We are now eight months into the presidency of Donald Trump. The good news is that means that one sixth of his term is already over – assuming, that is, he is not re-elected in three years’ time.
What is there to show for it? What will be there to show for it?
There is evidence that illegal immigration into the US has been curbed somewhat since Trump’s election. But the anti-Muslim measures that he attempted to impose are probably irrelevant to the decline in such immigration, the main source of illegal migration being the Americas. Even then, his bombastic promises about deporting millions of migrants, starting on his first day in office proved to be empty.
That campaign promise apart, Trump has achieved practically nothing so far.
His pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare has run into the sands of congressional opposition. His Mexican wall has petered out like a Mexican wave. His détente with the Kremlin has soured. His China policy has yo-yoed between cordiality and hostility. Kim Jong Un appears to have called his bluff; North Korea continues to build a lethal nuclear threat against the US. Syria has turned out to be far more intractable than Trump ever imagined.
US policy in the Gulf States, Iraq, Turkey and Kurdistan is all over the place. Iran is as problematic as ever from a US perspective.
In the Americas, his relationship with Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela is going backwards – unless he attempts and succeeds in deposing Maduro.
In Europe, Trump is despised, feared and despaired of - in equal measure
Rex Tillerson is manfully standing in the credibility gap that surrounds Trump internationally.
The real issue now is whether Trump’s US domestic voter coalition is going to stick with him or quietly desert him.
Money markets rallied greatly at the mere thought of a Trump-led economic revival. If market sentiment is important – and it is- share prices blossomed in a promising manner in the first semester of his presidency. Promised tax cuts for the wealthy were bound to have that effect. But will it last?
The real test of whether sustainable economic growth has any substance is the rate of investment in growth-producing industry, infrastructure and commerce. US employment growth to this point is more attributable to the backwash of Obama’s policies than to anything Trump has done.
Now middle class and working class Americans, the core of middle America, need to see signs that America is becoming great again. Opening a few coalmines won’t make the US great again.
Only a massive programme of infrastructural investment will bring hope to middle America.
And that is where Trump’s difficulties come into sharp focus. Just how do you cut taxes, cut the deficit and increase capital spending at the same time? You can’t – unless you slash current non-capital spending in areas like welfare, health, education and defence. And such cuts won’t make middle America feel great again.
Trump’s chaotic reign at the White House and his bitter, confrontational relationship with majority leader Mitch McConnell bode ill for the implementation of a sustainable, radical budgetary policy that might be the foundation of economic “greatness” for America.
In the unforgiving US political calendar, Trump’s mid-term congressional elections are emerging into view. The question is whether the Democrats can get their act together sufficiently to recapture the House of Representatives or the Senate.
If there is a substantial Democrat recovery, both Republicans and Democrats will put their minds to ending Trump’s presidency after one term. Strangely, the GOP might easily select another candidate at their next convention with the aim of holding on to the White House. The bigger problem for the Democrats is finding an electable candidate who is not in the mould of Hillary or Bernie – a candidate with charisma, vision, credibility, and optimism.
In that context, Trump’s complete u-turn on Afghanistan last week raises even more credibility issues. He claimed that he is going to commit more troops to “win” the war against the Taliban. He disavows any attempt to engage in “nation-building” on behalf of the Afghans.
But what does “winning” mean? As Trump puts it, winning means “killing terrorists”. But is that really “winning”? Is killing Muslims and occupying their lands “winning”? Or is it stoking up fires of Salafist extremism across the globe?
The “best” outcome that can be hoped for is that the US supported Kabul regime survives long enough to force the Taliban to settle for an Afghanistan that becomes a mosaic of tribal fiefdoms run by regional warlords under the umbrella of a moderate coalition government in Kabul that is reasonably friendly to the US and that eschews any sympathy for Al Qaeda and Isis.
We are not talking about creating a secular democracy, one in which oppressed Afghani women are guaranteed equality in all regions. Trump won’t attempt to build up the Afghans’ primitive infrastructure when he can’t even tackle infrastructural deficits back home.
How many US and Nato soldiers’ lives will be sacrificed in pursuit of such a limited and elusive goal?
This is a strategy that Trump promised middle America that he would definitely not follow. This is an Obama strategy that he derided. This is a military campaign that can’t be “won” in any intelligible way. The most that can be done with this strategy is to avoid humiliating military defeat and withdrawal under fire from Kabul in the next 18 months.
We in Ireland could perhaps afford to watch Trump’s intended battle against Islamist extremism with a detached interest if it weren’t for the atrocities in Barcelona and Turku last week. The Jihadist terror group based in small-town Ripoll were immigrants. Their leader was an imam who used European civil rights law to avoid deportation to Morocco while at the same time he planned an atrocious slaughter of hundreds at Barcelona’s Gaudi-designed Sagrada Familia cathedral – where any of us could have been the victims.
But the Manchester and London atrocities demonstrated that Jihadi groups can be home grown as well.
None of us is safe from these “faith hate” Islamist extremists anywhere in Europe – even here in Ireland. I just hope that our security forces are active in pre-empting terror being unleashed on our innocent and vulnerable society.
In their perverted minds, Allah calls on mujaheddin “martyrs” to kill infidel men, women and children in Europe as part of the Jihad against western infidels and, in particular, allied drone strikes and cluster-bombs unleashed on men, women and children in Afghan, Yemeni, Syrian and Iraqi war-zone villages.
The big question is whether Trump is going to make the situation better or worse. Is he going to fan the flames of hatred or douse them?
It is hard to see any peace-making or de-escalation happening while Trump sits in the White House. He doesn’t do subtlety or complexity. Nor does his core constituency.
Theirs is a confrontational, simplistic world-view. By irony, it is their sons who will come from Afghanistan in caskets draped with Old Glory- it won’t be the sons of those making paper millions from Trump’s boom in share prices on Wall St.
I blame those in the GOP who brought us Trump’s presidency. They could have beaten Hillary and won the election without Trump.They flirted with the Tea Party, they subverted Obama because they couldn’t stand having a black president, and they cheered Trump on in his bombastic buffoonery. They know so little of the world outside America that they cannot now see how diminished America has become in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Only Trump’s successor can make America great again and that can only happen if the American people begin to appreciate the dimensions of the great mistake they made in empowering him to diminish America.
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