Just before his term ends, President Biden announces the USA will provide one last significant package of weapons and equipment to Ukraine. Following threats of ‘Hell to pay’ from the president elect, Israel and Hamas enter into a ceasefire agreement. The World has taken advantage of these precious final moments of relative stability. Now it holds its breath, awaits Trump’s second inauguration, and braces for impact.
Those who have read my previous posts will have some sort of idea about my views on Trump. I could delve deeper here and tell you how he should be viewed in the light of his criminal conviction. I could also launch a tangent about 6 January 2021 and what exactly his role was in it. Reaching into what are now becoming the bowels of history, I could even regurgitate his sacking of the FBI director in 2017 and explain the spectre of totalitarianism which looms over America – and by extension, the spectre which threatens the entire World.
However, consideration of Trump’s fitness for office should not focus solely on discrete events. It should be directed at the requirements of the position and the basic elements of his being. With that in mind, my overarching difficulty with Trump is that he is just not a statesman. He lacks all traditional oratory skills and has no sense for diplomacy. He is generally offensive and rude. He usually does things without thinking and is reckless. On the odd occasion when he finds a moment of clarity, he births a thought which does little else but masturbate his own megalomania.
At a minimum, it is incumbent on the American president, and the leader of the free world, to bear good will for his fellow man and act in brotherhood with him. In Trump, we have a ruthlessly libertarian capitalist (and, quite literally, a criminal) hellbent on his own self-interest and the gratification of his ego. Where the president’s heart is in the wrong place, he takes his country and the World to the wrong place.
For instance, take Trump’s recent suggestions about the USA buying or using military force to acquire Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. As with all successful tyrants since the days of Ancient Greece, Trump is a sophist who spruiks seductively simplistic reasoning for his own ends. There is something artful about his proposals to acquire territory, because he has grafted his pointless narcissism onto the free world’s known strategic interests – and thereby disguised it to some degree. His bad policy is sugar-coated with logic. It is palatable to those who lack an enquiring mind and the ability to taste the bitter self-gratifying pill within.
The sugar-coating is this. There is a clear strategic interest in ensuring that the free world maintains control over the Arctic region. So too is there interest in maintaining influence over extremely important pieces of global trade infrastructure, such as the Panama Canal. Freedom of navigation and trade is critical to the stability of global supply chains and international friendship and peace. Russia currently dominates the Arctic and potentially any new Arctic trade routes. China has (ridiculously and transparently) started to self-describe as a ‘near Arctic State’ and is thus also competing with NATO countries in the region. As for the Panama Canal, Panama, some time ago, switched its allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing. All this is in the context of a continuing Chinese campaign to obtain influence south of Texas. Russia and China have been in opposition to freedom of navigation and commerce since the beginnings of the first United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in the late ‘50s. The risk of global instability and conflict increases if America does not somehow control the Arctic and enjoy influence in Panama. America, as leader of the free world, is obliged not to let either fall into the effective control of Russia and China.
Obviously, neither I nor Trump are the first to notice the strategic importance of the Arctic and the Panama Canal. You just need to follow the links above and read. People have been talking about this for a while. Trump deserves absolutely no credit for expressing an intent to act on it. The advisors of any American president would highlight these strategic interests and any president would have to choose to take or not to take action – for better or worse. What people must consider is not whether Trump or any other president takes action in the Arctic or Panama. They must instead consider the quality of the actual type of action taken.
Herein lies the bitter pill beneath the sugar. The USA annexing territory by any means, especially military force, is an extreme measure. No dire circumstances have arisen which would warrant such measures. To make such an extreme proposal, one requires context to justify it. That context simply does not exist. Trump has, in his typically uncouth style, made these proposals without tact and with complete disrespect to the autonomy of the Greenlandic, Canadian and Panamanian peoples. The mere proposal of annexing these territories is very dangerous diplomatically. Given the responses from Canada, Greenland and Panama, it has inarguably already damaged America’s relationship with other countries and its global influence – and all this before Trump formally takes back his chair in the oval office!
There is no need for the USA to acquire territory to achieve American control in the Arctic and influence in Panama. America already has military strongholds in the Arctic, with nine US bases in its Arctic territory of Alaska. It even has one in Greenland, without having purchased a square metre of territory there. Being the strongest member of NATO, America exerts significant influence and power in six of the seven other Arctic nations, which are all NATO members. The USA can already advance Western interests from its own territory in Alaska and, if it needs anything in addition to that, it has all the means it needs to do so via NATO.
As for the Panama Canal, the situation is different because of its developing relationship with China. However, that developing relationship is not an extreme circumstance which would warrant America taking over the Panama Canal by force. As America and Australia have together proved in the Pacific, influence can be won back from China with means other than force; EG: the security deal between Australia and the Solomon Islands. If Trump is truly one who practises ‘the art of the deal’, then he should be able to find something like the security deal which a rich nation such as America could give Panama in exchange for responsible management of the Panama Canal.
So, when these much more reasonable options exist, why does Trump take the extreme and damaging course of insulting every nation around him? Because he is not in the job to advance America’s or the free world’s interests. These measures he proposes are extreme and damaging and they are therefore different to the norm. They excite the passions of the foolish masses, who are uninformed and do not care about politics and bettering the World. Trump feeds off this. He needs this cultish fanaticism to sustain his ego. He runs his government not for the people, but to quell his insecurities.
If any good arises out of Trump’s presidency, he achieves it either entirely by accident or under the disguised direction of his advisors. Almost all other serious politicians, those who believe in the betterment of mankind or at least the stewardship of liberal society, are better options than Trump. It beggars belief that the American people should be so irresponsible as to elect him, but his election is unfortunately democracy at work. Trump is clearly symptomatic of serious cultural and political problems in America. My main complaint is about the ignorance of most Americans to their responsibility to the rest of the World. You cannot, in good conscience, enjoy the benefits of economic, political and cultural dominance over the World and then elect a leader who cries ‘America First’. You must give back to the World from which you take, or at least let the rest of the World share significantly in what you pillage. To do otherwise is to succumb to the moral turpitude of imperialism, which America, with more hypocrisy than I have time or patience to vent about here, takes pride in having renounced on the 4th of July.
Trump is bereft of any presidential character and morally unfit for the presidency. He will never take action for the advancement of America’s interests or the interests of the World. He will only govern to gratify himself. Although this is a bad outcome, American democracy is functioning as intended. The only remedial action to be taken is this: America must reflect on its identity and its duties to the World. Americans must effect serious cultural change and ensure they do not vote such a dangerous man into power again, both for their own good and the good of the World to whom they are beholden.
Trump is the figurehead of the American people who put him in office. The people are responsible for him and they must do better, no matter their political stripes.
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