Trump’s ‘America First’ philosophy has created a less stable world

by Dr.Fareed Zakaria

https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2019/5/16/trumps-america-first-philosophy-has-created-a-less-stable-world

President Trump has seemed largely uninterested in foreign policy. He got excited briefly when he thought he could win a Nobel Peace Prize and hyped the danger of an imminent North Korean attack — so that he could play the peacemaker. When it became clear that a deal was not to be had easily, Trump lost interest and scarcely mentions the subject anymore.

Beyond North Korea, his foreign policy has largely been one of subcontracting (a familiar style for a real estate developer). Middle East policy is farmed out to Israel and Saudi Arabia. The administration simply backs whatever those nations want. Policy toward left-wing regimes in Latin America — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — has been delegated to saber-rattlers such as national security adviser John Bolton and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The rest of Latin America is dealt with solely through the lens of immigration —  in other words, subcontracted to senior policy adviser Stephen Miller.

 

The one common aspect of Trump’s foreign policy, however, has been that it has provoked a vigorous nationalist response abroad. Take China, where the government has gone on the offensive and denounced what it sees as the United States’ aggressive trade demands. Beijing’s state-controlled television network recently featured a commentary that tied U.S. tactics to previous foreign efforts to subjugate China. “If you want a trade war,” the anchor said, “we’ll fight you until the end. After 5,000 years of wind and rain, what hasn’t the Chinese nation weathered?” That clip, in addition to being aired on China’s main TV news channel, has been watched online more than 99 million times.

In Iran, the Islamic Republic has been able to withstand the economic storms caused by U.S. sanctions because it has been able to pin the blame on Trump’s anti-Iran strategy, not the regime’s economic mismanagement. Washington has always underestimated nationalism, especially in the case of Iran. Many of Iran’s foreign policy moves stem from its geopolitical position, not some fundamentalist Shiite ideology. Last year, Ardeshir Zahedi, who served as foreign minister under the shah, published an open letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, essentially defending the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. Iran’s nuclear program, it is worth recalling, began under the shah.

 

The manner in which the Trump administration deals with almost every country provokes a nationalist, anti-American response. One of the great achievements of U.S. foreign policy over the past 30 years was that Mexico had gone from being an anti-American, revolutionary country to a pro-American partner. In 2015, before Trump’s election, 66 percent of Mexicans had a favorable view of the United States, according to a Pew Research Center survey. By last year, that number had dropped to 32 percent. Confidence in the U.S. president plummeted in that same period from 49 to 6 percent.

The pattern recurs almost everywhere. In Canada, confidence in the U.S. president went from 76 percent in 2015 to 25 percent in 2018. In France it’s worse, from 83 percent under President Barack Obama to single digits under Trump. In fact, in the Pew report, which surveyed 25 countries, only two places expressed greater confidence in Trump than his predecessor: Russia and Israel.

Countries around the globe are becoming more assertive and anti-American, even ones that embrace Trump’s ideology. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban proudly says that he is building an “illiberal democracy” in his country. In recent years, he has destroyed democratic checks and balances, demonized immigrants (of whom there are few in Hungary) and mouthed anti-Islamic rhetoric. Shunned by Obama, Orban was warmly welcomed this week at the White House by Trump. And yet, Orban has rebuffed U.S. overtures and aligned with China and Russia when it has suited his purposes.

It makes perfect sense. In his 2017 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Trump called for “a great reawakening of nations,” urging countries to use patriotism and self-interest as their guides in foreign policy. Trump’s north star has been a narrow conception of national interest, rejecting the idea that there are larger international interests and, by implication, denigrating the idea of cooperative, win-win solutions.

Well, Orban is simply doing what Trump urged, as are the Chinese, the Iranians and so many others. And since the United States is still the world’s leading power, and Trump’s style has been to be aggressive and undiplomatic, the easiest response is a nationalist, anti-American one, feeding public anger, stoking bad historical memories and locking countries into a win-lose mindset.

It is a world with more instability, less cooperation and fewer opportunities for the United States. And it is a direct, logical consequence of Trump’s philosophy of “America First.”

