Dear America,
I'm not one for pride, personal or national. I was taught that pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins, and thus I eschew both pride and prideful action...in myself, my children or my country. Pride has gotten me and this nation into a lot of trouble in the course of our respective histories from promises I made that I couldn't keep to promises we made as a nation, rightly or wrongly--like the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq for example--that in the end revealed themselves to be sheer folly. Vietnam is now one of our prominent trading partners and an economic ally. Afghanistan has not been subjugated by an alien power in its history, ultimately not even by Alexander the Great, and it is now abundantly clear that we won't be the first. And Iraq...what more needs to be said. Given that pride has been the father of such debacles, we should probably look at it more skeptically and critically than we--especially the Trump voters--do. Thus, all these little indicia of Trump's pridefulness, from his incessant attempts to shame his adversaries to his own lack of self-criticism are alarms that should embarrass us, but more importantly make us wary.
There have been instances of his hubris, which will come back to haunt him when he fails, but there are also rash decisions he is making, like withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, that may well haunt not just him but us and the generations to come. And then there are the trivialities, which really serve as emblems of the greater problem that Trump represents. For example, while Trump was in Europe attending a NATO conference, he attended a photo event with the other leaders of the NATO countries, including the Prime Minister of Montenegro. As the group formed up for the picture, Prime Minister Markovic wound up near the front of the group with Trump behind him. Trump was then seen by the world to push the Prime Minister aside with a smile on his face that was replaced by his usual imperious scowl when he had succeeded in supplanting Markovic in the front row. As he did so, you could see on the faces of the other world leaders in the frame the disdain with which they regard their new billionaire colleague for the crass bully that he is, crashing ahead like the high school quarterback on the lunch line. Prime Minister Markovic dismissed the incident graciously, even attempting to vindicate Trump's decision to force his way to the foreground, but everyone saw what the man did, and whether the victim was forgiving or not, Trump personified the pride and arrogance that much of the world sees in our national presence on every world scene. Trivial as the incident was, it was an augury of things to come.
Consider the more substantive matter of his remarks to the group ostensibly about participation in the funding of NATO. The NATO states agreed to a guideline of 2% of GDP for funding of each nations own military forces, albeit only five of them have managed to meet that standard; it was not promulgated as a part of NATO's treaty. But our president berated the underfunded countries as if it were even though in the end, it has nothing to do with funding NATO itself. At the same time, Trump refused to agree to what is called article five of the NATO treaty, which requires each country to come to the aid of any NATO country that is attacked. That provision of the treaty is the core of the alliance, and our refusal as a nation to be bound by it makes the other members that much more vulnerable. Trump's thought in that regard is probably, so what. They aren't paying their bills, so, as John Ehrlichman said when testifying about some of his cohorts during the Watergate hearings, leave them to "turn slowly, slowly in the wind." That's where the danger of Trump's prideful arrogance lies. If a European country--like say Latvia--is attacked it will be because it is perceived as vulnerable in light of the uncertainty of American participation in its defense. That absence of the potential for American intervention was a large part of the Russian impunity that led to the annexation of Crimea and the sub-rosa invasion of Ukraine. At first blush the prospect of invasion of Latvia seems remote, but consider this: it wasn't long ago that, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were satellite nations of the Soviet Union...which included Ukraine.
So, trivial as a rude shove seems from the perspective of issues that face the world, maybe I shouldn't be harping on it. But if the incident is not just a function of a crude, seriously flawed character but rather is a function of a failure to understand that actions have consequences...even if you're Donald Trump...that's a different matter.
Your friend,
Mike
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