The Blogs: Donald Trump is already correcting the course of history – Part I | Christian Rudolf Hamann

Saving Israel from the UN

On September 13, 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution against Israel, calling on it, among other things, to end the “genocide” in the Gaza Strip and the “illegal occupation” of the Palestinian territories. This unjust resolution calls into question the existence of the Jewish state within a year by ordering the withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by ultimatum.

After decades of incessant distortion of history and Israel’s legal position and after more than a year of propaganda in the Gaza war with absurd accusations of genocide, the mood around the world has been whipped up against the Jewish state. In this environment, after the ultimatum expired, Israel might have lost its UN membership in accordance with Article 6 of the UN Charter.

But under the impression of Trump’s election and his threats against Hamas, a new UN resolution was passed on December 3rd. Although it repeats the false accusations and narratives against the Jewish state like a mantra, it offers constructive advances for a final, peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict for the first time. This change is an important but only small part of the global impact of Trump’s election on November 5th, 2024 – and this is already weeks before he takes office.

Learning from past mistakes

After 13 years of civil war in Syria, the fact that Islamist militias ended it just after Trump’s election requires an explanation. It is not surprising that the victorious jihadists are close to Turkey. But when these people, some of whom come from the circles of ISIS and Al Qaeda, suddenly announce peaceful coexistence with Christians, the reconstruction of the country and the repatriation of refugees, it is a reason to take a closer look.

In particular, after decades of being prevented from learning from past mistakes, the time has come to take a critical look back at the “program” that has now ended so abruptly and that has kept a civil war going in Syria for so many years. The country was depopulated by a good half – but couldn’t be freed from the supposedly dangerous President Assad. It took HTS Islamists to show that something like this could be done within 11 days, even without major bloodshed. Remarkably, they are beginners compared to the CIA and the US military, who have already shown in dozens of operations all over the world (with a focus on Latin America) that regime change is a routine task for them. The explanation for such inconsistencies is provided by comparable actions – while learning from them Western citizens were also hindered.

These were similarly drawn-out wars and civil wars with US involvement in Guatemala (36 years), Vietnam (20 years), Iraq (almost 9 years) and Afghanistan (20 years), among others. At their respective times, these wars should have raised the vigorous question in the media as to how manipulative influences by war-interested forces (namely MIC) could have caused such absurd delays.1) But this did not happen – because the same groups of people also influence the media.

The birth of an immoral strategy

Regardless of the question of possible manipulation, some of the effects of such long-term wars are beyond question. The affected population gradually loses its livelihood and mass exodus sets in. Aid organizations care for the uprooted people on site or work to take in the refugees in developed countries.

During the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), there was extensive persecution of Christians. However, European politicians responded to this not only by taking in their oppressed brothers and sisters in faith, but also indiscriminately Muslims. The migration movements during this long civil war thus had the side effect of spreading Islam in Europe.

This gesture that Europeans saw as cosmopolitan in reality was naive and unworldly. Almost certainly, it was even highly destructive, as it provided a motive to people in power to inflict war and violence on entire countries, accepting the death and impoverishment of millions of people.

The likelihood of this working out is as high as the likelihood that Muslim leaders and the Western forces associated with them realized that there is no more effective mechanism for spreading Islam than protracted wars and civil wars in Muslim countries, as these sustain large-scale refugee movements. The empathy-free willingness to sacrifice one’s own people, especially soldiers, in the supposed interest of the group and in the real power interests of the leaders has been standard in autocracies for thousands of years. Islamists have taken it to new extremes, with Hamas, among others, providing vivid examples.2) In addition, the miserable conditions during war keep birth rates high, which makes it possible to compensate for the losses, while aid organizations prevent people from starving.

The elected Syrian President Assad, who was branded a brutal monster by the CIA with media support3), had for years served the American military and secret services as the pretext to keep on being involved in the civil war there – without putting an end to it and to the resulting refugee movements.

In his pretext function, however, Assad was already a replacement figure that had to be installed by propaganda, after the original pretext had been combating IS. However, thanks to the targeted intervention of the Russian air force, this terrorist group was eliminated at the end of 2018, except for scattered remnants. The extensive Western media agitation, which accompanied the Russian missions, confirms the assessment that in influential circles, the solution to the conflict was undesired. This was confirmed by the considerable resistance which Trump faced then when enforcing an American troop deduction.

Under Biden, again 2000 US soldiers are in Syria – which immediately after Assad’s escape fly against IS and thus reactivate the original pretext for their presence. However, the renewed or continuing IS threat in particular offers Turkey a potential pretext to take over the function of a protective power once the HTS militias should be overwhelmed.

The autocratic ambitious forces, which have been waging a combined propaganda and migration war against the nations of free civilization for decades, have decided to change strategy under the impression of Donald Trump’s choice. This upheaval offers the unique opportunity to insight into the hidden machinations of great politics. The 180-degree application of the new rulers in Damascus with al-Qaida background is of course incredible as a “wonderful” ad hoc change towards non-violence and fairness. In contrast, the coherence with other events after November 5, 2024 shows the true character of a calculated strategy change for a limited time window. For example, this is consistent with the foreseeable change of government in Germany, where a more restrictive refugee policy is expected from February onwards.

