Typically American

AT the New Yorker Robin Wright is dismayed that President Trump is so ignorant about the rest of the world:

I asked top Republican and intelligence officials from eight Administrations what they thought was the one thing the President needs to grasp to succeed on the world stage. Their various replies: embrace the fact that the Russians are not America’s friends. Don’t further alienate the Europeans, who are our friends. Encourage human rights—a founding principle of American identity—and don’t make priority visits to governments that curtail them, such as Poland and Saudi Arabia. Understand that North Korea’s nuclear program can’t be outsourced to China, which can’t or won’t singlehandedly fix the problem anyway, and realize that military options are limited. Pulling out of innovative trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will boost China’s economy and secure its global influence—to America’s disadvantage. Stop bullying his counterparts. And put the Russia case behind him by coöperating with the investigation rather than trying to discredit it.

Trump’s latest blunder was made during an appearance in the Rose Garden with Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, on July 25th. “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against isis, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah,” Trump pronounced. He got the basics really wrong. Hezbollah is actually part of the Lebanese government—and has been for a quarter century—with seats in parliament and Cabinet posts. Lebanon’s Christian President, Michel Aoun, has been allied with Hezbollah for a decade. As Trump spoke, Hezbollah’s militia and the Lebanese Army were fighting isis and an Al Qaeda affiliate occupying a chunk of eastern Lebanon along its border with Syria. They won.

The list of other Trump blunders is long. In March, he charged that Germany owed “vast sums” to the United States for nato. It doesn’t. No nato member pays the United States—and never has—so none is in arrears. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in April, Trump claimed that Korea “actually used to be part of China.” Not true. After he arrived in Israel from Saudi Arabia, in May, Trump said that he had just come from the Middle East. (Did he even look at a map?) During his trip to France, in July, the President confused Napoleon Bonaparte, the diminutive emperor who invaded Russia and Egypt, with Napoleon III, who was France’s first popularly elected President, oversaw the design of modern Paris, and is still the longest-serving head of state since the French Revolution (albeit partly as an emperor, too). And that’s before delving into his demeaning tweets about other world leaders and flashpoints.

There’s a simple reason for it. Trump is a typical American. He’s spent relatively little time outside the U. S. and that time has been mostly closeted with other rich people. He doesn’t speak any language other than English fluently (no comment). He isn’t particularly well-read in English. Like it or not those are all typically American. Those were all (except the rich part) as true of Harry Truman as they are of Trump.

I suppose I could quibble about some of what she lists. If we’d devoted as much time, attention, and money to antagonizing the UK, France, and Germany as we have to aggravating Russia, are relationships with them would be much more hostile than they are. Of them only the UK are arguably our friends. France and Germany are at best frenemies. We don’t have many friends on the international stage. We have clients, we have frenemies, we have foes. Thinking in terms of friendship with other countries is simplistic. We have interests. They have interests. Sometimes the interests coincide; sometimes they conflict.

My point here is that some distinction should be made between knowledge and adhering to established Washington dogma.