Donald Trump has already engineered a profound change in the foreign policy connotations of warfare by weaponizing new instruments, regardless of whether he rises to greater political strength after the mid-term elections or is dethroned by impeachment.
Trump has weaponized trade, finance and currency as instruments of coercion to impose behavior change on foreign governments, including those of European and other allies.
Even Europeans, who share America’s civilizational values, are now trying to weaken the tutelage over them of the US dollar and American military protection. They no longer fall in line with US foreign policy as easily as in the recent past.
Russia, Iran, China and Turkey already allege that Trump is waging economic, social, cultural and cyber war to depose their regimes and impoverish their people. US officials vehemently deny this, saying Trump wants only to change their regimes’ behavior.
Each of those countries contains ancient civilizations. They are much weaker than Trump’s America currently, but are unlikely to remain so in a couple of decades especially if they become convinced that America is their long-term economic, cultural and military enemy.
Carl von Clausewitz’s 1832 treatise Vom Kriege (On War) contained the famous dictum, “’War is the continuation of politics by other means”, making clear that war is a necessary and legitimate feature of interstate relations.
He broadly defined war as an act of violence characterized by destruction intended to compel the opponent to obey a foreign regime’s will, based upon that regime’s political motives, culture and morality.
The dominant features of war are a Clausewitz trinity, namely, (a) primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which operate as irrational natural forces; (b) chance and probability, managed through flexible and creative responses; and (c) subordination to a reasoned policy.
In modern times, a war among Great Powers would put the US, most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia (and probably India) on one side possibly against Russia or China or both Russia and China.
However, because of the presence of massively destructive nuclear bombs, wars deploying the full panoply of Great Power weapons would be catastrophic for all nations and make the earth uninhabitable.
Trump is skirting these catastrophic outcomes by using new weaponized methods. He is stoking Clausewitz’s dominant features of war while taking care not to cause an actual war that kills hundreds of million people.
First, he is fueling violence, hatred and enmity inside the US between his supporters and others — and outside the US with great powers like Russia and China, and lesser powers like Iran and Turkey.
Whatever his motives, his precipitous actions seem reckless because he is acting unilaterally without profound consultation with America’s military and economic allies and friends.
Nor does he have the full overt support of US Congress and Senate, US military elites or even is own administration’s top staff. Clear support from the American people is also conspicuously missing, since he is a minority president.
Regardless, he is trying to bend to his will all opposing foreign governments or to overthrow them by using devastating non-military options capable of killing millions of people.
He is weaponizing financial and economic sanctions that could cause widespread poverty, untreated sickness and massive social unrest among the people of foreign regimes that refuse to accept his demands.
This looks like politically-motivated amoral warfare driven by his need to please his own political supporters in the US.
Even loyal long-time European allies who disagree with his methods are not being spared as evidenced by trade sanctions against the European Union and Canada and threats of even more severe sanctions against them.
Secondly, the draconian financial and other sanctions against Russia and Iran and unprecedented trade sanctions against China are also fueling uncertainties and thickening Clausewitz’s fog of chance.
All such actions could have the unintended consequences of pushing the global economy into recession in the coming 24 months, causing millions of people to sink into poverty and provoking the fall of many governments – even if powerful America’s own economy remains stable.
The global political and economic anarchy may lead to new and unprecedented authoritarian regimes, taking world affairs back to the 19th century and earlier. The flexible and creative solutions needed to deal with such probabilities are grievously missing from Trump’s calculations.
Third, Clausewitz’s standard of subordination to reasoned policy is not being met. Trump is using the US dollar, which is world’s main currency for international transactions, as a weapon to coerce obedience to whatever he thinks is necessary to “make America great again”.
He is holding hostage all European and other major companies doing business in America or using US financial institutions and other services. They either obey his decisions about causing intolerable pain to Iran and Russia or start losing access to their assets and business facilities in the US after November this year.
Almost all Chinese trade with America totaling about $530 billion may become subject to tariffs of 10-25 per cent by January 2019. About $250 billion dollars of trade with the Europe, could also suffer a similar fate.
And the entire population of Iran may be forced into poverty because Trump wants to cut its oil exports to zero by November and beyond.
All American aid given to Palestinian refugees for their basic survival has already been cut. That intensified Palestinian misery could also have awful consequences not intended by the US and Israel.