From North America To Europe

With remarkable prescience, Josh Lederman of the Associated Press reported a mere three days after the inauguration of our nation's 45th president

“With the election of Donald Trump, the old world of the 20th century is finally over,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote in the Bild newspaper, reflecting a broader European lament about confused international leadership and increased disorder.

Signs already abounded when at the recent meeting in Brussels, President Trump notably failed to affirm American commitment to Article 5, which emphasizes "an atack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies."  Refusing to acknowledge that the only time Article V has been invoked has been in support of the United States (after 9/11/01), the head of the world's leading economy moaned and groaned like a weak, bullied child, complaining about the size of the defense budgets of member nations.

European leaders were neither pleased nor amused. The de facto chief of NATO, Germany's Angela Merkel, received a standing ovation when a few days later she stated "This is what I experienced in the last few days. We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”







Thus with no formal declaration, Mrs. Merkel was thrust into the role as leader of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance.  Responding in part to the expected announcement by Trump on June 2 of US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, on June 1

According to a statement being prepared before an EU-China summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, the new alliance will say they are determined to “lead the energy transition” toward a low-carbon economy.

The EU’s climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, told the Guardian: “The EU and China are joining forces to forge ahead on the implementation of the Paris agreement and accelerate the global transition to clean energy.”

Cañete continued: “No one should be left behind, but the EU and China have decided to move forward. Our successful cooperation on issues like emissions trading and clean technologies are bearing fruit. Now is the time to further strengthen these ties to keep the wheels turning for ambitious global climate action.”

This neatly, albeit disturbingly, fulfills Lederman's speculation on January 23 that

President Donald Trump’s pursuit of an “America first” foreign policy is raising questions about who, if anyone, will fill the void if the U.S. relinquishes its traditional global leadership role. China and Russia are among the aspirants for greater economic and military influence, while an ambivalent Germany could emerge as the West’s moral compass.

Given that mainland China and even Russia are typically not considered part of the "west," Germany has become much more than even a moral compass, an irony no one could even imagine 72 years ago.

It takes no imagination, however, to interpret the whine of Environmental Protection Administrator Scott Pruitt during the Administration's news conference of June 2 when he complained (at 1:40 of video)

The world applauded- the world applauded when we joined Paris. And you know why? I think they applauded because they knew it was going to put this country at an economic disadvantage. And the reason European leaders- going back to the question earlier- is I think they want us to stay in, is that they know it'll shackle our economy that we're leading the world in respect to our CO2 production.







Pruitt- who is said to be one of the two opponents of the pact in the Administration- clearly summarized a prime motive for Trump's action.  The President name-checked cities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan (what- no Wisconsin?) but was also eager to give the middle finger to the rest of the world,  It was only more convenient that it was the Paris Agreement, and the French have a reputation among a lot of Trump voters for those things they find most offensive in the modern world.

Additionally, Pruitt expresses that sense of grievance that runs through so much of Trump's statements and tweets. Whether he and the President really are silly enough to believe that the world's nations joined the Agreement to harm the USA, to "put this country at an economic disadvantage," is less important than its reinforcement as a theme in this presidency.  Similarly, in Brussels, Trump moaned "this is not fair." Whatever he complains at any time of of being "not fair"  is less important than assuaging a sense of grievance..

President Trump, Michael Grunwald notes, is "creating an international leadership vacuum" and "opening the door for China and Europe to take over the role of global leaders on climate change, and maybe the world’s other major problems."

The cooperation between the EU and China on global warming may presage leadership of Beijing on other major problems. But the interests of the free world cannot be met by China,which is not a free country, and which recognizes only its own interests, a view of nation reflected in Trump's "America First" mantra.

The torch of leadership, once alleged to be passed to a new generation, now must pass to a group dedicated to common interests, and to its leader.  "We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands," Angela Merkel maintains.  The two world wars of the last century notwithstanding, that torch now resides not in Washington, but in Berlin.






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Worse Than Insane

Keith Olbermann displayed impressive understanding of foreign policy when after President Trump recently presented to German chancellor Angela Merkel a bill for NATO expenses, he remarked

Geographically, Germany is essential to American security. It is our symbolic front against Russia and Russia's primary geo-poitical goal since 1945 has been to break up the German-American alliance.  Politically, Germany is essential to American security because the last time we pushed it away, after World War I, when it rose up again it was powerful enough to start World War II.If we help it with its self-defense, even if we pay a little more of the freight tahn it does, we are in effect paying for our self-defense.








Olbermann's argument about Donald Trump, however, is less persuasive when he cites a "twenty question screening test for psychopaths" in which the maximu score is forty points." He states "the threshold for probably being a psychopath is thirty points. Trump's words and actions got him thirty-two points."

Psychoanalyst Steven Reisner would not agree. Alluding to what we lay people might recognize as a variant of self-fulfilling  prophecy, he explains

the real problem with diagnosing Trump as mentally ill based on deviation from the norm is that Trump himself is a master at determining what counts as normal. Especially in our brave new world of reality television, Trump has an outsize influence—he is such a virtuoso of media-made reality that media coverage itself often helps turn his wildest statements into fact sooner than fact checkers can convince Americans otherwise. Let’s not forget that immigrants may not have been rioting in Sweden when Trump made his mysterious claim, but they actually did begin rioting soon afterward. And Trumps’ far-fetched statements about a deep state and rampant immigrant terrorism may actually help bring these about, strengthening Trump’s hand. And now, even his outlandish claim of being wiretapped is being given some credence.

