 Hello, and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. Today, we look at the United States, where Donald Trump's proposal of a border wall has led to a federal government shutdown, which is likely to be the longest in the country's history. We also look at Syria, where the United States has started withdrawing forces and the implications it will have for the region. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakasar, the head of the chief of news media. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, let's start with the government shutdown in the United States. So it has been largely portrayed as a battle between Donald Trump and the Democrats. A lot of people are working without salaries. They have been protests by federal government employees, and there's a lot of stories about the kind of impact it is having in the United States. But at the same time, there is also a larger perspective in the region, if we can call it so. And the fact that a lot of this also stems from the fact, from the United States policies towards countries in the region, whether it be Guatemala, whether it be Honduras, whether it be Colombia, for that matter. So how do we see this issue also from the perspective of the region, per se, and not just as an issue between two parties in the United States? That's always the problem of looking at the United States. You get drawn into the internal politics of the United States. And we know so much more about the United States than any other part of the globe. It always seems interesting to the people. But if we take this issue of the government shutdown, et cetera, all of these extend us to what rest of the world should consider, because after all, we have no role in that. That's something they have to resolve, the American people have to live with. So we leave that out for the time being completely. That yes, there is with the government shutdown, it continues. Who will blink in the United States? That's an open question. And also that the United States people, the government departments, all of them will have to suffer the consequences of a shutdown in the United States, which means a lot of the government salaries expenditure will not take place. The question is really the famous Donald Trump's wall. That this would be a wall which would isolate the United States from the rest of the continent. And in some sense, the white states, America and Canada, the two settler colonial states, if you will, in the region, want to secede through this symbolic wall as well as a physical wall from the rest of the America. So that's really the crux of the imagery of the wall, that can the white settler colonial states, i.e., the United States, and of course, the Canada goes along with it, virtually as its satellite, though Trump has made noise about Canadians as well. But essentially, they will be insulated from the rest of the region. Now if we see what you raised earlier, what is the relationship between the rest of the world, the rest of the Americas and the United States? You know, this whole issue of why the United States is a favorite destination is on two counts. One is, of course, it's much richer. And it is much richer because it has actually feasted off the rest of the continent, as well as you now know on the Persian Gulf oil, on the kind of treaties it is imposed across the world. So there's been a lot of the consequence of that, which we'll also discuss when we come to Syrian issue and what Pompeo has said. But by and large, you can see the destructive impact of the American policies in the region that it has had coups repeatedly, not once repeatedly in the region. It has forced governments to surrender to itself, if not through coups by other coercive means, including economic ones. At the end of it, the destruction of these countries meant that they also create what would be called economic refugees who are fleeing. Now if you see the, for instance, the state of Mexico, which of course shares the border with the United States. Mexico, as we know, has been first dismembered by the United States through some colonial wars. Forget about that. More recently, it has interfered repeatedly in Mexican elections, prevented democratic progressive forces from winning. It has supported brutal, shall we say, gangs, criminal gangs, who have held the very Mexican government hostage. And the close nexus between crime in the United States and drug mafia in Latin America, in which Mexico is also a conduit. All of this means that, as we can see, a certain number of states turn into what are called narco states. That essentially supplying, shall we say, various opiates to the United States becomes their main business model, at least for the criminal gangs, which also wield a lot of economic power in the region. So a lot of this is economic destruction of these countries. We can go back to Arabians and Guatemala, 1953 coup. You can go to the war. It waged against various left and progressive governments. It's the fact that it had, it's through the what are called the CIA run and military establishments. It supported a whole range of military coups in the region. