Dan Drollette Jr
Proposed tariffs that are the highest in a century. Threatened annexations of other countries. Pulling out of the Paris agreements to fight climate change. Slashes to the funding of public health research. Attacks on higher education (and indeed, any outside source of expertise), along with threats to deport any foreign students or immigrants who don’t toe the line. Cozying up to dictators at the expense of long-time Western allies.
The role of the United States in international affairs is changing dramatically, as the Trump administration imposes a new order upon the planet. It may not be as coherent and coordinated as, say, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, but the 80-year-old post-war order is clearly morphing into something else, for better or worse.
To help make sense of the thinking behind this new state of affairs, this issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists includes expert viewpoints from disparate fields—including a top analyst of international security policy, historians, a climate scientist, a college president, a former presidential science adviser, and a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Each examines a different facet of the new new world order that Donald Trump has wrought in his second presidential term.
As Harvard University strategist Graham Allison notes, the current US president enjoys violating rules. Indeed, Allison says, “he [Trump] sees rules and norms as invitations to violation—if by violating the rules he can outrage his audience. In his book The Art of the Deal he explains how if by violating a rule or norm, he can outrage his target audience, they will be less comfortable and thus more willing to give him a better deal than he could get otherwise.”
It’s a strategy that keeps observers on the back foot, constantly wondering which Trump pronouncement is aimed only at stoking outrage and which is a trial balloon for an outrageous plan that could become real—such as annexation. In “Will the Trump administration attempt to annex Greenland, Canada, or somewhere else,” historian Daniel Immerwahr—author of How to Hide an Empire—notes that an observer can err in both directions: “It’s possible to chase after something that was never really serious in the first place, and it’s also possible to not take something seriously that turns out to be a reality.” He also points out that some of Trump’s proposals, such as making Canada a 51st state, are not new, but tap into a deep historical urge for empire-building—something which has been simmering below the surface in America since the country’s founding.
No comments:
Post a Comment