@aviationdoctor.eth

Nine years ago almost to the day, just as Trump was being inaugurated, I published a piece titled "The rise of neo-protectionism in aeropolitics" in which I was forecasting a backslide in the liberalization of international aviation. Trump just now announced decertifying the Canadian-made Bombardier aircraft until Canada certifies Gulfstream aircraft. Aviation safety is now being used as a coercive instrument in trade wars. Here's an excerpt from my Jan 2017 article. --- Global aeropolitics are a two-pronged affair. The first is preoccupied with the exchange of information and the harmonization of procedures to ensure the safe and efficient operations of air transport regardless of geography, language, culture and legal environment; it is mostly a technocratic concern governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The second deals with the oft-contentious bilateral state relations in air transport and the granting of the so-called "freedoms of the air", which is arguably about to be hit with a wave of neo-protectionism unprecedented since the 1947 Chicago Convention. Perhaps most notably, it originates from Western countries that used to be driving forces behind globalization and free trade. In the US, the election of Donald J. Trump on November 8, 2016, may also herald a series of changes in this aspect of global aeropolitics. The new administration is distinctively Jacksonian, as evidenced by W. R. Mead: suspicious of untrammeled federal power, skeptical about the prospects for domestic and foreign do-gooding including welfare at home, opposed to federal taxes, more enamored with the second amendment (the right to bear arms) than with the first (freedom of speech), and not so much at the helm of a political movement as it is wielding into an instrument of power a folk ideology and community of political feelings (what J. Hulsman calls the Rust Belt's "Springsteen Democrats"). Mead, a senior fellow at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, further describes the main goal of the Jacksonians’ hawkish populism to be "the physical security and the economic well-being of the American people". Their foreign policy is realistic, pessimistic, and honor-bound. Realism is, of course, related to realpolitik, and translates into a practical and scruple-free "us versus them" mentality that sharply favors U.S. interests, before North America, the West, and finally, the world, in that order; it is in a sense antagonistic to the globalist ideal of free and open trade as a mechanism for equalization. Pessimism implies a degree of skepticism towards the motives of foreign states, and distrust for supra-national organizations that set the tone for aeropolitics. The honor code demands a fair treatment from foreign countries that are involved in bilateral agreements with the US, and meets any temerity on their part with determined resistance that only escalates -even militarily- in the face of reprisals or confrontation. Regardless of how much Mead’s framework for Jacksonian politics applies to the new U.S. administration, further insight is to be found in Mr. Trump's own rhetoric: in April 2015, he declared, in the context of trade relations: "When you’re doing business — [...] ‘American exceptionalism', I don’t like the term. [...] first of all, I want to take everything back from the world that we’ve given them. We’ve given them so much". This could indicate a likely inclination of the new administration to scrutinize many of the pre-existing agreements - not just NAFTA and the One China diplomatic stance, but also the 111 Open Skies agreements that the US are party to. Existing and/or future air transport agreements may be revisited with a business-like approach, favoring arm's length, ad-hoc and transactional deals over more binding perennial partnerships. This stance marks a departure from the promotion of Open Skies by the previous administration; in March 2011, then-State Secretary Hillary Clinton had commented that "an Open Skies agreement has powerful benefits – fewer government restrictions, more competition, more jobs in the air and on the ground; more people trading, exchanging and interacting; cheaper flights, more tourists, new routes to new cities [...] Building a continuous airborne corridor of prosperity around the world is one of our goals". This statement was also in line with ICAO’s (2006) own assessment that "every $100 of output produced and every 100 jobs generated by air transport trigger additional demand of some $325 and 610 jobs in other industries". One possible way that this shift could manifest itself is in how the incoming administration will reconsider the arguments of the "US3" carriers (American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines), who have been lobbying the U.S. administration against the alleged unfair competition from the "ME3" (Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways). The two main requests of the US3 (formal consultations on Open Skies agreements with Qatar and the UAE, and a suspension of flights) were turned down by State Secretary John Kerry in mid-2016. Confrontation on this matter can have far-reaching ramifications. In 2010, when Canada refused Emirates and Etihad additional landing rights, the UAE "[closed] its airspace to Canada’s defense minister while he was in mid-flight, which forced a diversion, and [evicted] Canadian troops from a Dubai base they were using to support combat in Afghanistan. Canadian visitors to the U.A.E. were slapped with visa requirements" (Campbell, 2017). Coincidentally, Mr. Trump's inauguration as the 45th U.S. president happened on the last day of the 47th Davos World Economic Forum, which the president of China attended as a keynote speaker for the first time ever. In the same week, Jacksonian forces rose to power in the West while the forces of globalization shifted East. The world of aeropolitics may never be the same. ---

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