Mark Wignall | March to the drum of the new Imperialist

An early focus on Donald Trump’s state of mind begins with watching him that Monday as he strolled along the grounds of the White House, a baseball bat in one hand an\d Secret Service agents within sprinting distance of him. A political contemporary of his, with a ball in one hand approaches.

As much as it may not be mentally easy to process, Trump wants to play ball. So he demands that his guest let him have the use of the ball for a few days. The man says no. It is at that stage that it suits you to take a more intense look within all areas of Trump’s cognition.

Trump pouts in petulance and breaks out into a childish tantrum while accusing the man of disloyalty, disrespect, and cowardice. After all, how dare they refuse him anything.

I say all of that to impress upon you that any sort of war games or simulation of the tragic US-Israel vs Iran violent conflict would have had to feature an oil tanker blockade by Iran in the Straits of Hormuz and, therefore, it would make the waging of that war practically unsound and not worthy of further consideration. The strait moves 20 per cent of global oil.

Of his own volition, Trump would claim, he launched this ‘pre-emptive’ war and then when it suited him, he would claim that allies of the US should meekly accept the demands of the White House. He wants allies, most of whom he recently vilified, mainly because it is his nature to be crude and shameless on top of being notoriously incurious, to shiver at his voice.

Even with little to no constitutional pushback from the GOP-controlled Congress to give the war some sham legitimacy, the imperialist appetite has grown in him, and it seems that Trump, like an overstuffed manatee, is looking to graze at will in the Caribbean waters.

Amid the imperialist’s newest rattle of chains, and stating that it would be his ‘honour’ to take Cuba, it seems that the Cuban takeover has been in the planning for many months now.

THAT HUNGRY CUBAN SOLDIER

Think of this. The American warfare experts know that the Cuban military can still operate fairly efficiently in a calorie intake comparison with the US armed services. This has its limits, though. Duration and supply.

At the same time, the systematic starving of the general population of Cuba is just one way, and most effective, too, of a genocide by hunger without the need for gunfire. A half-hungry soldier is, basically, cannon fodder.

A dentist friend I’ve known for about two decades told me recently, “I know that at least 30 per cent of the Cuban doctors under threat of being sent home will choose to stay in Jamaica . The rest will go home. Of the 30 per cent, how many of those will be the invaluable eye docs is worth special consideration. .

“Many times I’ve wondered why is it our medical schools, or should I say the UWI graduating class from our Mona campus in 1976, when the Cubans first came to Jamaica (that’s 50 years of producing medical doctors) what percentage of them have gone into areas such as ophthalmology surgery or biomedical engineering, which the Cubans have helped us with .

“How many of those graduates have gone into those specialities? Fifty years of graduating medical doctors should amount to close to a thousand doctors. We need to encourage our graduates into these specialities.

“I employ a Cuban dentist, who prefers to work as my dental assistant and not do the board exam in Jamaica to qualify to work as a dentist. He’s been my assistant for 10 years and before that worked as a dentist in Venezuela for 11 years when Chávez was pals with Fidel.

“He told me that he had little of his salary given to him. The majority of it was sent back to Havana to the ‘communist’ [his words] there. The same is true for his brethren in Jamaica.”

Under the convenient renewal of the Monroe Doctrine, the USA wants not a hint of communism in Jamaica, whatever it is rumoured to be, or fashioned as, in 2026, hence Marco Rubio telling Andrew Holness to straighten up and fly right .

Jamaica needs its own medics to help their own. Our university should encourage this as the Cubans do on their own. My dentist friend added:

“This self-help is drilled into them from their very first day at medical or dental school . And as for dentists, the Cubans could help us tremendously in this field, too. Years ago, I worked in the government clinics in Kingston in the needy and depressed communities. The patients I had only had an interest in pulling teeth . You couldn’t get one to believe in preventative dentistry. The Cubans could help us there, doing cleaning, fillings, dentures, etc.”

DELICATE XI-TRUMP FACEOFF

China has been waiting on this moment at a time when America has been caught in its own web of power delusions by hanging on to the fascism being practised by Donald Trump. He may be cunning and devious, but he is plainly a geopolitical dunce.

America enjoyed dancing with the lightheaded George Bush in the early 2000s, flirted with the political embarrassment, Sarah Palin in 2008, and still, it seemingly gained nothing useful and inflicted more pain by electing the intellectual midget, Trump, twice after that.

Because of that international leadership vacuum, autocratic China is playing the US like a two-stringed guitar. While starving the Cuban economy and its people, including the elderly and the newborn, Trump forgot about the China option. With no oil in the lamps of the Cubans, Xi has stepped in with solar technology to ease the horrific fuel crisis. Any bets that Rubio and Trump will see the solar arrays in Cuba in 2026 and 2027 and pretend they do not exist?

As Trump aches to add super vitamins to the Monroe Doctrine, there is one nation in addition to the US that will have universal naval access in the Atlantic and in the Pacific close to the Hawaiian islands and the Indian Ocean over the next few years. The Americans will have to love it or lump it especially as they may find themselves leaning on China to use its pro-Iran alliances in gaining influence in the Straits of Hormuz.

If it lasts that long, over the next six months, the Middle East war will sap the political energy of Trump and his Cabinet of buffoons and create more nightmares for Netanyahu. No win is likely for either side as attrition rules, but the one who picked the fight has to pull back as the boots on the ground VietNam syndrome sets in and the limbs of US soldiers are blown off.

There will be no anaesthesia. The reset will continue the elevation of China.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.