India, South Africa, and the Trump Mediation Misconception
There’s a strange rhythm to Donald Trump’s diplomacy style– half bluster, half improvisation, and nearly entirely untethered from diplomatic fact. In the past month, the globe saw 2 glaring instances of this: one in Washington, where Trump’s conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa turned into a phenomenon of disrespect, and one more in South Asia, where he asserted to have actually brokered peace between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.
Both events, though vastly various in context, reveal something important about just how American ego– when unchecked– can clash headlong with countries that no longer see themselves as junior partners in the global order.
The South African Head Of State Who Really Did Not Flinch
Let’s begin with the White Residence. Ramaphosa had actually hardly worked out right into his seat when Trump disrupted him, repeatedly, prior to playing a video clip that peddled the long-debunked conspiracy theory of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was a scene that can have quickly spiraled right into polite calamity. However Ramaphosa didn’t flinch.