Trump’s handoff to Biden — world in utter disarray
The sheen is off America, and its democratic ideals are in tatters
PARIS >> Most countries lost patience long ago. The erratic outbursts of President Donald Trump were unacceptable to allies when they were not simply insulting. Even rivals like China and Russia reeled at the president’s gut-driven policy lurches. Trump said in 2016 that America must be “more unpredictable.” He was true to his word.
The sudden infatuation with North Korea’s Stalinist leader, Kim Jong Un, the kowtowing to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the “Chinese virus” obsession, the enthusiasm for the fracturing of the Euro
pean Union, and the apparent abandonment of core American democratic values were so shocking that Trump’s departure today from the White House is widely viewed with relief.
The sheen is off America, its democratic ideals hollowed. Trump’s imprint on the world will linger. While passionate denunciations are widespread, there is a legacy of Trumpism that in some circles won’t easily fade. Through his “America First” obsession, he galvanized other nations to put themselves first, too. They will not soon fall back into line behind the United States. The domestic fracture that Trump sharpened will endure, undermining the projection of American power.
“Mr. Trump is a criminal, a political pyromaniac who should be sent to criminal court,” Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, said in a radio interview. “He’s a person who was elected democratically but who is not interested in
democracy in the slightest.”
Such language about an American president from a European ally would have been unthinkable before Trump made outrage the leitmotif of his presidency, along with an assault on truth. His denial of a fact — a defeat in the November election — was seen by leaders including Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, as the spark to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.
A mob amok in the inner sanctum of American democracy looked to many countries like Rome sacked by the Visigoths. America, to foreign observers, has fallen. Trump’s reckless disruption, in the midst of a pandemic, has bequeathed to Joe Biden, the incoming president, a great global uncertainty.
“The post-Cold War era has come to an end after 30 years, and a more complex and challenging era is unfolding: a world in danger!” said Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference.
Trump’s talent for gratuitous insults was felt the world over. In Mbour, a
coastal town in Senegal, Rokhaya Dabo, a school administrator, said, “I don’t speak English, but I was offended when he said Africa is a shithole.” In Rome, Piera Marini, who makes hats for her store on Via Giulia, said she was delighted Trump was going: “Just the way he treated women was chilling.”
“Biden needs to tackle the restoration of democracy at home in a humble way that allows Europeans to say we have similar problems, so let’s get out of this together,” Nathalie Tocci, an Italian political scientist, said in an interview. “With Trump, we Europeans were suddenly the enemy.”
Still, to the last, Trump’s nationalism had its backers. They ranged from the majority of Israelis, who liked his unconditional support, to aspiring autocrats from Hungary to Brazil who saw in him the charismatic leader of a counterrevolution against liberal democracy.
Elsewhere the support for Trump was ideological. He was the symbol of a great nationalist and autocratic lurch. He personified a revolt against Western
democracies, portrayed as the place where family, church, nation and traditional notions of marriage and gender go to die. He resisted mass migration, diversity and the erosion of white male dominance.
This global cultural battle will continue because the conditions of its eruption — insecurity, disappearing jobs, resentment in societies made still more unequal by the impact of COVID-19 — persist from France to Latin America. The Trump phenomenon also persists. His tens of millions of supporters are not about to vanish.
“Were the events at the Capitol the apotheosis and tragic endpoint of Trump’s four years, or was it the founding act of a new American political violence spurred by a dangerous energy?” François Delattre, secretary-general of the French Foreign Ministry, asked. “We do not know, and in countries with similar crises of their democratic models we must worry.”
France is one such country of increasingly tribal confrontation. If the U.S. Justice Department could be politicized, if the Cen
ters for Disease Control and Prevention could be eviscerated, and if 147 elected members of Congress could vote to overturn the election results even after the Capitol was stormed, there is reason to believe that in other fractured post-truth societies anything could happen.
“How did we get here? Gradually and then suddenly, as Hemingway had it,” said Peter Mulrean, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti now living in France. “We’ve seen the steady degradation of truth, values and institutions. The world has watched.”
As Simon Schama, a British historian, has observed, “When truth perishes so does freedom.” Trump, for whom truth did not exist, leaves a political stage where liberty is weakened. An emboldened Russia and an assertive China are more strongly placed than ever to mock democracy and push agendas hostile to liberalism.
Toward China, Trump’s policy was so incoherent that Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, was left appealing to Starbucks, which has thousands of stores in China,
to improve strained U.S.China relations. Xi wrote last week to the company’s former chief executive, Howard Schultz, to “encourage him” to help with “the development of bilateral relations,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Trump called the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “dishonest and weak,” whereas North Korea’s brutal Kim was “funny.” He did not see the point of NATO but saluted a North Korean general.
He exited the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Iran nuclear agreement, and planned to leave the World Health Organization. He stood the postwar American-led order on its head. Even if the Biden administration moves fast to reverse some of these decisions, as it will, trust will take years to restore.
The world, like America, was traumatized by the Trump years. All the razor wire in Washington and the thousands of National Guard troops deployed to make sure a peaceful transfer of power takes place in the United States of America are testimony to that.