Obsession with ompeo’s regime change has left America isolated as ever.

Two events last week underscore just how isolated Donald Trump’s America is in the world. The first was a speech on August 12 in Prague by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who succeeded in sidesteping any pressing issue on European security and democracy. The second, two days later, was a UN Security Council vote on extending an arms embargo against Iran, which the United States lost by the largest margin in the Council’s history.

Pompeo’s speech was very strange. Delivered in the Senate of the Czech Republic, one of the few remaining bastions of democracy in post-communist Central Europe, it contained only one sentence about Russia, nothing about threats to Ukraine or the rigged elections in Belarus or the rise of illiberalism in Hungary and Poland as the dangers of a fragmented European Union.

Instead, he focused almost entirely on China – or, rather, the Chinese Communist Party, which he claimed was “completely separate from the Chinese people,” a “regime” with “a Marxist-Leninist core.” He went further and declared: ‘What is happening now is not Cold War 2.0. The challenge of resisting the CCP threat is somehow much more difficult ”- this for an audience that remembers the 1968 Soviet coup which left their country occupied by five Red Army tank divisions and a harsh dictatorship for the next 22 years.

The Pompeo theme was not entirely out of place. China is a very controversial issue in Czech politics. Czech President Milos Zeman, who is closely linked to businessmen with major interests in China, has said he wants his country to be an “unintended carrier of Chinese investment expansion” in Europe. In contrast, Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib aroused the ire of Beijing by proving Tibetan independence (even flying the Tibetan flag over town hall) and planning an official visit, with a large delegation, to Taiwan – a move that forced Beijing to cancel a Chinese tour the Czech Philharmonic.

Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in an email that many Czechs see China’s dominance of Tibet and Taiwan “from their own national experience, and Pompeo played for that. ” Daalder continued, however, his speech came in “the whole week when Belarus exploded and when Turkey and Greece (with French help) threatened to blow” – he did not, however, spend any of his time “dealing with the crisis at the door of Europe. Remarkable! “

Just last month, Pompeo delivered a similar, albeit unfavorable, speech in the Richard Nixon library, which essentially called for regime change in China, and even suggested that Russia – which he did not criticize in the least – was a worthy ally. in this crusade may be, an idea that Russian specialists on Moscow-Beijing relations dismissed as fantasy.

Pompeo’s obsession with China can even be considered one-sided, unless he has another obsession – regime change against Iran. And it was this obsession that led to the worst defeat Washington has ever experienced at the United Nations.

The humbling came when the US, at the initiative of Pompeo, proposed a resolution to extend an embargo on the purchase and sale of conventional weapons to and from Iran. Of the 15 members of the Security Council, only two voted in favor of the motion – the United States and the Dominican Republic. Two others – Russia and China – opposed them. The other 11, most of them longing for American allies, remember them.

Under Iran’s nuclear deal, as part of a broader lifting of economic sanctions, the embargo – which has been in place for 10 years – would be lifted on October 18, 2020, five years after the UN adopted the agreement. Pompeo has argued that the Security Council should extend the embargo because Iran has recently exceeded the limits of the deal for enriching uranium and storing nuclear fuel.

However, other members of the council stated that Iran had taken this step, only after the United States withdrew from the deal, re-imposed its own sanctions on Iran, and then demanded that other signatories do the same, threatening sanctions against them. to lay up if they do not. Indeed, Iran did well in paragraph 36 of the nuclear deal, which states that if one signatory believes that the others “do not fulfill their obligations”, then it would, after several meetings and consultations, have “grounds to commitments. ”(Iranian diplomats sought to discourage European signatories from reinstating sanctions for a full year before restoring the nuclear program.)

European members also argued that because the United States withdrew from the deal, it should no longer stand to comment or impose fines on Iran’s actions. Ultimately, these members still hope to bring Iran back to the table – to restore compliance on all sides – perhaps after Trump leaves office.

Trump officials have made the new argument that the United States should remain a ‘participant’ in the agreement, even if Trump dropped him off. This has led to sighs and giggles. As many have pointed out, a country cannot adhere to international agreements with cherry-pick: it cannot define itself to one participant, but not in others.

In short, Trump and Pompeo are transforming the United States into an infamous world power – so narrow in its obsessions, so transparent in its hypocrisy, that it is not credible as an ally, yet effective in expressing or pursuing its own national interests. More than ever, Trump’s slogan comes from America First to America Alone.