‘Very stable’ Trump? European leaders beg to
differ – POLITICO
BY Josh
Gerstein
The president’s wild shifts in tone
left many NATO allies concluding no hidden strategy lies behind his
unpredictability. As a NATO summit he threw into chaos wrapped up
Thursday, President Donald Trump cheekily declared himself a “very stable
genius.”
The other world leaders present mostly
begged to differ.
Trump’s wildly unpredictable
performance over two days in Brussels left many European leaders convinced that
there is little method to the American president’s rhetorical madness, and
simply no way to anticipate what he might do next. “Nobody knows when Trump is doing
international diplomacy and when he is doing election campaigning in Montana,”
Danish Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said. “It is difficult to
decode what policy the American president is promoting. There is a complete
unpredictability in this and one of the things you need in this alliance is
predictability towards Russia.” Frederiksen said NATO allies now “live with the
uncertainty” that Trump “plays in a completely different way than the rest of
us.”
Trump’s behavior has been just as
unnerving, if not more so, to smaller allies that have long counted on
Washington.
Trump upended the summit even before it
started by unleashing a tirade against Germany during a
breakfast meeting on Wednesday with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg,
and created further upheaval by hijacking a meeting Thursday morning about
Ukraine and Georgia, where he again demanded that allies quickly increase their
national military spending and threatened that if they fail to do so, the U.S.
could break with the alliance and start conducting security policy
unilaterally, by going its “own way.” Reaction to Trump’s tirades against
European allies — not just on military spending but also on trade and other
issues — has focused mainly on the major powers of Germany, France and the U.K. But Trump’s behavior has been just as
unnerving, if not more so, to smaller allies that have long counted on
Washington and shown unwavering loyalty to the Western alliance.
In the NATO leaders’ meeting that
focused on spending — what the alliance refers to as “burden sharing” — Danish
Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he confronted Trump, noting that the
Danish military had suffered casualties participating in the U.S.-led mission
in Afghanistan roughly in the same proportion as the U.S. military. [BF mine...MS]
In an emotional presentation, Rasmussen
told the president that he had attended the funerals and could not accept
Trump telling him that Denmark was not doing enough for NATO. “In direct and clear speech, I have made it clear to him that Denmark’s contribution cannot be measured in money,” Rasmussen said.
Trump telling him that Denmark was not doing enough for NATO. “In direct and clear speech, I have made it clear to him that Denmark’s contribution cannot be measured in money,” Rasmussen said.
“The U.S. president has come up with
some pretty bombastic announcements and Twitter has moved into the conference
room,” he said at a post-summit briefing.
Denmark’s foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen,
chimed in with his own concern: “It is a new reality and you have to look past
both spelling and factual mistakes and take Trump seriously when he barrels
forward with his Twitter.”
When a Croatian journalist confronted
Trump about his inconsistencies, the president flatly denied there were any,
and he repeated a defense of his own sanity that he had made when previously
questioned about his fitness for the presidency. “We understand your message, but some people ask themselves,
will you be tweeting differently once you board the Air Force One?” the
reporter said. Trump, speaking at his news conference before leaving the summit
replied: “No, that’s other people that do that. I don’t. I’m very consistent.
I’m a very stable genius.”
But leaders who spent the first 18
months of Trump’s presidency thinking there might be a method to his chaos
creation — and struggling to discern what it might be — now seem to have
concluded that it’s just chaos, and that Trump himself may not understand what
he’s doing. …
There's more at Politico.
Trump is that relative that no one wants to be seen in public with. The one who makes a scene at the wedding reception. The one who makes you wonder if he got dropped on his head when he was a baby. The one who tells an off-color joke to Great Aunt Mildred. I say, just hand him the mike and let him keep talking. Hopefully by the time his time is up, either at the end of his first term, or when Mueller turns up something impeachable, the adults in the room will realize he's not fit to govern.
ReplyDeletePerfect example, Katherine. My cousin Bill was asked (we're they crazy?) to give a toast at his nephew's wedding reception. He stands up and days "Here's to all who wish me well. All the rest can go to hell."
Delete"But leaders who spent the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency thinking there might be a method to his chaos creation — and struggling to discern what it might be — now seem to have concluded that it’s just chaos, and that Trump himself may not understand what he’s doing. …"
ReplyDeleteI agree, and frankly I'm surprised it has taken European leaders this long to figure this out. In their defense, they have dealth with enemies in the past, and arguably in the present with Putin, who are enigmatic in service to evil designs. Trump is just erratic. There is nothing behind the curtain of his unpredictability.
Being irrational, like being a bully, is a recognized negotiating strategy. I don't doubt it has served Trump well in the past, and I don't discount the possibility that it will be effective for him as a president. But irrationality and bullying strategies typically are employed in negotiations where the trust is low and the sets of possible outcomes are all win-lose. With allies, there should be a modicum of trust and we should be working toward win-win.
I think they figured it out immediately. Like all of us, They're enduring the Trump years, hoping that they will soon be over, and there will be a sane person to deal with. There are decades worth of alliances with the U.S. that they don't want to throw away.
