There is an old Soviet-era joke about Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev traveling on a train. The engine stalls, the train doesn’t move. What to do? Stalin has the engineer arrested and shot. The train still doesn’t move. Khrushchev gets the engineer posthumously rehabilitated – still no result. Finally, Brezhnev gets up, draws the curtains over the windows and announces: “We’re moving.
Ironically, this has emerged as Donald Trump’s modus operandi. He’s constantly telling his followers how smoothly the country runs, how the economy is suddenly so much stronger under his tutelage then under his predecessors, how everybody is better off than a year and a half ago and how much he has achieved.
The unemployment rate is the case in point. During the campaign he claimed that the “real” jobless rate is as high as 40%. Today he touts full employment as his achievement while it has merely been the continuation of a trend that began back in 2009.
The slogan for his 2020 re-election campaign which he began less than a year into his first term has already been mooted: since according to his claims he’s made America great again, the new motto will be Keep America Great.
Just the other day Trump tweeted: “we have had the most successful first 17 month Administration in U.S. history – by far”, which is of course total hogwash. Other examples of similarly spurious claims are provided by Trump and his entourage on a daily basis – in spades.
The same technique is being applied to international politics. With precisely zero as yet achieved in talks with North Korea, and the summit with Kim Jong Un up in the air – the Republicans have apparently already jumped the gun, nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. A recent poll revealed that around one quarter of Americans believe he deserves it.
The relationship between an authoritarian ruler and his flock is based not on facts but on a deep personal bond between the ruler and the ruled. It is based the model of a traditional family where the ruler is the all-knowing father and his citizens are little children. This is why Trump supporters don’t care about the democratic process: the father’s authority is based on tradition, not the ballot box. And this is why they take everything Trump says or tweets as gospel truth; after all, kids in traditional families are not taught to distrust or question their father. When his statements are contradicted by facts, they’re more likely to dismiss the facts.
So regardless of how the summit with Kim goes, Trump will create an alternative reality of achieving lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula and making North Korea concede to his demands – even if in the real world absolutely nothing will change.
The same is true with the ongoing trade negotiations with China. A few cosmetic changes will be presented as huge victories that Trump’s weakling predecessors were unable to achieve.
There is a big difference between Trump’s negotiating position and that of his interlocutors. They are for the most part pursuing a set of concrete goals whereas Trump is mainly interested in self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. He is open to flattery and even, as the recent case involving the Chinese telecom giant ZTE has shown, is open outright bribery. As long as he is allowed to walk away looking like a big winner he doesn’t give a damn how much he has lost.
Such “victories” are going to be pyrrhic. North Korea may get access to economic aid and advanced technology which will make its regime all the more dangerous over the long run; China’s economic and military domination in Asia will be bolstered at the expense of American influence – as has already happened thanks to Trump’s abrupt gesture of withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.
Trump’s Wizard of Oz illusionism has been on display recently in the Middle East. His abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal and the symbolic gesture of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem were lauded last week as a major step toward peace in the region – even as Israeli soldiers were slaughtering dozens of unarmed Palestinian protesters a few miles away from the embassy opening ceremony.
This brings us to Ukraine. Trump’s brand of personal diplomacy is precisely what Vladimir Putin loves. He has been trying for years to get George W. Bush and Barack Obama to sit down with him somewhere in a back room and do a bit of horse trading, to divvy up the world into 19th century-style spheres of influence. He had no takers in Washington – until that is Donald Trump usefully came along. Especially since Putin obviously has a massive amount of dirt on Trump, either in the form of the infamous “pee tape” or money laundering kompromat – or both.
Don’t take the talk of the new Cold War, or the worst relations between Moscow and Washington since the fall of the Soviet Union, too much to heart. That’s what you might call “dictator obfuscation,” seen recently when Trump and Kim were exchanging their puerile tweets and calling each other names.
Now that Putin has solidified his hold on Crimea with the opening of a bridge, it may soon be time for the two Dear Leaders to meet in person, for the long-bruited Russian-American summit.
What we’re likely to get out of it is lots of hand-shaking and even kissing on the manner of Emmanuel Macron, and talk about “peace in our time”. We’ll be told that Russia’s appetite in the post-Soviet area has been curbed – and Trump’s supporters will readily believe it and clamor again for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Essentially, however, it will confirm Russia’s hold on Crimea and give Putin a free hand in Ukraine. It will be the worst case of appeasement if not in world history, at least since Neville Chamberlain. Over the long run, this may once again lead to a major war in Europe but whether or not it will, in any case Trump’s foreign policy will likely mean a national tragedy for Ukraine.
