America the Fitful

It's not whether the US is good or bad. It's that it can't be relied on.

Donald Trump (Daniel Torok/The White House Flickr)

If I offered you £1 million to text a friend, but you only get the money if they fail to reply within a week, who are you texting? We all have someone like this in our lives — and often they are the best sort of friend. The one who would drop everything, meet you anywhere at any time to help you bury a body, no questions asked. The only thing they won’t do is text you back.

In contrast, there are the reliable friends. Those who will message you the morning of an early evening catch-up, just to confirm you’re still on. These people are precious and ought not be taken for granted. In fact, it is often only when someone or something (usually a printer) lets us down that we remember just how important a quality ‘reliability’ is — and also how rare.

It’s curious. If asked how we might like to be remembered, I suspect that ‘reliable’ would not feature highly on many lists. Indeed, to call someone ‘reliable’ carries a faint whiff of condescension, half a rung above ‘dependable’ — which is practically code for ‘dull’. And yet, in real life, someone who does what they say, gets things done and is there when you need them? Sign me up.

You can feel the pivot coming, can’t you? Because the same is true of nation-states.

America the Fitful

In the last few weeks, the United States has, in no particular order, kidnapped the president of Venezuela, threatened the sovereignty of a Nato ally and sent what looks awfully like a secret police force into the state of Minnesota to harass, arrest and, as it transpired, kill civilians. Each of these, I think, is bad. But a policy of repression at home and historical revisionism (the two tend to go hand-in-hand) abroad does not explain why hitherto close US allies and middle powers are urgently seeking closer ties with China.

The Chinese Communist Party is not exactly famous for its adherence to the rule of law or reverence for human rights. Nor is it averse to threats of territorial expansion, whether over Taiwan or in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, if Donald Trump’s anti-Ukraine posture is alarming for Europeans, it is worth noting that China is said to be producing almost 80% of the electronics currently used in Russian drones. Clearly, this is about something else.

One of the more unsettling aspects of Trump’s America is not that it has suddenly become a bad country. The US has always been a complicated hegemon, capable of acting with extraordinary generosity and intense cruelty¹. The overriding issue is not that the US suddenly exhibits values which friendly nations now find unconscionable. It is that no one can be confident which values will apply on a given day.

Commitments from this White House are made and unmade on impulse. Foes and allies alike cannot be sure whether a promise (or threat) will hold until the markets open. Positions are hardened, softened and reversed via social media. In short, deals with Trump simply do not hold.