Why the World Hates King Donald

 Let’s put aside the obvious; that he is an odious buffoon, a bully and ignorant of a great many things. He is not actually as stupid as he looks. For example, the problem of low flow toilets and non-incandescent light bulbs really is a thing. Sometimes you need to think like Trump to understand that he is not entirely daft. He is also correct, in a way, about NATO and its dependence of American force projection. He gets the solution wrong, however. It is not withdrawal. It is expansion of the political system.

This story goes back to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran (who is actually a descendant of the Khans) and the foundation of the Islamic Republic. This event has colored Middle Eastern political and religious life for 40 years and shows no sign of stopping. Indeed, the more we interfere, the more likely the status quo will be maintained.

Why this is important to American foreign policy involves delving into the mind of Dick Cheney. Anyone who served in the DoD knows that the PPBS process goes from Defense Guidance to planning, programming, budgeting and into contracting and execution of mission.  When Dick was our boss as the Secretary of Defense, the first Gulf War took place and the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell. 

According to General Wesley Clark, who saw the D.G., in order to keep the economic engine which is the military industrial complex well fed, a new threat was needed. The Secretary found that threat in the Middle East. His grand plan was a series of wars and American footholds, with Iran as the last stage. 

Whether Cheney’s motivation was economic, jingoistic or an unacknowledged love of President Carter, whose presidency was ruined, in part, by the hostage crisis, what he planned as Secretary was actualized as Vice President. In response to September 11, another war in Iraq was his response. He wanted to finish the job of ousting Saddam. Bush 43 was having none of it, nor did General Powell.

How does this relate to Trump and to NATO? When the second Iraq War was looming, the world did not want any part of it. The coalition of the willing included the U.K., but not much else from NATO. People took to the streets. It is important to understand why.

The United States, and its President, is the leader of the alliance. The American Giant had awoken in World War II. Europe and the Pacific were a ruin. The U.S. was not. We also had a nuclear monopoly, at least for a while and we were not sharing the weapons, nor the launch codes. Every mutual defense treaty we have spells out that the Supreme Commander must be an American flag officer, reporting to the President.

In 2003, Europe did not like the full implication of that agreed upon reality. President Obama, who pulled Europe’s feet out of the fire in Libya, was seen as a much more capable King of the Alliance, for by treaty, the President is essentially a king (Europe invoked NATO because a slaughter of rebels at the lands of Qaddafi would have made it hard to keep buying their light sweet crude). Then Trump was elected.

Trump did not, and probably does not, understand even the basics of American defense, like the nuclear triad (land based ICBMs, nuclear subs and B-2 bombers). The subtleties of American hegemony do not occur to him. All he knows is that he got caught wanting to put a giant tower in downtown Moscow, which would have looked phallic from behind the onion domes of St. Basil’s. I am sure he fully expects that this tower may eventually have his name on it. He may finally be having doubts. It was never going to happen.

NATO does not like that its King was playing for the other team. He has no appreciation that his role as President gave him that power or that Europe was an is aghast that he, in theory, possesses it. If I were a European, I would want Trump out of NATO more urgently than Trump wants to leave. It is a triumph of long-term thinking that the United States has not been expelled from the alliance. An extremely unlikely second term may have that result. 

Those in the know are hoping that Cy Vance will indict Trump sooner than later and that Don McGahn will quickly be before House Judiciary, forcing the GOP to do to Trump what it did to Nixon. A dark GOP convention, a dormant Trump ad campaign and signals from the Senate Leader that social distancing from Trump is OK can be seen as hints the way that Kremlin watchers would analyze who was in favor by who sat where during parades in Red Square. (I doubt Trump is aware that this was even a thing).

Getting rid of Trump is a short-term Band-Aid to a bigger problem. Indeed, the last three years have again drawn attention to the American monopoly in mutual defense. Trump has it ass backwards. The problem is not that we support Europe, but that Europe has no say in the selection of the Supreme Allied Commander or the election of his Commander in Chief.

This state of affairs cannot be maintained. At some point (which Trump is right about), there must be fundamental change of America’s role in the Alliance. What Trump cannot process is that it must involve either removing automatic command from the American President or including the entire alliance in his or her selection.

Democracy does not do empire well. We use our economic power to make it look good, but it is against our basic credo; although since the Spanish American War, we have been relishing how imperialism and capitalism work so well together. 

Frequent readers know that getting rid of capitalism is also on my list.

To expand the Allied polity, we need to contract the scope of American governance. Many matters should be governed and funded at a regional, rather than a national level. The White House staff, even with the best of Presidents, is not the proper venue for what is called the Administrative Presidency, which is control of the domestic agenda over and above fiscal policy (and sometimes including it). 

Regional vice presidents and legislative caucuses will remove unaccountable power closer to the people. Civil and workers rights, the national debt,  printing money and military and strategic deployments, of course, would remain national, as would NASA and certain regulatory agencies. 

At some point, allies become regions and regions become allies, with some combination of regional executives and allied legislators selecting the Commander in Chief of the Alliance. That person should not always be an American. Many would say, we have had our turn. Trump taking his (and wanting to keep it) may be the last straw.