Middle East offers Trump a chance to prove his critics wrong
Donald Trump’s claim that Google’s search engine is biased against him has spurred media mavens to rush to defend a tech giant regarded jointly with Facebook as “the public enemy number one for newspapers and journalism”.
Overlooking the awkward irony of the gang-up, the US president and other conservatives suspect Google bumps up news and search results that are unfavourable to them because of its perceived liberal bias.
A surer way for Trump to hold Google, Facebook and Twitter to account for any ideological hanky-panky in their algorithms would be to first take a number of indisputably correct foreign-policy decisions (since the US economy is powering along at an impressive pace and offers no scope for improvement).
In the Middle East, this would mean changing course to re-insert the US onto regional politics, instead of accepting the dominance of Russia, Iran and Turkey as a fait accompli.
The waffling and timidity that marked the early stages of the Trump presidency compounded the strategic errors of the Obama administration, allowing the perpetrators of some of the worst war crimes of this century to gain the upper hand in the defining conflicts of our time.
It is past time for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to be disabused of the notion that, with the Daesh threat tackled for now, the Kurds of northeastern Syria who helped the US-led international coalition accomplish this mission will be left to fend for themselves.
Acting in tandem with Washington’s regional partners, Trump should use every arrow in his foreign-policy quiver to make Assad understand that prevailing over opponents in a series of battles does not amount to winning the war, still less regaining a lost legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the US sanctions targeting Tehran that are steadily snapping back into place ought to give Assad a sobering impression of the steep price the people of Iran are paying partly for their leaders’ efforts to prop him up with the help of Moscow.
Trump’s other top priority should be to warn Assad and his overseas backers that in view of the high risk of civilian casualties, an assault on Idlib province in the name of “wiping out” Al-Qaeda-linked armed groups will be punished with much more than a few missile strikes.
The moves on Syria should be paired with an increase in American diplomatic and economic pressure on the Baghdad government – the objective being to remind Iraq’s Shiite politicians across the spectrum that they do not have a monopoly on power.
Iraq’s vulnerable minorities – Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrian Christians, and Yezidis among others – may not have won as many seats in parliament in the May elections as the Shiite blocs did, but democracy is as much about majority rule as it is about the protection of individual and minority rights.
From now on, leaders of Iraq’s rival factions should be under no illusion about US resolve to stay the course in the fight against Daesh remnants, to jostle for influence with Iran at every step, and to nudge their nascent democracy in the right direction.
With regard to Turkey and Iran, Trump should ideally stay above the fray instead of indulging in bluster and bravado via Twitter while the leaders of the two countries grapple with their debt and currency challenges.
Having taking advantage of a brief period of American declinism and the international community’s collective shrug to expand their influence in the Middle East, Turkey and Iran now find themselves dealing with a reality check that has come not a moment too soon.
Even if Trump could manipulate the US dollar by some sleight of hand to ease the suffering of the silent Iranian and Turkish masses, he would be able at best to make a minor dent in their leaders’ lengthy catalogues of self-inflicted wounds.
In a sense, Trump’s idiosyncrasies and obsession with “fake media” and “left-wing media” have proved useful in diverting his attention from the agonies of Iran and Turkey, denying their governments the chance to rally public opinion around their failed policies by pointing to his tweets and taunting.
All of this in no way means that Trump is undeserving of Google news and search results favourable to his administration.
On the contrary, his penchant for blunt statements, hard bargaining, and unabashed bad-cop acts appears to be advancing American interests at a pace matched by few of his recent predecessors.
Indeed, the word is that the Trump administration has a none-too-secret containment strategy aimed at ensuring America’s global leadership by cutting strategic rivals down to size and reinvigorating ties with allies and partners.
Against this backdrop, only Google knows for sure whether its search engine ranks results fairly and objectively or to reflect a certain political ideology.
