Oh, Canada: U.S. stomps on an ally
In Dante’s “Inferno,” the first circle of hell is for the virtuous unbelievers — non-Christians like Aristotle, Socrates and Julius Caesar. The second is for those who give in to their carnal desires, your Cleopatra and Achilles types.
So it goes, through the various vices — gluttony, greed, wrath, etc. — that send you to your own designated place of eternal torment.
I can’t seem to find the specific locale in the Stygian depths for Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. And yet, White House trade adviser and apparent theologian Peter Navarro said on “Fox News Sunday” that, “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door.”
Navarro was talking about Trudeau’s decision to hold a press conference in which he calmly and politely explained that our neighbors to the north would be responding to the White House’s imposition of aluminum and steel tariffs with tariffs of their own, something the Canadian government had said it would do all along.
This infuriated Trump. On Twitter, Trump announced that he would instruct U.S. representatives not to endorse the official G-7 communique and taunted Trudeau as “weak” and “dishonest” for good measure.
Over on CNN, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow repeated that Trudeau “stabbed us in the back” and insisted he apologize for his “betrayal.” Kudlow went on to claim that the real reason Trump attacked our ally was to offer a show of strength before the Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un.
“POTUS is not going to let a Canadian prime minister push him around,” Kudlow told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “He is not going to permit any show of weakness on the trip to negotiate with North Korea. … Kim must not see American weakness.”
Kudlow is a wonderful man, but this is barmy. Traditionally, the president of the United States is considered the leader of the free world. Well, being the leader of a coalition of powerful and rich countries is a stronger position than leader of America alone.
By throwing Canada under the bus — with language we rarely use about our actual adversaries — Trump and his subalterns were sending a message of American weakness, not strength.
When you go into a negotiation with a barbaric rogue state, you want to be able to convince your adversary that you can deliver your allies when it comes to the final deal. Giving Trudeau a rhetorical wedgie sends the exact opposite message.
It also creates problems far beyond whatever comes out of Singapore. Part of Kudlow’s complaint was that Trudeau’s “betrayal” was a “sophomoric political stunt for domestic consumption.”
Whether you think that’s true, there’s an important lesson here. One senior Trump adviser told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that the Trump Doctrine could be summarized as “We’re America, B---h.” That may not be an official policy statement, but that is the impression our allies are getting.
The standard response from the administration’s defenders is, “That’s what his base wants,” or “That’s what he campaigned on.” True enough. But if running a foreign policy based on fan service to your base is good for the goose, it’s good for the gander as well.
When Pew asked about public confidence in Trump’s ability to handle world affairs, 22 percent of Canadians expressed confidence in the president (compared with 83 percent for Barack Obama). In Germany, only 11 percent trust Trump.
That’s not a problem if you think we don’t need allies, because they’re all going to hell anyway. But don’t be surprised if other world leaders decide it’s in their interest to behave antagonistically toward America now that Trump has decided it’s in his interest to do so to them.
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