We’ve Now Entered the Final
Phase of the Trump Era
The president is stuck in a vicious
downward spiral.
JUNE
2, 2020
Thomas Wright
Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
We are in the
Götterdämmerung now, the final phase of the Trump era. We began with the axis
of adults that imperfectly constrained him. We then entered the age of hubris
and action during which he systematically rid himself of the adults and was
free to follow his whims. The third phase was the reckoning as he began to bump
up against the contradictions of his own approach, on China and Iran in
particular. Now we have finally arrived at the long-feared crisis and
unraveling.
For
three chaotic years, Donald Trump muddled through, at least in the eyes of
Republicans, buoyed by the strong economy he inherited from his predecessor and
powered forward by the long GOP wish list, which included, among many items,
judicial appointments, deregulation, and the undoing of the Iran nuclear deal.
Virtually every consequential and sympathetic analysis of the Trump
administration, though, included a caveat: A serious crisis would upend any
Republican progress and test the ill-equipped and vindictive president. Deep
down, we all hoped the country would get lucky and slip through these four
years without a paradigm-changing incident. But if luck is earned, we had no
right to it.
The worst possible crisis arrived in COVID-19, one
that tugged at every weakness of the president and the nation. It demanded
scientific literacy, discipline, trust in authority, sacrifice, and patience.
And then another crisis arrived with the economic depression. And then another,
with the brutal murder of George Floyd. Now more than 100,000 people are dead,
more than 40 million are unemployed ,
and violent protests have spread across the country.
Trump is stuck in a
vicious downward spiral. He is incapable of undertaking the policies necessary
to address any of these three crises, so he grasps for actions that shock the
senses—accusing journalists of murder, pulling out of the World Health
Organization, trying to prosecute Obama-administration officials. These actions
simply make matters worse, but he still doubles down again and again.
Foreign policy is not the most important issue facing
the country right now, but a 48-hour period last week highlights the sheer
chaos Trump is now fomenting at all levels of government. On Thursday, the
Chinese Parliament ratified a new security law for Hong Kong that would
effectively end the “one country, two systems” model. The governments of the
United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia released a joint
statement condemning the move and promising action. The European Union condemned the
law but was unable to agree on any punitive measures.
Behind the scenes, U.S.
diplomats were organizing an in-person G7 summit for late June at which the
leaders would present a unified front on Hong Kong, backing it up with concrete
steps—possibly imposing sanctions on China and
having some G7 members granting refugee status to Hong Kongers. Trump tweeted that he
wanted to gather in person as a sign of a return to normal after the pandemic
shutdowns. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and
French President Emmanuel Macron suggested
that they would attend. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was more circumspect
but said she would
participate in the G7 in whatever form it took “to fight for multilateralism.”
A G7 agreement was not a done deal, but senior administration officials
believed the prospects looked good.
On
Thursday night, protests broke out over Floyd’s murder. On Friday, Twitter
issued Trump a warning for threatening violence with his tweet stating , “When the
looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump responded by trying to distract. He
gave a press conference at 2 p.m. in which he declared that he would terminate
relations with the WHO and unilaterally announced a
response to China’s actions against Hong Kong. Within hours, Angela Merkel let
it be known that she
was withdrawing from the summit. Miffed, Trump said the next day that he was
postponing the summit and inviting Russia, Australia, India, and South Korea to
join.
The postponement destroys any hope that a multilateral
organization would condemn China’s actions against Hong Kong. Moreover, Russia
is a staunch supporter of China’s position that Hong Kong is a purely internal
matter that should be of no concern to the rest of the world. Some observers
thought the invitation to more countries was designed to isolate China, but its
practical effect was to deliver Xi Jinping a big win.
The
damage did not end there. China has more leadership roles in
United Nations organizations than the other four permanent members of the U.N.
Security Council combined. To their credit, some officials in the Trump
administration were attempting to build an international coalition to push back
on this influence. They scored a victory earlier this year when they helped deny China the
chair of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Trump’s termination of
relations with the WHO dealt a death blow to this effort—other countries will
not follow Washington’s advice on how U.N. organizations should be run if they
believe the U.S. is disengaging. This decision clears the way for China to
march forward in its effort to overturn global liberal and democratic norms. It
also damages vital U.S. interests with respect to global health.
The inclusion of Russia in the G7 summit,
a long-standing goal for Trump, also contradicted the official White House
China strategy , released on
May 20. Modeled on NSC-68, one of the most important documents of the early
Cold War period about the threat from the Soviet Union, this assessment went
further than the administration has gone before in unpacking the rationale
behind its rivalry with Beijing. Although it does not mention Russia, it does
speak about a systems competition between democracy and authoritarianism in
which the U.S. needs a global alliance of like-minded democracies. The G7
provides the basis of how to build it, but not if Russia, one of the world’s
most dangerous autocracies, is included as a member.
The net effect of Trump’s
actions over that 48-hour period was to swing a wrecking ball at his own
administration’s efforts on China. If this is what he does to his own
administration’s policy, which actually had some chance of success if exercised
with patience, discipline, and restraint, one can only imagine how concerned he
will be that his actions may negatively impact the issues and people he does
not care about. This is what to expect for the next five months. The worse the
multiple crises get, the more he will lash out, to less and less effect, except
to render the U.S. impotent and irrelevant. The American people will pay the
price.
There is no way back from the
Götterdämmerung in the remainder of the Trump era. The question facing
responsible senior administration officials (there are several at the principal
and deputy level), Republicans in Congress, and allied governments is not how
to persuade Trump to do the right thing, but how to limit the damage so the
government can be repaired after he is gone. This may mean not urging Trump to
take action on crises even if it is merited; circumventing the president
wherever possible; Republican governors declaring their independence from their
party leader, trying to craft a bipartisan approach in Congress on
foreign-policy issues such as competing with China in international
institutions and protecting against Russian interference; and using distractions
of their own to divert his attention from truly consequential decisions. Call
it fortification—of constitutional democracy and America’s international
interests. There are 231 long days with nothing but stormy weather left.