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Barr Cover-Up: Call It What It Is

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2019/04/15/the-barr-cover-up-call-it-what-it-is#21396f1d3638April 18,2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2019/04/15/the-barr-cover-up-call-it-what-it-is#21396f1d3638Barr Cover-Up: Call It What It Is

 

 

 

Contributor

Leadership Strategy I write about management in its many forms.

• Call it what it is, this is Banana Republic stuff.

 

The more latitude A-G Bill Barr has to redact, the more latitude he has to protect the president. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) ASSOCIATED PRESS

Enough already. No more benefit of the doubt.

Having observed this whole process all too carefully, I’m convinced Attorney General Bill Barr’s actions with respect to the Mueller Report are being guided by the following principles:

Take as long as possible, and use every legal means possible, to release as little damaging information as possible.

Translation: Protect the president as much as possible.

Interest in the American public actually seeing anything meaningful in the Mueller Report? As little as possible.

No matter that this pleasant avuncular fellow looks and talks more like a respectable attorney than a fixer. Don’t be fooled: The fix is in.

Consider his actions over the past three weeks. He’s put a chokehold on Mueller-related information. In his measured lawyerly tones he’s promised everything and delivered nothing.

Following are four reasons why I have no confidence there will be much of anything meaningful in his redacted version of the Mueller Report.

His original four-page summary. This was a carefully crafted and misleading document designed to shape public perceptions, and place the president in the most favorable possible light. This was all about management, devious though it may be: managing the message, and attempting to manage public opinion.

Grads of Life BrandVoice

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Immunization Under Fire

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Voting Together Across Generations

His decision to exonerate the president for obstruction. Barr arrogated a decision that should never have been his, given the enormity of the stakes, rather than let the examination of facts, discussion and decision go to Congress, as Mr. Mueller doubtless originally intended.

Stonewalling Congress. He’s persistently refused to let the full report go to Congressional leadership, despite their numerous requests for it.

Redacting more rather than less. Barr says he wants transparency but far more important than what he says is what he does. He’s spent weeks now completing the broadest possible universe of redactions, removing both grand-jury-related material as well as the especially unclear vague references to “peripheral third parties.”  The more latitude he has to redact, the more latitude he has to protect the president. The less the public will know what’s in the full report.

This is all part of a consistent pattern designed to minimize the release of damaging information.

One would hope that the highest law enforcement officer in the land would be more of an honest broker than a spin doctor, but clearly in these hyper-partisan times that’s too much to hope for.

As I’ve noted previously in this space, I’m a registered political Independent, not a Democrat, and no fan of Bill, Hillary and Obamacare. But I am a fan of transparency and finding out what actually happened in this investigation – and this is a strange way to conclude the most consequential political inquiry in decades.

As an interested citizen, and like many interested citizens, I’d like to know exactly what’s in the Mueller Report. Not have an ideologue masquerading as an impartial attorney general tell me what he wants me to know.

Call it what it is, this is Banana Republic stuff. Think about it: The president wanted an attorney general who would protect him. Barr “auditions” for the job with his now-famous 19-page memo. He then proceeds to become judge, jury and evidence keeper, while maintaining a respectable legal facade.

Despite this veneer of objectivity, I believe our attorney general is neither unbiased nor operating in good faith.

Unless someone involved in the investigation leaks the actual Mueller Report (an increasing possibility, given the byzantine way this is unfolding), Democrats should take the gloves off and use every legal means at their disposal to get the document in its entirety.

What other options are available? Welcome to tribalism, 2019 style. The Barr cover-up. Call it what it is.

[Update 2:15 p.m. 4/15/19: The Justice Department announced today they expect to release the redacted Mueller Report this Thursday. This is 25 days after Barr released his summary letter.] 

 

 

 

Contributor

Nearly a quarter century of Fortune 500 management experience. Long interested as practitioner in the subject of management, both good and bad, effective and ineffective…

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which can be incredibly detrimental.

Duration 1:00

Trump’s Most Worrisome Legacy

April 13, 2019

Apr 9, 2019

The US president’s attacks on America’s truth-seeking institutions jeopardize its continued prosperity and very ability to function as a democracy. As corporate giants capture the institutions that are supposed to protect ordinary citizens, a dystopia once imagined only by science fiction writers is emerging before our eyes.

