When Trump quips about war, joke’s on us
Nostalgia for combat whets appetites for battle — that serves his purpose
Donald Trump doesn’t tell jokes. He does talk quite a lot about war. But when Trump invoked a war from long ago as justification for a trade war now, some of us laughed at what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the “quip.”
Hahaha. A famous paranoiac controls the White House and alludes to his closest neighbour and ally being a target and a threat immediately prior to its hosting of a critical international summit, get it?
Well, maybe it is something like hilarious to suggest that Canada’s fleet of paper airplanes poses a national security threat to the United States of America on the basis of a 200-year-old act of arson committed by the great-great-great-great-great grandfathers of some British people. It would be a joke, very nearly a good joke, if Trump were a good person or even a normal person or even a not-totally-unhinged person who habitually gaslights the world by uttering odious provocations, then justifies them as jokes and then asks why can’t you people take a joke. But Trump isn’t those things. This isn’t a one-liner.
Trump is a war-like person talking about war the way he often does: As a pretence for talking about more war, lots of war, many types of war. He doesn’t do it because he’s actually going into battle. This is a guy who got multiple student deferments for Vietnam before finally getting out of it for good with a doctor’s note. He threatens war because he likes threatening war and because the people who support him like threatening war. Raising the spectre of war makes him feel good, either by giving him some political or financial benefit or by letting him imagine he’s the kind of guy who can conceivably win real live actual wars.
No need for Canada to man the whatever-we-haves. Probably not, anyways: If it won’t make him rich, I suppose Trump isn’t likely to do much of anything; although, even if it will make him rich, he is almost as likely to do what will make him declare bankruptcy. But I somehow think we’re safe from an invasion of those who would at any rate do us the kindness of banishing kilometres from our road signs.
Reminiscing about old wars can whet supporters’ appetites for new wars though, which may serve whichever of Trump’s purposes extend beyond the immediate satisfaction of his ego.
Some wars over old wars are fought over territory. “They are trying to distort the events of the war, to forget the true heroes,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a recent Moscow military parade.
The war he was talking about wasn’t in Crimea; it was the Second World War. But in a sense he was talking about Crimea, because the current enemy — the “they” he accuses of having faulty memory — is not merely Germany, but all the Western powers that oppose his own annexation. By glorifying old battles he seeks domestic support for newer ones.
And Trump’s friend joins Trump’s accused foreign political benefactor in inspiring war reminiscences. Like Putin, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is fond of talking about the Second World War, a particularly courageous conversation piece given the side his country fought on. It is a conversation in which, for instance, he explains how Japan’s war criminals are not really war criminals in Japan. More true heroes, I suppose, come to rescue a political leader from accusations he is a militaristic bully.
Trump’s war may be very different, being a trade war, but the battles he invokes can call upon a nationalistic fighting spirit for mercenary rather than military purposes.
And they can inspire the same abroad. Now that French President Emmanuel Macron has openly declared that the six other countries form a larger market than the United States and can always sign an agreement without it, Trump may learn that if one wants to do battle it is best to attack one’s enemies rather than allies.
Still. Even if we win the war, when we have to engage with a mad clown the joke is always on us.