What do we have to truly fear about President Donald Trump? Early October he pulled off the successful re-negotiation of the North America Free Trade area. Pundits thought, with Canada refusing to bend, it could not happen. Maybe the deal now leans more in America’s direction, but Trump has also given something away: The right of Mexico and Canada to sell their trucks and cars more easily in the US. He said he’s a great “deal-maker”, and so this time he is.

His trade tussle with China, which looks to be a stand-off at the moment, has not yet led to a breakdown in relations. Trump has been more than careful to keep direct channels open to President Xi Jinping, even if in early October he became more openly critical and personal. He has treated Xi much better than he treated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.

Nevertheless, the fact is the Chinese have taken advantage of the US, ignoring its copyrights, blatantly reverse engineering expensive US products and subsidising exports. Trump goes too far with his demands, but he is on firm enough ground to force the Chinese to re-think some of their policies. He’s making progress.

Likewise, while being tough on Russia, ratcheting up sanctions, sending modern arms to Ukraine, increasing defence spending and standing back from the cuts in nuclear weapons that President Vladimir Putin has suggested, he keeps his personal channels open to Putin, unlike President Barack Obama. Later he may reap the harvest of this. Russian politics is very personal under Putin.

With North Korea, he appears to have flattered President Kim Jong-un to the point where Kim shows his constructive side to Trump. Progress is being made on nuclear disarmament even if it’s not at the rate the foreign policy establishment wants.

Nevertheless, for all this, the fact is that Trump is a man with an ugly personality, as ugly in its way as Kim. Sometimes one can imagine, if he wasn’t constrained by law, he would execute some of his enemies as Kim has done.

His staff find he’s impossible to deal with although he gets important things done.

After reading Bob Woodward’s new book Fear: Trump in the White House, one realises that Woodward gives little space to Trump’s achievements, and his interviews and re-creations of real-life scenes are nearly all orientated in a critical direction.

Woodward has painted a picture of a sordid man, full of quite disgusting profanities and untruths that he aims at his staff and many of those who do business with him with hourly regularity. (If the women in his “base” could hear these, many would be shocked).

It’s a fine book, researched in the most intimate and thorough way. One doesn’t doubt its veracity. Quite a bit of it we have read in the newspapers already over the last two years, but even then Woodward gets deeper inside the man, the policy-making, and how it’s implemented. He’s the best fly on the wall anyone could ask for.

There are, too, whole chapters where Woodward writes about startling things we’ve not known about. Again and again, in order to keep the US on a sensible course in its policies for trade, foreign relations and financial affairs, his staff have to secretly remove from his desk papers waiting to be signed. This choleric man is so seized up by the next crisis or what appears as an affront that he forgets he asked for them.

Time and time again, his staff are courageous, offering the president clever analysis, despite his constant put downs. He tells them it’s bullshit and that he’s held his views on this or that for over 30 years and he’s not going to change. Amazingly, they argue back, and he lets them — up to a point. In his way, he accepts a lot of talk-back and even verbal insubordination, but then gives the staffer hell.

There is insubordination behind his back, too. On one occasion, when discussing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Trump said to General James Mattis, the Defence Secretary, “Let’s go in, let’s fucking kill him.” “Yes”, Mattis said, “I will get right on it.” He hung up the phone. “We’re not going to do any of that,” he told a senior aide.

When the North Korea crisis first blew up, Mattis made it clear he didn’t want war. His view was that North Korea could be contained.

Ironically, as with North Korea latterly, Trump in some areas of policy can have non-warlike instincts. He argued hard with the military until they persuaded him otherwise, that the US should totally withdraw from Afghanistan.

Where this story ends nobody knows. Woodward for one doesn’t advocate impeachment but by the end of the book it hangs in the air. Who really wants such a volatile, unhinged and amoral man to have his finger on the nuclear button?

(This article was originally published on DNA. Read the <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-notoriously-difficult-to-deal-with-trump-gets-work-done-2675381">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

What do we have to truly fear about President Donald Trump? Early October he pulled off the successful re-negotiation of the North America Free Trade area. Pundits thought, with Canada refusing to bend, it could not happen.

