19 January 2017
Will Trump Explode?
And if so, will he take us with him?
By John Watson
“Yes, but it won’t really happen, will it? How do I know? Well, since the war, the West has been a pretty stable place from a political point of view. We have come of age, as it were. Our leaders all believe in peace – and I expect that other world leaders do too, come to that. Oh yes, there’s the occasional dust-up. Refugees dying out in the Middle East? Well, things are less civilised out there, always have been. Here in Europe and the US we are really in a “post conflict” age. Those in charge have learnt from history. Their attitudes are modern. There is the odd maverick, admittedly, and things will get a bit rough from time to time, but in the end it will all be cooled down by the restraining influence of an ever more sophisticated public consensus.”
It is a comfortable way of looking at things and a lazy one too, but a fatuous optimism on the basis that things always work out all right in the end makes us all feel better. It absolves us of responsibility and enables us to justify our failure to engage as being based in maturity and experience. Nothing much has happened to us before, so it won’t now. That is how the world works. Theories like this are the intellectual duck down which lets us sleep comfortably, whether in Islington or Manhattan.
We are not the first to draw the wrong conclusions from this sort of comfort. One of the fatal steps taken by Louis XVI just before the French Revolution was to base himself in Versailles rather than in Paris. He wanted to hunt. “The trouble over the bread shortages? Oh, yes, that sort of thing happens from time to time but the authorities will deal with it, hopefully as humanely as possible. Now then, about those deer.” There must have been something similar in the air in 1939. “Re-arm? Really? What is the point? Yes, you can see why the Germans are keen to have the Sudetenland, but they have promised not to go further. After all, everyone learnt from that bloodbath 20 years ago. Clearly Hitler wouldn’t risk that sort of slaughter again. I am sure that the Sudetenland is the end of the story. Anyway, it is ridiculous to spend the money on arms when there are so many more important uses for it.”
Actually, you don’t have to go so far back to see comforting certainties turned on their heads. Jump back to 2007 and listen to your financial adviser. “Yes of course those collateralised debt structures are all right. I must say, it is clever, the way in which they have managed to turn a number of doubtful debts into Triple-A securities simply by bundling them together, but that is the whole point. They are hardly all going to go wrong, are they? After all, look at the ratings they have been given. Those boys at the rating agencies may not be a barrel of laughs but they are certainly very thorough. No, I think the return is a good one for little risk. The market is a pretty safe place these days. After all, we have abolished boom and bust.”
Now let us travel back to 2017 and across the Atlantic to where Mr Trump is to be inaugurated tomorrow. To be sure everyone was a bit surprised when he secured the Republican nomination and more surprised still when he beat Hillary, but after a bit they began to comfort themselves. In the past he has been associated with the Democrats so perhaps his views are much more liberal than you would think. True, a lot of his campaigning was pretty dishonest but that’s just campaigning after all. He won’t really pull back from NATO commitments, will he? Surely that wall was just a gimmick. How much power does a President really have if he cannot carry the establishment with him? Scrap Obamacare? No, he will just tweak it a bit. Power will moderate his approach to foreign affairs. It cannot all go badly wrong, can it?
Oh, yes it can and it almost certainly will, not so much because of Trump’s political beliefs but because of the thinness of his skin. It is part of his nature to aggressively protect his own vanity against any possible denting. An Oscar winning actress criticises his politics. He has to tweet denigrating her professional achievements. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who did not vote for Trump, hosts the new apprentice show. Rather than just wish him luck, Trump has to sneer at his ratings. The message seems clear. Do something that irritates Trump and you will get an ill-considered and hostile reaction.
What a gift to Trump’s enemies this is. The taunting and jeering will get wilder and wilder, drawing Trump further and further away from sustainable ground. Baiting him will become a blood sport, and it is not necessary to be an expert on playground politics to see how it will get out of hand. Nastier and nastier jeers met with more and more vicious responses? It cannot go on for four years and the only question is what will bring it to an end? Will Trump learn to shut up rather than respond? Possibly. That is what his advisers will be telling him to do. Will he be deposed, or break down? Maybe, but there are stages to such a process and the thought of a President in full Lear mode with the nuclear codes in his hands is not a reassuring one.
That has always been the worry with the theory of nuclear deterrence. It is unlikely that in the normal course of events a world leader will doom his own country to extermination. So goes the theory, the deliberate start to a nuclear war is unlikely. But what about a leader in the course of disintegration: Hitler in the bunker; Kim on his deathbed? Would they decide to take their enemies with them regardless of the cost to their fellows or would they not? Hmm, that is more difficult. Hopefully the US has the safeguards to prevent an unbalanced president triggering a catastrophe. Still, one would rather not test them.
The danger of an irrational reaction won’t be missed by other world leaders and we can expect to see other countries treating Mr Trump with great care, something which may indeed enhance his status for a time. But US Presidents never lack for enemies and there will be those who try to exploit this weakness to bring him down, regardless of the possible danger. Will they succeed? Who knows. But whether he can be persuaded to ignore personal attacks will be the key to his presidency.
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