NEW YORK – Kirstjen Nielsen’s forced resignation as US Secretary of Homeland Security is no reason to celebrate. Yes, she presided over the forced separation of families at the US border, notoriously housing young children in wire cages. But Nielsen’s departure is not likely to bring any improvement, as President Donald Trump wants to replace her with someone who will carry out his anti-immigrant policies even more ruthlessly.

Trump’s immigration policies are appalling in almost every aspect. And yet they may not be the worst feature of his administration. Indeed, identifying its foulest aspects has become a popular American parlor game. Yes, he has called immigrants criminals, rapists, and animals. But what about his deep misogyny or his boundless vulgarity and cruelty? Or his winking support of white supremacists? Or his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty? And, of course, there is his war on the environment, on health care, and on the rules-based international system.

This morbid game never ends, of course, because new contenders for the title emerge almost daily. Trump is a disrupting personality, and after he’s gone, we may well reflect on how such a deranged and morally challenged person could have been elected president of the world’s most powerful country in the first place.

But what concerns me most is Trump’s disruption of the institutions that are necessary for the functioning of society. Trump’s “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) agenda is, of course, not about restoring the moral leadership of the United States. It embodies and celebrates unbridled selfishness and self-absorption. MAGA is about economics. But that forces us to ask: what is the basis of America’s wealth?

Adam Smith tried to provide an answer in his classic 1776 book The Wealth of Nations. For centuries, Smith noted, standards of living had been stagnant; then, toward the end of the eighteenth century, incomes start to soar. WhySmith himself was a leading light of the great intellectual movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The questioning of established authority that followed the earlier Reformation in Europe forced society to ask: How do we know the truth? How can we learn about the world around us? And how can and should we organize our society?From the search for answers to these questions arose a new epistemology, based on the empiricism and skepticism of science, which came to prevail over the forces of religion, tradition, and superstition. Over time, universities and other research institutions were established to help us judge truth and discover the nature of our world. Much of what we take for granted today – from electricity, transistors, and computers to lasers, modern medicine, and smartphones – is the result of this new disposition, undergirded by basic scientific research (most of it financed by government).

The absence of royal or ecclesiastical authority to dictate how society should be organized to ensure that things worked out well, or as well as they could, meant that society had to figure it out for itself. But devising the institutions that would ensure society’s wellbeing was a more complicated matter than discovering the truths of nature. In general, one couldn’t conduct controlled experiments.

A close study of past experience could, however, be informative. One had to rely on reasoning and discourse – recognizing that no individual had a monopoly on our understandings of social organization. Out of this process emerged an appreciation that governance institutions based on the rule of law, due process, and checks and balances, and supported by foundational values like individual liberty and justice for all, are more likely to produce good and fair decisions. These institutions may not be perfect, but they have been designed so that it is more likely that flaws will be uncovered and eventually corrected.

That process of experimentation, learning, and adaptation, however, requires a commitment to ascertaining the truth. Americans owe much of their economic success to a rich set of truth-telling, truth-discovering, and truth-verifying institutions. Central among them are freedom of expression and independent media. Like all people, journalists are fallible; but, as part of a robust system of checks and balances on those in positions of power, they have traditionally provided an essential public good.Since Smith’s day, it has been shown that a nation’s wealth depends on the creativity and productivity of its people, which can be advanced only by embracing the spirit of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And it depends on steady improvements in social, political, and economic organization, discovered through reasoned public discourse.

The attack by Trump and his administration on every one of the pillars of American society – and his especially aggressive vilification of the country’s truth-seeking institutions – jeopardizes its continued prosperity and very ability to function as a democracy. Nor do there appear to be checks on corporate giants’ efforts to capture the institutions – the courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies, and major media outlets – that are supposed to prevent them from exploiting workers and consumers. A dystopia previously imagined only by science fiction writers is emerging before our eyes. It should give us chills to think of who “wins” in this world, and who or what we might become, just in the struggle to survive.

 

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt Institute. His latest book, People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, will be published in April.

