Trump Will Destroy Our World If We Let Him

A Nineteenth Century View in the Twenty-First Century

Pres. Trump’s foreign policy frightens me so much that I have no words to express the depth of my fear. I truly believe that his policy may bring the end of our world. Let me try to explain. 

Trump's recent moves make it clear that he has a nineteenth century view of foreign policy. He sees a world of entirely autonomous nation-states each with its own interests. Like Lord Palmerston (Queen Victoria's foreign minister), Trump believes that a nation-state has no permanent friends or allies; it has only interests, and it pursues them to the exclusion of all other considerations. International organizations have no importance, and there are no significant international laws or norms. Every nation-state has the right to use whatever power it possesses to pursue its interests.

Mr. Trump’s view is expressed in his recent claims to Greenland and the Panama Canal. He has said that he does not rule out the use of military force to obtain them. If he were to use such force, neither Denmark, which owns Greenland, nor Panama could resist effectively. We would acquire those territories in the same way that we acquired Puerto Rico and The Philippines in 1898. 

We can also see Mr. Trump's view of foreign policy in the way that he has abandoned our NATO allies to cozy up to the Russians. He believes that we have an interest in the commercial possibilities that Russia offers, and he sees the war in Ukraine as an obstacle to taking advantage of those possibilities. In his view, Russia’s power gave it a perfect right to claim a part of Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine is responsible for the war because it failed to accede to Russia’s claim. In effect, Mr. Trump believes that Russia has the same right to take a part of Ukraine that we have to take Greenland or a part of Panama. 

The Nineteenth Century World Destroyed Itself In Deadly Wars

A world in which powerful nation-states do whatever they want in pursuit of their national interests can lead only to deadly and destructive wars because sooner or later, the powerful nations come into conflict with each other. We know that because we know what happened the world of the nineteenth century. It exploded and destroyed itself in the two deadliest and most destructive wars the world has ever seen. 

In World War I, 40 million people died. In the area where the trenches were, everything was destroyed. Even today, more than 100 years after the end of the war, there are places in France and Belgium where farmers have to drive tractors with armor plating on the bottom to avoid being killed by unexploded ordinance in the soil. A few people are still killed every year.  

In World War II, an estimated 80 million people were killed including at least 50 million civilians. The damage to property in World War II was so great that it cannot really be estimated. At least 220,000 homes were destroyed and another 3.5 million were damaged. There were at least 21 million refugees in Europe. In Asia, the suffering was even greater. In India, millions died of famines related to the war. In Japan, approximately 30 percent of the urban population was rendered homeless. The sufferings of the Chinese, including the Rape of Nanking are beyond calculation.

Most of the empires of the nineteenth century were destroyed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Turkish empire and the Prussian empire disappeared in 1918. The British and French empires survived for a few more years, but after 1945 Britain and France had been so bankrupted by the world wars that they could not hold onto their empires, and they disappeared as well. The Russian empire became the Soviet Union. So, it survived, but the suffering of the Russian people was terrible. An estimated 2.3 million people - mostly civilians - died in the First World War and about 10 million died in the civil war that followed. An estimated 24 million died in the Second World War. The United States fared better only because the Atlantic and Pacific oceans protected us from the destruction that occurred in other parts of the world. So, we made Hawaii into a state, but we gave up the Philippines.

In short, the world of the nineteenth century was almost completely destroyed, and most of the major powers of that time – Britain, France, Germany, Japan - have never completely recovered. Today, they are shadows of their former selves. They exist under the protection of the United States, and they are starting to realize that they cannot trust that protection. 

We Cannot Allow Our World To Be Destroyed

For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we cannot allow Mr. Trump to repeat the mistakes of the nineteenth century or to resurrect the world of 1914. We cannot allow it because we know that it leads only to death and destruction on a colossal scale. The destruction produced by the world wars was so great that even the winners realized that they could not go through such wars again, and they founded international institutions to provide an alternative to wars. Those institutions are very imperfect, but they point toward a world in which our children and grandchildren can hope to live in peace.

The United States has played a role in maintaining a peaceful world since 1945 by using our navy to patrol the sea lanes to allow all nations to trade safely. We have not played that role consistently. We have allowed ourselves to become involved in pointless wars in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan, but those wars did not spiral into world wars, and on balance, I think that we can be proud of the work that our navy has done.

Mr. Trump may be right when he says that we should not indefinitely bear the burden of maintaining the peace of the world by ourselves. It made sense for us to do that in the years after 1945, but perhaps, it no longer makes sense today. However, we should not try to relieve ourselves of that burden by resurrecting the world of 1914. That way lies disaster. Instead, we should share the burden by strengthening international institutions. If we do not want to guarantee the safety of the sea lanes by ourselves, we should promote the establishment of an international alternative.

If we allow Mr. Trump to recreate the conditions that produced that explosion of 1914, we should expect that the explosion will occur again, but this time, the violence and destruction will be a hundred times greater than they were in 1914-45 because this time the wars will be fought with nuclear weapons. In addition, the use of intercontinental ballistic missiles will guarantee that the United States suffers the same destruction as other parts of the world. The oceans will not protect us. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we cannot allow Mr. Trump to do resurrect the world of 1914. If our children and grandchildren are to have a world to live in, we must oppose his foreign policy with all of our strength. Resist!