Foreign policy of the ‘infinite monkey’ kind

Supporters of President Donald Trump hail him as a disrupter of the status quo and a man who, unlike government bureaucrats and career politicians, has a profound knack for assessing situations in an unconventional manner. From my perspective, he is a leader who perhaps knows how to play checkers, but he has little talent for chess.

In foreign affairs, a leader must be a chess player. Primitive thinking, oversimplification, exaggerated pronouncements, outright lies, contradictory stances, heckling, and boorish behavior are not useful for winning a chess match.

Trump backers purportedly wanted a president to shake things up, break up the logjam in Washington, and all the other clichés. But overturning the chess board is not an effective way to promote America’s national security. To think otherwise is like embracing the “infinite monkey” theorem; to imagine that a chimpanzee, if given enough time, could randomly type out a Shakespeare play.

The “infinite monkey” approach to foreign policy suggests that an unwise, uninformed, uncouth, unintelligible, and unabashed president might be able snub the careerists of the State Department and then fire and replace the secretary of state while arbitrarily undoing the Iran nuclear arms treaty weeks before having a summit with the North Korean dictator to force denuclearization and the abandonment of missile development.

Yes, as the nation’s chief diplomat, President Trump is coming across as the infinite monkey in chief. But we should concede that it is nonsense to think a chimpanzee would ever be able to type the script of “The Tempest or King Lear,” even if by chance the president is in many respects living out a Shakespearian tragedy.

Yet supporters are ready to bestow on their infinite president the Nobel Peace Prize. They have not yet seen what the monkey has typed, but they are convinced that it is real Shakespeare. But it does not take a “little rocket man” to detect a poor chess player.

After the White House boasting, North Korea has signaled the possibility of talks being cancelled. But even if talks go forward, one does not know how the American president will fare when his opponent starts moving pieces on the board. Unexpected scenarios could occur.

Scenario one: The North Korean leader agrees to get rid of nukes. Weapons are destroyed, sanctions are lifted, and U.S. troops removed from South Korea. But then what about verification? If later it is determined that North Korea cheated and retained some nuclear capability, then what? By such time, the Trump deal may have given North Korea what it wanted.

Scenario two: The North Korean leader agrees to get rid of nukes. He permits the kind of verification the United States seeks. But then later a treaty is made between China and North Korea. China agrees to place nuclear missiles in North Korea. The weapons are totally controlled by China, but their deployment is officially explained as a defensive barrier against U.S. overreaching into the Far East. China will only agree to move the missiles if the US withdraws from Okinawa.

Scenario three: The North Korean leader agrees to get rid of nukes while permitting valid verification. But then later Russia and North Korea make a treaty: Russia agrees to install a missile defense system in North Korea. The Russian missile shield is based on the pretext of opposing U.S. hegemony.

A monkey winning all of the chess tournaments while typing all of Shakespeare’s plays seems more probable than the notion that Trump will resolve the problem of North Korea.

Overturning the chess board is not an effective way to promote America’s national security.