Elizabeth Warren and Axelrod

March 3, 2019

 

A Trade Deal with China will require a more comprehensive approach, based on a fundamental shift in mindset say, Andrew Sheng and Xiao

February 23, 2019

 

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-zero-sum-approach-china-trade-talks-by-andrew-sheng-and-xiao-geng-2019-02

In the ongoing US-China trade talks, considerable progress has been made on several key trade issues, such as intellectual-property rights protection. But to defuse tensions in any sustainable way will require a more comprehensive approach, based on a fundamental shift in mindset.

HONG KONG – Trade negotiations between the United States and China are closing in on the March 1 deadline, after which the bilateral tariff war will resume – beginning with an increase from 10% to 25% on $200 billion worth of Chinese products. While global financial markets are fluctuating wildly, investors seem to assume that too much is at stake for the US and China to fail to reach a deal. Their optimism could prove short-lived.

To be sure, there has been considerable progress on several key issues, such as technology transfer, protection of intellectual-property rights, non-tariff barriers, and implementation mechanisms. But to defuse tensions between the US and China in any sustainable way will require a more comprehensive approach, based on a fundamental shift in mindset.

Over the last 40 years, Sino-US engagement has been largely cooperative, reflecting a holistic approach that takes into account the interests of the entire global system. US President Donald Trump’s administration, however, does not seem to believe that engagement with China (or anyone else for that matter) can benefit both sides. As Trump’s “America First” agenda shows, the US is now playing a zero-sum game – and it is playing to win.

For example, the US has threatened to punish or desert its closest allies unless they increase their defense spending. Under pressure from the Trump administration, South Korea just agreed to increase its contributions to US forces in Korea by 8.2%, to $923 million, in 2019.

Similarly, Trump has repeatedly disparaged fellow NATO members for insufficient defense spending. Most recently, Trump has criticized Germany for spending only 1% of GDP for defense, compared to America’s 4.3%. German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded by condemning US isolationism at the Munich Security Conference, and calling for the revival of multilateral cooperation.

The Trump administration’s myopic approach is also apparent in its preoccupation with bilateral trade imbalances. Any US deficit with another economy is, from Trump’s perspective, a loss. Given this, if China agrees to cut its bilateral trade deficit with the US, other economies with bilateral surpluses vis-à-vis the US – including close allies, such as the European Union and Japan – may find themselves facing intensifying pressure to do the The weakening of trade that could result in this scenario would compound existing negative pressure on global growth, hurting everyone. A global economic downturn is the last thing the world needs at a time when it is already beset with risks, including a possible no-deal Brexit and populist gains in the European Parliament election in May.

Of course, while Trump does not spare his allies, his primary target remains China. After all, the competition between the US and China extends far beyond trade. Although the US maintains military, technological, financial, and soft-power superiority, China has been steadily catching up, leading to bipartisan support in the US for a more confrontational approach.

Last October, US Vice President Mike Pence bluntly accused China of technology theft, predatory economic expansion, and military aggression. Pence’s stance echoed the fears of the US national security community. As former US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter put it, “Because it is a Communist dictatorship, China is able to bring to bear on US companies and our trading partners a combination of political, military, and economic tools that a government such as ours cannot match. This puts us at an inherent disadvantage.”

And yet America’s tools are hardly useless. The US authorities have mobilized a broad range of domestic and international resources – from law and diplomacy to national security measures – to stop the overseas expansion of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. If Western countries allow Huawei to build their 5G infrastructure, America’s hawks and their allies argue, they will be vulnerable to cyberattacks from China in some future war.

All of this has shaken business and market confidence to the core, wiping out trillions of dollars in market capitalization. And the Trump administration’s apparent insistence that countries choose sides in its dispute with China is further heightening fears. As the rest of the world’s trading countries understand, Trump’s approach will fragment business and reverse the globalization-enabled economies of scale that have fueled growth for decades.

“Ending the Sino-US trade war will require considerable statesmanship on the part of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But, beyond that, both sides need to recognize that supporting global peace and prosperity requires less ideology and more respect for diversity of political, social, and cultural systems. Failing that, the fault lines will continue to deepen – much as they did in the 1930s – potentially setting the stage for full-blown war”- .

