Trump’s Distorted World View
Beyond the fallout of defending U.S. strikes on suspected
drug boats, increasing threats of an undeclared war on Venezuela, the excesses
of a mass deportation campaign spiraling out of control, unending tariffs, and
flailing attempts to force Ukraine into a bad deal with Russia, we got a
new National
Security Strategy document that lays out Trump’s values as if they are
ours.
Together, they reflect the clear vision of an autocratic,
power-minded Trump who wants to dictate to Americans and the rest of the world
that they should forego human rights and democracy, recognize a U.S.
hemispheric dominance, and kowtow to us because of our national wealth, not our
ideals.
As
The New York Times concluded in an analysis of the strategic document,
“The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its
vast powers to make money” at the expense of support for dictators and caring
about those without wealth.
“Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a
global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing
migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing
them as sources of cash,” The Times analysis said.
When combined with fresh debate about killings of shipwreck crewmen on those drug boats and calling immigrants from a growing list of nations “garbage,” we have a remarkable emergent picture of an arrogant, self-interested despot who sees the world as serving him with no questions allowed.
A Game Only the Wealthy Play
Of course, Trump the Disrupter has little world-view
patience for programs that feed the hungry or address global AIDS, which is why
he has canceled those positive U.S. contributions. He has declined to stand by
longtime friends, instead seeking to kindle close ties even with longtime foes
whose power he respects.
You can’t even get into the power-as-money version of
international affairs if you’re not wealthy already, either personally or as a
nation. And so, the world’s poorest nations are automatically now being shunted
into a travel ban to the U.S. and their publicly debased citizens barred from
U.S. visas or immigration. Just this week, Trump ordered Homeland Security
Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Mario Rubio to move from 19 barred
countries to more than 30.
The Saudi Crown Prince is feted at the White House without
mention of his role in ordering the murder of an American journalist or the
historic role Saudis played in 9/11 attacks; there is a tantalizing trillion
dollars’ worth of investment in the U.S. at hand. Pressure on Ukraine to fold
before Russian aggression continues to assure a U.S. hand in mining operations
to “pay back” the U.S. for military and humanitarian aid to defend democracy
and international sovereignty,
Even last week’s show-off re-signing of a truce between the
Democratic Republic of Congo (among the 19 banned countries) and Rwanda at the
newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace building was a joke: The
fighting renewed the next day, though the signed deal made sure to guarantee
U.S. access to rare earth minerals.
How surprised will any of us be if there is a U.S. attack on
Venezuela in which oil reserves turn out to be the prize?
The entire arbitrariness of the Trump tariffs is based on a
Trump-decided scale of which country needs the worst lashing over U.S.
advantages. The would-be campaign to level various economic imbalances is based
on expressions of personalized fealty to Trump, and, of course, is paid by U.S.
taxpayers as a super sales tax, not by the “penalized” countries.
Hitting Europe
The harshest criticisms in the annual strategic statement
are for a Europe that is becoming more non-White through immigration policies
that Trump rejects wholesale. Europe is facing “civilization erasure” and
becoming “unrecognizable” because of immigration.
The report identifies the specific American strategic
recommendation to help Europe “to correct its current trajectory” over the next
decades. “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational
self-confidence” and pledged U.S. outward support for political parties opposed
to immigration.
It’s a direct call to White nationalism of the sort that
Trump denies but clearly pursues in this country.
How else to explain a U.S. campaign that arrests and deports
the undocumented with such armed force and fervor that shuns adherence to legal
rulings, court-ordered procedures and plain humanity involved in splitting
families? How else to justify racial profiling and the labeling of whole
immigrant groups as “garbage.” How else to explain why it is necessary to
demand emergency review by the U.S. Supreme Court of Constitutional
“birthright” status for millions of children born in the United States or its
territories?
The Trump strategy never addresses what is supposed to
happen to the world’s impoverished or to those without a million bucks or five
million bucks to buy U.S. entry through a Trump “gold card.” Trump’s acceptance
of a made-up FIFA World Peace Prize from a soccer league with a history of
corruption as if it is the Nobel Peace Prize is as ludicrous as it is symbolic
that all international transactions have to include personal aggrandizement.
This is a document that offers as international
justification the kind of Trump chest-beating and abasement of The Other that
Trump shares with his most loyal base of voters, a view of “America First” as
America Only.
When paired with the policy-as-profit views and its
unquestioning support for absolute power in the hemisphere and in the world, it
is a document that serves as outline for personal grift for the Trump family
and its inner circle. It presents U.S. foreign policy as a loaded deck that
must reward the wealthiest and the personal supporters of an autocratic Trump.
Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at
The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and
leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a
Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers
in New York. As an editor, Terry created new approaches in newsrooms, built
technological tools and digital media. He pursued efforts to recruit and train
minority journalists and in scholarship programs. A resident of Harlem, he
volunteers in community storytelling, arts in education programs, tutoring and
is an active freelance trombone player.
