Upside down global order

Trump wants something similar and in fact declared it openly that the tariffs are to make other countries “kiss his a**. — AP

HERE’S an old story that we learnt in school. In the 17th century, every three years, the King of Siam would receive a Bunga Emas dan Perak, two small trees made of gold and silver, along with other valuable gifts such as weapons, goods, and slaves, from his vassal states of Terengganu, Kelantan, Kedah, Pattani, Nong Chik, Yala, Rangae, Kubang Pasu, and Setul. “The rulers of 17th century Kedah considered it a token of friendship, while the Siamese kings considered it a recognition of their suzerainty,” according to Wikipedia.

In other words, when there’s a difference in power between two entities, they can view the same thing rather differently. One thinks of it as a friendly gesture while the other sees it as a tribute given to a more powerful state. It was only when the British, an even more powerful entity, signed the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 that those golden flowers stopped going to Ayutthaya, then the royal capital of the Thai kingdom. Clearly the Kedah and other vassal state rulers deemed it necessary not to stop sending these tributes all those years for fear of retribution.

I thought of this history because we can see echoes of this happening again. The most powerful country in the world, the United States, has suddenly decided that its been taken advantage of by everyone else all these years and therefore the rest of the world should make that right. That might seem an upside-down way to look at the world but these are not normal times.

As Joseph Chinyong Liow, who holds the Tan Kah Kee Chair in comparative and international politics at Singapore’s National Technical University, wrote in The Washington Post, an imperial statement from the Ming Dynasty describing the 15th century Chinese tributary system declared: “When our Dynasty first arose, its awe-inspiring virtue gradually spread and became established. Wherever its name and influence reached, there were none who did not come to Court.”

Trump wants something similar and in fact declared it openly that the tariffs are to make other countries “kiss his a**”. Why they should do so to a country they’ve apparently “victimised” is another bit of illogic that we now have to contend with.

While we may think it’s only right and proper to hustle off to Washington to negotiate with the billionaire Howard Lutnick and trade representative Jamieson Greer, we should be mindful of how much a**-kissing we’ll be required to do just to get the tariffs down. Further-more, I’m not sure what we can offer in return. Lower tariffs on Coach and Tory Burch handbags that are made in China? Declare all our chip-making factories US territory so they can pretend they’re made in the US? Stop boycotting Starbucks?

There’s no guarantee that, no matter how much of Trump’s bottom we pucker up to, we will get the soft treatment. The tariffs, as far as anyone can tell, came solely out of the US President’s head. At any time, just as he has done already, he can reverse course, halt temporarily, change numbers, and do whatever else comes to mind as he quaffs yet another McDonald’s Big Mac. This might mean that our esteemed Trade Minister will have to spend a lot of time jetting to and from Washington DC negotiating endlessly. Think of how much money we could save if he just stayed home and used that American product, Google Meet.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re very syok sendiri, thinking that we’re so important in the eyes of the US government. After all, if they’re anything like Bill O’Reilly, the conservative political commentator, they think we’re very poor and can’t afford anything anyway. Besides McDonald’s of course, which has helped to make us the fattest people in South-East Asia.

Personally, I’m rather enjoying this whole drama in the US. It provides a good distraction from our own problems, like flags, incest, child abuse, and all that. I marvel at the very notion that a TV host would make a good Defence minister, or that a hillbilly can happily go to other countries and lecture them on how to govern themselves. But then leadership is everything isn’t it? Whatever the boss says goes, and everyone else just toes the line.

Mind you, there is something so familiar about all this. Don’t like migrants? Arrest and deport them. Don’t like protesters? Go after them, even if all they did was write an op-ed. Don’t like universities? Threaten them and attempt to keep them well under control. Don’t like the way the media is reporting? Just ban them.

Maybe that’s what they’re really importing from us. And it’s tariff-free too!

Marina Mahathir is trying to find some politician she can believe in anywhere in the world. The views expressed here are solely her own.