More broadly, the Trump administration’s rejection of multilateralism undermines the global cooperation needed to confront a range of issues, including migration, poverty and inequality, climate change, and the challenges raised by new technologies. Trump’s focus on geopolitical rivalry – and the associated rise in security and defense spending – will dramatically reduce resources available for global public goods, such as infrastructure investment and poverty-reduction programs.

 

Trump’s Bizarre, Rambling Announcement of a National Emergency

February 16, 2019

Politics

The circus in the Rose Garden threatened to distract from what the president actually did on Friday.

 

by David A. Graham

 

https://www.theatlantic.com

12:22 PM ET

Carlos Barria / Reuters

After failing for two years to persuade Congress to fund a wall on the southern border, President Donald Trump on Friday said he will declare a national emergency and reallocate some $8 billion to build the wall through executive fiat.

Trump announced the move in a rambling, free-associative appearance in the White House Rose Garden that was more MAGA rally than presidential announcement. Even by the standards of this President, his remarks were confusing, untruthful, and often off topic, with strange ad-hominem attacks on other politicians and sharp exchanges with reporters. Despite claiming that the nation faces an acute crisis that requires immediate attention, the president meandered through a long preamble about trade deals and North Korea. When he finally got to the point, he struggled to stay focused.

“We’re going to be signing today and registering national emergency,” he said. “And it’s a great thing to do, because we have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it’s unacceptable. And by signing the national emergency, something signed many times by other presidents, many, many times, President Obama, in fact, we may be using one of the national emergencies that he signed having to do with cartels, criminal cartels. It’s a very good emergency that he signed … And what we really want to do is simple. It’s not like it is complicated. It’s very simple. We want to stop drugs from coming into our country. We want to stop criminals and gangs from coming into our country. Nobody has done the job that we have ever done.”

• 

  Read President Trump’s Speech Declaring a National Emergency

  Olivia Paschal

• 

  What Someone Needs to Explain to Trump About ‘National Emergencies’

  Bob Bauer

   

   

Yet Trump also undermined his own case for the national emergency, effectively saying the declaration was all about political expediency.

“I can do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this. I would rather do it much faster,” the president said, an astonishing acknowledgment that could come back to haunt him in court.

Read: What the president could do if he declares a national emergency

It was one of the least coherent appearances Trump has made in a presidency noted for its incoherence. Yet the circus in the Rose Garden threatened to distract from a major policy announcement.

During a briefing Friday morning, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that Trump would take $600 million from a Treasury Department forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion from a Defense Department counter-drug fund, and another $3.6 billion from Pentagon military-construction money. Only the construction funds require an emergency declaration. Trump will not take money from disaster-relief funds, an idea that had been discussed.

The move is sure to draw legal challenges, and might not take effect exactly as Trump described. But the fact remains that the President has declared a national emergency in order to save face with anti-immigration members of the conservative media and his base, having been roundly defeated in a joust with Congress over funding. In essence, the president has created a new crisis to get himself out of a previous crisis—which he also created. And the timing of Trump’s announcement, after months of equivocating and congressional debate, hardly supports the idea of an acute crisis.

There is an irony to Trump’s declaration. Prior to being elected, Trump aggressively criticized then-President Barack Obama, saying that he could be impeached for using executive orders to change immigration policies.

“Now he has to use executive action and this is a very, very dangerous thing that should be overwritten easily by the Supreme Court,” Trump said in 2014.  The following year, Trump said, “The whole concept of executive order—it’s not the way the country is supposed to be run. He’s supposed to go through Congress and make a deal and go and talk to people and get the guys in there and, you know, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, is supposed to all get together. He’s supposed to make a deal, but he couldn’t make a deal, because it’s not his thing.” During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to withdraw Obama’s executive orders and accused him of abuses. Since becoming president, however, Trump has become a prolific user of executive orders.

Yet by declaring a national emergency, Trump is doing something more aggressive still. There is nuance to the situation: As the White House points out, Trump is using powers granted to him under a law passed by Congress in 1976, and not creating powers out of thin air. But it’s not clear that this situation fits within the letter of the law, and it’s all but impossible to say that it follows the spirit of the law.

