Trump’s deal or no deal
By now, they could probably paper all the White House walls with copies of agreements Donald Trump has pulled out of or reneged on.
In his 16 months in office, Trump has been more demolitions expert than builder, blowing up as much as he can of his predecessor's legacy.
In withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and Trans-Pacific Partnership and in tearing up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Affordable Care Act, what Trump has built for America is basically a landscape of rubble.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal is the latest instance of his unilateralism, disdain for experts or evidence, and indifference to the interests of allies, the credibility of America’s word or, in fact, consequences.
The Iran agreement was signed in 2015 by five powers in addition to the U.S. and Iran. It committed Iran to curtail its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.
The best international intelligence says there is no evidence Iran is not living up to its obligations.
Susan Rice, national security adviser to former president Barack Obama, wrote in the New York Times that evidence shows Iran has complied with obligations to relinquish 97 per cent of its enriched uranium stockpile, dismantle twothirds of its centrifuges and its entire plutonium facility, and abide by the most intrusive international inspection and monitoring regime in history.
The deal, she said, called for “stringent verification — in perpetuity” and “effectively cut off all potential pathways for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.”
But this week, Trump has “freed Iran from all those constraints,” she wrote.
John Brennan, former head of the CIA, called the president’s announcement “madness.”
Beatrice Fihn, 2017 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, tweeted “THIS IS SO STUPID!”
Still, there is in a way an odd consistency about it.
Trump trades in absolutes, perpetually tilted in his favour. His is a mind that seems bereft of a temperate zone.
In that sense, his view of international agreements is at one with his opinion of humankind or employees. Women are either beauty queens, or objects of disdain. Men are either great guys or losers. Staff are either loyal to the point of servility, or treacherous and dismissed.
As president, agreements have to be worked utterly to his liking — not merely accomplishing incremental goals — or they are “a horrible, onesided deal.”
Compromise, give and take, progress over time — though the underpinnings of most human transactions and evolution - are to this president wholly alien notions.
They are the basics of diplomatic arrangements that advance the cause of world peace and stability.
The Iran nuclear deal was a compromise, not a means by which the repressive Iranian regime would be suddenly transformed into soulmates of the Rotarians of Orange County, Calif.
As Roger Cohen wrote in the Times, “that’s what diplomacy is about: imperfect solutions, arrived at between enemies, that are better than the alternatives, the worst of them all being war.”
How many of these agreements Trump has actually read, or truly fathoms, is anyone’s guess. To the president, particulars hardly matter.
His actions are invariably taken with an eye to his own personal political ends, designed to enhance his America-First, I-don’t-make-idlepromises image of himself.
The damage to world security, global climate, international order, business confidence, trust in America’s word seems not to trouble his conscience.
But with his walls and withdrawals, Trump is all but transforming America’s national symbol from the eagle to the turtle, retreating ever more into its own shell, disengaged, disconnected, oblivious.
And that is more than sad.