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Trump’s Real Source of Power
(Editor’s note: Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. And a Guardian US Columnist. Today his opinion piece “The Nato summit exposed the real source of Trump’s power”. Whether it’s Nato, Iran, the World Cup, the 2020 election, making billions off his presidency – or anything else – he’s is unconstrained by norms, rules, treaties and laws.)
At the Nato summit just ended, Trump lashed out at other Nato members, saying he was “very disappointed with Nato” and asking: “Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’re not there for us?” He reiterated his desire to take over Greenland, blasted European energy and immigration policies, insulted Spain, and worried allies by declaring that the fighting between Kyiv and Moscow “doesn’t affect us”.
Yet throughout the proceedings, Trump was treated by other Nato powers with as much courtesy and respect as any US president has ever received from Nato – perhaps more. “It was a great meeting, there was a lot of love in that room, a lot of unity,” Trump said when it was over.
What happened? It’s important to understand the source of Trump’s power.
His power doesn’t come from his being president of the most powerful nation in the world. In fact, his arbitrary tariffs, absurd war in Iran, and outright abduction of Nicolás Maduro have reduced the US’s standing in much of the world.
Nor does his power come from his Maga base, which is now having second thoughts about supporting someone who got the US involved in another Middle Eastern war, caused prices to rise, and whose administration still refuses to release the complete Epstein files.
Nor does his power flow from any kind of strategic brilliance or cunning.
Trump’s power comes from his willingness to violate all the norms, rules and laws about how US presidents are supposed to act – to do anything that helps him accumulate more wealth, power and glory, and wreak vengeance on anyone who has tried to get in the way.
The Nato presidents and prime ministers treated Trump with extraordinary deference because they’re afraid of what he might do if he doesn’t get what he wants.
Whether it’s Nato, Iran, the World Cup, the 2020 election, making billions off his presidency – or anything else – he’s unconstrained by norms, rules, treaties and laws.
When the global community of World Cup fans objected to his intervention last weekend on the side of the US, he responded: “If [Belgium] beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say it was – I’d say – it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020.”
Note how he corrected himself – from we’ll say to I’d say. Ethics is all about “we” – our collective judgment about what’s right or wrong. Trump doesn’t give a fig for the world’s or the nation’s judgment about right or wrong. He doesn’t think about right or wrong.
We’ve been missing the boat by characterizing Trump as breaching ethical standards. Ethics assumes some sort of agreed-upon standards against which a breach can be defined and measured. But Trump doesn’t have any standards at all. His entire approach to life, to business, and now to the presidency, has nothing whatever to do with standards. It’s about winning at all costs. Whatever it takes.
Trump isn’t unethical. He’s non-ethical. He isn’t immoral. He’s amoral.
It’s hard for most of us to conceive of living in a Trumpian world without standards, norms, rules or laws – a world composed only of transactions and calculations in which the only test is what’s in it for me and at what cost.
And that difficulty most of us have of imagining such a world is itself the key to Trump’s power.
Whether you’re president of the United States or anyone else, it’s always possible to extract personal benefits by being the first to break a widely accepted norm.
Think of a small town where people don’t lock their doors or windows because of the unwritten rule that no one steals. Under these circumstances, the first thief to commit robberies operates at a huge advantage. He can effortlessly get into anyone’s house.
This first-mover advantage disappears as soon as people catch on and start locking their doors and windows. But the thief doesn’t bear the costs of the locks or the hassle of locking all the doors and windows. He exploits the community’s trust. Then, once he destroys that trust, he leaves it to them to protect themselves against such future violations.
That asymmetry – small cost for the violator of trust, large costs for everyone who has to thereafter protect themselves – is the very essence of Trump’s MO. He gains wealth, power and glory for himself by shattering norms, after which everyone else has to pick up the pieces.
As president, he has far bigger norms to shatter than does a small-town thief, and at far greater benefit to himself.
As president, his thuggery has paid off, at least for himself. But it has also damaged all sorts of institutions that the US and the world have relied on – from Nato to Fifa to the US Department of Justice – institutions based on the trust that no American president would ever do what he’s done.
He’ll be remembered as the most powerful president the US has ever had, but also the worst.
When he’s gone, all of us will be paying to clean up the mess. We’ll have to buy an infinite number of locks for an endless number of doors and windows, and spend huge amounts of our time installing them and then keeping them locked.
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