WORLD TRENDSTUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY III
Abrupt Shifts
Unnerve U.S. Allies
This article is by David D.
Kirkpatrick, Ben Hubbard
and David M. Halbfinger.President Donald J. Trump’s
surprise acquiescence to a
Turkish incursion into northern
Syria this month has shaken
American allies, and not just
because it was
a betrayal of a
loyal partner.
What alarmed
them even more was his sheer
unpredictability.
His inconsistent and rapidly
shifting positions in the Middle
East have injected a new ele-
ment of chaos into a volatile re-
gion and have left allies guess-
ing where the United States
stands and for how long.
Previous American policy-
makers were clear about their
intentions, said Mowaffak al-
Rubaie, a former Iraqi national
security adviser. “This guy is
all emotional,” he said.
The uncertainties only com-
pound worries about the dura-
bility of the American commit-
ment to the Middle East.
American presidents have
been promising for almost 15
years to reduce the country’s
presence in the region, unnerv-
ing partners like Israel and the
Persian Gulf monarchs that
rely on American protection.
But few American leaders have
ever made and disclosed major
foreign policy decisions with
the speed and seeming improvi-
sation that Mr. Trump does.
Analysts say many allies are
now concerned that this unpre-
dictable commander in chief
could bolt without warning.
His decision to get out of the
way of the Turkish incursion
was apparently made on the
spur of the moment during a
phone call with the Turkish
president. It opened the door
to a fierce Turkish assault on
the American-backed militia
led by the Syrian Kurds, which
was key to the ground battle to
retake territory captured by the
Islamic State.
This was just the latest in a
series of flip-flops in American
policy in the region, including
two in Syria this year alone. In
December, Mr. Trump prom-
ised to withdraw all 2,000 or so
American forces there. But he
later changed his mind, with-
drawing about half.
He has warned that the Unit-
ed States was “locked and load-
ed” for military action against
Iran. But when Iran shot down
an American surveillance
drone this summer, Mr. Trump
reversed himself in the final
minutes to call off a planned
missile strike. Then last month,
he denounced Iran for orches-
trating an attack on Saudi oilfacilities but declined to take
military action.
Critics say that Mr. Trump’s
zigzagging policies have
emboldened regional foes,
unnerved American partners,
and invited Russia and various
regional players to seek to exert
their influence.
Michael Stephens, a scholar
at the Royal United Services
Institute in London, said, “The
region is in chaos because the
hegemonic power does not
seem to know what it wants to
do, and so nobody else does.”
Even in Britain, a close ally,
“nobody knows what to do any-
more,” Mr. Stephens said.
Mr. Trump insists he is acting
consistently and has said he
was fulfilling a campaign prom-
ise to get out of conflicts around
the Middle East.
To critics, his shifting posi-
tions show his fickleness.
Other countries are scurry-
ing to adapt to the new reality.
“Many nations around the
Middle East now are consid-
ering major changes in their
strategic defense plans because
they no longer see the United
States as a reliable ally,” said
Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, an
adviser to the Al Ahram Center
for Strategic Studies in Cairo.“It will be very difficult to con-
vince nations of the Middle East
that the United States is serious
about what it says.”
Since the American military
presence in the region reached
its apex with the invasion of
Iraq in 2003, all presidents have
tried to cut back.
President Barack Obama
sought to pull out of Afghani-
stan but instead sent a surge of
more troops to try to achieve
enough stability to ease a with-
drawal — a gambit that failed to
achieve that goal. He withdrew
American troops from Iraq in- But his critics say the pull-
out enabled the emergence of
the Islamic State, which seized
a large portion of Iraq and Syria
in 2014, drawing the United
States military back in.
Mr. Obama’s experience
might now serve as a caution-
ary tale to Mr. Trump, who risks
allowing a resurgence of the
Islamic State by pulling back in
Syria, argued Michele Dunne, a
scholar at the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace.
But unlike Mr. Trump, Mr.
Obama “said from the begin-
ning that he wanted to pull the
U.S. troops out of Iraq.”
Steven Erlanger and David
Sanger contributed reporting.With Trump seen
as unpredictable,
uncertainty reigns.
NEWS
ANALYSISAmerican Titans Bend to China
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
and CHRIS BUCKLEY
BEIJING — Back in the Cold
War, the rigid Soviet system
proved no match for the lure of
American entertainment: rock
’n’ roll, Coca-Cola, Hollywood.
