A country doesn’t have to be defeated on the battlefield in order to lose a war. In November 1918, Germany capitulated with its army still largely intact and no enemy boots on its soil. In 1989-91, the Soviet Empire collapsed without a single shot being fired, and Russia effectively admitted that it lost the Cold War.
These two acts of surrender, though inevitable, later came to be regarded as betrayals in Weimar Germany and post-communist Russia.
Donald Trump’s visit to Europe in early July 2017 will also enter history books as a journey of American surrender, a humiliating defeat inflicted by a once-great nation upon itself when it was still a leading global economy and formidable military power. While Obama had been accused by his critics of going on “apology tours” abroad, every word uttered by Trump during his visits to Poland and Germany was an admission of America’s capitulation.
Most observers expected Trump to cave in at his first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin, and he didn’t disappoint. At the start, he predicted that “very positive things” would come out of that meeting, and indeed lots of positive things already have – for Russia: Trump patting Putin on the back, announcing that he’s honored to meet him and spending two hours over the allotted time in conversation showed the world that Putin is out of the international doghouse, where he had been in since 2014, when troops invaded Ukraine and shot down the Malaysian passenger airliner. Whether or not Trump pressed Putin on election hacking, it’s now irrelevant, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a Russia-decorated former oil company executive.
Russia has been recognized by Trump as a major player in world affairs and an equal partner of the United States. Few people doubt that sanctions will soon be eased or lifted and that Russian spying compounds in the United States will be returned.
But, for all of its symbolic importance, the Trump-Putin powwow on the sidelines of the G-20 summit was still a sideshow. The unconditional surrender that Trump has been announcing on behalf of the United States of America is not capitulation to Russia. Or rather not only to Russia. And it didn’t start last week. It has been a steady, deliberate, across-the-boards process, affecting all aspects of US policy at home and abroad.
America has always been a daring experiment – an idea and an ideal. It often failed to live up to its own high-minded principles in practice, but it never stopped trying. And in many ways, it succeeded. As a land of opportunity, it was open to the world. It was rational, hopeful and optimistic. It believed in science and progress. It was, indeed, great.
Not anymore. Trump’s election campaign, while wrapping itself in the Old Glory, was entirely based on dumping on America. It thrived on the resentment of Trump voters and used every occasion to stoke it, always finding new targets: illegal immigrants, Muslims, foreigners in general, educated people, women, the handicapped, etc.
Since the election, Trump has been consistently attacking the judiciary, federal law enforcement agencies and the free press – the three pillars on which the American experiment rests. Trump consistently presents the world in terms of us vs. them, admitting defeat for everything America has historically represented and tried to achieve. If capitulation can be equated with treason, Trump’s capitulation meant the betrayal of American principles and ideals. While promising to make America great again Trump has turned Lincoln’s “last, best hope of earth” into a mean and resentful banana republic.
After the end of WWII, the United States led the way in building a more open, just and stable international community. This too was an experiment, a global interdependent system that was meant to replace the chaotic world regularly torn apart by national rivalries and governed the the “might is right” principle. International institutions established under US tutelage developed a set of rules that made it possible for countries to coexist peacefully and grow richer. Originally adhered to by America’s Western allies, it proved highly successful, attracting newly independent states in Asia and Africa and, eventually, most of its former communist adversaries as well. The existing global political and economic framework was built largely on American principles; it was spearheaded by American efforts and it is being protected by American power. China, India, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe have all prospered within this system.
Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, his isolationist policies and bilateral “deals” are a resounding admission that America can no longer compete in a game played by its own rules. It is another white flag raised over the White House. Trump is undermining the very institutions that were built by post-WWII American presidents. He wants to break up the European Union, which smarter Americans of the previous generations helped build. He is perverting NATO, which has kept peace in Europe for over seven decades, provided security to the United States as well as to its allies and helped the West win the Cold War. As historian Anne Applebaum pointed out in her piece in the Washington Post, Trump is turning the Western alliance into a protection racket.
The G-20 summit, held in the week when the United States marked its 241st anniversary, showcased Trump’s new, diminished America. It demonstrated to the world that Trump’s country is scared of leading, allowing others, notably Germany and China, to shape common response to a variety of key issues that will dominate the future, including trade, migration, global warming, alternative energy, etc. While other world leaders used the summit to discuss serious topics, Trump was kowtowing to Putin.
The meeting with Putin needs to be seen in this broader context of America’s surrender and betrayal. Never before did a US president loathe so much the principles on which his country was founded and never before was he so brazenly open about it. And never before had an American president had so little in common with leaders of Western democracies and so much in common with an authoritarian thug. Trump’s visible enjoyment in Putin’s company was probably the most disgusting visuals from that entire sordid week.
This sheds a new light on Trump’s speech in Poland, in which he called upon the West to summon the will to defend its civilization. There is definitely an urgency in that. Our values are indeed under threat and have to be defended – but they have to be defended against the Axis of Evil represented by the Trump-Putin alliance.
