimed, adding the 'comments back me up.' Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Trump's closest ally's chilling warning to the president about 'neocons'
Marjorie Taylor Greene sees a schism in the Republican party, and it's not between her and President Donald Trump, she told the Daily Mail in a sit-down interview, it's among 'neocons' and conservatives. Referencing a Daily Mail article from last week on one of Greene's social media posts expressing discontent with the GOP on behalf of President Trump's 'base,' she argued that 'there's no daylight' between her and the president. 'I represent the base and when I'm frustrated and upset over the direction of things, you better be clear, the base is not happy,' she wrote. The Georgia congresswoman clarified her long post was not about the president but 'typical Republican leadership' which, along with 'classic neocons' she accused of co-opting the MAGA movement away from Trump. Neocons are generally Republicans who advocate for U.S. intervention in global affairs, like the wars of Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and more. 'I'm not naming and names in particular, but everyone pretty much knows it's the same old, same old,' Greene said of the forces influencing the GOP. '[The] Classic neocon establishment in Washington. It's just an existence. It's a conglomerate.' An obvious example of this, she argued, is the Senate 's discontent with Ed Martin, Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The Trump nominee is currently opposed by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and because of that Martin's bid may not pass. Greene, therefore, blames Tillis, among others, for obstructing Trump's agenda. 'We have problems in Congress,' she told the Daily Mail. '[Trump's] agenda is not being passed in Congress.' 'Look at the Senate. We've got, what is it? Four or five senators that are saying 'No Ed Martin,'' Greene shared. 'Susan Collins is one of them, and she's the Chair of Appropriations. Like these are powerful people that are refusing to pass the president's agenda.' Americans 'didn't vote for Susan Collins or Tom Tillis' to be president, she said. 'So why would Senate Republicans hold that up?' Greene asked. 'It's the disconnect between typical Republican leadership and control and Washington, D.C., and all the muck that comes with it.' With some of the neocons identified, the Georgian turned on some of her House colleagues, too. Greene chairs the House's DOGE subcommittee and said skeptical that many Republicans will have the stomach to cut the waste, fraud and abuse uncovered by the group led by Trump appointee Elon Musk. 'His executive orders, DOGE cuts, rescissions, those are the easiest things,' the Republican said, noting how DOGE's work identifying wasteful programs is pointless work unless Congress passes legislation to codify the reforms. Greene also pointed to the mountain of executive actions, 143 at this point, which she believes should be codified into law. Driving the point home, the lawmaker brought up her effort to enshrine the name change of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Trump shows off a new Gulf of America hat at the White House President Donald Trump, from right, speaks to reporters accompanied by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Burgum's wife Kathryn Burgum, aboard Air Force One where Trump signed a proclamation declaring February 9 Gulf of America Day The project is so dear to the president's heart that a poster of the name change has hung in the Oval Office and he had hats made with the new phrase. 'He literally keeps the map next to his desk,' Greene told the Daily Mail. Though with some Republicans reportedly upset over the measure, Greene dared any GOP lawmaker to jump out of line and 'stand with Mexico.' Overall, the congresswoman also vehemently warned against those advocating for foreign wars and status-quo Washington procedure, a prevailing wind forcing the president's White House wayward. 'The Republican establishment wants to do this like a speed bump,' Greene warned while leaning forward in her seat. 'They know that President Trump can't run again.' 'They would love to continue just steaming ahead in their same path, and try to get over him like a speed bump and keep going,' the Georgia congresswoman continued. 'And my voice is important to not allow that to happen,' she added. The Georgian has been a MAGA ally for a decade and wrote for conservative online outlets before becoming a member of Congress three days before January 6, 2021. Greene boasts one of the largest social media followings for any member of Congress on X, with a combined 6.3 million, 1 million on Instagram and over 500,000 on Facebook. When Daily Mail asked Greene why she thinks the 'base' is displeased, she immediately pointed to one thing, the same reason highlighted in her post from the week prior: war. 'Washington, DC, has an addiction to foreign wars,' Greene told the Daily Mail. 'President Trump is on record for decades being against foreign wars, saying that we need world peace.' Then she congratulated the president on striking a peace deal with the Houthis in Yemen, which have been bombing ships in the Red Sea, a critical shipping route. 'This is exactly one of the reasons why I've always supported the President is because he has worked for peace and stopping foreign wars,' the lawmaker said. 'However, we had been seeing people here in Washington pushing him towards one a war with Iran, which we do not want. American people don't want that. No one's no one's interested in a war Iran,' Greene stated. She then dove into the Ukraine war, the U.S.'s war in Afghanistan and other conflicts that the country lost so much in, which she blamed on 'neocons.' 'That's why I said, if you're losing me and I'm angry at you and I'm frustrated ... You're losing the base.'
