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| Want proof? Trump's Memorial Day tweet says it all. |
“What does Trump want?” South Korean
officials at the conference kept asking me. Notably, no one asked what the
United States wants. They knew it was all about Trump.
Trump’s goal has nothing to do with
peace on the Korean peninsula, or even with making America great again. It’s
all about making Trump feel great.
“They are respecting us again,”
Trump exulted to graduating cadets at the Naval Academy last Friday. “Winning
is such a great feeling, isn’t it? Nothing like winning. You got to win.”
In truth, the United States hasn’t
won anything, in Korea or anywhere else. After fifteen months of Trump at the
helm, America is far less respected around the world than it was before.
The only thing that’s happened is
Trump is now making foreign policy on his own – without America’s allies,
without Congress, even without the State Department.
Trump may consider this a personal
win but it hardly makes America safer.
Some earnest foreign policy experts
are seeking to discover some bargaining strategy behind Trump’s moves on North
Korea.
Hint: There’s no strategy. Only a
thin-skinned narcissist needing flattery and fearing ridicule.
Trump got excited about a summit with Kim when he thought it might win him praise, even possibly a Nobel Peace Prize. He got cold feet when he feared Kim might be setting Trump up for humiliating failure. Now he’s back to dreaming about the Prize.
The delicate balance in Trump’s
brain between glorification and mortification can tip either way at any moment,
depending on his hunches. All international relations become contests of
personal dominance.
He rejected the 2015 Iran treaty for
no apparent reason other than Obama had entered into it.
Trump couldn’t care less that by
doing so he has harmed relations with our traditional allies, who pleaded with
him to stay in. And he’s undermined America’s future credibility.
Why would any nation (including
North Korea) enter into a treaty with the United States if it can break it on
the whim of a president who wants to one-up his predecessor?
Ditto with the Paris climate accord.
Obama got credit for it, so Trump wants credit for unilaterally sinking it.
Trump has demanded that America’s
nuclear arsenal be upgraded. Why? Since 1970, the United States has been
committed to nuclear nonproliferation. What changed? Trump. A more powerful
arsenal makes him feel more powerful – “respected again.”
It’s not about American interests in
the world. It’s about Trump’s interests.
Wonder why Trump promised to lift
trade sanctions on ZTE, China’s giant telecom company? ZTE has been trading
with North Korea and Iran, in violation of American policy. Everyone around
Trump advised against lifting the sanctions.
Look no further than Trump’s
personal needs. ZTE is important to China, and China recently pledged a
half-billion-dollar loan to a project connected with Trump’s family business.
While we’re on the subject of high
tech, why has Trump pushed the Postal Service to double the shipping rate
it charges Amazon? I mean, isn’t Amazon important to America’s high-tech race
with the rest of the world?
The most likely explanation is that
the CEO of Amazon is Jeff Bezos, who’s also far richer than Trump. Bezos also
owns The Washington Post, and the Post has been
critical of Trump.
As you may have noticed, the man
doesn’t like to be criticized. As Trump explained to Leslie Stahl of “60
Minutes” during his campaign, his aim is “to discredit you all and demean you
all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”
Any halfway responsible president of
the United States would be worried about Russian meddling in U.S. elections.
Protecting American democracy is just about the most important thing a
president does.
But Trump has turned the inquiry
about the Russians into a “dark state” conspiracy against him. And he’s
demanded that the Justice Department investigate the people who are
investigating him.
With Trump, there’s no longer
American foreign policy. There’s only Trump’s ego.
If peace is truly advanced on the Korean
peninsula, the Prize shouldn’t go to Trump. It should go to South Korean
president Moon Jae-in, who has tirelessly courted the world’s two most
dangerous megalomaniacs.
Robert
B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California
at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He
served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time
Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the
twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers
"Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is
available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
"Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original
documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.