On the way to unmaking America

It is supremely ironic that President Donald Trump, who campaigned on “making America great again” is now engaged in a campaign to undo what remains of that greatness.

Make no mistake: That is exactly what withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate change accord means. The United States was one of the 195 nations that signed the accord, but it was, and remains, the most important because it has the biggest economy in the world and is the second-biggest greenhouse gas polluter.

For decades, the U.S. was the biggest polluter, but has been overtaken by China, which has the world’s second-biggest economy. China, however, is remaining in the accord, as is India, which now has the world’s fastest-growing economy and whose air is now dense with coal-induced smog.

In Brussels and Sicily last week, Trump angered America’s European allies by refusing to commit to the Paris accords and by refusing to publicly endorse Article 5 of the NATO agreement, which calls upon the alliance as a whole to defend any of its members that may come under attack. It is the key article in the NATO agreement, and yet Trump refused to commit the U.S. to support Article 5 as every American president has done since the treaty was signed in 1949. Trump may boast that he had a wonderful visit to Europe; nobody else thinks so.

In fact, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in the wake of the visit that it is clear that Europe now must be prepared to stand on its own, not as a matter of strength, but in recognition of a possible, perhaps even likely, American withdrawal.

However one chooses to see Merkel’s statement, it was a clear slap in the face for Trump. The two do not like each other. Nor does Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appear to like the president. Trump’s foreign policy credentials, never strong to begin with, were not enhanced by this trip. In fact, they suffered a serious blow.

The decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement came after an intense, internal White House struggle, led on one side by senior adviser Steve Bannon, a right-wing conservative bordering on the isolationist, and on the other by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, a moderate pragmatist, who pleaded to remain in the accord. She lost.

On the face of it, the decision to withdraw is remarkably stupid as it has the U.S. not only on the wrong side of history but against worldwide public and political opinion, exactly where no leader wants to be. On the other hand, leaving the accord was a major pledge during Trump’s candidacy, and so far he has had little luck in making good on those pledges. So there was a lot of political expediency in the decision to leave the accord at the expense of America’s larger national interests. As a country, we may yet come to regret such expediency-based decisions.

There is, of course, a moral dimension to the Paris accords and to the U.S. decision to leave. The Industrial Revolution, which brought so much material and scientific benefit to working people in the West, also brought a lot of misery. Alleviating that misery is what domestic politics in Europe and America has been largely about for the past 150 years. But the immense wealth created in Europe and America helped us to dominate much of the rest of the world. That era is now at an end.

The developing world, as we once called it, is still struggling to rise. It will not be stopped. If the poorer nations of the world are to survive and prosper without the vast coal-based resources that at one time fed and polluted the West, then we must assist them for our sake as well as theirs. There is only one world, and we are all part of it. This is what the multibillion-dollar development fund in the Paris accords is all about and to which the U.S. has already contributed about $1 billion. It is this money the Trump administration wants to stop.

At the same time, China is waiting in the wings and the Europeans are there to welcome them. China is ready to take our place, and we are about to give it to them. There is everything to be gained by remaining in the Paris accords and everything to lose by leaving.

Bill Stewart writes about current affairs from Santa Fe. He served in the U.S. Foreign Service and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine.

The decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement came after an intense, internal White House struggle, led on one side by senior adviser Steve Bannon, a right-wing conservative bordering on the isolationist, and on the other by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, a moderate pragmatist, who pleaded to remain in the accord.