" See, the sand, myte--it acts like little ball bearings under your runnin' shoes. A bloke or sheila could fall down and go boom."
Posted on 07/14/2017 8:01:28 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As Donald Trump lives out his “America first” mantra riddled with a presidential character of unreliability and unpredictability, the existential question for other nations looms large: is Trump an aberration or harbinger of a permanently changed America?
For Australia, there is no more important foreign policy issue. The test is whether our task is merely to survive the traumas Trump poses for the world and his alliance partners or whether the forces that created Trump are permanent and reflect the most decisive shift in US society, culture and outlook since World War II.
The notion that after four years of a Trump presidency the US will revert to the pre-2016 status quo is surely fanciful. Neither life nor politics works like that. Trump has come to shake up America. He has come to convince the world it must deal with a different America no longer pledged to the global order and leadership of the past seven decades.
Because Trump operates strictly short-term, thrives on changing his mind and possesses a volatile and mercurial temperament overlaid with self-obsession, he remains a leader destined to confound and disprove much of the “rush to judgment” about his presidency. Yet the forces that made him President are deep and embedded.
These are that the US is compromised as the land of opportunity, that it has become fractured along a schism leading to a separated elite with different cultural values, that a generation of poor wages growth and compressed living standards for the working and lower middle class combined with job displacement via technological change has created a grievance mentality, introspection and distrust in the political system.
In this situation outsiders and radical solutions gain currency — witness the rise of populists from the right such as Trump and from the left such as Democratic contender Bernie Sanders. If this thesis is right — that the economic and cultural malaise is deep and will take many years to rectify — then disruption in politics will far outlast Trump.
Much depends on how the Democrats respond to Trump. If they shift left, repudiate the Clintons, embrace a brand of Sanders populism and protectionism, then the next presidential contest might involve two candidates neither of whom is seriously pledged to the globalism and alliance framework that once defined US leadership. That means Trump’s 2016 victory is the dawn of a new and more dangerous age.
Michael Wesley, dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, says: “Australia faces an existential choice: does Trump represent an aberration that will be corrected in four or eight years, or does he represent a long-term shift away from liberal internationalism in US foreign policy?
“If it’s the first, the imperative for Australia is to hunker down and wait him out. If it’s the second, the imperative is to start building alternative security partnerships as soon as possible.”
Sooner or later, this is the pivotal judgment Australia must make. The difficulty is that nobody really knows the answer. As Wesley says, a correct reading of US politics “has never been more pressing” for Australia.
University of Sydney historian and analyst of the Australia-US alliance James Curran tells Inquirer: “Trump is no passing phase. The deep resentments and angry currents that carried him to power represent a widespread unease and fatigue in Middle America with the US global mission. Trump is unique among recent presidents in not speaking the language of Pax Americana: he is not a believer in the American national myth.”
Last week’s G20 meeting in Germany showed Trump is unafraid to be isolated on trade, climate change and the global system in his “America first” quest — but the price is high. Instead of the US leading such debate, setting the agenda, shaping the outcomes, Trump looked marginalised, inviting the spectre of US decline.
The ABC’s political editor Chris Uhlmann put this picture into lights, describing Trump as an “uneasy, lonely, awkward” figure in a television report that went viral. This was Trump as symbol of a diminished America. Other leaders can see what is happening: depending on their alignment, they seek either to exploit or finesse the Trump problem.
Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the ANU, tells Inquirer: “Purely on grounds of foreign policy competence, or glaring lack thereof, this is not business as usual. The grand lost opportunity of the G20 meeting demonstrates how bad Trump is for American credibility.”
In his “Howard on Trump” conversation at the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre this week, John Howard praised Malcolm Turnbull for the way he had managed Trump so far. Turnbull has shunned gratuitous criticism, focused on agreed areas of national security, upheld Australia’s national interests and avoided personalising policy differences over climate change and trade. It has been a disciplined, professional effort. Although Howard said before the US election he would “tremble” at the notion of a Trump presidency and had “deep reservations” about Trump, his remarks this week were more positive, cognisant that Australia must deal with the occupant of the White House. “He won,” Howard said. “We have got to accept that.”
