The more time that passes since the days Donald Trump was making campaign promises, essentially outlining the guidelines of the future of US politics, the more similarities one can spot between his administration and that of former US President Barack Obama. In some areas, one can’t resist the temptation to call them virtual twins. Yes, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, since the “script writers” behind Trump’s political performance are essentially the same that laid out the policies of Barack Obama during his days in office.
Until recently, the world condemned Obama for his commitment to a purely militaristic approach in solving problems around the world. As it’s been noted by Breitbart, President Obama wasn’t just mired in the civil war in Syria, but in numerous other conflicts as well.
In this regard, many held hope that the Trump presidency would end US military involvement in various conflicts around the world, thus creating a new positive trend. However, the first steps of this new White House have all but entirely crushed these hopes.
In spite of Trump’s declared intentions to reboot US-Russia relations, we’re witnessing major deployments of tanks and other heavy equipment along the Russian frontier this week, part of the largest infusion of US troops into Europe since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. In April, the US is planning to send an additional military contingent of a thousand men to Poland. Upon their arrival to the Baltic states and Poland, the US military is becoming a constant participant in various political events across this region, including their ongoing participation in various nationalist marches which casts a shadow on the history of the allied joint struggle against fascism. The US military appears to be making plans for a long-term shift in focus toward Europe.
During a phone conversation with Mexican President Peña Nieto, in early February, Donald Trump threatened to send American troops to Mexico to “stop the bad guys,” as the Associated Press reported referring to the transcript of the leaders’ conversation.
Syria has recently witnessed an increased number of American Marines being deployed destined to take part in an armed operation to seize back the city of Raqqa, as unnamed sources in the Pentagon announced. There’s a growing number of unofficial reports that the United States is about to launch a large-scale ground operation in Syria, as it’s been noted by the Washington Post, among other media sources.
Along with this, the US Department of Defense issued an order to deploy new military special forces across the Middle East and North Africa, covering these military actions with the slogan of “strengthening the fight against terrorism.”
The abrupt increase in number of US operations in Yemen has recently been of particular interest, after the Obama days when the US military became mired in a bloody war against the civilian population of this country. The trend is being carried forward under Trump, as on February 15 in the immediate vicinity of Sana’a, the US-Saudi coalition launched an air strike against a mourning ceremony with a large number of women and a children being hit. In addition, on February 6, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdul-Malik al-Mekhlafi announced the need for a “reassessment” of US special forces raids deep into Yemeni territory, since one of these raids on January 29 conducted in the Yemeni province of Baida also resulted in a large number of civilians being killed.
The Pentagon has recently confirmed the death of 21 civilians as a result of its operations in Iraq and Syria over the last three months, and those are just the official figures.
Just like in the Obama days, we’re witnessing a growing number of racial hate crimes within the US itself, with African-Americans being far more likely to be wrongfully convicted of crimes such as murder, sexual assault and illegal drug activity than whites due to factors including racial bias and official misconduct.
As it’s been noted by AlterNet, as many as 60,000 detained immigrants have been engaged in forced labor for private prison companies. Now a private prison company is suspected of violating federal anti-slavery laws. The lawsuit alleges that detained immigrants awaiting court dates were forced to work for 1 dollar per day or for free, on threat of solitary confinement.
But in spite of these facts, one could only hope that the new US administration will learn from the long list of mistakes committed by the Obama administration, bring peace to the Middle East and preventing a new Cold War from unraveling any further.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
