Perhaps not North Korea, but a war might be just the distraction Trump seeks
THE SIRENS THAT SOUNDED in Elmira last Friday night warned of storm activity, not an impending shower of nuclear bombs. Despite the posturing – i.e. appendage swinging – of Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un, climbing under our desks is unlikely.
Conjuring up apocalyptic images that may play to the evangelical base, or perhaps just going big – uuuuuge, even – with the hyperbole, Trump offered up “fire and fury” in response to North Korea’s nuclear threats. It was most unstatesman-like, but not likely the actual outcome in the escalating war of words between Washington and Pyongyang.
While American presidents have seen their warmaking powers increase post-9/11, Trump is unlikely to jump headlong into a war with North Korea for a variety of entirely rational reasons, suggests University of Waterloo political scientist Aaron Ettinger.
“There’s not much risk of his waging war or intervening militarily by the stroke of a pen,” says Ettinger, who conducted a study of U.S. military interventions since 2001, recently published in the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.
He found that the actions of Trump predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama have effectively expanded the authority of presidents to go to war, altering the shared power with the Congress in place since the end of the Vietnam war.
The study chronicles the way Bush and Obama navigated around consultation and authorization protocols with Congress and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), setting a precedent that presidents could unilaterally go to war as opposed to seeking authorization from Congress.
“Right now, Donald Trump has an enormous amount of power to launch military action, perhaps more than any president since the Vietnam War. Trump’s predecessors left a legacy of military adventurism that suits his aggressive style.”
In a gray world, black-orwhite thinking is Trump’s métier, never more so in his saber-rattling pronunciations before the cameras or on Twitter. The military posturing, in particular, illustrates his authoritarian tendencies – see, for instance, his regard for the generals he’s brought into his inner circle – and plays to his base of supporters.
“He said things that are just about as bombastic as we’ve ever heard. It appeals to a certain type of muscular conservative or muscular nationalist,” says Ettinger of Trump’s breastbeating. “He’s almost a caricature of aggressive masculinity.”
The exchange with North Korea is in keeping with other Trump posturing, though with the added threat of nukes. It’s a trashtalking approach akin to the weigh-in at a boxing match, he notes.
It’s certainly not the kind of talk we expect from politicians, let alone the president of the United States – “Even George W. Bush sounds eloquent and moderate by comparison.”
Such so-called straight talk is part of what appealed to those who elected Trump last fall. He tells it like it is ... or like the base thinks it is, which is what matters. He’s not another mealymouthed politician, the kind that talks out of both sides of his mouth without really saying anything.
That is actually an appealing characteristic – we have too many pablumspewing officials – but would be much more useful if there were a few informed opinions behind Trump’s public statements. Instead, we get the sense that little thought and even littler knowledge plays into his opinions. Off the cuff is all he’s got.
That doesn’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, says Ettinger. Today’s pronouncements are indicative of his mindset going back 25 years – his books show a fairly shallow knowledge of issues and public affairs, and a filter of looking at issues as if they were business deals – a “transactionalism” approach to all matters.
“There’s nowhere in the constitution that says you have to be smart” to be president, Ettinger jokes of Trump’s shallow thinking.
Is there a danger, though, that the bombast and ego will start a war with consequences well beyond threats of fire and brimstone? Not likely, even if it falls within the president’s growing powers to make war.
“I think he could, but I don’t think he will.”
Theoretically, as the commander in chief, all it would take is his command to launch a nuke, but the military is a big, complex organization with some checks and balances of its own. The threat to the U.S. itself is fairly small – threats to Guam notwithstanding – but any kind of war would be catastrophic for South Korea and Japan, certainly.
For all his threats just now, Trump is more likely to simply declare victory and let something else occupy his short attention span.
“I foresee this kind of fading away, at least from public view,” says Ettinger of the situation in North Korea. Diplomatic work will go on behind the scenes, with the parties coming up with some way for both sides to save face.
Still, there’s plenty of fodder for pundits and political scientist alike to chew on just now.
“There’s a long history of theorizing in this field about what would happen if there was a crazy person in the U.S. or Russia or China with his finger on the red button,” he notes.
Today is much closer to theory than many people might like, but the unthinkable is likely to remain undoable.
That said, many a war has been waged for the distraction value and patriotic boost it gives to leaders, elected and/or despotic alike. As Gwynne Dyer asks this week, is Trump setting up for his own version of Ronald Reagan’s Grenada?
North Korea probably isn’t on that list. But Trump has made military-option references to the goings-on in Venezuela, for instance. That’s one that stumps Ettinger, who notes the U.S.
has plenty of examples of what can and does go wrong when it interferes in other countries, particularly during times of social unrest or civil war.
For military adventurism, there’s always Afghanistan, he suggests, where he could put thousands of troops back on the ground with the stroke of a pen.
But as Trump creates daily distractions all on his own, that may not be necessary.