No statement caused as much international wonder, shock and consternation last week as US President Donald Trump’s suggestion, with a beaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side during a Washington press conference, that Palestinians should be evicted from the Gaza Strip, into Egypt and Jordan, so that Israelis will live in peace, United States will clear the rubble and build a French style Riveira on Gaza’s Mediterranean shores.
No American president in living memory has ever made such an outlandish statement or proposed such an outrageous solution to a land dispute. As many American observers quickly pointed out, Trump is a career property developer, so his view of a waterfront piece of land is how many Trump Towers, plazas, hotels, shopping malls, casinos, holiday resorts, boulevards, conference centres and tourist camps can be erected in there. Historical attachment to homeland, nationhood claims, cemeteries of ancestors, monuments, places of worship, United Nations resolutions and all other considerations are of no consequence to Mr. Trump. The only other thing that matters is the presence of vast oil and gas fields off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, which the Israeli occupiers prevented its natives from exploiting all these decades.
Actually, an American land grab of Gaza was a small Trumpian afterthought after all the other land grabs he proposed in the only two weeks that he has been President of the United States. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter negotiated a treaty to hand the Panama Canal back to Panama and, with great difficulty, got the US Senate to ratify it. Trump now declares that he must grab back the Canal, allegedly because the Chinese are running it, though reporters who went there firmly assert that Panamanian officials are running it. Trump declared an intention for Denmark to sell Greenland to US in the same manner that the Russian Czars sold Alaska to it in 1867. And then, wonder of all wonders, Trump proposed that Canada should become the 51st American state. Canada has only a small army, so Trump might soon send the 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne and US Marine Corps to seize Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver, force the Canadians to “apply” for incorporation into USA, get the US Congress to “admit” it as the 51st state, the way it admitted Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.
Trumpian land grabs and re-grabs might not end there. Thirty-two years ago, the US handed Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base back to the Philippines after 90 years. If Mr. Trump were to find any Indians on those bases today, he will probably try to grab them back. The US still hangs on to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and has refused to hand it back since 1959 when Fidel Castro chased out old dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Others copied from the American example. Spain clings on to the coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, as well as Pennon de Alhucemas, Penon de Velez de la Gomera and Islas Chafarinas islands, brushing aside all demands from Morocco to hand them back. While clinging on to these two Moroccan enclaves, Spain shamelessly demands that Britain return to it control of Gibraltar, which the Brits snatched from the Spaniards in 1713. The French borrowed a leaf from them and are holding on to Mayotte Islands, which belong to Comoros; are also holding tightly to Glorioso Islands, which rightly belong to Madagascar.
I am just thinking. If this incipient Trump Doctrine of land grabs becomes the governing principle of international relations of the 21st century, hundreds of territorial disputes that dot the world’s map, on all continents and all regions of the world, including the high seas, will now be resolved by force of arms. What are the Western powers fighting for in Ukraine? Why not simply allow Russia to gobble up Crimea, which was Russian anyway until Nikita Khrushchev donated it to Ukraine in 1954? Vladimir Putin should throw out all non-Russian speakers from eastern regions of Ukraine and build a Sochi-like holiday resort there.
Look, the big power nations of Asia should solve the continent’s numerous land disputes using the Trumpian principle of daylight land grabs. China, for example, should end its territorial dispute with India by sending the 2.3-million strong Peoples Liberation Army to seize Aksain Chin. PLA should evict all Indians from the country’s Arunachal Pradesh State and annex it to the Peoples’ Republic. If South Korea can manage it, using hi-tech equipment made by Daewoo and Samsung, it should grab Baekdu Mountain from China and evict the Chinese.
Other Asian territorial disputes need simple Trumpian solutions. Taiwan, for example, should send its army to grab East Turkestan from China. What is Taiwan waiting for, that it will not grab Heixiazi/Bolshoy Ussuriysky from Russia? Indians, who recently overtook China as the world’s most populous country, are wasting time by not grabbing several disputed enclaves from Bangladesh. What about Kashmir? It is time to end that old dispute, if Pakistanis can throw out the Indians and unify the territory under their own rule.
Where are Burma’s Senior Generals? This their old dispute with China, they should end it by grabbing back Kachin State, throw out rebels from Kayin State and invite American developers to turn it into a Riveira along the Irrawaddy River. China is wasting time with decades-old territorial disputes; it should borrow a leaf from Trump, grab Pamir Mountains from Tajikistan and grab Wakhan Corridor from Afghanistan. Donald Trump’s old friend, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, is also wasting time; he should send his 1.3 million man, nuclear-armed army to grab disputed islands from South Korea. Philippines, a former American colony, should be inspired by Trump and should seize the Pattani region from Thailand.
