Jul 22, 2018

Trump, falling ni love with power

With everything said about the Trump and Putin summit in Helsinki this week, I still feel the need to make a few notes.

Putting the TV on the morning after the 2016 election, watching CNN anchors Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota's smile-less faces announcing the outcome, I felt like looking at the planes crashing into World Trade Center 2001. Yet, I had no idea…

Nor had anyone. The House of Cards / Game of Thrones or whatever you would like to call the 1,5 years passing has been as frightening as it has been fascinating. And the astonished question always coming up is What is he doing and why? What does Donald Trump want? That question is highly relevant this Mid-July week.

I am reading two Swedish analysts and watching one American. More frightening than fascinating.

Frida Stranne, researcher at an university branch in Halmstad, Sweden, focusing at the US, sums the events of the last months up. The fact that Trump is pulling out of international agreements and criticising Nato and the EU is his way of undermining the credibility and future for fundamental institutions he doesn’t believe in. And Stranne means the quarrel with Trump’s G7 colleagues and the support for Brexit are examples of the same stance.

She goes far, suggesting Donald Trump wants to create a different world order. From that perspective it makes sense meeting Putin making him feel big and downplaying Crimea and the meddling in the US election. In the world Trump wants, Stranne says, countries manage by themselves and accepts regional super powers.

Mike Winnerstig, security analyst at FOI, the Swedish defense research institute, agrees that Donald Trump is pursuing a world order where the one who is strong is also right, rather than collaborations between countries and organisations on equal grounds.

As long as the Congress and Senate feel the need to hold on to what we know as the fundaments for governing, we will recognise the political landscape. But, if congressmen/women and senators starts getting exchanged for people aiming Trump’s world order, researcher Frida Stranne’s scenario might be real. 

It has actually already started, as the National Security Adviser HR McMaster was replaced with John Bolton, an open UN critic. And if the Secretary of Defense James Mattis who underscores the avail of alliances would be fired and replaced with an isolationist, that would be a big step towards a Trump world order, according to Mike Winnerstig, FOI.

To me this is worrying information. But what made me really scared was listening to Tony Schwartz interviewed on CNN the other day. Tony Schwartz is a journalist and writer, co-writer of Donald Trump’s book The Art of the Deal. Basically Tony Schwartz knows Donald Trump’s brain in and out. 

Schwartz predicted Donald Trump wouldn't be long at the job as the President. That he was in it for the win but would be bored with the slow pace of democracy. But I was wrong he says. “What I didn’t predict was that he would fall in love with the power”.

And that’s where we are at now. Donald Trump, the boy brought up by a father who used the expression “a killer” for the personality he wanted from his son and who in addition was taught to never admit any kind of wrong doings, is the President of the USA. A man obsessed by week or strong. Who has fallen in love with power. 

No wonder he also falls in love with similar men. Like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. And wants to be chums with them. He understands them. There is no way he can relate to Justin Trudeau and Emanuel Macron. Not to mention women.

So, what we saw in Helsinki was a little boy in a huge man’s body wanting to be one in the gang of killers, creating a new world order. A world were the strong is right. Something to reflect upon on a Sunday in July.

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