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, of course, the famous Chilean example, and this government being overthrown. So if we see the recent past, we can see it's attack for us in Honduras. The fact that Zalaya was overthrown. He took refuge in Brazilian embassy that he was finally through a constitutional coup. A right wing president took over. He didn't want to let go power. Honduras continues to be destabilized with crime as well as with assassinations. You can go down or up, shall we say, Central America. And you will find the same pattern. Now, all of it means, of course, there's a huge difference between the American standards of living and what is happening elsewhere. So there is a flow of refugees created partially by the fact that the United States has neocolonial policies in the region. And I think that's a significant part of it. But I also think the imagery of it is very important, wanting to secede out of the Americas. And I think the fact that you have a settler, colonial state wanting to secede out of the Americas is as much a part of Trump's electoral imagery that the white population wants to secede from the rest of the Americas. But also it's internal politics of turning against the quote, African Americans and Hispanics who in, say, 20, 30, 40 years down the line may have as much political power as the white population. Therefore, this is also, in some sense, shall we say, the racial war inside the United States, which is also shown by this war. So all this is basically completely obscured by the fact that this ends up in just being a debate over, say, whether it should be a wall or a fence, whether it's 1.5 billion or 5.7 billion. And this entire politics completely gets obscured by that. So let's move on to Syria where the United States has technically started withdrawing soldiers. They're moving gear out, not soldiers yet. And at the same time, we've had two interesting incidents in the past week. On the one hand, Mike Pompeo went to Egypt and he gave a very bellicose speech, in fact, criticizing Obama's earlier speech also and talking about how the US was a force for good. On the other hand, we have John Bolton going to Turkey, trying to set up conditions for the withdrawal of the US from Syria. And he was, and Erdogan and the Turks didn't really pay any attention at all. So even as the US is thinking of withdrawing, how do we see these two, what do you call it, very verbose, belligerent declarations by these two important characters? You know, one thing we should be very clear about that the US, if it gets defeated, it looks like its policies are slowly getting defeated in West Asia. We still will have a bloody withdrawal. We are not going to have an easy, shall we say, transition to peace and prosperity in the region. You are going to see that the United States, its imperial or neocolonial policies, in its withdrawal is going to be as bloody, bloody as it was in its expansion. So I think that we need to understand. When you look at what Pompeo and Bolton have said, that while paying lift service to Trump's withdrawal, they are actually putting conditions for withdrawal on powers which are not within Syria. They are talking about Turkey. They're talking about Iran. And Pompeo went one step further. He talked about essentially a West Asian or an Arab NATO, which would fight against Iran. According to him, Iran is the big bad player in the region and everybody is a nice guy, including the United States. What they did not say is also very important. Yemen is not mentioned by either of the two. So in all this good that the United States has apparently done in the region, Yemen is not even mentioned. Now let's look at what Bolton said. Bolton said we want to withdraw out of Syria but there are two conditions. One is Iran must withdraw completely. Now Iran is there and the response of a sovereign country is called for help. Whether Iran leaves or not depends on the Syrian government. The United States as a sovereign power cannot have the right in another sovereign country to decide what will or will not happen here. So US is certainly an extraterritorial right over Syria, which it doesn't have in international law and at the moment physically also does not really have. All it has is the ability to bomb. That's what it really has on the ground. Now it wanted to use this to say that the Kurdish militias over there should not be attacked by Turkey. And what it is again looking at is can the Kurdish forces take over entire east of Euphrates, which you've discussed earlier. Now Kurdish as we know have a presence in the northwest east part of Syria but this is not more than say seven percent of the population of Syria. And it's a thin strip of land which you can talk about Kurdish majority. It's not contiguous. There are other ethnicities in this region as well. But certainly the amount of land today, the Kurdish and its supported SDF control is completely out of proportion to the numbers it has or the influence it has. It's spread shall we say over a much larger part which is not Kurdish. So that's an inherent problem that the US supported Kurdish SDF has in Syria. The Kurdish have read the writing on the wall. They're already talking to, from what we understand, to Russia and Syria and maybe through them to Turkey. And they are in fact trying to join the Astana