It is almost impossible to follow, let alone describe, American foreign policy. The armed conflict with Iran which Donald Trump, for legal reasons, refuses to describe as a war, even though his self-styled secretary for war is nominally in charge, has become ridiculous. With numerous claims of victory, equally numerous claims that the Iranians are desperate to negotiate, demands for unconditional surrender, and threats of annihilation, Washington finds itself mired in an intractable mess. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Oil and gas prices are causing immense international instability. US weapons stocks are being depleted. Its large-scale military, aerial and naval deployment has achieved absolutely nothing except perhaps cover for Israel’s monstrous impunity.
Even then, Binyamin Netanyahu claims to be angered by Trump’s deal to allow Turkey to purchase F-35 fighter jets and his other deal to promote nuclear capacity including uranium enrichment by Saudi Arabia. Uncritical support for Israel is increasingly unpopular in American politics. Once protected by an almost universal omerta, the activities of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) are now being increasingly challenged and frequently condemned in American political discourse.
Trump’s largely illusory international Board of Peace has gone nowhere in addressing the devastation in Gaza. Hamas says it will disarm and hand over to a civilian authority if Israel withdraws from the entire Gaza Strip. Israel refuses to budge. Trump once again flounders.
In Ukraine, Trump has failed utterly in every endeavour. For a man who a year ago derided Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a loser who held no cards – an ingrate who started the war with Russia – Trump has slowly distanced himself from the abject fawning posture towards Putin which was on display at the Helsinki and Alaska summits. He now affects to favour Ukraine, but wobbles pathetically on every issue involving positive assistance for Kyiv or enforcing sanctions on Russia. His signal that he would supply Kyiv with the technology to build its own version of the Patriot air defence system lasted less than three weeks.
Now Trump proposes to visit Ireland to be present at the prize-giving at the Irish Open in September in his golf resort at Doonbeg. This is part of a pathetic political strategy to hoodwink Irish-American voters that he is welcome and respected in the land of their forebears. He isn’t. On the contrary, among all of his predecessors in the White House, he is regarded as the least respected, least welcome and most unworthy holder of his office.
The Irish Government has quietly agreed that he will also visit Dublin as part of his trip. Why? Will he visit President Catherine Connolly for an icy courtesy call at Áras an Uachtaráin? Or will he stay at Farmleigh for a night and remain in the closed-off Phoenix Park in a replay of his ridiculous circular horse-carriage ride at the closed-off Windsor Park, where he was kept well away from the real people of London?
I cannot imagine that anyone has been so foolish as to suggest that he address the Houses of the Oireachtas. Such an event would be a recipe for chaos and embarrassment. The idea that he would even get a cool, polite and respectful hearing from those houses is nonsense. There are far too many members who would like to give him a noisy piece of their minds on the US-armed atrocities in Gaza, and let him hear the moral justification for the recent ban on imports from US-encouraged settlements in Palestinian lands. There may be a huge street demonstration against his policies if he visits Dublin. The numbers attending could send Irish-America an unmistakable message about where Trump really stands in the “auld sod”.
The problem with a policy of appeasing Trump’s madness and idiocy is that it’s based on the erroneous assumption that he is a transient phenomenon who will be gone in another two and a half years. That ignores the very real danger that Trump’s adherents in the Republican Party can portray his period in office as one which can be repeated or imitated by JD Vance or Marco Rubio.
Leaders of liberal parliamentary democracies owe it to their voters not to allow Trumpism to become the medium-term norm in international affairs and relations. The very idea that this gross idiocy, arbitrariness and lawlessness has endured for nearly two years is bad enough. But those who oppose it must bring it to an emphatic and unambiguous end.
Merely hoping that loss of the House of Representatives will clip Trump’s wings is not enough. The rest of the free world has to convince American voters and politicians that freedom – wherever in the world – needs an underlying values-based order to survive. Playing the roles of courtiers and jesters at the court of the idiot king betrays everyone’s freedom, values and self-respect.
This week, some EU politicians seem to have forgotten that Spain needs support in the face of Trump. Even if you regret some of Spain’s ambivalence on migration – as I do – the idiotic and utterly disproportionate Italian suggestion of suspending Spain’s membership of Schengen in response to the invasion of Ceuta was simply wrong.
I, for one, was glad that Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan was presiding at the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council to assert the need for reason and solidarity.