What do we have to truly fear about President Donald Trump? Early October he pulled off the successful re-negotiation of the North America Free Trade area. Pundits thought, with Canada refusing to bend, it could not happen. Maybe the deal now leans more in America’s direction, but Trump has also given something away: The right of Mexico and Canada to sell their trucks and cars more easily in the US. He said he’s a great “deal-maker”, and so this time he is. His trade tussle with China, which looks to be a stand-off at the moment, has not yet led to a breakdown in relations. Trump has been more than careful to keep direct channels open to President Xi Jinping, even if in early October he became more openly critical and personal. He has treated Xi much better than he treated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Nevertheless, the fact is the Chinese have taken advantage of the US, ignoring its copyrights, blatantly reverse engineering expensive US products and subsidising exports. Trump goes too far with his demands, but he is on firm enough ground to force the Chinese to re-think some of their policies. He’s making progress. Likewise, while being tough on Russia, ratcheting up sanctions, sending modern arms to Ukraine, increasing defence spending and standing back from the cuts in nuclear weapons that President Vladimir Putin has suggested, he keeps his personal channels open to Putin, unlike President Barack Obama. Later he may reap the harvest of this. Russian politics is very personal under Putin. With North Korea, he appears to have flattered President Kim Jong-un to the point where Kim shows his constructive side to Trump. Progress is being made on nuclear disarmament even if it’s not at the rate the foreign policy establishment wants. Nevertheless, for all this, the fact is that Trump is a man with an ugly personality, as ugly in its way as Kim. Sometimes one can imagine, if he wasn’t constrained by law, he would execute some of his enemies as Kim has done. His staff find he’s impossible to deal with although he gets important things done. After reading Bob Woodward’s new book Fear: Trump in the White House, one realises that Woodward gives little space to Trump’s achievements, and his interviews and re-creations of real-life scenes are nearly all orientated in a critical direction. Woodward has painted a picture of a sordid man, full of quite disgusting profanities and untruths that he aims at his staff and many of those who do business with him with hourly regularity. (If the women in his “base” could hear these, many would be shocked). It’s a fine book, researched in the most intimate and thorough way. One doesn’t doubt its veracity. Quite a bit of it we have read in the newspapers already over the last two years, but even then Woodward gets deeper inside the man, the policy-making, and how it’s implemented. He’s the best fly on the wall anyone could ask for. There are, too, whole chapters where Woodward writes about startling things we’ve not known about. Again and again, in order to keep the US on a sensible course in its policies for trade, foreign relations and financial affairs, his staff have to secretly remove from his desk papers waiting to be signed. This choleric man is so seized up by the next crisis or what appears as an affront that he forgets he asked for them. Time and time again, his staff are courageous, offering the president clever analysis, despite his constant put downs. He tells them it’s bullshit and that he’s held his views on this or that for over 30 years and he’s not going to change. Amazingly, they argue back, and he lets them — up to a point. In his way, he accepts a lot of talk-back and even verbal insubordination, but then gives the staffer hell. There is insubordination behind his back, too. On one occasion, when discussing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Trump said to General James Mattis, the Defence Secretary, “Let’s go in, let’s fucking kill him.” “Yes”, Mattis said, “I will get right on it.” He hung up the phone. “We’re not going to do any of that,” he told a senior aide. When the North Korea crisis first blew up, Mattis made it clear he didn’t want war. His view was that North Korea could be contained. Ironically, as with North Korea latterly, Trump in some areas of policy can have non-warlike instincts. He argued hard with the military until they persuaded him otherwise, that the US should totally withdraw from Afghanistan. Where this story ends nobody knows. Woodward for one doesn’t advocate impeachment but by the end of the book it hangs in the air. Who really wants such a volatile, unhinged and amoral man to have his finger on the nuclear button? (This article was originally published on DNA. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Notoriously difficult to deal with, Trump gets work done

I haven’t played cricket with Imran Khan, the newly elected prime minister of Pakistan, but I did interview him back in 2005, when only a rare foreign journalist was interested in him despite his fame as having been the world’s best cricketer. Now he has won a handsome political victory.

We did talk about Kashmir, the number one foreign policy issue then and today. Khan didn’t think the Indian government of that time, when Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister, was strong enough to make a deal. On the Pakistani side, he didn’t think an army man could do it despite the army’s large influence on politics. He went on to say, “a civilian prime minister could do it if a real leader emerged like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto” (who was prime minister in the 1960s). Maybe he meant himself.

The issue of Kashmir has dominated Pakistani and Indian foreign policy ever since colonial India was partitioned in 1947. The British left Kashmir with a majority Muslim population and a Hindu ruler. Both Pakistan and India claimed this beautiful piece of Himalayan real estate. The conflict has led to three wars. President Bill Clinton said he was worried the next clash might lead to nuclear war.

India missed its great opportunity to settle the burning dispute while the military president, Pervez Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan from 2001 until his overthrow in 2008, was in office.

According to diplomats I talked to, both British and American, in New Delhi and Islamabad, a deal was tantalisingly close. One British ambassador told me that the main barrier to a deal was “psychological” and that India had to make very few concessions to make a final deal.

If Musharraf wasn’t prepared to give away the store, the Pakistani compromises came close to it. But India, despite the seemingly friendly diplomacy of Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the unwarlike Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, couldn’t bring itself to go the extra mile.

Observers had different explanations for the Indian intransigence – that the Indian Army, the intelligence services and senior bureaucrats in the foreign ministry were resisting an accord that the leadership had not made an effort to educate the electorate as Pakistan’s had done that the Prime Minister was weak and over preoccupied with the economy that his (highly successful) attempt to lower the grinding poverty in the rural areas was also a preoccupation that the time consuming nuclear deal with the US was critically important and that India rather liked the status quo, since stubbornness fitted in with its self-image of being the subcontinent’s superpower.

There was also the failure of the George W. Bush Administration that was, in Singh’s words, “loved” by India for pushing a deal through Congress that lifted the long-standing embargo on selling India nuclear materials and reactors. America could have used the muscle that the nuclear deal gave it to help push India to sign on to Musharraf’s magnanimous offer.