Any declaration of emergency seems by definition distressing—either the president is announcing a bona fide emergency or the government is creating an opportunity for abuse of power, or both. The very point of emergency provisions is to circumvent standard protections and procedures. While that should be concerning to citizens in any case, it’s especially worthy of scrutiny coming from Trump, a president who has disregarded restraints, procedures, and laws even without claiming extraordinary powers; acted like the ruler of a one-party state; and expressed admiration for authoritarians.

As Elizabeth Goitein explained in The Atlantic recently, the 1976 National Emergencies Act superseded a range of laws that were designed to grant the president leeway to respond to an acute crisis. Congress concluded that there are times when the country needs to respond faster than the standard legislative process can act. Mulvaney said Friday that Trump is simply invoking this law.

“It actually creates zero precedent,” he said. “This is authority given to the president, given to the law already. It’s not like he didn’t get what he wants, so he’s waving his wand.”

This is only half true. The authority does exist, and critics saying otherwise are exaggerating. But it’s also exactly like he didn’t get what he wanted, so he’s waving a wand. There’s a legitimate argument to be had over whether a serious problem exists at the border, though the case that there is one is weak. While illegal immigration to the United States is rising, it remains well below the recent peak, in 2000. Trump allies have argued that recent incidents where the Border Patrol fired tear gas across the border show the menace posed by immigrants; however, as Press Secretary Sarah Sanders pointed out, tear-gassing was common during the Obama administration. The White House has also offered up a bogus statistic about terrorists trying to enter the United States.

But there’s no case to be made that Congress hasn’t had a chance to act. Trump has been asking lawmakers to fund his wall since he took office, in January 2017. He failed to persuade even a unified Republican Congress to give him the money. (On Friday morning, Trump repeatedly criticized those in the last Congress who didn’t push hard enough to fund the wall, a clear reference to former House Speaker Paul Ryan.) Since December, two Congresses—one with unified GOP control, and then another with a Democratic House and Republican Senate—have been extensively considering border funding, and they have decided, clearly, not to give Trump the money. The Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate, and it has decided at length what it wants—a fact Mulvaney acknowledged.

“They’re simply incapable of providing the amount of money necessary in the president’s eyes to address the present situation at the border,” he said. But it’s impossible to believe that Congress passed the National Emergencies Act for the purpose of the president sidestepping the Constitution simply because Congress decided it disagreed with him.

This is a fact other Republicans have acknowledged. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has called the emergency “dubious from a constitutional perspective.” Senator John Cornyn of Texas has expressed worry that a future Democratic President could use unilateral power in ways that would make Republicans uncomfortable. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said in the past that he hoped Trump would not declare an emergency. Yet on Thursday, Poodle McConnell announced he would support the declaration.

While the President does not need Congress’s say-so to declare an emergency, Congress does have the right to override him after the fact, with a vote of both houses. The House will likely do so, but it’s unclear whether enough Republicans in the Senate would join with Democrats to pass a measure there as well. In any case, Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post reports that Trump would veto such a resolution—which would be the first veto of his presidency.

Read: Trump’s emergency declaration is a test Republicans didn’t want to take

Trump predicted in the Rose Garden that he would triumph in litigation.

“I’ll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office,” he said, in a peculiar singsongy voice. “And we will have a national emergency. And we will then be sued and they will sue us in the Ninth Circuit even though it shouldn’t be there. And we will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we will get another bad ruling, and then we will end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we will get a fair shake and win in the Supreme Court, just like the [travel] ban.”

Ironically, even though Trump’s lengthy vacillation on whether to declare an emergency shows that the crisis is not as acute as he claims, it’s also helped inure the public to the declaration. But the declaration is still another huge violation of existing norms and constitutional protections.

The President appears single-mindedly focused on the wall, an unusually sustained focus for him. Given the concrete goal involved, this is probably not a situation in which Trump is likely touse the emergency as an excuse to take other, more extraordinary actions, such as declaring martial law or ordering military action. Moreover, Trump’s biggest projects have been repeatedly bedeviled by failures of execution and follow-through, though even a limited impact in this case could be substantial. The point is that he could do those things. That’s a dangerous tool in the hands of a scrupulous president with great respect for restraints on his power—much less Trump.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers U.S. politics and global news.

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