All became symbols of American
freedom and prosperity that no
amount of communist prohibitions
could stop.
Today, selling American cre-
ativity and talent increasingly
demands submission to the views
of the Communist Party as the
price of admission to a market of
1.4 billion.
A recent furor that began with
a tweet by a National Basketball
Association executive in support
of the Hong Kong protests has
underscored the consequences of
China’s willingness to use its vast
economic clout to police any polit-
ical values that threaten the par-
ty’s legitimacy or its policies.
For years, American companies
have yielded to Chinese demands
to tailor their words and prod-
ucts, as Hollywood studios now
regularly do, or to apologize. The
reward is continued access to Chi-
nese customers; the price may be
the erosion of American credibili-
ty as a beacon of free speech.
“When it comes to national sov-
ereignty, the Chinese government
is signaling loud and clear that it
would rather be feared than loved,”
said Jessica Chen Weiss, a profes-
sor of government at Cornell Uni-
versity in Ithaca, New York.
The Houston Rockets general
manager, Daryl Morey, immedi-
ately deleted the tweet that start-
ed the commotion, but it was too
late. The N.B.A.’s plans for China
were suddenly gutted. Broadcasts
were canceled, sponsorships sus-
pended. The league faced denun-
ciations from state news media
and fans, who tore up tickets for an
exhibition game between the Los
Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn
Nets in Shanghai.
Chinese authorities appeared,
belatedly, to grasp the conse-
quences of the furor and moved to
temper reports and commentary
about the N.B.A.
“Even with the N.B.A., if you
take to hurling abuses, or using
linguistic violence, like hatred and
invective, that will only make the
problems even more complicated,
and they may become more seri-
ous,” said Tong Zeng, a business-
man in Beijing who has been in-
volved in protests and campaigns
against Japan.
For an emerging superpower,
China can seem thin-skinned, and
its reactions petulant. Lady Gaga
faced a temporary ban on perfor-
mances and sales in China in 2017
after she met the Dalai Lama, theTibetan spiritual leader whom the
Communist Party denounces as
a separatist. Last year, Gap was
forced to apologize for selling a
T-shirt showing a map of China
that did not contain Taiwan or is-
lands in the South China Sea.
Jonathan McClory, the gener-
al manager for Asia for Portland
Communications and the editor
of an annual survey on soft pow-
er published with the University
of Southern California, said such
responses were “not a good look.”
“This reaction will have a neg-
ative impact on how people per-
ceive China, not just in the United
States, but around the world,” he
added.
The N.B.A. has a large and fer-
vent following in China, and it has
tried to capitalize on that. It islooking to China as a major market
and as a recruiting ground.
Mr. Morey’s comment appeared
to ignite a buildup of frustration
with the United States that has
mounted amid the trade war. The
protests in Hong Kong, which have
raged through the summer, have
compounded that. Although the
government massaged public opin-
ion, the outrage seemed genuine.
Xu Guyong, a 46-year-old civ-
il servant, attended the recent
game in Shanghai. He and his son,
13, wore Lakers jerseys. Yet he still
condemned Mr. Morey’s tweet.
“If people in China say we
should boycott N.B.A., I’m all
for it,” he said. “I would answer
the country’s calling and give up
watching.”
The league rushed to contain
the fire, offering an apology and
distancing itself from Mr. Mo-
rey’s view — only to face its own
backlash for seeming to pander to
Beijing. To some Americans, the
episode amounted to China un-
dermining one of America’s basic
rights: free speech.
Hollywood already self-censors,
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican
of Florida, said on Twitter. “Now
private citizens risk losing their
jobs if they offend China.”
But Mr. McClory noted that in
today’s world, commercial in-
terests trumped any intention to
promote a set of political values.
“The N.B.A. looks at China not as
a place to go out and fly the flag for
the U.S. or to trumpet the values
of democracy and free speech,” he
said. “They want to be there, to put
it bluntly, for profit motives.”
The N.B.A. is struggling to find
a way to make amends. When a
journalist recently tried to ask two
members of the Houston Rockets
if they still felt comfortable com-
menting on social and political is-
sues, a media officer for the Rock-
ets stepped in to curtail any reply.
“Excuse me,” said the officer,
“we are taking basketball ques-
tions only.”Claire Fu, Amber Wang and Lin
Qinqing contributed reporting.
HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
The National Basketball Association is trying to repair its relationship with China.
Ideals are no match
for access to a
market of 1.4 billion.