America is having a code red moment. Which of its enemies is likely to strike first?
US presidential elections and the uncertain transition periods that follow have traditionally been viewed by military, intelligence and security officials as moments of maximum national vulnerability. They will be especially worried now.
The fact that Donald Trump is ill in hospital, presidential advisers and Republican senators are also unwell, or self-isolating, and the election campaign is in chaos will intensify a sense of dangerous exposure at the Pentagon, CIA and state department.
“This is a code red moment for the US government on multiple levels,” said Samantha Vinograd, a former member of Obama’s national security council. “It weakens any credibility that the US has in terms of being a competent global leader prepared to confront threats.”
The risks are twofold. One is the fear that foreign enemies or hostile forces – North Korea and Islamic State terrorists are two possible candidates – may choose this fraught moment to take unspecified actions against the US or its allies.
“With the president’s illness amid a divisive campaign, we should not discount the possibility that China will step up pressure on Taiwan or Russia [will] seek to take advantage in eastern Europe,” warned Nicholas Burns, a former senior US diplomat.
There is also a risk that US military chiefs, on edge and lacking clear direction from the White House, could overreact to real or imagined foreign threats and take pre-emptive action to neutralise them.
One example is the ongoing tension with Iran in the Gulf region. Since Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general in Iraq in January, there have been frequent, repeat rocket attacks on US and western interests in Baghdad by pro-Iranian militias. Iraq is the sort of flashpoint that could escalate rapidly if militants try to take advantage of a perceived power vacuum in Washington.
Other possible flashpoints include Taiwan and the South China Sea, where tensions between the US and China have risen sharply. Trump has deployed powerful naval forces in the region. In response, Beijing has mounted intrusive military operations amid heightened talk of imposing a “solution” on Taipei.
Part of the problem is how the turmoil in Washington appears to a watching world. “The perception of a president stricken by Covid-19, perhaps in part because of his own lax protocols, doesn’t inspire confidence,” Vinograd said. “This is a major downside risk for the US position on the world stage.”
Another difficulty compounding the US sense of vulnerability is that Trump has sidelined the national security decision-making apparatus created after 1945 to stop presidents acting on a whim, as Franklin Roosevelt is said to
have done.
Since Trump often makes up foreign policy on the hoof, and without much consultation – as with his recent Middle East deal-making – the potential for confusion, paralysis and miscalculation in the event of an emergency has risen.
Reflecting these fears, some politicians have taken matters into their own hands. “Any adversary who views news of [Trump] testing positive as an opportunity to test the US would be making a grave mistake,” Marco Rubio, acting chair of the Senate intelligence committee, tweeted. Rubio’s portentous warning was somewhat reminiscent of Al Haig, the former secretary of state, who famously (and unconstitutionally) declared “I’m in control here” after Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. A Pentagon spokesperson was more circumspect: “There has been no change to our alert levels. The US military stands ready to defend our country and its citizens.” Some international reaction to Trump’s illness has been sympathetic. Fans such as Britain’s Boris Johnson and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu sent supportive messages. But Chinese state media said, in effect, it served him right for flouting Covid precautions.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s need to stress the “sincerity” of his good wishes meanwhile fed suspicions that he was again manipulating Trump. US officials say Russia is attempting to influence the US election result via social media, as it did in 2016. It seems probable the Kremlin will accelerate covert and overt propaganda efforts to exploit current uncertainties.
Western European allies critical of Trump’s policies have mostly been biting their tongues in reaction to the news from Washington, tacitly reflecting the dilapidated state of the transatlantic alliance. But in Germany, a frequent target of the president’s scorn, reciprocal ill-feeling has been evidentin public discussions. A top trending term on Twitter on Friday was “schadenfreude” – the German word for experiencing pleasure at another’s suffering.