Headline News 02/02/2019

Headlines:

• America Announces Withdrawal from yet Another Treaty
• American Congress Calls for Continued Military Presence in Syria and Afghanistan
• Britain, France and Germany defy US in preparing for CTrade with Iran

Details:

America Announces Withdrawal from yet Another Treaty

According to the Independent:

The Trump administration has announced it is pulling out of a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, triggering fears of a new arms race between Washington and Moscow.

In a statement, Donald Trump said America would suspend its obligations under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty from Saturday, citing alleged Russian violations of the 32-year-long agreement.

At the same time, the US would begin the six-month process of withdrawing from the treaty completely, “unless Russia comes back into compliance” by destroying all its violating missiles and launchers, Mr Trump said.

The treaty, a centrepiece of nuclear arms control, banned both countries from possessing or test-firing ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 300 and 3,100 miles.

The withdrawal has been expected for months, and follows years of unresolved dispute over Russian compliance with the 1987 pact.

The West has been in a continuous arms race since the Industrial Revolution, two centuries back, devising and building weapons capable of destroying the entire of humanity many times over. America broke the back of the Soviet economy through massive spending on military technology, thereby ending the superpower status of its closest rival. And America is once again ramping up military spending to confront the threat of China, which is why it doesn’t want to be bound by the INF treaty with Russia.

In abandoning religion, the West turned to the atheistic values of freedom and democracy, which in effect deprive man of anything beyond the material; the result is an ideology that promotes Capitalist imperialism, seeking the exploitation of the entire world to benefit a small Western elite.

Islam dominated the world for a millennium but the Khilafah State, despite being the world’s superpower and possessor of the foremost military technology of its time, succeeded in spreading peace, harmony and prosperity throughout the world, and so sparingly resorted to its advanced technology that arms races were almost unheard of. With Allah’s permission, the re-established Islamic Khilafah State on the method of the Prophet (saw) shall challenge, confront and contain the Western military threat and return the world to a condition of peaceful stability as existed before.

American Congress Calls for Continued Military Presence in Syria and Afghanistan

According to the Washington Examiner:

On Thursday, the Senate gave President Trump a bipartisan slap on the wrist over his calls to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

With bipartisan support, lawmakers approved an amendment to a broader Middle East policy bill that warned that “the precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either country could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.”

The amendment, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refrained from directly attacking the president by name but clearly targeted his isolationist foreign policy approach: “it is incumbent upon the United States to lead, to continue to maintain a global coalition against terror and to stand by our local partners.”

President Donald Trump ran his election campaign on a commitment to withdraw US troops from lengthy foreign engagements but on entering office realised that he had to comply with the warmongering policies of the American establishment. Now that elections are again near, Trump has begun speaking again of military withdrawal, and it is this that has brought a strong reaction from the US Senate.

With the revival of the Muslim Ummah in recent decades, America knows that continued domination of Muslim lands will not be possible without significant military presence in Muslim countries. Furthermore, Muslim lands are located at the strategic centre of global geopolitics, so America is desperate to maintain control over these territories in order to support its superpower status. The American elite are quite willing to sacrifice wealth and blood to maintain their global hegemony, and they will always be able to find politicians like Trump, who are willing to carry out policies that contradict their campaign promises to the American people.

Britain, France and Germany defy US in preparing for Continued Trade with Iran

According to Business Insider:

In a major diplomatic and strategic split from the administration of US President Donald Trump, NATO and European allies, Britain, Germany, and France — or the E3, as they have referred to themselves — on Thursday announced a channel that circumvents intense US sanctions and effectively opens trade with Iran.

A statement from the E3 foreign ministers on Thursday announced the creation of "a new mechanism for facilitating legitimate trade with Iran" in order to preserve the Iran nuclear deal.

In establishing an alternative Euro-led trade channel that more or less flouts the kind of strict US trade sanctions that Chinese tech giant Huawei has run afoul of can only undermine US efforts to isolate both Iran and China and send signals from the White House to Moscow that once inseparable Western allies can be split.

Energy starved Europe is finding itself completely unable to comply with American demands to stop trading with oil-rich Iran. It was America that brokered the nuclear agreement under President Obama at a time that America desperately needed to use Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria. But America does not need these forces now and sees no need for Europe to continue to benefit from Iranian oil.

The Western powers sometimes collaborate and sometimes clash with each other. Sometimes Europe has supported America but at other times European powers have overtly or covertly pursued their own independent interests. This should give confidence to Muslims that they are fully able to independently manage their own affairs, if they pledge themselves to sincere, capable leadership instead of the present ruling class who are forever seeking benefit from collaboration with one or other Western power.

·       American Congress Calls for Continued Military Presence in Syria and Afghanistan