U.S. Has Always Been A Dangerous Nation
America
Is Now a Dangerous Nation
By
Gideon Rachman
August
18, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
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The claim that
America is a “threat to world peace” has been a
staple of Russian and Iranian propaganda for
many years. For believers in the western
alliance, it is painful to acknowledge that
there is now some truth to this idea. Under
Donald Trump,
America looks like a dangerous nation.
Over the past week, Mr Trump has indulged in
nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea,
issued vague threats of military action in
Venezuela and
flirted with white supremacists at home. He is
offering the very opposite of the steady,
predictable and calm leadership that American
allies seek from Washington.
Mr
Trump’s swiftly notorious threats that North
Korea risks “fire and fury” from a “locked and
loaded” America were particularly irresponsible.
Even if the threat is a bluff, it puts American
credibility on the line and risks triggering
escalation from the
Kim Jong Un regime,
which is threatening to fire missiles near the
US territory of Guam. Even more alarming, the
Trump administration is openly flirting with the
idea of a pre-emptive strike on North Korea —
arguing that a nuclear-armed Mr Kim cannot be
deterred. But if America could rely on
deterrence to contain the nuclear threat from
Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China — it can
certainly do the same with Mr Kim’s North Korea.
All previous presidents have rejected the idea
of pre-emptive attacks on nuclear-armed states —
for obvious reasons.
The international crisis that Mr Trump is
stoking is increasingly inseparable from the
domestic problems besieging his administration.
The investigation by former Federal Bureau of
Investigation director Robert Mueller into
Russian intervention in the US election is
getting ever closer to the president’s inner
circle. Congress is deadlocked and the White
House is a merry-go-round of sackings and
scheming. And now there is political violence on
the streets, as white supremacists and neo-Nazis
attack, and even kill, protesters in
Charlottesville
— while the president issues evasive and
equivocal statements from a golf course.
The
danger is that these multiple crises will merge,
tempting an embattled president to try to
exploit an international conflict to break out
of his domestic difficulties. Just this week,
Sebastian Gorka, a controversial White House
aide, used the North Korean crisis to pressure
Mr Trump’s domestic critics to back down,
telling Fox News: “During the Cuba missile
crisis we stood behind JFK. This is analogous to
the Cuba missile crisis. We need to come
together.”
Mr
Gorka’s flirtation with the idea that the threat
of war could lead Americans to rally around the
president should sound alarm bells for anyone
with a sense of history. Governments facing a
domestic crisis are often more inclined to
adventurism abroad. For example, the German
government that led Europe into the first world
war felt under acute threat from domestic
political enemies. But on the day war broke out,
an exultant Kaiser told a crowd: “I no longer
recognise any parties or affiliations; today we
are all German brothers.” Or as Mr Gorka put it
last week: “These are the moments when we have
to come together as a nation.”
Leaders
under severe domestic political pressure are
also more likely to behave irrationally. During
the Watergate crisis, members of Richard Nixon’s
cabinet told the military to double check with
them before obeying a presidential order to
stage a nuclear strike. Unfortunately, it is not
clear that any US official — now or then — has
the right to countermand the president if he
decides to go nuclear.
At
least in public, the pushback against
Trump’s threats of war has been remarkably
weak, both in Congress and within the
administration
Outside
observers are left hoping that the “adults” in
the Trump administration will somehow manage the
president. But, at least in public, the pushback
against Mr Trump’s threats of war has been
remarkably weak, both in Congress and within the
administration.
HR
McMaster, the president’s national security
adviser, has defended Mr Trump’s warmongering on
national television. Meanwhile, General McMaster
himself is under attack from the white
nationalist wing of the president’s supporters,
who blame him for sacking some of their allies
on the National Security Council. Last week, as
the North Korean crisis built, the hashtag “Sack
McMaster” was trending on Twitter, as the
nationalists sought to purge their newfound
enemy from the White House. This is the very
opposite of the atmosphere that should prevail
in the White House as a potential nuclear
confrontation looms in the Pacific.
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Those who are hoping that America’s “Deep State”
will contain Mr Trump — or even force his
resignation — are probably guilty of wishful
thinking. Forcing him from office remains a
massively difficult task and risks provoking a
further radicalisation both in domestic politics
and the conduct of
US foreign policy.
A final
disturbing thought is that Mr Trump’s emergence
increasingly looks like a symptom of a wider
crisis in American society, that will not
disappear, even when Mr Trump has vacated the
Oval Office. Declining living standards for many
ordinary Americans and the demographic shifts
that threaten the majority status of white
Americans helped to create the pool of angry
voters that elected Mr Trump. Combine that
social and economic backdrop with fears of
international decline and a political culture
that venerates guns and the military, and you
have a formula for a country whose response to
international crises may, increasingly, be to
“lock and load”.
This article was first published by
Financial Times
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The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
