(Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
At the end of his first mandate as POTUS [1] Donald Trump is shifting gears in the foreign policy of the USA, playing hardball on four different tables.
Persian Gulf
A game of smoke and mirrors
One of the most recurrent topics in the action movies, back in the ‘70s, was the fighting sequence in a hall of mirrors. Hero and villain chasing each other in a long series of hit-and-miss, until the dramatic end. It’s a good metaphor for what’s going on in the Middle East. A pity that there are a lot of players inside the mirrored maze and I can’t see any hero ready to save the day.
Find the difference
We have to congratulate with John Kerry for a rare moment of truth between the federal administration of the USA and the public. The current Secretary of State was attending a hearing in the House of Representatives last Wednesday (September 4th, 2013) and answering a question admit loud and clear that foreign countries have offered to pay the bill for the military intervention in Syria.
The new Russia and the Middle East
Present days Syria’s crisis is a good start to think about how Putin’s Russia look at the whole Middle East in short and middle terms (from 1 to 5 years). After the shake down of USSR in 1991 russian presence in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf has been close to be wiped out. No political sphere of influence was viable for a nation in rubble, not to mention the overwhelming military power of the USA that was already on the brink to squash Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
Angelo Benuzzi 