process which the United States completely disregarded. It's also interesting that Bolton was rebuffed rather sharply by Erdogan refusing to meet him, take his comments seriously and saying Bolton putting conditions on Turkey unilaterally that is not going to work. That if something has to be decided it cannot be through preconditions of the United States. So that was one thing. Of course, Turkish forces have not entered Syria, not after this disengagement shall we say. And there is clear discussions going on what will be the future of Manbij when whether it will be handed over to Syrian government forces or not. All these discussions are going on but certainly Bolton's condition regarding the Turk what they should do has been disregarded by Turkey and Pompeo has not repeated in Egypt. Pompeo is interesting because there is a huge amount of American exceptionalism that he talks about how we are good, our wars are good wars and other people's wars are bad wars. So apparently when America bombs, it's good. When others fight, it's always bad. Others don't have the ability to bomb that way in West Asia, it's only Israel and United States which has bombed other countries. It has also, here the severity of the cheek shall we say not only to condemn Obama, which he did, talked about how Obama basically mistaken completely, dismissing entirely his policies which I will again leave to the internal politics of the United States, we're not really concerned. What he talks about, have we controlled, have we acted hegemonically unlike Iran? Well, they were in Iran. They overthrew the Mosaddegh government. They were the hegemon in Iran for a huge number of years before the Iranians really overthrew their puppet Shah. So for him to come and say this in West Asia seems to believe that the region's people are as ignorant as probably most American people are because American people never learned the history of different parts of the world from their history books. So what they have learned is shall we say the Pompeo Bolton doctrine presented as if it is truth. So I think what we are seeing is the myth making powers of the United States are increasing as its forces on the ground weaken. We also see that Saudis are no longer, Saudis, Israeli, United States alliance today does not seem to be getting more traction. We see people sort of getting away from it trying to work out their own relationship. And Turkey, don't forget, Turkey is the second biggest military power in NATO. If we take soldiers into account, the number of armed forces, the people in the armed forces. So I think Turkey not willing to tow the line is a huge defection shall we say from American policies, the region. Now what Turkey will do, how it will play its cards, I think is not going to determine by the United States. So the events in Syria no longer depend on the US. It's really now the course of this is going to be set by the Syrians themselves. It's going to be set by Turkey. It's going to be set by Iran. And of course Russians who have relationship with all of them and trying to build a certain kind of shall we say understanding in the region. And the other important part of it which we shouldn't forget is Israel is getting slowly frozen out of Syrian airspace. And that is a major game changer because Israel's ability to hit Syria is what kept it in the game. Once that ability goes away, Israel is not going to intervene militarily in Syria. And if it doesn't enter Syria militarily, its air force has really very, very little shall we say traction anymore. And if that happens Israel as a player in the larger West Asian process will certainly seem, you know, will certainly get more marginalized. I think we are seeing a transition from a US centric West Asia to a more regional balance in West Asia. But as I said, the spoiler is what the US does. I think Trump's decision to withdraw is de facto what was happening anyway because the United States really did not have anymore a dog in the game because more or less every player was working independently of the United States. And their locus of having 2000 soldiers over there with probably another 3000 shall we say mercenaries, you know, the Eric Prince kind of mercenaries over there, that really did not give them traction. The only traction they had with their force and with the Russians now giving slowly the Syrians more and more S 300 and other batteries, more and more the ability of the United States attacks in Syria against Syrian forces was weakening. Let's face it. When Syrians, Americans talk about ISIS and Al Qaeda, they've never fought either of the two in Syria. In fact, one could be argued they in fact have helped as a lot of times it has been said they have acted effectively as an air arm of Al Qaeda by bombing Syrian forces, particularly at times that they were moving against ISIS or against Al Qaeda, that they have ended up by at that point of time bombing the Syrian forces. So I think the de facto Trump's policies is a recognition that this cannot continue. The United States has to withdraw but Papua and Bolton are making that process painful and longer drawn out than perhaps it had otherwise. Thank you for that. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching news click.