Stressing that Trump’s style was “unusual” — he would like Trump to stop tweeting but knows that will not happen — Howard argued Trump’s substance was more conventional. He had reaffirmed NATO, supported the one-China policy, shown “outstanding” judgment in his missile strike on Syria and had discarded many of his wilder campaign pronouncements.
Howard was emphatic on the core question: Australia must trust Trump. Any alternative position at this point would be unwise and unjustified. When pressed, he ridiculed the almost fashionable notion that Australia should take out “policy insurance” by distancing itself from Trump. He would not entertain such action merely “because you think your best friend is going to rat on you”.
Howard’s hope is that over time Trump becomes more conventional. He urged people to calm down and remember that Trump had been in office only seven months. And when people talked about US decline they needed to reflect on the previous administration, since US decline under Barack Obama “was very marked to say the least”.
Yet doubts about Trump’s style are tied to worries about his character. Have no doubt, the US President has a character problem. The Pew Research Centre reported last month on a survey of 37 countries and found a median of just 22 per cent had confidence in Trump to do the right thing in foreign policy compared with 64 per in the final years of Obama’s presidency. Only Russia and Israel rated Trump higher than Obama.
The Australian figures were stark: an 84-29 per cent gap against Trump; the British figure was 79-22 per cent against Trump; South Korea was 88-17 against and Japan 78-24 against him. Trump has a grievous public opinion problem among his allies.
“Confidence in President Trump is influenced by reactions to both his policies and his character,” the Pew Centre said. “In the eyes of most people surveyed around the world, the White House’s new occupant is arrogant, intolerant and even dangerous. Among the positive characteristics tested, his highest rating is for being a strong leader.”
For US allies such as Turnbull the task is ominous: he must hold together a pro-US position in the face of fragile domestic support and the suspicion Trump has generated among other nations. The isolation of Trump at the G20 meeting was bad for everybody — for the G20, for Trump and for allies such as Australia.
In his US Studies Centre conversation with this author, Howard referenced an article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Elliott Abrams, an adviser to former Republican presidents and once tipped as Rex Tillerson’s No 2 at the State Department until vetoed by Trump. “Trump might not be a conventional president, but so far, his foreign policy has been remarkably unremarkable,” Abrams says. “It is already clear that this is not a revolutionary administration. The broad lines of its policy fit easily within those of the last few decades.” In a bold prediction, he says that “based on early impressions the Trump era will be marked more by increasing adherence to traditional US foreign policy positions than by ever-larger deviations”.
Time will tell — the relevant point, surely, is that becoming conventional would constitute a breach of Trump’s pledge to the American people. “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land,” he promised in his inaugural address. “From this moment on, it’s going to be America first. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”
A powerful alternative view to that of Abrams comes from Thomas Wright, Brookings Institution analyst and non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, who wrote in Politico Magazine in March: “Trump has deeply rooted, visceral and consistent ideas about American foreign policy that date back over 35 years. Since 1980 Trump has lambasted America’s allies and denounced free trade deals. He has been very sympathetic to Russia since 1986 when he first visited Moscow. He views national security primarily through an economic lens and wants to know how the (US) benefits in the short -term from each and every action. He rejects notions of a liberal international order to proactively shape the world.
“He acknowledged to The New York Times in March 2016 that his views harken back to the turn of the 20th century, before World War I. Trump expressed these views on dozens and dozens of occasions in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s. There is much that the President does not know about the world but he has been remarkably consistent on a small number of very important things, often at a high political cost — which suggests he truly believes them.
“The bottom line is that the President is an ideological radical who would like to revolutionise US foreign policy but he is largely alone in his intentions. He faces opposition from almost all quarters. His cabinet will continue to work quietly to repackage his orders as small modifications to America’s traditional foreign policy. In such circumstances, a coherent strategy is impossible. Incoherence is inevitable.”
