By Patricia H Kushlis
Did Trump, his henchmen and his acolytes finally cross the Rubicon?
He’s made one colossal mistake after another since he assumed the office of the presidency January 20, 2016. But his July 25 phone call with the recently installed president of Ukraine, the stonewalling and coverup that has followed, not to mention his fatal and ill-considered decision to stand down and then remove the small number of American troops who had been providing the cover – the tripwire preventing a Turkish invasion of Kurdish territory in Syria along the Turkish border acting in response to a nudge in an over the weekend phone call from Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan should demonstrate to even the most vociferous Trump enablers that their hero in the red MAGA cap should not be in charge – let alone ever again touch with a single small pinky - US foreign policy.
In an excellent article today in Foreign Affairs, for decades the moderate, if not conservative, voice of the US foreign policy community, William Burns, author of The Back Channel and former Deputy Secretary of State, decries the current disheveled state of the State Department, questions its ability to function under this administration and the ability to rebuild it in Trump's wake.
Cracks into Canyons
Burns should know. He was a career Foreign Service Officer with assignments in the Middle East and as Ambassador to Russia as a part of his lengthy and distinguished State Department career. My only quibble with his observation about the state of State is that the cracks in its edifice were showing three decades before and had been papered over by previous administrations. This current administration has just turned those cracks into deep canyons.
I wonder how many people raise similar questions about the Pentagon's effectiveness: how effective can the US military be in the face of a president who has undermined its expertise and authority. It’s clear no one there had an inkling of Trump’s single handed or should I say ham-handed brain dead decision to order a withdrawal of support for the Kurds. Pentagon officials knew the implications - as State officers knowledgeable of Middle East affairs would have too - and had warned the White House of the consequences - but they too were left out of the calculus and in the cold.
So who is in charge of an American foreign policy that has gone off the deep-end? How is it that a single, half-witted megalomaniac is able to make such momentous decisions for this country at perilous times like this? Why is no one in the GOP Senatorial leadership or even among its rank and file, not to mention the cabinet, concerned about where this man is taking the country? Or are they all bought off by Moscow as is their fearless leader?
Tripwires
Tripwires are there for a reason as the weekend events have demonstrated. The US never had enough forces in Berlin or in West Germany to stop a Soviet invasion even in concert with West Germany’s own. But those US and alliance troops had a function: they served to warn Moscow that a crossing of the then Rubicon – otherwise known as the Fulda Gap - would trigger a much larger and determined US and NATO defense against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The tripwire worked then; and it had worked in Syria until last weekend. Until that is Trump’s ill-considered decision to revoke it.
I shudder to think what would have happened had a Trump been President of the US or for that matter a Boris Johnson or a Jeremy Corbyn been Prime Minister of the UK prior to 1991.
I also think, however, the Presidency especially in conjunction with a feckless Senatorial majority, should not have the kind of power that Trump has fecklessly usurped. This is particularly true in the life and death, split second arena of foreign affairs. No individual should single handedly have – or be able to usurp such power.
So my question is not just how can the state of State be righted but also how can the disheveled state of the union be restored once mad King Lear is out of the White House by whatever way it occurs.