There is a new world order — and hasn’t it arrived fast?
North Korea has nuclear weapons and China eyes the world as the US loses global influence.
In an era attuned to the millennial, of apps, of same-day delivery and near instant everything, the speed with which this new normal has arrived shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Yet it has. Not just because a shakeup of this magnitude seldom happens in modern geopolitics, but because the man driving it — President Trump — is a septuagenarian with little inclination for traditional leadership.
His shortcomings — which are manifold and manifest to some and invisible to others — have had a public airing this week.
Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake fired off a double-barreled volley of criticism.
Corker, without using the word, called Trump a liar: “much of what he says is provably untrue, factually inaccurate and people know that.”
Hours later, Flake, in an eloquent and emotional speech to the Senate, called for change: “It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end.”
For Trump’s critics at home, there was hope that the attack could amount to either a political assassination or that it at least might wound Trump for a more sustained assault later.
But it is Trump who has the initiative. Corker and Flake’s political cards have been marked. Their debt for lack of loyalty to the President will be paid. At least, that’s how Trump’s supporters see it.
Overseas, however, it is a different story. Not just the obvious concern about where his Presidency is going, but the realization that the coming chaos Corker and Flake are flagging will be every bit as bad as they fear.
Both Flake’s denouncement of Trump’s Twitter diplomacy — “the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters” — and Corker’s warning of the implication of Trump’s lies –“Unfortunately World leaders are very aware much of what he says is untrue” — bode ill.
In the case of the UK, America’s erstwhile partner in the so-called “Special Relationship”, Flake and Corker’s warning that the President cannot be trusted has an all too familiar ring.
Last June, following a deadly terror attack on London Bridge, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan told citizens to expect to see more police on the streets, but that they had no reason to be alarmed. Not long after, Trump — who had already had a spat with Khan earlier in the year — tweeted “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there ‘no reason to be alarmed!'”
Khan’s office politely implied the US President was at best not in possession of the facts or at worst being intentionally ignorant, a spokesman saying that Khan had “more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks.”
Last week Trump attempted a similar stunt, again at Britain’s expense. Newly released crime statistics showed a 13% increase in victim-based crime. Trump followed with his own version of this news, suggesting that the 13% rise had something to do with “spread of radical Islamic terror”. It did not.
There are only so many times any leader might want to annoy a valuable ally, but in September Trump appeared to go too far, prompting the British Prime Minister Theresa May to push back.
How very un-British. But that’s how bad things have got.
After a bomber tried to detonate a plastic bucket full of explosives on a busy commuter train on its way to the center of London, Trump tweeted that there had been “Another attack in London by a loser terrorist,” adding that “These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard (London Police).”
The problem was that at the time Trump tweeted so confidently that this was a terror attack and that the authorities knew who the perpetrator was, the incident was still being investigated by police.
Theresa May’s reserve cracked, calling Trump’s tweet “unhelpful”. She didn’t mention Trump by name. She didn’t need to. Everyone knew.
It’s the idea that the most powerful man in the world cannot be trusted that makes Flake and Corker’s words resonate around the world. And it’s what gives America’s allies palpitations — and its enemies openings to exploit.
Whether in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran or Pyongyang, Trump’s lies are a bridgehead to their ambitions.
Moscow is getting more recognition as a world power. Beijing is being given the geopolitical space to strengthen its growing global reach. Meanwhile Tehran is able to diminish America’s Middle East clout. And Pyongyang, of course, may soon become an accepted nuclear power.
When Corker accused Trump of “breaking down relationships around the world that have been useful”, he meant the willingness of America’s traditional allies to stand by Trump’s side.
Since Trump’s refusal to re-certify the Iran nuclear deal, all the other signatories — US allies like France, Germany, the UK and even enemies Russia and China — have stuck together, warning Trump not to do it.
Iran hasn’t been silent, On Thursday, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Abadi not to trust America: “You should be careful about the Americans’ mischief and never trust them”. He also said that the US was responsible for creating ISIS.
It’s careful messaging designed to encourage Iraqis’ to oust American influence in Baghdad and replace it with Iranian influence. America needs its allies to win that battle.
Corker and Flake have drawn into sharp focus that Trump’s ability to be the leader of the free world is in free fall.
His globe-trotting secretaries of State and Defense have logged thousands upon thousands of miles this week, meeting allies, making friends and building the kind of relationships that America needs to keep its place in the world and keep Trump’s dreams of American jobs on track.
When they get home, the world will be watching, remembering what Trump did to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson only last month: After a flying visit to Beijing to talk about curbing Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions, Trump told Tillerson he was wasting him time.
We may never know all the considerations that President Xi Jing Ping weighed before announcing China’s new muscular foreign policy this week, but it would be an unwise diplomat who ruled out a calculus based — at least in part — on Trump’s imperfect learning curve.
At the White House, the lesson learned this week appears to be that Republicans cannot criticize Trump. At the press briefing, Corker and Flake’s carefully nuanced criticisms have been dismissed as the death rattle of unelectable Senators.
Reporters’ legitimate questions about Corker and Flake have been shut down in hostile press briefings.
To many outside America, this does not look like a strong leader who is in control. Rather, it looks like an administration indulging in the politics of arrogance, expressing no humility and apparently learning no lessons.
