Trump’s Foreign Policy Goal

COMMON SENSE: If you want to understand what is happening in Iran, along with what has already happened in Venezuela, I’m going to explain it. It’s not what the experts on TV have to say. By understanding what I am about to write, it will open your eyes and provide you with wisdom few possess. I promise it will, so please pay careful attention. You won’t be disappointed.

With that stated, let me proceed. During the COVID 19 pandemic, do you remember the Chinese (CCP) threatening to cut off our supply of antibiotics? Having unwisely farmed the manufacture of antibiotics out to them over the years, not having access during the pandemic would have been catastrophic. The CCP used the threat effectively as leverage over us.

More recently, just last year, the CCP threatened to cut off our supply of rare earth metals, including magnets. They are necessary for computers and many other things. Again, this was used as coercive leverage to force the USA to do the bidding of the CCP. The threat was so real that, to counteract it, President Trump was compelled to take strong measures. To continue providing munitions for Ukraine to fight Russia, he required Ukraine to provide the USA with access to their rare earth metals.

Having allowed China to manufacture our pharmaceuticals and rare earth metals for years, we became dependent on them. Strategically, with the CCP being our global adversary, doing so was foolhardy, a major foreign policy blunder.

Now, with President Trump in charge, his goal in foreign policy has been to flip this strategic dependence model upside down. Here’s how he is doing it.

China, which requires 10 million barrels of oil a day to operate, does not produce its own supply. There’s a reason for this. China has almost no oil, but Venezuela and Iran do. They have an abundance of it. Venezuelan reserves are the world’s largest. Iran’s are the third largest. China has been the largest purchaser of oil from both, but their control over these countries has diminished greatly, based on Trump’s foreign policy initiatives.

With Venezuela now friendly to the USA, and regime change about to occur in Iran, becoming friendly to the USA as well, China’s power position in Venezuela and Iran has atrophied too practically nothing. This has been Trump’s strategic goal.

It means the next time China decides to put the squeeze on the USA, depriving us of this or that, they will have to factor in the potential loss of oil if they do.

In Realpolitik, as compared to Gefühlspolitik, which is political decisions driven by public sentiment, Trump has placed our global adversary in a very unenviable position. Adding insult to injury, because a friendly Iran will provide us with operational control over the Strait of Hormuz, oil from the Emirates will now be under the watchful eye of USA’s CENTCOM. Where the CCP is concerned, this is checkmate.

Remember, the nation that controls the world’s production of oil, which is quickly becoming the USA, will be the only true superpower for the next half century.