Silence of Trump critics helping him wreck U.S. policy abroad

The headline on the anonymous op-ed that has shaken Washington reads: “The Quiet Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”

Quiet resistance. That’s exactly the problem.

As the New York Times essay spells out, the United States has an ignorant, reckless president whose senior officials struggle to curb his worst foreign-policy instincts.

Those senior aides — and Cabinet members — can probably prevent Trump from provoking a war. Yet, even short of war, the damage the president has already done and will do by 2020 is so severe that quiet resistance equals collusion. Unless the “adult” members of Trump’s foreign-policy team go public soon, preferably in unison, history will judge them harshly.

Yet the so-called adults in the room who seek to counteract Trump’s preference for dictators over allies still refuse to challenge him openly. Almost Trump’s entire leadership team — including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — have rushed to deny authorship of the New York Times essay and distance themselves from its critique. Ditto for the distancing from Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” which also recounts the frustrations of Trump’s national security team at his lack of knowledge and refusal to learn.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster opposed many Trumpian moves. Yet, having been ousted, they have kept silent about Trump’s ignorance in dealing with foreign leaders.

Of course, the anonymous author self-servingly argues that the quiet resisters can keep Trump’s “erratic behavior” in check and his “bad decisions contained to the West Wing.” And indeed, the president’s security officials and military commanders can probably restrain him from embroiling America in new wars. Trump’s past “fire and fury” rage against Pyongyang, his past public threat to invade Venezuela and his other warlike blustering may never have been serious. The president’s attention span is so brief it’s hard to imagine him ordering the military into major combat.

Yet, the “quiet resistance” hasn’t halted the Trump foreign-policy wrecking ball, as he aids our adversaries, and diminishes America’s standing in the world.

By now, most world leaders grasp that any foreign thug can win him over with honeyed words. Just this week he tweeted thanks for Kim Jong Un’s “unwavering faith in President Trump.”

Kim easily bamboozled Trump at the Singapore summit, where the president signed on to a vague statement calling for “demilitarization of the Korean peninsula.” Despite the fact that there has been virtually zero progress toward eliminating North Korea’s weapons, Trump appears blissfully ignorant of those differences, perhaps because Kim keeps up the effusive praise.

Adversaries also understand they can ignore the White House. China’s bucking U.S. tariffs and speeding ahead with militarization of international sea lanes; Russia’s Vladimir Putin pockets Trump’s undercutting of NATO, while ignoring U.S. requests to stabilize Syria. And rather than fold, Iran expands its hold on Syria and Iraq.

Still, Trump crows of foreign-policy successes while “the quiet resistance” stays silent. This is the moment for McMaster, Tillerson and Mattis and any official who cares about American security to stand up, preferably together, and confirm what the anonymous sources have told us. And to keep up the critique until the public grasps the need for change in the Congress and White House.

Otherwise, the “quiet resistance” is just enabling Trump to remain Trump.

Trudy Rubin is a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist. © 2018, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.