Turkey’s large-scale ambitions

Turkey’s new orientation also fits in with this, towards Europe as well as towards Inner Asia and the Arab world. – Similar to the Arab view of Israel, the Turkish view of Europe also has a revanchist side. It was European powers – namely the victors of the First World War – that caused the Ottoman Empire to lose its Arab possessions, because the Arabs, who were always inferior in military terms, could never have freed themselves on their own. But the possibility of sending guest workers since 1961, especially to Germany, has opened the prospect of an unofficial but functioning type of long-term demographic conquest – backed on patience and an asymmetrical demographic development. An applied for but rejected accession to the EU would have accelerated and legalized the process.

But the Arab parallel societies in Europe, which have been growing rapidly, particularly since the civil war in Syria, have thwarted such prospects. Since Merkel opened the gates wide in 2015, at the latest, the signs no longer point to a long-term and harmonious development, but to a hasty and destabilizing one. Secondly, the Arab group in Europe is outperforming the Turkish group. From the Turkish perspective, a rival Muslim group in an unstable development that may be accompanied by outbreaks of violence stands in the way of a long-term and peaceful demographic conquest.

The irrational escalation in Ukraine even indicates that such conditions could occur prematurely. Unlike naive politicians in the EU, Erdogan has wisely kept Turkey out of the intra-European war. In the event of an escalation to world war, his country would have been the actual victor, with various rivals weakening or eliminating each other.

But with Trump’s election, everything will change. Above all, the prospect of a near-term collapse in stability in Europe – on the migration-related level and, after taking office on January 20, also on the military level – is no longer a threat (supposed that the Europeans don’t thwart Trump’s peace initiative). Turkey has already implemented the strategic realignment adapted to this at the earliest possible date – on November 6, 2024. On this day, representatives of the Organization of Turkic States met in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. This includes countries in which languages closely related to Turkish are spoken. Full members are the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as Turkey. There are also three countries with observer status, namely Turkmenistan, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Hungary.

This association, which was only founded in 2009, is kept in the background in the media. This means that the fact that Turkey was the main beneficiary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 remains outside Western people’s consciousness. At that time, five Turkic-speaking former Soviet republics, whose total area exceeds that of India, seceded. For Turkey, uniting these in a federation or union is only a matter of time and, above all, of finding the right strategic time.

The election of Trump has postponed this point further, because first new strategies must be put in place towards Arabia and Europe. Although Hungary only has observer status and, as a Christian country, occupies a marginal position among Muslim ones, Victor Orban received a special honorary award at the conference in Bishkek.4) With Hungary as a bridge, the organization is now seeking closer proximity to the EU, bringing Turkey back to the time of its accession efforts. The next conference will take place in Budapest.

But unfortunately, the initiative cannot represent an authentic opening towards liberal civilization. For many years, Erdogan’s policies have deviated further and further from the reform course of the forward-looking founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal (Kemal Atatürk), by joining the growing Islamist movement in the country. In contrast, Atatürk had already eliminated the influence of Islam on politics around 100 years ago and subjected the representatives of the religious community to state control. Under him, also Sharia was replaced by a legal structure developed by parliament.

By clarifying the hierarchy between religion and the republican state, Atatürk had opened the door to a liberal, democratic development. As a leading Muslim nation, Turkey could have helped Islam to achieve steadily improving compatibility with the European-influenced cultural area on this reform course. Just as the Catholic Church had to be separated from its anti-freedom collaboration with the feudal nobility and to be persuaded to recognize scientific findings, the pressure for reform on the Islamic leaders built up by Kemal Atatürk also had to be maintained.

A momentous setback

In the meantime, Turkey and with it the entire Islamic world has fallen far behind the reform successes of Atatürk. This is partly due to Atatürk himself, as he as a field marshal relied on the power and loyalty of the military. As he had intended, the military actually took over the protection of his reform work for decades (in a weakened form until the failed coup in 2016). – But like the democratic principle in general, Kemalism in particular requires constant and well-considered further development. The military, on the other hand, can at best guarantee the preservation of what has been achieved – and even then only if the principles to be defended are deeply internalized. However, this is too much for the military, which is used to dealing with dangers on a physical level, not on a psychological and ideological one.

The real, truly gigantic blame for the reform setback lies in the Judeo-Christian cultural area and its amateurish position towards political Islam. Instead of taking up the relevant insights of Hegel and later Atatürk and encouraging their further development, the practical politics of the liberal nations ignored the insufficient compatibility between political Islam and the principles of the constitutional rule of law out of ignorance, convenience and cowardice. Without being exposed to the appropriate pressure for reform necessary for peaceful coexistence, reactionary counterforces were able to prevail within Islam, which led to ideological hardening, increasing politicization and diverse radicalization. This ideologically rigid and partially radicalized Islam is the main obstacle that blocks an authentic and not just strategically calculated rapprochement of Turkey with Europe.

Additionally, Turkey’s authentic rapprochement was blocked by nationalism. As much as Atatürk’s secular state model was close to Western democracies, his Turkish nationalism was far away from the patriotism open to integration that is found in particular in continent-sized states such as the USA, Brazil or Russia. Unlike patriots, nationalists show little compatibility with other ethnic groups. Historically, for members of minorities such as Armenians, Greeks and Kurds in Turkey, this meant discrimination, and in times of war, even persecution and murder.5)

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