Et Tu, Rational Security?

 I was listening to last week's Rational Security episode, which contained a long-awaited segment on Trump's recent threats against Panama, Canada, and Greenland/Denmark. I was looking forward to this one. Finally—I thought—people who will do justice to just how bananas these threats really are. 

But no. To a person, everyone on the show concurred in downplaying the seriousness of the threats. "I don't really understand why everyone is making such a big deal about this," they said. "I don't know why foreign leaders felt the need to issue statements. Why did France and Germany respond, etc.?" 

Oh, I don't know—maybe because the U.S. president-elect, just days before taking office, hauled off and threatened to invade a NATO ally out of nowhere?—and to initiate an unprovoked trade war with a second NATO ally unless they agree to cede their national sovereignty and accept U.S. annexation? 

The hosts pooh-poohed these concerns. Trump says weird things all the time that he doesn't really mean. Maybe it was a negotiating tactic—"anchoring," say. The art of the deal. The madman theory. In short—the hosts trotted out all the usual defenses that Trump's followers make for his obscene behavior. 

They also pointed out a number of reasons why Trump would be unlikely to follow through on these threats, particularly vis-a-vis Greenland. Namely: Denmark is already a treaty ally. The U.S. already has a military base there. There's no real national security justification for invading and annexing it. 

I of course agree: those are all very good reasons why it would be a terrible idea to invade Greenland. But who ever said Trump was incapable of doing something just because it's a terrible idea? 

The hosts seemed to assume without evidence that he's a rational actor. But isn't that exactly what he has given us sound reason to doubt, time and again, over the last eight years—not least by uttering these kinds of bizarre, unprovoked threats in the first place? 

I obviously agree with the hosts that invading Greenland or Panama would be inimical to the U.S. national interest. But who ever said Trump has the country's best interests at heart? 

I thought if anyone would doubt the sincerity and beneficence of Trump's intentions, it would be these podcasters. Didn't they follow the Trump-Russia story more closely than anyone? Don't they know more about the ins-and-outs of the special counsel's investigations than the rest of us? 

I thought that if anyone would be committed to preserving the liberal world order—and would therefore understand just how dangerous and weird and destabilizing it is even for Trump to threaten to annex the sovereign territory of our allies, regardless of how seriously he means it—it would be this podcast. 

But no. It appears they too have joined John Fetterman and the rest in sane-washing Trump and relativizing his behavior. "My friends forsake me like a memory lost," as the poet John Clare lamented. It would seem I am to be, with Clare, the "self-consumer of my woes." 

After all, if even the folks at Brookings have decided to treat Trump as if he were a normal American elected official, I don't know who is left that will be willing to see what ought to be staring everyone in the face at this point: Trump is a menace not only to American democracy, but to the whole globe. 

As Orwell said, sometimes it takes a great deal of effort "to see what is in front of one's nose." Like the characters in Max Frisch's play The Firebugs, it is convenient at times to pretend we simply don't see the men stockpiling explosives in the attic, and that we simply can't imagine what they might do with them. 

And meanwhile, to quote Edna St. Vincent Millay, all the time "Hall upon hall/ The moles have built their palace beneath us, we have not far to fall."