US a power in decline?

Sat, 28 Jan 2017 12:32:10 +0000

BIBLICAL character King Nebuchadnezzar, like Donald John Trump, was a proud, arrogant monarch who presided over one of the most powerful nations in world history and a classic example of how God can bring a proud man and his kingdom to their knees.

Nebuchadnezzar ruled the world empire Babylon from 605 to 562 B.C., greatly expanding his kingdom, conquering other powerful nations at the time, including the Jewish capital Jerusalem, and deporting the Jews in the process across the modern-day Europe and Asia Minor.

The Babylonian pagan king is best remembered for his iconic dream which his magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and fortune tellers failed to interpret. It had to take the courage and opportunism of Jewish death row prisoner and prophet Daniel to unravel for the king the great mystery of his dream.

Former Finance minister Alexander Chikwanda, in his prophetic article ‘‘Trump’s script anchored on over-simplifications’’, gives a profound summation of the  United States president’s comical but dangerous view of the world which has startling similarities to the conduct of Nebuchadnezzar in his second year reign as the world’s most powerful man at the time.

Mr Chikwanda describe’s President Trump’s inaugural speech as ‘‘somewhat revolutionary. Overall, there was total lack of vision – some outrageous over-simplifications which, in a global context, were adrift or at variance with reality and likely to roll back the frontiers of international cooperation’’.

Indeed to many world observers, especially here in Africa, Donald Trump’s conduct and pronouncements in the first 10 days of his presidency was a fine example of a world political power in decline. It provided a brilliant overview of world events yet to come that will define the United States of America as perhaps the last human world power.

President Trump’s isolationist policy which he hopes will make ‘‘America great again’’ is hollow, empty rhetoric which will reduce the United States from a world economic, technological and military power to a laughing stock and a nation in turmoil.

In other words, left to his own designs, Donald Trump will tear America apart and reduce it to a banana republic. This is what Nebuchadnezzar’s dream foretold. The four kingdoms that the king saw crashing down were Babylon, Persia, Greece and the Roman Empire.

There is debate over the fifth one – the one which is a mixture of clay and iron. Other Bible scholars call it the Anglo-American world power. This is the military, political and economic alliance between the United States and Britain who have literally ‘‘ruled’’ the world since the end of the Second World War.

As Mr Chikwanda points out, there are great risks to President Trump’s miscued partisan interest to reincarnate America of the 60s and 70s. Which countries will accept to be America’s doormat or play second fiddle to its military and economic ambitions?

Certainly not China or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Not to mention North Korea. That kind of arrogance and selfishness is what fueled the arms race of the 50s and 60s, resulting in the current massive stockpiles of nuclear arsenals.

To crown it all, President Trump wants the US to quit the United Nations and he has declared he will evict the world body from New York. The UN was a brainchild of America’s forefathers who felt that it was safer for bitter world political rivals to sit together on a roundtable glaring at each other than smouldering with anger in their country’s capitals.

Donald Trump’s streak of megalomania, as Mr Chikwanda calls it, is a threat to world peace. No country, and certainly not modern-day China, will accept to be an appendage of the United States. The world needs each other to prosper equally and equitably through unrestricted trade and live in peace without any nation thinking it was more superior or powerful than the rest.

Nebuchadnezzar is a living illustration of how God deals with the humankind. President Trump must learn from history if he does not want the United States to be the former world power.