The three most outspoken and controversial leaders on the world scene today are undoubtedly US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan and of late the new President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte. For various reasons, motives and intention they have commanded the attention of the world and are driving or attempting to make things happen as they like or to make the world and their environment see issues and problems from their perspectives.
It will be a classical understatement to just call them strong leaders or to dismiss them as crazy as many brand Trump, arrogant as some describe Erdogan or murderous as some call Rodrigo the new Filipino strong man. But no one can ignore the obvious fact that they are driving change in their environment, are popular and no matter how distasteful you may think, they have charisma, the magical quality that guarantee blind, unrelenting followership.
In a world besieged by Islamic militancy and terrorism, typified by the murderous Islamic State or ISIL, of the borderless caliphate notoriety, national and regional insurgency and the greatest migration in history of humans and global insecurity is obvious and pervasive. With desperate migrants fleeing wars in the Middle East and descending on Europe from the Mediterranean and the high seas, the emergence of these three leaders appears to be a logical conclusion given the type of message for change and hope for a better future that their mannerisms and eccentric style of leadership have brought forward. It is my intention to show today how these three leaders are involved in measures that will result in a realignment of forces in international affairs and diplomacy globally. I make bold to say such realignment may be as important as such alignments, alliances and deep feuds that characterized the Cold War from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany.
For a start let us examine some of the utterances and actions of these leaders in the last one week . Donald Trump this week said US President Barak Obama founded ISIS and gave emphasis to Obama’s Muslim name Hussein in making his point, which he has not retracted. Turkey’s Erdogan visited Russian President Vladmir Putin in Russia and warned that unless the US extradited the cleric living in America that he insists was behind the failed coup in Turkey recently, then the US will have to choose between Turkey and the cleric. In the Philippines the newly elected president Rodrigo Duterte, called the US ambassador in the country a son of a bitch for interfering in the last presidential elections in that nation. We shall now proceed to look at the implications of the actions and utterances we have highlighted.
Starting from Trump, it is easy to say that nothing can be further from the truth in saying Obama is a founder of ISIS .However what the Republican presidential candidate was saying in his usual polemical manner was that Obama’s foreign policy contributed to the emergence and blood thirstiness of ISIL and that is not very far from the truth. It even does not make Trump crazy but at best confrontational or perhaps verbally violent. If you add Syria and the failed Obama line in the sand on chemical weapons used by President Assad on his people plus the attendant migration through Turkey and the Oceans by millions of Arabs and Syrians fleeing war in the Middle East, then you get to see that Trump was holding the US president responsible for diplomatic failure of a policy of deterrence culminating in the emergence and ferocity of ISIS. There was no way he could have been saying he Obama was there at the founding of ISIS. Such a conclusion will be naïve and rather simplistic in many ways.
On the global scene Donald Trump has cast aspersion on the Obama legacy which is the legacy that the candidate of the President’s party Hillary Clinton has adopted to campaign to succeed Obama. Trump however has consistently thrown spanner in the works of Hillary’s succession by defaming Obama on ISIS and calling Hillary crooked. Trump has taken on the world literally before becoming president and it is predictable how the world would look if he becomes president, a possibility that even Obama who branded him unfit to be president has candidly acknowledged. Undoubtedly Donald Trump is planning to bring a new world in to existence, like British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston once said in defending colonialism,’ to redress the balance of the old‘. Given the way Islamic terrorism has brought both Muslims and Christians to their knees globally I see nothing unthinkable about a change of guard in the US or anywhere for that matter if the stated objective is to make the world more secure for humanity in any environment they exist in order to survive.
Similarly Erdogan’s threat on extradition of Gulen or parting of ways with the US should not be treated lightly or scoffed at. The fact that Erdogan has gone to Putin in Russia to patch their relations up is significant. Turkey is strategic member of the military alliance between the US and Europe called NATO. Turkey for now is the nation at the heart of Europe through which Syrians are fleeing to Europe in droves and that is creating tension between existing European governments and the electorates. Such tension created the Brexit success in Britain and like the Financial Times wryly noted this week, is driving the Donald Trump campaign in the US. In addition Erdogan has mended fences with Israel and together they can screw Syria’s Assad which has always been a mutual foe to both nations. Especially as both the present political leaders of Turkey and Israel are at loggerheads with the US their traditional patron and supporter.
Meanwhile some pessimists have observed that any truce between Turkey and Russia cannot last because historically the Ottoman Empire of Turkey has been at logger heads with the Russian Empire for centuries. But that is so much ancient history as Turkey now knows the importance of trade and tourism for its buoyant economy which was why Erdogan has won three elections back to back and is so [popular he is using the failed coup to castrate the military politically and totally in Turkey. In addition Turkey’s protracted application to join the EU and which is being threatened for cancellation by the EU because Erdogan wants to execute the recent coup plotters, may be given some pep or accelerated approval after 50 years if Turkey threatens to open its borders for a predictable floodgate of desperate war migrants into Europe.
In broad terms then the diplomatic options open to Turkey under Erdogan are enormous and the US with its sovereign reputation in tatters because of the quality of its 2016 presidential campaign is hardly on any moral ground to give any lessons on democracy, security or even amazingly, on political stability given the Trump bull in the China shop plaguing its political system. Inevitably then, some diplomatic horse trading must be concluded sooner than later in the Middle East which will alter immensely the political equation in that part of the world, and even the US and Europe as we know them today.
With regard to President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines there could be no excuse for him to call the US ambassador a gay ambassador and the son of a whore. Yet that was what happened this last week and the US has called the Filipino Ambassador in Washington to protest. But the new President of Philippines, Rodrigo a former mayor got elected because he promised to kill drug lords pestering his people and to trample on human rights in order to tackle terrorism, corruption and crime in his nation. Yet he got elected to show that in a democracy, the choice of the electorate matters at the polls and that the voice of the people is the voice of God.
In conclusion then, I think it is the prayer of citizens in any nation to be blessed with leaders who are people oriented and who have integrity and are blunt. I have mentioned three world leaders today and would have added a fourth in the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. But he seems to have lost his momentum on the promised change that brought him to power in 2015. The only shining armour he has now is his integrity and the respect of the Nigerian nation. He has not shown enough strength in punishing those stealing public funds because he wants to be politically correct. This is something the anti establishment Donald Trump in the US said he does not want to be. Yet President Buhari has more political power and acceptability in Nigeria to blaze a trail, than Trump has in the US for holding political correctness in contempt. Buhari has to do something unexpected and non-conformist to show Nigerians that those who steal public funds cannot get away with murder as at present. He can not do that by being politically correct under our present laws where even the Speaker says budget padding is not an offence and the presidency reportedly agreed. Once again, long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.