But as the leader of the world’s sole superpower, whose rivals are sitting on such ticking time bombs as civil wars, deadly insurgencies, crashing economies, and a strong dollar, Trump is frankly better placed than most to swing Google search results in his favour.
Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Overlooking the awkward irony of the gang-up, the US president and other conservatives suspect Google bumps up news and search results that are unfavourable to them because of its perceived liberal bias.
A surer way for Trump to hold Google, Facebook and Twitter to account for any ideological hanky-panky in their algorithms would be to first take a number of indisputably correct foreign-policy decisions (since the US economy is powering along at an impressive pace and offers no scope for improvement).
In the Middle East, this would mean changing course to re-insert the US onto regional politics, instead of accepting the dominance of Russia, Iran and Turkey as a fait accompli.
The waffling and timidity that marked the early stages of the Trump presidency compounded the strategic errors of the Obama administration, allowing the perpetrators of some of the worst war crimes of this century to gain the upper hand in the defining conflicts of our time.
It is past time for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to be disabused of the notion that, with the Daesh threat tackled for now, the Kurds of northeastern Syria who helped the US-led international coalition accomplish this mission will be left to fend for themselves.
Acting in tandem with Washington’s regional partners, Trump should use every arrow in his foreign-policy quiver to make Assad understand that prevailing over opponents in a series of battles does not amount to winning the war, still less regaining a lost legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the US sanctions targeting Tehran that are steadily snapping back into place ought to give Assad a sobering impression of the steep price the people of Iran are paying partly for their leaders’ efforts to prop him up with the help of Moscow.
Trump’s other top priority should be to warn Assad and his overseas backers that in view of the high risk of civilian casualties, an assault on Idlib province in the name of “wiping out” Al-Qaeda-linked armed groups will be punished with much more than a few missile strikes.
The moves on Syria should be paired with an increase in American diplomatic and economic pressure on the Baghdad government – the objective being to remind Iraq’s Shiite politicians across the spectrum that they do not have a monopoly on power.
Iraq’s vulnerable minorities – Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrian Christians, and Yezidis among others – may not have won as many seats in parliament in the May elections as the Shiite blocs did, but democracy is as much about majority rule as it is about the protection of individual and minority rights.
From now on, leaders of Iraq’s rival factions should be under no illusion about US resolve to stay the course in the fight against Daesh remnants, to jostle for influence with Iran at every step, and to nudge their nascent democracy in the right direction.
With regard to Turkey and Iran, Trump should ideally stay above the fray instead of indulging in bluster and bravado via Twitter while the leaders of the two countries grapple with their debt and currency challenges.
Having taking advantage of a brief period of American declinism and the international community’s collective shrug to expand their influence in the Middle East, Turkey and Iran now find themselves dealing with a reality check that has come not a moment too soon.
Even if Trump could manipulate the US dollar by some sleight of hand to ease the suffering of the silent Iranian and Turkish masses, he would be able at best to make a minor dent in their leaders’ lengthy catalogues of self-inflicted wounds.
In a sense, Trump’s idiosyncrasies and obsession with “fake media” and “left-wing media” have proved useful in diverting his attention from the agonies of Iran and Turkey, denying their governments the chance to rally public opinion around their failed policies by pointing to his tweets and taunting.
All of this in no way means that Trump is undeserving of Google news and search results favourable to his administration.
On the contrary, his penchant for blunt statements, hard bargaining, and unabashed bad-cop acts appears to be advancing American interests at a pace matched by few of his recent predecessors.
Indeed, the word is that the Trump administration has a none-too-secret containment strategy aimed at ensuring America’s global leadership by cutting strategic rivals down to size and reinvigorating ties with allies and partners.
Against this backdrop, only Google knows for sure whether its search engine ranks results fairly and objectively or to reflect a certain political ideology.
But as the leader of the world’s sole superpower, whose rivals are sitting on such ticking time bombs as civil wars, deadly insurgencies, crashing economies, and a strong dollar, Trump is frankly better placed than most to swing Google search results in his favour.
Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.