DeleteJean, I am sure you're right about enduring the Trump years. At the same time, though, I understand they've also been looking askance at our electoral system, given the presidents it has produced in recent memory.
DeleteTrump is sort of anti-republican-democracy. To our chagrin, he's actually pretty consistent in pursuing the checklist of items he campaigned on.
Maybe that's how it's supposed to work. But my understanding of the philosophy of our federal government is that our elected leaders are supposed to be more than the mouthpieces of the people who voted for them. If that was all that is needed, we could just get rid of elections, rule by plebiscite and let the mob take us where it will. The original conception was that the elected officials would use their wisdom and judgment to do what is best for the country, even when it isn't particularly popular.
Sticking it to our European allies is quite popular in some quarters, but notably unwise.
"But irrationality and bullying strategies typically are employed in negotiations where the trust is low and the sets of possible outcomes are all win-lose."
ReplyDeleteExactly correct. But the Trumpsplainers are all in that it's a working strategy for him. This morning on NPR, Russian expert Masha Gessen was talking about the Putin-Trump meeting Monday in Finland (when Trump will get his performance evaluation), and Gessen began by saying their one-on-one is problematic because both are "habitual liars." The NPR host felt compelled to say, "A lot of people in the United States do not see Trump as a habitual liar."
To prove Gessen's point, he called his interview with The Sun in Britain "fake news" and denied he had trashed Mrs. May within less than 24 hours of finishing the audio tape to which anyone in the world can listen.
He doesn't have a "negotiating strategy." He has a big mouth, and he owes a lot to Putin. And he is our president.
Between 1914 and 1945, Europe tore itself apart. In the first effort Serbia, Austria, Germany, France and Russia had multiple reasons to reorder the continent, though none imagined the destruction that came with WW1. The second effort, WWII, nearly succeeded and it was Germany that had to be ground to a halt.
ReplyDeleteThe post-World War II settlements were an effort to repair the damage and to prevent another outbreak of such destructive and horrifying reach. The plan devised by General Marshall was a major effort to repair the economic and political destruction. The subsequent development of the EU and NATO were part of that effort along with many other institution-building measures across Europe.
Time tests all institutions and, no doubt, all of these need repair and reform. That Trump would wantonly aim at their diminishment if not their demise is a measure of his historical ignorance and utter lack of foresight at what would follow if they fail.
One prerequisite for a US president is to have a comprehensive knowledge of US and world history and a grasp of historical forces. Trump doesn't even read. Maybe candidates should have to pass an exam.
DeleteHere's a very frank statement of what NATO was meant to do:
ReplyDeleteWhat is new and different about Trump’s decision to use NATO and Germany as punching bags on his European trip is the president’s failure to understand that NATO and the European Union were designed both to build a counterweight to the Soviet Union and to save Germany from itself. The Americans and the other Europeans wanted to enmesh Germany so thoroughly in Western alliances that it never again became a dominant, destabilizing force. As NATO’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, put it in the 1950s, the alliance’s purpose was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-thinks-nato-is-just-about-russia-its-about-germany-too/2018/07/13/dcc22d36-85ec-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.eadf01231f19
That Wash Post above is a must-read:
DeleteHere is his take on Merkel:
Merkel is clearly nearing the end of her 13-year tenure as chancellor, but she has remained popular in the decades after unification in good part because of what she is not. As a product of communist East Germany’s opposition movement, Merkel was deeply suspicious of charisma and Western notions of leadership. She has appealed to Germans’ respect for a quiet, serious, business-like demeanor and a purposeful if dull focus on policy and fairness. She is, in many ways, the anti-Trump.
Merkel, like her mentor Helmut Kohl, understood in her gut that Germany’s success on the world stage depended on maintaining a certain reticence — on not scaring people, as she told me in a 1991 interview. She knew that by acting through the European Union and NATO, Germany could boost its role as Europe’s economic engine without seeming threatening.
I have a lot of respect for Merkel. Which is more than I can say about our fearless leader.
DeleteA president who is a rather dull but competent administrator is what I've been thirsting for for a long time as well. I voted for John Kasich in the Republican primaries! But it seems that our politics doesn't allow quiet competence to rise to the top. Flamboyance is rewarded. It may be that the most we can hope for is competent flamboyance.
DeleteTrump's predecessor had no previous governing experience and essentially was a Washington outsider; Trump himself has no previous political experience and is even more of a Washington outsider. Obama got a little better at being a president as time marched on. That may be the case with Trump as well, although he started at such a low level that to say he's a little better this year than last year is to damn him with faint praise.
I've never been enamored with the Washington outsider moniker. I'd rather have a president who understands the levers of power, so long as s/he wields them reasonably morally and in the national interest.
Jim, I would have voted for John Kasich also. Unfortunately our primary is one of the later ones, and he had already called it quits by then. I have often thought that it would be better to have the primaries all on one day. The states which have late ones don't get to pick from the full range of candidates.
DeleteHere is an article by Ezra Klein laying out the reason why Trump is undermining the EU. Given his world view, it makes perfect sense...to him.
Katherine, many thanks for the link to that Ezra Klein article. I'd consider it must-read.
