Accidental president Donald Trump took just two weeks to live up to his predecessor’s judgement that he was unfit for any office of public trust. Nobody could really claim surprise.

All it took to reverse the catastrophic tide — as TV personality Bill Maher said — was for Trump to learn the magic quality of three words: “I stand corrected”. There was no time for that learning process though, in the rush to requite promises made through a campaign pandering to mass prejudice.

Tutored by advisors who disdained all constitutional niceties, Trump was neck-deep in a confrontation with the judiciary within two weeks. The stakes were high and there was no question of backing away. Rather, there was a tweet-storm of outrage at the supposed incompetence of the judiciary and a presidential surrogate, Stephen Miller taking to the air to argue an aggressive case for authority untrammelled by judicial review.

A few days later, national security advisor Michael Flynn — who signed up early and remained by Trump’s side through the campaign — was shown the door after media reports suggested improper contacts with the Russian ambassador in Washington DC. These had been uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and communicated to the White House, but kept under wraps until leaked. As Flynn resigned under a cloud, Trump took to his favoured medium to tweet out an exoneration and blame the culture of leaks in Washington DC for his travails.

As a former head of military intelligence, Flynn should have been aware of the surveillance systems in place around diplomatic missions in Washington DC, especially involving an adversarial state. His telephone conversations were conducted under an assumption of executive privilege and may have conveyed assurances contrary to official US policy at the time. Sensitivities were raw over findings that Russia had waged a campaign of cyber sabotage to shift the public mood Trump’s way during the presidential election. Shortly after Flynn fell upon his sword, reports emerged about a persistent pattern of contacts between Russian operatives and Trump’s staff through the campaign.

Trump’s presidency had sailed into turbulent waters and all the indulgence granted him through a brutal campaign suddenly seemed misplaced. Historians looking for parallels reached back to the 1790s when politics in the US was polarised between loyalists of Britain and France. A more recent point of reference was the Nixon campaign’s contacts with South Vietnam in 1968 to torpedo a prospective peace deal that Vice-President Hubert Humphrey could have leveraged to advantage in a closely fought election. In 1980, the Reagan campaign is rumoured to have promised substantial rewards for Iran if it delayed the release of hostages held in the US embassy in Tehran, ensuring that President Jimmy Carter carried that millstone till polling day.

Winners in the past have also rewritten the rules. The clandestine acts of both the Nixon and Reagan campaigns – verging on treason — were forgotten because they played to strongly entrenched factional views within the strategic establishment. The quickening pace of news leaks that have plagued the Trump White House in its early days, shows there are elements within, anxious to get the word out before the shroud of silence descends. There clearly is a perception that the current occupant of the most powerful office in the land, represents a clear and present danger for vital US strategic interests.

Strategic competition with Russia involves deeper engagement in Europe and the Washington establishment was unimpressed by Trump’s recent telephone conversation with French President Francois Hollande, when he reportedly railed at the unfair burden the US bore in sustaining the alliance. Neither was Trump attentive to wider strategic interests in Asia when he badgered Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a programme President Obama had agreed to, for taking in a thousand refugees detained in a limbo by the Australian coast guard.

For the Obama administration, stronger engagement with Australia was an integral part of the pivot to Asia, to draw friendly States into the containment of China’s growing clout. Trump’s phone call, which he brusquely terminated when Turnbull held his ground, came from a politics nurtured within the small world of real estate deals and haggles.

Just days before, Trump had terminated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a flourish of the pen. He had to deliver on campaign rhetoric when he had portrayed the TPP — which the US Senate showed little inclination to ratify — as a jobs-killer. This effectively knocked out another prop of the new order the US has been crafting in Asia, deepening ties while keeping China out.

Trump did not help the larger cause at his first meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, by grousing about the persistent trade deficit the US ran with Japan. Petty haggling skills were amply on display but nothing suggestive of a larger strategic sense. The deficit with Japan goes back to the 1980s and has since been superseded as a priority by various other structural faults in the US economy. Protectionism in the manner that Trump now advocates, will do little to solve these problems.

With his recalcitrance to adult supervision now plain, the US strategic establishment is under increasing compulsion to ease out the disordered personality currently in occupation of the White House. That could be an even uglier political spectacle than last year’s election campaign.

Sukumar Muralidharanis an independent writer and researcher based in Delhi NCR

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW