- 16 Aug 2019 15:51
#15026771
In a world spiraling towards chaos, we can begin to see the fruits of Donald Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy, his systematic undermining of alliances and hollowing out of America’s diplomatic and national security architecture. For a while, things more or less held up. But now the whole structure is teetering. To be sure, most of these crises have causes other than Trump.
But in one flashpoint after another, the Trump administration has either failed to act appropriately, or acted in ways that have made things worse. “Almost everything they do is the wrong move,” said Susan Thornton, who until last year was the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, America’s top diplomat for Asia. Americans have grown used to ignoring Trump’s casual lies and verbal incontinence, but people in other countries have not.
But in one flashpoint after another, the Trump administration has either failed to act appropriately, or acted in ways that have made things worse. “Almost everything they do is the wrong move,” said Susan Thornton, who until last year was the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, America’s top diplomat for Asia. Americans have grown used to ignoring Trump’s casual lies and verbal incontinence, but people in other countries have not.
"Society in those days was a perfectly competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine." Virginia Woolf 1897