Nervous about Trump? Wait until he has nukes

I was in South Korea last week and found that, just as in the United States, Donald Trump is a top topic of conversation.

Trump has been vocal in his belief that the U. S. gets “practically nothing” for defending South Korea from “that madman” — Kim Jong Un — who has received credit from Trump for his skill in consolidating power. “South Korea should pay us and pay us very substantially for protecting them,” Trump says, suggesting that if Seoul doesn’t pay up, he will remove U. S. troops. He has made similar threats to Japan, Germany and other U. S. allies.

Koreans are befuddled. They already pay handsomely to support the 28,000 U. S. troops in their country. South Korea contributes about 50% of the cost of their upkeep, more than $ 800 million a year.

Like other U. S. allies, South Koreans want to know whether Trump will win and, if he does, will he make good his threats? And — the most difficult question of all — does his rise presage a new era of isolationism?

The bad news, I told them, is that if Trump won, he’d have the authority to pull out U. S. troops if he wanted. Congress would be unlikely to stop him, in spite of the obvious benefits from a U. S. troop presence that prevents the outbreak of another Korean war, keeps South Korea from going nuclear, and contributes to the overall stability of one of the world’s most economically important regions. The good news is that Trump is unlikely to win, I said, citing estimates by FiveThirtyEight.com that he has only a 36% chance of prevailing.

The further good news, if you value the U. S.- South Korean alliance, is that relatively little of Trump’s appeal is due to his bashing our allies. His popularity can be explained by his celebrity, by his unconstrained and unconventional way of talking, and by his willingness to tap dark sentiments — racism and nativism — that other politicians shy away from. Trump’s complaints about free trade, unfortunately, resonate more in spite of the consensus among economists that trade is an engine of prosperity.

But is an American leadership role in the world also unpopular?

Not according to the Pew Research Center. In a poll released in May, Pew found that the share of Americans who believe the U. S. does too much abroad has declined from 51% three years ago to 41% today.

At the same time, 55% support maintaining America’s status as the only military superpower, and 73% say they want the U. S. to play a leadership role in combination with other countries. In short, most Americans are a lot less isolationist than Trump.

There’s still an outside chance Trump could win because Hillary Clinton is such a weak candidate. As I told my South Korean hosts, if you’re worried about what Kim Jong Un could do with his 20 or so nuclear weapons, just imagine what Trump could do if he controlled the thousands of weapons in the U. S. nuclear arsenal. The greatest threat to world peace now emanates not from Tehran or Pyongyang, but from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.