France Effectively Declares War on the United States
As Donald Trump's administration scrambles to make sense of what exactly happened in Saudi Arabia this weekend (who deployed the drones that hit two major oil facilities and sent shock waves through the oil markets?), it might be profitable to consider France, and particularly the recent doings and pronouncements of its present leader, Emmanuel Macron. It seems he is moving to fill a void left by Trump's unwise destruction of Obama's geopolitical program, which was continuous with (and not a break from) the US's long-established foreign-policy objectives. And Macron's move to international prominence will prove to be an excellent distraction from his never-ending domestic problems—the yellow jackets movement, his fall in the polls, and so on. As a shift in leadership is occurring in Berlin (Angela Merkel is stepping down), and London is stuck in the swamp of Brexit, Paris has been presented with a golden opportunity to step on the global stage and make itself known.
Before the surprise attack in Saudi Arabia, there was another surprise attack that happened at the G7 summit in August. Macron invited Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the event (which took place in Biarritz, France) without informing Trump's team. The US was simply blindsided by Macron and exposed as complete amateurs. And what Macron showed Europe is that France could run circles around the United States. And now this. The spectacular drone attack.
The structure of Iran's surprise G7 visit is the same as that of the surprise attack in Saudi Arabia. The first blindsided the US (and then the Kingdom); the second, the Kingdom (and then the US). As one left the world wondering how the US could be so in the dark of Marcon's maneuvering, the other left the whole world wondering how could 10 or so drones do so much damage so easily to the state's huge oil company, Aramco, which is preparing what many analysts predict will be the largest initial public stock offering in history (it's valued at $2 trillion)? And even if Iran was not directly involved in the strike, it's now very easy to imagine what would happen to the world's oil markets if the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen became an actual war, which would occur if the US attacked Iran.
A quick and excellent history of the proxy war in Yemen is outlined by Senator Chris Murphy in a series of tweets posted yesterday. Here's the first:
Link to tweet
Read more: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/16/41405093/france-effectively-declares-war-on-the-us
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