After his re-election, Prime Minister Singh unexpectedly found himself riding high. Not only did Congress win hands down, but the grumbling that Singh was a weak prime minister had disappeared.

But Singh still wouldn’t bite the bullet. As he had said to me 18 months before, “How can you expect me to push a peace deal when militants are coming from Pakistan every few months to set off bombs in India.”&nbsp

But when I repeated this in my interview with Musharraf, he responded sharply. “I don’t agree with his way of looking at it. If everyone in the world looked for calm and peace before reaching a solution, we would never achieve peace anywhere. It is the political deal itself that can produce calm. Bomb blasts are a result of the problem. Let’s not put the cart before the horse.”

Musharraf had his own good reasons for compromising. The conflict has led to Pakistan-based guerrillas fighting for a free Kashmir, (which Pakistan’s intelligence service has long secretly supported, although much less these days). But these militants have given aid, men and advice to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Is Imran Khan the civilian leader who could do the job of making peace with India? Could he carry the army with him? Can he neutralise the Pakistani Taliban? Is India ready this time if he does? We wait and we will see.

(Jonathan Power&nbspis a columnist and author)

(This article was first published on The DNA. Read the<a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-burning-question-can-imran-khan-make-peace-with-india-2651168"> original article</a>.)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

The issue of Kashmir has dominated Pakistani and Indian foreign policy ever since colonial India was partitioned in 1947.

I haven’t played cricket with Imran Khan, the newly elected prime minister of Pakistan, but I did interview him back in 2005, when only a rare foreign journalist was interested in him despite his fame as having been the world’s best cricketer. Now he has won a handsome political victory. We did talk about Kashmir, the number one foreign policy issue then and today. Khan didn’t think the Indian government of that time, when Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister, was strong enough to make a deal. On the Pakistani side, he didn’t think an army man could do it despite the army’s large influence on politics. He went on to say, “a civilian prime minister could do it if a real leader emerged like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto” (who was prime minister in the 1960s). Maybe he meant himself. The issue of Kashmir has dominated Pakistani and Indian foreign policy ever since colonial India was partitioned in 1947. The British left Kashmir with a majority Muslim population and a Hindu ruler. Both Pakistan and India claimed this beautiful piece of Himalayan real estate. The conflict has led to three wars. President Bill Clinton said he was worried the next clash might lead to nuclear war. India missed its great opportunity to settle the burning dispute while the military president, Pervez Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan from 2001 until his overthrow in 2008, was in office. According to diplomats I talked to, both British and American, in New Delhi and Islamabad, a deal was tantalisingly close. One British ambassador told me that the main barrier to a deal was “psychological” and that India had to make very few concessions to make a final deal. If Musharraf wasn’t prepared to give away the store, the Pakistani compromises came close to it. But India, despite the seemingly friendly diplomacy of Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the unwarlike Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, couldn’t bring itself to go the extra mile. Observers had different explanations for the Indian intransigence – that the Indian Army, the intelligence services and senior bureaucrats in the foreign ministry were resisting an accord that the leadership had not made an effort to educate the electorate as Pakistan’s had done that the Prime Minister was weak and over preoccupied with the economy that his (highly successful) attempt to lower the grinding poverty in the rural areas was also a preoccupation that the time consuming nuclear deal with the US was critically important and that India rather liked the status quo, since stubbornness fitted in with its self-image of being the subcontinent’s superpower. There was also the failure of the George W. Bush Administration that was, in Singh’s words, “loved” by India for pushing a deal through Congress that lifted the long-standing embargo on selling India nuclear materials and reactors. America could have used the muscle that the nuclear deal gave it to help push India to sign on to Musharraf’s magnanimous offer. After his re-election, Prime Minister Singh unexpectedly found himself riding high. Not only did Congress win hands down, but the grumbling that Singh was a weak prime minister had disappeared. But Singh still wouldn’t bite the bullet. As he had said to me 18 months before, “How can you expect me to push a peace deal when militants are coming from Pakistan every few months to set off bombs in India.” But when I repeated this in my interview with Musharraf, he responded sharply. “I don’t agree with his way of looking at it. If everyone in the world looked for calm and peace before reaching a solution, we would never achieve peace anywhere. It is the political deal itself that can produce calm. Bomb blasts are a result of the problem. Let’s not put the cart before the horse.” Musharraf had his own good reasons for compromising. The conflict has led to Pakistan-based guerrillas fighting for a free Kashmir, (which Pakistan’s intelligence service has long secretly supported, although much less these days). But these militants have given aid, men and advice to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Is Imran Khan the civilian leader who could do the job of making peace with India? Could he carry the army with him? Can he neutralise the Pakistani Taliban? Is India ready this time if he does? We wait and we will see. (Jonathan Power&nbspis a columnist and author) (This article was first published on The DNA. Read the original article.) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Opinion: Can Imran Khan make peace with India?

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Zee News Rajasthan

Editor

Jonathan Power

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