Trump and War

A reader notes: Re: Trump, it comes down to whether a president can keep us out of war. And you know? So far, that dog hasn’t barked. And Trump has had plenty of pressure to go to war. And Tulsi is an amazingly smart person, the only democratic candidate who is 100% anti war. I say let it ride. I don’t deny Trumps many faults, but in the topic of war, so far so good.

I respond:

Re: war, I was thrilled to see Bolton go. Having said that:

• What he’s done with Israel has made the peace process with the Palestinians even more difficult, not to mention damage international respect for the U.S.
• Buddying up with the world’s great tyrants makes the world a more dangerous place, and again, damages international respect for the U.S.
• His bromance with Putin is good for the Russian Federation, bad for NATO.
• What he’s done with Iran is insane, as the entire world is telling us.  His dealings with Iran are so erratic that negotiations are impossible. By flip-flopping so regularly and so dramatically, he’s signaling that people who try to use diplomacy are simply wasting their time.
• A world in which nuclear powers don’t face MAD (mutually assured destruction) if they strike first is a very dangerous one, and such a world is in the process of becoming a reality.  Of course, the withdrawal from the intermediate range nuclear force wasn’t exclusively Trump’s fault, but the U.S. should be aggressive in getting this or something like it back in place immediately.
• By working against climate change mitigation, he’s heightening the long-term prospect for scarcity of resources, which is a frequent cause of war.
• According to the Military Times, Trump’s approval rating with active duty troops is also exactly 50/50, an all-time low, which plunged after Jim Mattis resigned as Defense Secretary over unspecified ethical issues. Perhaps an even more potent weapon against him here is his racism, considering that a disproportionate number of people of color are in our military.  His banning of transgenders from the military took its toll as well.  Nobody knows what a low approval rating here means for national security, but it can’t be good.
• Believing that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies are incorrect that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and believing that Putin is telling the truth that he didn’t do it, is also insane.
• The 86 times Trump has made suggestions that Islam is our enemy are reported to be emboldening groups like ISIS by facilitating their recruitment efforts.

We haven’t seen what he does when the threat of impeachment starts to impinge on him, but lots of people join me in this observation: he’s capable of anything.