What would Neville Chamberlain do?
Most Americans can point to many instances where our foreign policy hasn’t been moral. We’ve been blessed — or cursed — with leaders who knew how to rationalize periodic lapses of humanity with just enough realpolitik razzmatazz to keep our conscience at bay.
Most of the time, we’ll settle for a foreign policy steeped in the most appalling moral grime as long as the dirty work happens in the shadows. Thinking about things done in our name to other nations and people can generate all sorts of cognitive dissonance.
Two years ago, an electoral majority of Americans catapulted a man to the presidency who doesn’t pretend he’s ever given morality — much less the faux morality of the American foreign policy establishment — a second thought.
Though he is briefed daily on the state of the world’s various calamities, Donald J. Trump has never read a book on American foreign policy. No one can even picture Mr. Trump sitting through a lecture about balancing the pursuit of our national interests and our national values without fidgeting or nodding off.
Had Mr. Trump cracked a book during a presidency characterized by a thuggish reaction to every perceived slight, he would have tweeted about it in much the same way a cat proudly presents the bloody remains of a mouse to its startled owner once the killing is done. Try to imagine Mr. Trump allowing a milestone like reading a book to slip by the American people unacknowledged. You can’t.
The fact is that Mr. Trump is surrounded by foreign policy experts with agendas that are beyond his comprehension or interest. He might be able to find Saudi Arabia and Iran on a map if pressed, but he couldn’t point to Yemen. This ignorance usually works to his advantage. It is easier for him to make snap decisions about geopolitical abstractions than to care about the people who will suffer because of his failure to grasp their history or humanity.
There’s something about the White House statement about the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that makes many of us instinctively ashamed of the immorality of a Trump foreign policy that turns killers into allies.
After the mindless salutation “America First!” Mr. Trump’s barely edited apologia for Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman made no pretense of trying to attain a higher morality than the blood-soaked dollar:
“After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development and much additional wealth for the United States.
“Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States.”
Until Donald Trump, American presidents had made a point of disguising the lethal amorality that contributed to our standing as the world’s biggest arms dealer with rhetoric — and sometimes action — that embraced human rights, democratic change and the virtue of a free press.
Mr. Trump’s blithe dismissal of American ideals was both honest and horrifying. For Mr. Trump, foreign policy is purely transactional, even when it comes to war (as in Yemen), and puts oil and blood money above all other considerations.
“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.
“That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region. It is our paramount goal to full eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world.”
For Mr. Trump, the murder of a dissident journalist by the Saudi regime isn’t even a speed bump. All the caterwauling in the world about human rights and press freedom isn’t worth half a barrel of oil in the Trumpian metric.
Because Mr. Trump thinks the appeasement of the Saudi royal family demonstrates unbridled American nationalism and strength, any comparison of his rambling press release to the deluded speech Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made following a meeting with Hitler after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 will be lost on him.
“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time,” Chamberlain said. Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland and declared war on democratic Europe.
Repackaging appeasement as national self-interest didn’t work for Neville Chamberlain and it won’t work for Mr. Trump.
No, MBS isn’t Hitler (yet), but the incompetent and morally corrupt Saudi Arabia he leads has proven itself to be the Donald Trump of nations.