But those of us who have watched Trump for a while remember his Tiananmen Square comments and kind words for Saddam Hussein, Moammar Qaddafi, and the rest. You don’t really have to bribe the mogul to get him to say nice things about foreign strongmen with brutal methods. He just does it instinctively.
The core question at the heart of every Trump decision and interaction is, “Am I being respected enough?” Any slight, insult, or lack of respect sets off Trump’s sense of grievance and need for revenge. All slights, insults, and signs of disrespect are indications of weakness. They must be rooted out and snuffed out; they must be humiliated. Counter-punch anyone who dares criticize — even a Gold Star family. No act, comment, or gesture can be ignored. Even loyalists need to be periodically humiliated so that they’ll remember their place — think of Chris Christie.
Trump looks at Vladimir Putin’s Russia and sees a well-run place. Nobody messes with the boss over there. Everybody knows their place. It’s orderly. Everybody respects that leader’s strength. As longtime Trump employee Michael Cohen put it, “To those of us who are close to Mr. Trump, he is more than our boss. He is our patriarch.”
How Donald Trump Hacked the Politics of Foreign Policy
Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy proposals, like forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall or withdrawing from NATO, have drawn unprecedented condemnations as incoherent, contradictory and unrealistic.
Yet for all the boos they elicit from experts, they draw frequent cheers at his rallies.
Scholars of American politics say this is because Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is using international issues as a medium to connect with voters’ gut-level fears and desires
.. Studies show that most voters rank foreign issues low on their list of concerns, but they do listen and use those issues as a window through which they judge candidates’ values and ideology.
.. Mr. Trump has exploited this dynamic, offering ideas that experts consider unworkable, but that tap into some voters’ desire for a strong-handed leader.
.. “People tend to choose the candidate they like first,” and then take on that candidate’s views as their own, she added. “This is the way people make sense of a complicated world.”
.. Because foreign policy requires difficult trade-offs, conventional candidates are limited in how emotionally appealing they can make their plans while keeping them workable. They also need to appease the hard-nosed policy experts or party officials those candidates rely on to get elected — and, eventually, to govern. But Mr. Trump was under no such constraints.
The result: Mr. Trump’s foreign policy is not a foreign policy at all, but rather a vessel for reaching voters on a purely ideological level.
.. Mr. Trump’s message: “NATO requires cooperation. Cooperation is something you do if you’re weak. If you’re strong, people go along with you.”
.. Mr. Trump’s worldview demands and offers “a sort of Fortress America, or perhaps a gigantic gated community, separated from transnational dangers of all kinds by a series of walls.”
.. Mr. Trump alarmed those outside his rapidly growing base with proposals to kill the families of terrorists and with praise for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, as well as for China’s 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
But for supporters, these and other statements suggested Mr. Trump could be trusted to impose order on the chaos they see in a rapidly changing world.
.. when Mr. Trump promises to force Mexico to pay for a giant border wall or warns that Iranian boats will be “shot out of the water” if their sailors “make gestures” at American sailors, he is communicating that he understands that his supporters feel fearful and humiliated, and that he will punish those responsible.
.. Mr. Trump has tapped into what scholars call conservation values.
People who hold those values prioritize security, conformity and tradition. They also tend to fear physical threats and people they see as outsiders, whether that means foreigners or those of different races or religions. And they often express those values as a particular set of “hawkish” foreign policy views.
.. That hawkishness is very different from that of neoconservatives like President George W. Bush or interventionist Democrats like Mrs. Clinton. It is characterized by a desire to
- shut out the world,
- ruthlessly promote American interests,
- reject cooperation and
- meet threats with overwhelming force.
.. Voters who hold conservation values are drawn to such policies not out of a sudden interest in global affairs, but as a way to express their fear of change and desire for order at home, the researchers found. They desire a strong leader who will protect “us” against an ever-more-menacing “them.”
.. Mr. Trump, by redirecting voters’ anxiety about demographic, cultural and economic changes toward foreign policy, gives his supporters a clearer set of villains
.. Supporters do not primarily hear a policy agenda, but a promise: that Mr. Trump understands their fears and will protect them.
How Dictatorships Are Born
“Do you really believe the compatriots of Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Beethoven will fall for this rubbish? How dare you insult the memory of twelve thousand Jews who died for our country?”
Germans fell for the rubbish. The Republican Party fell for the garbage.
.. That Trump traffics in violence is irrefutable. His movement wants action — deportations, arrests, assassination and torture have been mooted. The most worrying thing is not that Trump likes Vladimir Putin, the butcher of Aleppo, but that he apes Vladimir Putin.
Trump and the Intellectuals
On the one hand,many of the pro-Trump thinkers seem to believe that for all his distinctive vices, Trump would probably end up governing largely as a conventional Republican.
.. Reagan-era conservatism had its time and failed, these Trump-supporting intellectuals suggest, and the time has come to roll the dice, to embrace a change agent even if he seems gross and seedy and bigoted, because the alternative is staying on a fatal course.
.. Others take the more modest view that Trump is correct on particular issues (immigration, foreign policy, the importance of the nation-state) where the bipartisan consensus is often wrong, and his candidacy is a chance to vote against an elite worldview that desperately needs to be chastened and rebuked.
.. If Trump gets restrained by his advisers, he’ll be a typical Republican, this combination would go, and if he stays true to his own essential Trumpiness, he’ll be the scourge our rotten system needs.
.. What remains is this question: Can Donald Trump actually execute the basic duties of the presidency? Is there any way that his administration won’t be a flaming train wreck from the start? Is there any possibility that he’ll be levelheaded in a crisis — be it another 9/11 or financial meltdown
.. Trump’s zest for self-sabotage, his wild swings, his inability to delegate or take advice, are not mere flaws; they are defining characteristics. The burdens of the presidency will leave him permanently maddened, perpetually undone.
.. Months ago, I worried that Trump was too authoritarian to be entrusted with the presidency. That worry has receded a bit, because authoritarianism requires a ruthless sort of competence that Trump cannot attain.