Say what you will about Donald Trump: While he may have only ever had a handful of ideas, he’s been consistent about espousing them for more than half a century. Take, for instance, his view that America’s allies are a bunch of freeloaders who should be paying the U.S. protection money for defending them. The way he’s always seen it, the collective security umbrella that has existed since World War II is nothing more than a business arrangement that should be turning America a profit.
In 1987 he even took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to make his case. He said, “It’s time for us to end our vast deficits by making Japan, and others who can afford it, pay. Our world protection is worth hundreds of billions of dollars to these countries, and their stake in their protection is far greater than ours.”
Trump even had a specific example of an ally being ungrateful to the U.S., which is interesting in light of current events in the Middle East. “Saudi Arabia, a country whose very existence is in the hands of the United States, last week refused to allow us to use their mine sweepers (which are, sadly, far more advanced than ours) to police the Gulf. The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”
Titled “There’s nothing wrong with American Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone won’t cure,” the ad was the first articulation of what Trump’s eventual America First slogan, which he pilfered from an earlier generation of the far-right and has never acknowledged, actually meant.
Nearly 40 years later, that theft has led people into misunderstanding what Trump was talking about.
Many of those World War II conservatives had a not-so-subtle crush on a certain German führer. They were isolationists, determined to keep the U.S. out of what they considered Europe’s war.
That’s never been Trump’s goal, and he’s never really said it was. Sure, he campaigned against the “forever wars” of his predecessors — mainly because opposing anything they did was the only way he knew how to talk about foreign policy — and he donned the populist, xenophobic hat to malign immigrants and foreign nations alike.
Donald Trump was never a pacifist nor an isolationist. In fact he is the opposite — a domineering strongman who seeks to bully everyone around him into compliance.
But Donald Trump was never a pacifist nor an isolationist. In fact he is the opposite — a domineering strongman who seeks to bully everyone around him into compliance. Many of his followers doubtless find that his most appealing quality, but the rest of the world is no longer amused.
The president’s demeaning of America’s allies is nothing new. Throughout his first term, he denigrated NATO while cozying up to adversaries, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, as if they were long-lost brothers.
But since his return to the White House, Trump has really pushed the envelope, treating countries except Russia, Israel and wealthy Middle Eastern nations like vassal states. He began by disrespecting Mexico and Canada, our closest neighbors, so crudely that the rift he created may be permanent. He unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and demanded the media go along with it. Then he repeatedly demeaned Canada as America’s “51st state” and has referred to the prime minister as “governor.” These insults add up to a display of dominance based on nothing more than a desire to humiliate America’s friends, and all just to preen for his cultish following.
Since his early January raid on Venezuela and capture of the nation’s president and first lady, Trump has strutted the world stage, insulting everyone in sight, often purely for sport. He set his sights on Greenland, apparently at the behest of a cosmetics heir pal. By mid-January he had pushed things to the point that it looked likely he would send in troops to conquer the island nation, despite the fact that it’s a dominion of Denmark, one of America’s closest allies. His crude move left Europe reeling, and it brought home the fact that Trump’s virtual abandonment of Ukraine to Russia was a preview of what he was prepared to do if Putin expanded his war into Europe itself: nothing. With all Trump’s Greenland talk, some had to wonder if he wouldn’t actively take Russia’s side.
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The threats reached a fever pitch just as global political and business elites gathered in Davos for their annual meet-and-greet. Trump gave a horrific speech in which he did back off any plans to use military force to take the “piece of ice,” but what followed was so ugly and vulgar that it appeared to be the final straw for America’s friends and allies. (Among his claims was that the U.S. has “never gotten anything” from NATO — despite being the only member of the alliance to invoke Article 5, requesting and getting “collective defence” after 9/11 — that America was paying for “virtually 100%” of the organization and that the U.S. “gave Greenland back to Denmark” following World War II. None of these claims are true.)
Something had shifted over those few days, a shift most eloquently expressed in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s keynote address. “Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order,” he began, “the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.”
Carney correctly acknowledged that the old world order was over and that the hegemons, especially the United States — although he didn’t name it — were setting out new rules for themselves to benefit.
Carney correctly acknowledged that the old world order was over and that the hegemons, especially the United States — although he didn’t name it — were setting out new rules for themselves to benefit. He called for the world’s “middle powers” to work together to forge a new path away from the coercion and dominance of America. Carney’s speech was lauded around the world, and in many quarters here in the U.S., for its clarity and insight.
The rupture is real. Driven by delusions of grandeur and megalomania, Trump has entrenched the United States into a war in the Middle East.
Trump’s war of choice against Iran, launched in partnership with Israel and without any semblance of an imminent threat, was the fulfillment of a nearly 50-year-old right-wing wish fantasy. It goes against international law and common sense. Massive numbers of Iranians are being killed or displaced — a precursor to a major refugee crisis. The global oil market is being held hostage, and an already fragile world economy is hanging in the balance. Assuming that Iran would cry uncle on the first day and come crawling to him waving a white flag, Trump is stuck and doesn’t know what to do now that he’s belatedly realized that the famously dispersed Iranian opposition has no plans of its own.
Trump has demanded that NATO countries, as well as China, Japan, South Korea and Australia, “come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory.” They have all declined in no uncertain terms.
Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius bluntly said, “This is not our war; we did not start it.” French president Emmanuel Macron stated, “We are not party to the conflict and therefore France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his country will not be drawn into a “wider war.” Japan and Australia have both given thumbs down. In response, Trump has had so many tantrums it would be impossible to list them all. Suffice to say that he’s not handling this well. He has persisted in insulting the leaders of these countries for failing to bail him out of his jam, writing long screeds on social media that rail against their alleged perfidy. Concluding one on Tuesday, he wailed, “speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
His America First chickens, first unleashed all those years ago in that ad, have finally come home to roost. It’s now America alone — and he did that all by his lonesome.
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