DeleteKlein seems to attribute Trump's world view to Buchanan, but the president is articulating, ineptly, some points of view that are widely held across conservatism:
* That Europeans in NATO are free riders
* That the EU is an unaccountable bureaucracy that erodes national sovereignty
* The Merkel is overly generous in her immigration and refugee policy, to the detriment of Germany and Europe
* That lax European policies regarding immigration are directly responsible for terrorist attacks in France and elsewhere
I suppose John Bolton is actually the one feeding his boss these talking points.
Politically, May is a dead woman walking. It's impolitic of Trump to call for Boris Johnson to succeed her but he isn't saying anything that everyone in Britain and elsewhere isn't thinking about.
What Trump said, as quoted by Klein, will play very well in the US, at least in conservative precincts. Trump comes across here as the plain-speaking American. That he managed to rile European leaders is political gold in the US.
Of course Trump is playing to his base, he obviously doesn't much care what the Europeans think of him. And, as is typical, he makes it all about money. The paragraph Margaret highlighted, in which the Danish prime minister reminded him that the Danish military had suffered losses in Afghanistan similar in proportion to the US, was telling, and embarrassing. Trump apparently hasn't considered the possibility that there could be an emergency that arises in which we need the help of our allies. And they're going to say, "USA, who's that? Didn't they move away a long time ago? They didn't keep in touch. It's not going to be convenient for us to help right now."
DeleteKatherine - I would distinguish here between Trump's base and conservatism more generally. I think it's to be expected that Trump's base doesn't care much about Europeans; pretty obviously, they care even less for Latin American and Muslim immigrants. They're pretty isolationist and arguably exhibit some xenophobic tendencies.
DeleteWhat Trump articulated as reported by Klein are longstanding conservative grievances and critiques about Europe. Their reach is broader than Trump's base.
I'm making this point because Trump needs more than his base in order to be re-elected in 2020, and he needs more than his base to turn out this fall if Republicans have a prayer of keeping the House.
And beyond those political considerations, I don't doubt Trump genuinely believes what he said. In general, he's not very disciplined about staying on-message, and as Klein quoted him, he's very much speaking off the cuff in that instance. What he said is what is in his own head and heart. Like a lot of wealthy businessmen, he's got a lot in common with traditional Republican viewpoints.
I agree that Trump genuinely believes what he said. And that he has to have more than his base to be elected. However, if it were a Venn diagram, I believe that we would see a lot of overlap with the Trump base, and what I would call, for lack of a better term, Buchanan conservatives. And, hopefully there are conservatives who aren't part of either circle.
DeleteKatherine - yes, there are what we might call globalist conservatives. I guess I'm one. I'm against the tariffs, I'm for the trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP. For trade and prosperity issues, I opposed Brexit, although I also think that the EU is pretty dysfunctional, and I agree with my own bullet :-) above that the EU erodes national sovereignty.
DeleteBut the wake-up call to conservatives like me that came out of Trump's nomination as the GOP candidate (and, I guess, his election) is that there aren't many of us. And it's not that conservatives like me have been slackers in trying to educate conservatives in our worldview - I'm pretty mainstream, I think, in terms of my alignment with, say, The Weekly Standard for issues like trade. But it turns out that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are the agenda setters when it comes to conservative ideas. Which is really depressing. Now I've managed to get myself all bummed out :-).
As far as Fox News being agenda setters, they have lost whatever creds they ever had as serious news outlets (Rush never had any serious creds). I classify them as entertainment. I just wish they would quit playing Fox in public places. They had it going in the doctor's office waiting room last time I was there. "Hmm, your blood pressure's a little high today." Gee, I wonder why that would be?
DeleteAnd Trump and Putin had a chummy meeting in Helsinki today. Apparently he's okay with it when Russia is the one eroding national sovereignty.
DeleteYes.
DeleteI seriously wonder if there is anyone else okay with it. More mainstream conservatives like me aren't. I'd be surprised if Trump's base is, except that there is a portion of them that will believe him no matter what. But my take of the Trump base is that, as a species, they can be pretty in-your-face.
I think Trump loses his nerve. It's kind of telling that he verbally pounds women like May and Merkel and doesn't stand up to tough guys like Putin.
He shouldn't have done the summit. The indictments of Russians by Mueller from a few days ago should have precipitated a cancellation.
Fox may (or may not) have "lost whatever creds they ever had," but it is still the gold standard for the guy who went 4,303 miles to attack Hillary Clinton, with his shadow campaign chairman standing at his side.
DeleteWhat is truly disheartening are the people who are defending everything Trump does. They have drained the koolaid pitcher to the last drop.
DeleteI saw some of Trump with Putin. Trump is so obviously an airhead. For those who voted for him because of abortion, I wonder if abortion will never be banned in the USA because there won't be a USA for it to be banned in.
DeleteSince 1960, Americans have generally voted for the less qualified person to be president. The exceptions were LBJ in 1964 and George W. Bush in '88. (There may be one more I am forgetting.) We do love that outsider -- until he gets in and starts screwing up. Then we look for an outsider to drain the swamp. (What's the definition of insanity? -- doing the same thing over and over and always expecting a dfferent result.)
ReplyDelete