FORGED IN THE FIFTIES
Trump’s self-help foreign policy reflects his coming-of-age during a pivotal time in American interference.
WTrumphen President Donald
was born on June 14, 1946, the power of the United States was unprecedented. It had come out of World War II as the wealthiest and strongest nation in the world. It was the only major state to emerge from the war vastly richer rather than much poorer, and its standard of living was higher than that of any other country. Its per capita gross domestic product exceeded that of any other nation. Its manufacturing production accounted for more than half of the global total, and it was responsible for a third of the world’s production of goods. On top of this, the United States possessed an exceptional military arsenal. Its navy was unrivaled, its air power was unsurpassed, and, at the time, it alone possessed the atomic bomb — a weapon whose awesome power had just devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world had never seen economic and strategic power on this scale.
In Trump’s formative years, however, Americans were forced to come to terms with the fact that America’s power, though considerable, had its limits. Many Americans look back on the 1950s as a golden time in U.S. history, an era when the nation was secure, self-confident, and supreme in its global hegemony. Yet as Harry S. Truman prepared to leave the White House in 1952, the United States was mired in the Korean War and Americans were angry at their government, alarmed by their nation’s military performance and anxious about the country’s position in the world. Despite possessing unparalleled power and prosperity, the United States was struggling to secure victory on the Korean peninsula and the Truman administration was being accused of having “lost” China, after Mao Zedong established a Communist regime in 1949.
Writing in the lead-up to the 1952 presidential election, the British historian D.W. Brogan summed up the prevailing American attitude. Across the United States, Brogan observed widespread disbelief that there were areas of the world where America’s power did not extend. For Brogan, this “illusion of omnipotence” was encapsulated by a common American attitude to the Chinese Revolution. Rather than recognizing this as an event of immense historical importance that the United States could not control — occurring as it did 6,000 miles away in a country containing a fifth of the global population — American setbacks in Asia were simply blamed on the incompetence of its elected and non-elected officials. As Brogan noted, many Americans held to “the illusion that any situation which distresses or endangers the United States only exists because some Americans have been fools or knaves.”
Trump was a child of the 1950s and, just as his domestic agenda is a nod to that era’s vision of the American Dream, his worldview reflects the mentality that Brogan identified. This attitude maintains that if the world is moving in ways that are disagreeable and dangerous to the United States, then this can only be explained by the incompetence of American officials.
For Trump, almost every international problem that has beset the United States is explained by the idiocy of its leaders. For decades, he has claimed that America’s politicians are being duped by the rest of the world. In his 1987 open letter to the American people, when Trump bullishly inserted himself into national politics for the first time, Trump declared that “the world is laughing at America’s politicians.” The same day that letter appeared, he told Larry King in a CNN interview that other countries “laugh at us behind our backs, they laugh at us because of our stupidity and (that of our) leaders.” He has been repeating that refrain ever since.
Convinced that the United States is losing out in international trade, Trump declares: “Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people, but we have people that are stupid. We have people that aren’t smart.” In its alliances, Trump says, the United States is “defending wealthy nations for nothing, nations that would be wiped off the face of the earth in about 15 minutes if it weren’t for us,” while they “laugh at our stupidity.” In America’s immigration policy, Mexico is “laughing at us, at our stupidity.” On the environment, while “China and other countries, they just burn whatever the hell is available,” the United States adhered to international regulations because “our leaders are stupid, they are stupid people.”
When oil prices rose in the 1980s and 1990s, Trump suggested that “the cartel kept the price up, because, again, they were smarter than our leaders.” And the fact that the United States did not “reimburse” itself and its allies by taking Iraq’s oil before its withdrawal in 2011 is because “our politicians are so stupid that they’ve never even thought of it.”
For decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations, Trump has blamed virtually every international development that has negatively affected the United States on the foolishness of its leaders.
Trump’s litany of charges constitutes a decisive challenge to the bipartisan consensus that has underpinned U.S. foreign policy since the early years of the Cold War. Central to Trump’s indictment is his antipathy to America’s alliance commitments in Europe and East Asia, which he argues do little to aid American security and prosperity, while allowing its so-called friends to take advantage of it on trade and exploit its strategic protection.