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Trump Foreign Policy Sneers at Europe, Winks at Russia

July 6, 2018 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

There is a strain of conservatism in the United States that suffers from what might be called “Euro envy.”

It is not mainstream, and it was not the conservatism of former presidents Ronald Reagan or either of the Bushes. It has evolved from a hatred of socialist manifestations in European economies.

Sadly, President Donald Trump is the exemplar of this envy; this need to deride Europe and all things European.

Euro envy has its equally foolish counterpoint across the Atlantic that might be called “U.S. disdain.”

Neither would be of any consequence if it were not for the delicate international situation with the deteriorated relations between the United States and Europe, compounded by Europe’s own troubles.

Euro envy, at its purest, revolves around the successes of Europe: its public health systems, its efficient rail system, and its support of fine and performing arts. The belief is that Europe’s social approach cannot be better and somehow it must be found to be wanting.

Some things in Europe do work better, but at a price; a price in taxation and bureaucratic rigidities, which cost the Euro economies in lower growth and higher unemployment.

Anyone who has looked at European health systems knows that they work. Perhaps not perfectly, but well enough and at a lower gross price than their patchier American equivalent. Yet fables persist of people lining up in the streets of London for heart surgery and long waiting lists all over Europe for critical care. These are myths but potent ones.

For public transportation, health care and generous retirement, Europe pays. Recently in Sweden, a colleague who once worked in the White House press corps told me: “We pay half our wages in tax, but we get a lot for it.”

I would add to the downside of European life that it is very hard to fire anyone, that people retire too early and have too many government-guaranteed perks in the workplace like, in some countries, extended maternal leave for both parents.

The obverse, U.S. disdain, features exaggerated emphasis on gun violence, prison conditions, no universal health care, no job security and two-week vacation times.

The European left has always denigrated conditions in America and has unfailingly given short shrift to Republican presidents. They are damned out of the blocks. “Cowboy” is the pejorative thrown at them. This is as unfair and untrue as is the Euro sneering.

Despite these streams of envy, even hatred, the Atlantic alliance has been a thing of beauty in world history, a bulwark defending the cultures and freedoms that are the Western inheritance; the inheritance that has made the liberal democracies such a magnet for the world’s less fortunate. Illegal immigration is the compliment that the hapless pay to the happy.

Trump has swallowed whole the Euro disdainers’ views — they fit well with his nativistic views about the United States.

In one thing though, and it has riled the right for decades, Trump is right: Europe pays too little for its own defense. This is the cudgel that he will wield at the NATO summit. Europe, for all its quality-of-life smugness, depends on the U.S. defense umbrella.

These things make the next two weeks critical in world affairs, and replete with terrible irony. Europe depends on the United States to defend itself against Russia, which has shown designs on all the European countries which were once Soviet vassal states. But the guarantor of European freedom, Trump, is out to trash the European alliance and cozy up to Russia.

The irony does not stop there. Trump wants more money from Europe when he is about to damage its economies with a trade war.

In the next two weeks, there is not much to envy in the European predicament: pay up or face Russia alone. Trump will not have your back.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: foreign policy, NATO, Putin

The ‘Quaking Hour’ Of Governance Begins With Trump’s Tweets

January 6, 2017 by Llewellyn King 1 Comment

One can only imagine what it is like to be a Republican member of Congress in the age of Trump. What should be a time of harmonious playing, with both houses secure with a GOP majority and a Republican about to assume the presidency, instead is one of jarring orchestration.

The problem is the score written by President-elect Donald Trump. It is discordant and inspires fear among them.

Senate Republicans are not afraid of their leader Mitch McConnell, and their House counterparts do not quake when their leader, Paul Ryan, speaks. But when it comes to the president-elect, there is unspoken fear.

Republicans are not waking to the bright morning of governance, but rather to the “quaking hour” when they find out what Trump did to them overnight by Twitter or some other unplanned communication.

Did Trump ridicule one of them personally, attack a collective Republican action (like the attempt to close the Office of Congressional Ethics) or take aim against a heretofore Republican orthodoxy (like free trade)?

Has he promoted the interest of Russia over the well-grounded suspicions Republicans on Capitol Hill have of Russia in everything, from hacking to aggression in Syria and Ukraine?

Has he offended 27 European countries in the European Union by supporting Britain’s plans to exit?

Has he, perchance, committed the United States to military action on the Korean Peninsula without consulting Congress or our reliable allies in South Korea. Does he know that the South Korean capital, Seoul, lies just 35 miles from the heavily fortified border with North Korea?

There is surely more to come that will cause heartburn with breakfast.

Not all Republicans are climate deniers, even though they may not have liked Democratic prescriptions. Most Republicans are free-traders, and the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed with Republican support. Are they going to be asked to throw in their lot with dismantling it? And what might they get in NAFTA Mark II?

The known points of stress between the Republicans and their leader-elect are now joined — almost nightly — by random pronouncements with huge policy implications.

Trump is exempt from the normal disciplines of politics. He is comfortable with his paranoia, therefore all criticism is the work of “enemies” or fools. He seems to have no icons, no heroes, and no respect for the institutions of U.S. governance or the history that underlies them — hence giving the back of his hand to the intelligence agencies over Russian hacking.

If Trump does not like the message, he trashes the messenger.

This must sit badly but privately with congressional Republicans. They have fought hard over long years to protect the CIA, the NSA and the rest of the intelligence apparatus from being hobbled by the Democrats. So Trump’s cavalier dismissal of their findings must rankle, if not darn right alarm. The links between the intelligence community and leading Republicans are strong and enduring.

Trump will get his honeymoon. Republicans on Capitol Hill will support and explain and excuse the new president. But, in time, there will be a breaking point; a time when the music will change, when Republicans will speak up again for conservative orthodoxy and the going will get rough for Trump.

Tweeting is not governing, and the presidency is not reality television — particularly when you are threatening to upend the world order on midnight caprice.

Beware the quaking hour. It breaks with the first keystroke of the morning, when the GOP finds out what its leader might have done to it and its verities overnight. It breaks for the person who has spoken up and has been ridiculed, singled out as weak.

This is not what was expected from a party winning both houses of Congress and the White House. It is a new dimension in American politics. And the quaking is not just for Republicans.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Congress, Donald Trump, Putin, Republicans, Russia, Twitter

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