Though regrettably (favorably) quoting Freud (Reisner is an analyst, after all), Reisner recognizes that Trump is (italics his)

a reality artist, one who is adept at the strategies that turn his biggest whoppers into reality. It is reminiscent of Charles Foster Kane, in Orson Welles’ classic film, who, when informed by the war reporter he dispatched to Cuba that there was no war to be found but only delightful girls and beautiful scenery worthy of prose poems, famously replied, “Dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.”

When last July Olbermann contended that Trump could not pass a "sanity test," he nonetheless recounted an episode lending credence to the idea that Trump is less unbalanced than canny operator. He recalled that he

had interviewed Trump as long ago as 1983 and always thought him a horse’s ass, but after running into him when we both worked at NBC, and then in the lobby of one of his apartment buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co-worker and (in essence) landlord. In one role he described himself as an anti-Bush, pro-Obama liberal; in the other, he urged me to contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the building. Then he got on the campaign stage and, boom! He was America’s newest Mussolini Impersonator.

Ever the mental health professional, Reisner does not explicitly label Trump a con man but explains

By the sheer force of his personality, power, bullying tendencies, and money, Trump can bend reality to his perspective, which he does using a simple technique: He simply shifts the evidence for what is real from facts to feelings.

Thus he employs to great effect his strategy of appearing insane, impulsive, vengeful, and unpredictable—frightening his opponents with “American carnage” at one moment and taking advantage of their relief, the next, when he suddenly appears compassionate, reasonable, and “presidential.” He intensifies his supporters’ feelings, too, when it serves his reality—elevating their pain and suffering into evidence of his own sanity in a world gone mad and mobilizing their aggression at those who can be blamed for their misery. Bobbing and weaving between cruelty and compassion, impulsivity and sobriety, he makes his own definitions of what is real, changing them when they cease to be useful and turning the tables on his critics when challenged significantly.

There may be nothing more characteristic of 21st century American society than the triumph of the heart over the head, emotion over thought, and Reisner maintains

We must understand that Trump thrives in the aftermath of his provocations. Like a looter who instigates a riot, Trump is a master at navigating the chaos he himself provokes. To call Trump’s exaggeration of immigrant criminality delusional is to miss Trump’s real aim of bolstering the emotional evidence for his narrative: that outsiders have stolen Americans’ birthright and only a strong leader can make this right. To make his claim an emotional reality, he plans to create a new police force to crack down on immigrant crime and widely publicize the evidence.

In the same veing, though less scholarly and more succinctly, Steve M. captures the essence of support for the President when he remarks

Trump fans don't want him to be a president -- they want him to be an action-movie hero. They want him to transcend politics. No, that's not quite accurate -- they want him to kick politics' ass. They want him to leave politics bleeding to death in an alley. And many of them, although probably fewer and fewer every day, still think that's possible.

It is probably inaccurate to  consider Trump mentally ill and misleading to maintain that he couldn't pass some sort of "sanity test."  Doing so is, as Reisner points out

playing right into Trump’s preferred reality—no longer holding him to account on the basis of law, politics, and personal responsibility, but rather transferring him, like Brer Rabbit, into the briar patch of feelings, charisma, and threat. And in that particular briar patch, Trump is the professional and the psychiatrists are amateurs. So, like the gangster or outlaw who runs out of bullets when faced with a stronger foe, they stoop to the last resort and throw their gun: He’s crazy! When in reality what they are saying is: He is off-the-charts scary, and I don’t know how to stop him.

"We must abandon the comforting delusion that Trump is delusional," concludes Reisner. Let's not let President Trump off easy when the reality is probably even more dangerous.

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Confused- or Deceptive?

What to make of this exchange during the portion of the Charlie Gibson interview with Sarah Palin broadcast on 9/11/08?

GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?

PALIN: I have not and I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you. But, Charlie, again, we've got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody's big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state.

Is she saying "many vice presidents.... may have the same answer ("I have not") that I just gave you?" That would be uninformed, given that as, Lisa Chinn of ABC News reports, "every vice president over the last 30 years had met a foreign head of state before being elected." Or is she aware her experience is relatively limited and arguing that meeting a foreign head of state is "politics as usual?" It's hard to tell because, as with other answers she gave, Palin is either confused- or intentionally ambiguous, deftly avoiding giving a straight answer to most questions.

A Trip Abroad

On Saturday, June 28, Barack Obama's campaign announced that its candidate plans later this summer a trip to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain. The trip to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain will take place separately from a trip planned by the candidate to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of the visit to Europe and the Middle East, the Illinois Senator declared "This trip will be an important opportunity for me to assess the situation in countries that are critical to American national security and to consult with some of our closest friends and allies about the common challenges we face.”

This is a smart move by Obama because:

1- It allows the candidate to appear presidential, an improvement in stature for one whose foreign policy credentials have been questioned.

2- It will blunt the charge of inexperience leveled by Senator McCain, who on 5/28/08 charged of his rival "It’s been 871 days since he was there. And I’m confident that when he goes he will then change his position on the conflict in Iraq because he will see the success that has been achieved on the ground.”

3- It will give Obama more credibility to attack the Bush/McCain policy in Iraq, enabling him in debates and other appearances to fall back on "my experience in Iraq...." or "what I've learned...."

4- If played right, it gives the presumptive Democratic nominee an opportunity to emphasize the drop in standing of the U.S.A. abroad during the eight years of Republican reign and his own capacity to lift the prestige of the nation. (He must, however, avoid imparting the sense that foreign nations are trying to affect our election, a perception particularly dangerous for an individual who may be tagged by the opposition as somehow foreign or insufficiently American.)

And of course, it wouldn't hurt for a prospective President to be well-versed in some of the international issues which would confront him as Commander-in-Chief.