In the new issue of The New York Review of Books, Jessica T. Matthews (formerly of the State Department and NSC, now a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) provides a thorough post mortem of Donald Trump's Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un. She notes that, contrary to Trump's claims, absolutely nothing of substance was achieved. Indeed, in the aftermath of the event the United States has irrecoverably lost significant leverage in the struggle to disarm North Korea. These are broad points of consensus among informed observers. The question they raise that remains unresolved is Trump's degree of culpability in this error. On this score, Matthews offers two possibilities:
[E]ither President Trump...genuinely believes he accomplished something in Singapore...[or] the president knows that he got nothing. In that case, when he bragged on his way home that 'this should have been done years ago' and later tweeted 'There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,' he was simply being fraudulent in the way that works so well for him at home...Which is more dangerous- someone...who doesn't try, or someone who doesn't care about the actual outcome as long as he can sell a short-lived story of personal success and move on?
Both of the scenarios that Matthews lays out are very damning, but a close look at evidence would suggest that the truth is a great deal worse than she allows. Donald Trump is very conscious of his reality TV image, he consistently projects the persona that viewers feel they know from The Apprentice. This makes Trump's intellect and cognition seem so limited as to make "didn't try" or "doesn't care" plausible as the absolute range of possibilities in assessing his performance at the Singapore summit. However, though Trump is obviously quite ignorant and too lazy to give much thought to complex problems, he is just as obviously not nearly as daft as the character he plays on TV. He was almost certainly confidently in control of everything that happened in Singapore from beginning to end, and thus went into the summit knowing that he would be trading away American leverage in exchange for nothing, and determined to lie about it in the aftermath.
How can we infer this? The first indication is his surprise announcement of the cancellation of joint US-South Korean military exercises after his "conference" with Kim Jong-un. Trump is obviously not the expert negotiator that he claims to be, but neither is he in the habit of giving anything to anyone for free. The cancellation smacks of a quid pro quo, and since Trump made the announcement without openly consulting any of his military or foreign policy personnel, the quid pro quo in question must likewise have been made outside of the public eye. What did Trump get in exchange for this concession?
The answer is in his subsequent tweets. Trump has persistently bragged about the fact that there have been no more tests of nuclear devices or missiles since the scheduling of the Singapore summit. Just as Trump is not in the habit of giving away anything for free, he is also generally smart enough to refrain from making boasts that can or will be dramatically undermined. He obviously went into Singapore knowing that a deal had been brokered (most probably by Michael Pompeo, behind closed doors in Pyongyang): Kim Jong-un's regime agreed to refrain from nuclear and missile tests while Trump is in office (and perhaps agreed to other concessions unrelated to disarmament, like the return of the remains US servicemen) in exchange for the staging of a summit and the cancellation of military exercises. That is the entirety and the essential substance of the "Singapore" entente, there was never any good faith effort toward negotiating disarmament.
When Trump told everyone to sleep well at night because the nuclear threat from North Korea had been allayed, he was not doing so out of ignorance of history or indifference, but as part of a deliberate and calculated confidence game that had been his strategic aim from the very start. Trump knew exactly what had been negotiated before and during the Singapore summit, thus he had a clear sense of what he could sell to his own supporters for maximum political advantage. He knew that he could tell people the problem had been solved because he had assurances that Pyongyang would comply in maintaining appearances to corroborate that claim. He likewise knew that the problem was in fact not solved, and that in making his boasts he was foreclosing the possibility that he or any future US president could use diplomatic means to do so. Why should China or Russia ever again sacrifice profits to join a sanction regime against a threat that the President of the United States has declared neutralized?
It is thus clear what Donald J. Trump did in Singapore. He irredeemably traded away vital strategic capital of the United States government and military in exchange for an entirely phony and fraudulent (but desperately needed, in the face of the mounting allegations of the Mueller investigation) political victory. There is a word for that species of act: treason. I am not a lawyer, so I do not know whether the president's actions would meet the legal definition of treason in a court of law. But in every meaningful sense: moral, ethical, and institutional, Donald Trump betrayed the United States in Singapore and forswore the duties of his office in pursuit of personal gain. Given that the betrayal in Singapore was then compounded by an equally egregious act in Helsinki (where the president gave aid and comfort to a foreign adversary while undermining his own intelligence services and law enforcement agencies), there is no longer any real question but that the president can and should be impeached.
The Mueller investigation may indeed provide more evidence of the president's malfeasance, but if so that will only corroborate what millions of people have already witnessed with their own eyes. Donald Trump is a serial traitor to the United States, and should not serve as its president. By failing to even minimally acknowledge that fact the Congress is negligent in its duties as laid out in the Constitution.
Friday, July 27, 2018
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
An Open Letter of Apology to the People of the World
Dear Fellow Citizens of the World,
I write to apologize for the accession of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States. I would not presume to apologize for all Americans, though I do believe that all Americans, to one degree or another, owe you an apology. But I am only a single private citizen, thus I extend my personal regrets for the responsibility I bear in this ongoing tragedy.
Donald J. Trump is in all ways- intellectually, temperamentally, cognitively, and morally- unfit to serve in the office he holds. This is not only proven by his many transgressions against proper order, good taste, basic decency, and the greater good (for example: his travel ban, family separation policy, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and the disarmament treaty with Iran, to name only a very few), but was clearly evident from the very beginning of his campaign. We the American people knowingly elected a pathologically narcissistic, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ignoramus to the highest office in our Republic. It is certainly among the greatest miscarriages of civic responsibility in the annals of democracy.
