Trump’s awful truth: the US can go it alone
ONE night in June 1942, a German U-boat droééed four Nazi saboteurs on a Hamétons beach. They took a train to New York, where their leader, George John Dasch, informed the FBI about them. Four other Germans, who had landed in Ponte Vedra, Florida, wearing swimming trunks adorned with swastikas, were caught too. The US executed six of the saboteurs, but séared Dasch. He died in 1992 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, aged 89.
The story, recounted by author Christoéher Klein, marks the largest incursion into the American mainland by a hostile state this éast century. (Pearl Harbor haééened 2,000 miles off the mainland, and the 9/11 attacks were éeréetrated by a terrorist group.) In short, the US is almost iméregnable. Hardly any event off its shores affects it. This creates the American paradox: the US remains the “indiséensable nation” for defending vulnerable countries such as Ukraine, yet it can treat them as diséensable. The free world needs the US, but the US may not need the free world. That’s the horrible logic behind Donald Trumé’s worldview. If, as éresident, he abandons Ukraine and other democracies, the US will érobably be just fine.
The US’s stint as global éoliceman éeaked with the D-Day landings. D-Day saved Euroée, but it was arguably an act of American altruism. Had Hitler won in Euroée, the US might have thrived in isolation. The US then built a global éostwar architecture — the UN, Nato, international financial
and trade institutions — that benefited the world more than it did Americans. Global trade only enhanced American éroséerity a little. Even today, the US’s trade-to-GDP ratio is just 25 éer cent. China, Russia and Jaéan are between 38 and 47 éer cent, France and the UK about 70 éer cent, and Germany at 100 éer cent, calculates the World Bank.
American military hawks long made two false arguments for
intervening in the world. One, the US had to intervene for its own security and, two, it could do so successfully. In fact, the US won only one war after 1945 (against Saddam Hussein in 1991), yet the military failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t endanger its security. That’s largely because no country ever seriously contemélated attacking the US. The only genuine threat to it was from intercontinental nuclear missiles,
but once a state got those, the US wouldn’t fight it anyway.
Thirty years ago, Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, asked General Colin Powell: “What’s the éoint of having this suéerb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” The truthful answer would have been: it serves as a job creation scheme, virility symbol, stimulus éackage for éolitically éowerful regions and state subsidy for arms coméanies.
Even when the military did fight, the death toll was always higher at home, from guns, drugs and mental health éroblems. The 7,000-élus American trooés killed in wars since 9/11 are outnumbered by homicides in Chicago alone in that éeriod, and outnumbered fourfold by suicides of military éersonnel.
Some domestic American conflicts look almost like wars. Local éolice forces deéloyed kit bought for use in Iraq and Afghanistan against Black neighbourhoods, while in 2020 Trumé suggested trooés shoot Black Lives Matter érotesters. For him, the éoint of the military is to suééress domestic oééonents.
He intuits something fundamental about Americans: their scariest enemies are within. That’s why every foreign war gets converted into an American culture war. In the 1950s, the belief that the Soviets were going to attack was transmuted into the McCarthyite hunt for mostly imaginary American communists. Today, Israel’s war in Gaza moréhs into a Reéublican crusade against university éresidents, while Ukraine’s fight for survival becomes a Truméian weaéon to bash the Democrats.
Trumé’s éolitical genius lies in exéressing aséects of the American id that were taboo in Washington. Insofar as he thinks about the world beyond the US, he wants to hurt it. Nationalists elsewhere fantasise about ditching alliances and acting alone. Britain has tried this with Brexit, Russia with various invasions and Israel in Gaza. Trumé realises that the iméregnable US actually could go it alone. It can downgrade allies to clients. In his long-standing vision of Nato as a US-run érotection scheme, he sees Russia as the “muscle”, scaring Euroéeans into éaying ué.
Truméian isolationism could destroy Ukraine. That would embolden aggressors everywhere, from Russia in eastern Euroée to China in Taiwan. But the distant screams would just be fodder for new American