This insightful analysis explains the competing views about Trump’s policy and the difficulty of being definitive about its future course. It suggests an unprecedented internal convulsion within the US system at its apex.
The Australians interviewed for this column also leaned to the idea of permanent incoherence under Trump — a manifestly risky world. “Trump does represent a significant shift in the substance of US foreign policy,” Wesley says. “Trump has shown himself to disagree in words and actions from the liberal internationalism that has guided American foreign policy since World War II. This is the most significant change of direction in US foreign policy since (Franklin Roosevelt).”
Curran says: “We need to accept that unpredictability, chaos and dysfunction is the new norm in the White House. To sit and hold tight waiting for ‘normalisation’ to come is nothing short of fantasy. It is delusional to wait for the pronouncements of a Trump doctrine or coherent world view.
“The dilemma for Australian politicians and policymakers is both practical and intellectual. Practically, just deal with Trump one step at a time: it’s the only way given the chaos coming out of the White House.
“Intellectually, the task is how to grapple with a different America, an America with which this generation of leaders is unfamiliar — inward looking, hesitant abroad, angry, resentful, torn.”
Medcalf says: “Our credo about coping with Trump’s America should remain: don’t panic but don’t relax either. We should not sink into despair by permanently writing off America as a reliable ally or economic partner. After all, it remains our largest foreign investor by far. Instead Australia’s policy community is going through a reality check about the need for greater resilience and agility in a multipolar world.”
Signalling a qualified optimism, he adds: “America will be back. It’s a matter of how long it takes for Trump and his inner circle to reap their own political demise, how much harm they can do to their nation along the way and how much continuity can be sustained by experienced and responsible players.”
The Trump team’s despicable engagement with the Russians in the US campaign will seriously damage the President. Much now hinges on what else happened and is yet to be revealed. But the emails this week show the Trump team met Russian representatives to obtain anti-Hillary Clinton material after being told it was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.
These revelations alone will not bring Trump undone. But they have the potential to further weaken or cripple his presidency. The domestic polarisation over Trump is guaranteed to intensify. It is hard to imagine a more hazardous backdrop for the conduct of US foreign policy.
The prudent stance for Australia is to continue Turnbull’s approach, engage Trump and his administration, avoid being panicked into unjustified executive actions that assume the worst, but conduct deep “within the vault” scenario planning on the dangers that can arise from an American president whose high-risk “America first” credo is linked with his undisguised character flaws.
Ping
Yep
The land of Oz has become a uber liberal country with severe gun control, love of Muslims and hatred of a strong America.
Trump’s “High risk America First Credo” is a PROBLEM...to anti freedom elites
Yeah. We really want to listen to his wordy moron about how to run our country. He did so well getting his way in his.
My goodness! Never use one word when a thousand will do.
So what the pinkos used to call “Post-War American Imperialist Intervetionism,” they are now calling “liberal internationalism that has guided American foreign policy since World War II”
The aussies are on the same suicide rollercoaster ride as the europeans are. If these countries that align themselves with that crowd, it’s better if the US writes them off and goes about our own business.
These countries don’t realize just how low of GAF Americans have for places like Australia that are suffering from their own self inflicted socialist insanity.
The ‘America Last’ contingent speaks.
“Trump looked marginalised, inviting the spectre of US decline.” And that is why over the last ten days the Europeans pushed and shoved to be near him and to have their picture taken with him. That is why the Three Seas initiative will be a success. That is why the Red-Dead Sea Water initiative was agreed to yesterday. The wins just keep coming.
And never use the term Australian intellectual. It is a non sequitur.
I wonder how that would have read if he would have had to write it in Japanese as part of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”? Perhaps those old “America First” guys back in the 1930s had a point?
Yes, we bitter clinging Middle America deplorables are flat out resentful of a century of Wilsonian socialist-globalist intervention under the guise of making the world safe for "democracy".
" See, the sand, myte--it acts like little ball bearings under your runnin' shoes. A bloke or sheila could fall down and go boom."
America has no allies. It has grifters.
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