My personal culpability is admittedly limited- I did not vote for Donald Trump. But if I ask myself honestly whether or not I did everything I could to prevent his election, the answer must be "no". Given the enormity of the consequences involved, anyone who did not exhaust muscle and marrow in the effort to prevent the Trump presidency must acknowledge some failure of civic duty.
To be clear, I do not write out of guilt. Laboring you with such petty concerns would add insult to injury. I extend this apology because I understand something that many of my compatriots seemingly do not: in committing this grievous error we have squandered your trust. In the wake of WWII, the United States helped build a set of institutions that, with admittedly varied success, fostered order, stability, and peace on a global scale. Through negligence or malice, Donald Trump is now dismantling those institutions and undermining that international order.
Many Americans believe that this is simply a temporary phase. They fail to realize, however, that participation in the global system that the US helped build (which was not limited to allies of the US, but extended to neutral nations and even enemies) was predicated, in part, on a faith in the commitment of the US to respect certain norms of diplomacy and international politics. Now that we, the voters of the US, have elevated a man who told us that he would not respect those norms, the international faith that once animated broad participation in the post-WWII global order may be irrecoverable. How can you trust us, moving forward, never to elect a reprobate like Donald Trump again?
This is a question of more than academic interest. Even someone as feckless as Donald Trump takes the durability of the post-WWII order for granted. It is why he is comfortable fawning over Vladimir Putin or threatening to rain "fire and fury" on Kim Jong-un. Where is the danger in such rhetoric? We live in a world in which great-power conflicts no longer happen, right?
Except that as Trump and his supporters (and many other Americans) fail to grasp, since the US has now squandered the trust upon which the post-WWII order was, in part, based, the order itself cannot be taken for granted. Unless the US can reclaim some part of the world's trust, we are in danger of slipping back into a world prone to grand geostrategic conflicts. This is a horrifying prospect, because of course, in a nuclear-armed world, the next geostrategic conflict will be the closing act of human history.
So it is not as a salve to our consciences that Americans should apologize, but to broadcast our recognition of the scope of our error and the depth of what is at stake. Unless the US can regain the trust of the world, the international order that has helped maintain the peace may be irrecoverable, and if that proves to be true, we all may suffer collectively. So once again I say, I am sorry. I understand how disastrous the election of Trump was for everyone on earth, and I am determined to do everything in my power to see that it never happens again. I hope that most of my fellow Americans will join me in that resolve.
Sincerely,
Andrew Meyer
I write to apologize for the accession of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States. I would not presume to apologize for all Americans, though I do believe that all Americans, to one degree or another, owe you an apology. But I am only a single private citizen, thus I extend my personal regrets for the responsibility I bear in this ongoing tragedy.
Donald J. Trump is in all ways- intellectually, temperamentally, cognitively, and morally- unfit to serve in the office he holds. This is not only proven by his many transgressions against proper order, good taste, basic decency, and the greater good (for example: his travel ban, family separation policy, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and the disarmament treaty with Iran, to name only a very few), but was clearly evident from the very beginning of his campaign. We the American people knowingly elected a pathologically narcissistic, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ignoramus to the highest office in our Republic. It is certainly among the greatest miscarriages of civic responsibility in the annals of democracy.
My personal culpability is admittedly limited- I did not vote for Donald Trump. But if I ask myself honestly whether or not I did everything I could to prevent his election, the answer must be "no". Given the enormity of the consequences involved, anyone who did not exhaust muscle and marrow in the effort to prevent the Trump presidency must acknowledge some failure of civic duty.
To be clear, I do not write out of guilt. Laboring you with such petty concerns would add insult to injury. I extend this apology because I understand something that many of my compatriots seemingly do not: in committing this grievous error we have squandered your trust. In the wake of WWII, the United States helped build a set of institutions that, with admittedly varied success, fostered order, stability, and peace on a global scale. Through negligence or malice, Donald Trump is now dismantling those institutions and undermining that international order.
Many Americans believe that this is simply a temporary phase. They fail to realize, however, that participation in the global system that the US helped build (which was not limited to allies of the US, but extended to neutral nations and even enemies) was predicated, in part, on a faith in the commitment of the US to respect certain norms of diplomacy and international politics. Now that we, the voters of the US, have elevated a man who told us that he would not respect those norms, the international faith that once animated broad participation in the post-WWII global order may be irrecoverable. How can you trust us, moving forward, never to elect a reprobate like Donald Trump again?
This is a question of more than academic interest. Even someone as feckless as Donald Trump takes the durability of the post-WWII order for granted. It is why he is comfortable fawning over Vladimir Putin or threatening to rain "fire and fury" on Kim Jong-un. Where is the danger in such rhetoric? We live in a world in which great-power conflicts no longer happen, right?
Except that as Trump and his supporters (and many other Americans) fail to grasp, since the US has now squandered the trust upon which the post-WWII order was, in part, based, the order itself cannot be taken for granted. Unless the US can reclaim some part of the world's trust, we are in danger of slipping back into a world prone to grand geostrategic conflicts. This is a horrifying prospect, because of course, in a nuclear-armed world, the next geostrategic conflict will be the closing act of human history.
So it is not as a salve to our consciences that Americans should apologize, but to broadcast our recognition of the scope of our error and the depth of what is at stake. Unless the US can regain the trust of the world, the international order that has helped maintain the peace may be irrecoverable, and if that proves to be true, we all may suffer collectively. So once again I say, I am sorry. I understand how disastrous the election of Trump was for everyone on earth, and I am determined to do everything in my power to see that it never happens again. I hope that most of my fellow Americans will join me in that resolve.
Sincerely,
Andrew Meyer
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)