The Man Who Would Be Great--Part 2

Foreign Policy:  Why did the bull go to the china shop?

          There is no doubt that Trump has brought a new approach to US foreign policy.  In less than two years, he has managed to alienate all our allies, threatening to undermine political structures that have offered at least some hope of a more peaceful and prosperous world since the second world war.  Meanwhile, he cuddles up with the world’s worst dictators—Putin, Duterte, the Saudi monarchy, even Kim.

          Trump’s sucking up to Kim is really quite interesting.  The Kim regime is running the same con on Trump that they have run on every US president since Reagan, and this time the regime got something it very much wanted—a summit between Kim and the US president (rather than some lower ranking official).  When Obama suggested that he might be willing to meet with Kim, the GOP had a hissy fit.  Now Trump is braying about getting Kim to agree to denuclearization.  Of course, he seems not to know that the Kim regime has publicly declared its commitment to denuclearization numerous times over the past few decades, and even gone so far as to sign a formal treaty involving inspections.  Of course, the inspections never happened, and the regime continued to develop nuclear weapons capability.  (For anyone who really wants to understand the North Korean nuclear issue, The Impossible State, by Victor Cha, is a good place to start.)

          One hears Trump supporters bragging that now other nations “respect” and “fear” the United States.  Respect and fear, it should be noted, do not easily coexist.   And this is especially so when the fear is borne of our president’s belligerent irrationality.  Our former allies fear us because our president behaves like a bull in a china shop.   But, for exactly the same reason, they don’t much respect us anymore.  How could they respect a nation that puts a vulgar crap artist like Trump in charge of its affairs?   And the dictators of whom Trump is so enamored don’t respect or fear us.  They recognize Trump for the inept buffoon that he is.  And this brings us to the really interesting question about Trump’s interactions with other nations and leaders.

          Why is Trump so enamored of dictators?  Early in his presidency, when he was mostly cuddling up to Putin—defending his invasion of Crimea, destabilizing NATO, apologizing for US mistreatment of Russia—it was easy to be suspicious that Putin had something on him.  Lurid stories about a video or some other form of compromat were rife.  And, of course, one can’t help but wonder about just how dependent his fortune is on Russian and Saudi money.  But none of this explains his love for vicious dictators like Kim or Duterte.  The sad truth, I suspect, is that Trump so wants to be one of these thugs himself that he simply cannot resist fawning over them.  This is why his responses to the murders that Putin and the Saudis commit, or the vicious oppression practiced by such as Kim and Duterte, are always so lame.  He really doesn’t see what the problem is.  And he really wants to change the laws so he can behave as they do.

          The bottom line:  Trump’s foreign policy reveals his infatuation with power, and it bodes ill for the United States and the world.

Part 3, some reflections on Trump’s despoliation of the culture of the United States, will be up tomorrow.  Meanwhile, here is some music to soothe your fears while you contemplate the consequences of Trump’s foreign policy.