Like a mad king of old, President Donald Trump spends hours wandering his palace, developing plans to better display his wealth and glory to an increasingly skeptical and antagonistic world. Occasionally he remembers his royal responsibilities and implements the right policy, though even then often for the wrong reason.<\/p>\n
Such as reducing the number<\/a> of U.S. troops in Germany. At least it\u2019s a start, though resulting from a fit of pique, since Berlin, like virtually every other government on earth, criticized his lawless, reckless attack on Iran, which is disrupting the global economy. He is threatening to do the same to Italy and Spain, whose political leaders also have denounced Trump\u2019s bungled aggression, openly conducted on behalf of the Israeli government rather than the American people.<\/p>\n However, he is taking this action only more than a year into his second administration. After more than five years as president, and another four years in between terms contemplating his agenda if reelected, the president has merely announced the transfer of 5,000 personnel. All the while launching multiple aggressive military actions and pushing the largest military buildup in American history.<\/p>\n Trump first denounced the Europeans<\/a> and others for free riding militarily decades ago. The message seemed clear: Washington should not forever treat defense as international welfare, wasting American wealth and risking American lives to protect what the Europeans did not believe to be worth defending: their own peoples and countries.<\/p>\n During his first term the president displayed plenty of bark. Previous administration had routinely criticized the Europeans for openly leaving the heavy lifting to Washington. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was particularly blunt<\/a> shortly before his 2011 retirement: \u201cFuture U.S. political leaders\u2014those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me\u2014may not consider the return on America\u2019s investment in NATO worth the cost.\u201d Trump was even more ostentatiously contemptuous of the Europeans and talked about leaving the alliance.<\/p>\n However, nothing happened. Indeed, his appointees to the Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, and elsewhere generally backed the status quo, maintaining American military welfare for nominal allies around the globe. In his first administration\u2019s final months, Trump threatened to transfer some forces out of Germany, but that plan died with his 2020 election defeat. If all he intends to do now is reshuffle a few thousand soldiers here or there, he shouldn\u2019t bother. He will end up increasing costs to American taxpayers without reducing the risks of needless entanglement in other nations\u2019 wars.<\/p>\n Indeed, Trump\u2019s troop tergiversations highlight what is wrong with his presidency. He has no consistent philosophy, policy, or plan for foreign and military policy other than personal pique. He didn\u2019t like President Barack Obama, so he tossed the JCPOA nuclear deal without any replacement policy, leaving Tehran free to enrich uranium. Then he joined Israel\u2019s perpetual war against the Islamic Republic, angry that the latter wouldn\u2019t surrender to him. He continues to drag down the international economy because Tehran has withstood his insults and bombs, humiliating him, just as Germany\u2019s Chancellor Friedrich Merz opined<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, amid his disastrous war, the president is miffed that European leaders criticized rather than lauded him for playing the incompetent warlord. Merz\u2019s observation predictably triggered<\/a> a torrent of Trumpian insults, as well as the threat to revive, several years on, plans to reduce U.S. force levels. That\u2019s been enough to generate whining in Berlin<\/a>, but so far insufficient to<\/a> end Washington\u2019s military presence in the Federal Republic or limit America\u2019s involvement in another European war. Trump is blustering about doing even more<\/a>, as well as threatening to take similar action against Spain<\/a> and Italy<\/a>. However, he did not follow through in the past and European leaders have heard it all before. Consequently, they are paying little attention<\/a> to Trump\u2019s latest rants. They are far more concerned about his ongoing assault on the global economy through his seemingly endless quasi-war on Iran.<\/p>\n While a U.S. drawdown\u2014which should lead to shrinking, not expanding, U.S. force structure and military outlays\u2014is long overdue, Trump is treating the American military like a presidential honor guard rather than a national defense force. He moves it around to promote his personal pleasure rather than advance American security interests. Once in a while, like now, the two purposes coincide. However, the fact that it took him more than five years as president to act in this case demonstrates that most of the time the national interest is far from his mind.<\/p>\n Indeed, Trump\u2019s lack of desire to avoid unnecessary foreign conflicts was demonstrated last year when he used Washington\u2019s security dominance to extort cash from allied states, through punitive and destructive tariffs, and even more dubious foreign investment programs designed to put more of the U.S. and international economy under White House control. Japan and South Korea struck bad deals. The European Union made a truly awful agreement, essentially surrendering<\/a> to the president and accepting his<\/a> costly trade agenda\u2014of which, it should be emphasized, the American people<\/a> are the primary victims<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite some welcome increases in European military outlays, frankly due more to Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump, the Europeans remain reluctant to take the tough steps necessary to protect a continent with a larger population than and economy comparable to America. The U.S. defense dole enables \u201cEuropean governments to spend a certain amount on butter that might otherwise have gone on guns,\u201d observed<\/a> Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh. Months after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, Nathalie Tocci of the Istituto Affari Internazionali bluntly called<\/a> Europe\u2019s \u201cdefense efforts \u2026 underwhelming.\u201d Last year the International Institute for Strategic Studies reported<\/a> that \u201cthe gaps in [European] military hardware and software are considerable, and the IISS estimates that replacing key elements of the U.S. conventional military capabilities assumed to be assigned to the Euro-Atlantic theatre could cost approximately USD1 trillion.\u201d<\/p>\n Where will the money come from? Even today the Europeans remain badly divided<\/a> over alliance commitments, with serious barriers<\/a> and loopholes<\/a> remaining that obstruct rearmament, including a five percent of GDP commitment that doesn\u2019t take effect until<\/a> well after Trump\u2019s departure from office, meaning it might never be implemented. No wonder Europeans remain determined to preserve the Pentagon\u2019s international dole, which explains the continent\u2019s economic surrender<\/a> to the Trump administration<\/a>. And, sadly, the latter\u2019s willingness to keep subsidizing Europe\u2019s defense. Trump\u2019s policy is not focused on protecting America and avoiding foreign wars but using U.S. military personnel to promote an ostentatiously dirigiste and exploitative economic agenda around the globe. He appears to care little whether American blood is shed so long as dollars\u2014as well as Euros, Yen, Won, and more\u2014flow back to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Of course, sometimes, like now, Trump\u2019s personal pique might help serve America\u2019s interest. However, that confluence is rare and only coincidental. The president\u2019s belief that he is \u201crunning the world\u201d<\/a> and \u201con par with great, norm-defying, historical figures,\u201d<\/a> even \u201cthe most powerful person to ever live,\u201d<\/a> should remind us of Lord Acton\u2019s warning that \u201cpower tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d Unfortunately, the results are most likely to be bad, even disastrous, such as his Iranian misadventure\u2014a conflict which Trump entered frivolously as well as foolishly to advance the political interests of Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than defend the security interests of the American people, and for which the entire world is now paying.<\/p>\n The Pentagon should be about domestic defense, not foreign welfare. Donald Trump is so far proving to be worse than his hated predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, in doing the bidding of other governments. However, he could become the president who finally put America first when it came to foreign and military policy. He still has time to remember his promise to make America great again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like a mad king of old, President Donald Trump spends hours wandering his palace, developing plans to better…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[479,5,253,478],"class_list":{"0":"post-10830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-nato"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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