Right now, China claims ownership of 64 Russian villages situated east of the Heilongjiang River; it should throw out the Russians to Mongolia and claim the villages! How about Taiwan? It should send troops to grab Russia’s Tannu Uriankhai region as well as China’s Trans-Karakoram Tract, and consolidate them under the Kuomintang. The Japanese are also coming to grab South Korea’s Liancourt Rocks, while China is looking to grab Macclesfield Bank from North Korea. Vietnam, with its battle-tested army that once routed the French and Americans, is looking to grab Paracel Islands from South Korea. All these are preludes to the mother of all Asian land grabs. While Trump’s troops are landing in Gaza, China’s Peoples Liberation Army will elude the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet and fulfill the Chinese Communist Party’s longest ambition of invading Taiwan and finally bringing it under CPC rule in a united China.
Racial, cultural and religious affiliations notwithstanding, Arabs should solve their territorial claims Trump style. Bahrain and Qatar should resolve their claims to Hawar Islands in the Persian Gulf by military means. Saudi Arabia should send soldiers to seize Qaruh and Umm al Maradim Islands from Kuwait. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards are more than enough to seize Lesser Tunb Islands from United Arab Emirates, Burj Khalifah’s glitzy heights notwithstanding. That old dispute between Iran and Iraq over Shatt al-Arab waterway; what are their soldiers waiting for?
In Central and South America, we should soon see Guatemala and Belize militarily resolving a border dispute. Bolivia should grab back an Atacama Desert tract that Chile seized in 1884. Peru and Ecuador should militarily resolve their three disputed border points. Although the Falkands War ended 43 years ago, where is Argentina’s General Basilio Lami Dozo to go back there, sink the HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible and retake Las Malvinas, South Georgia and Sandwich Islands from the Brits?
The former Soviet states of Moldavia and Ukraine should resolve the ownership of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina militarily. When Ukraine throws out Russian troops, it should also throw Romanians out of disputed areas of the Black Sea. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China’s tripartite claims to the Isfara Valley area should be settled by force. Remember Nagorno-Karabakh? Azerbaijan should grab it and throw out all the Armenians. Since 1945, Japan has been demanding that Russia returns to it the Kurile Islands. What is Japan’s Self Defence Forces waiting for, that it cannot drive the Red Army out of there in 80 years?
Here in Africa, please forget about African Union [AU] with its ponderous mechanisms for resolving territorial disputes. The Ogaden Region of Ethiopia, whose ownership is long disputed, should be simultaneously invaded by Ethiopian, Somali and Eritrean troops and whoever can grab it, should go ahead. Egypt is wasting time over the 20,000 sq km Hala’ib Triangle; while Sudan is currently in turmoil with two Generals fighting for control, why not send its million-man army to seize the Triangle using Trumpian principles? Any Sudanese living there should be sent to Darfur.
To the southwest of Sudan, we have this old dispute between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea over Corisco Bay Islands; one of them should send troops to seize it, damn AU and UN Security Council. It is even because Libya is in turmoil right now; when it gets back on its feet, it should use the remaining weapons left by Gaddafi to grab northern parts of Niger Republic, Chad’s Aouzou Strip, parts of south-eastern Algeria that it claims, as well as maritime areas of Tunisia that Libya long covets. What is Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros waiting for, that they will not, with the help of an African High Command, invade Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean and Chagos Archipelago, throw out the Brits and Americans with their long-range nuclear-armed bombers?
As for me, honestly, there are only four land disputes that I want to see resolved using the Trumpian principles. Brexit or no Brexit, Irish troops should march across the border and grab Northern Ireland, which Brits illegally excised from their country before it gained independence in 1919. I know that our Chief of Defence Staff General Chris Musa has his hands full with Operations Fansan Yamma and Lafiya Dole but he should spare troops to reclaim Bakassi peninsula from Cameroon, damn the Green Tree Agreement that Obasanjo signed in 2004. Since Donald Trump so much desires that Israelis live in peace, why not evacuate all of them to Wyoming, North Dakota or even Alaska, there to rebuild their kibbutz on more fertile soil? Afterall, like the Yankees, all the Ashkenazi Jews came to Israel from Europe, whereas Gazans have never been to any other place.
Finally, Mexico should stop pussyfooting and send its soldiers across the Rio Grande to reclaim Texas from the United States. Just because it lost the US-Mexican War in 1848, should it sit askance and allow cowboys with their long hats to be treading all over Texas and awarding undeserved right-wing votes to Donald Trump?
