The Economist: An insurgent in the WH - Americas allies are worried and rightly so
An insurgent in the White House
As Donald Trump rages against the world he inherited as president, America’s allies are worried—and rightly so
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WASHINGTON is in the grip of a revolution. The bleak cadence of last month’s inauguration was still in the air when Donald Trump lobbed the first Molotov cocktail of policies and executive orders against the capital’s brilliant-white porticos. He has not stopped. Quitting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, demanding a renegotiation of NAFTA and a wall with Mexico, overhauling immigration, warming to Brexit-bound Britain and Russia, cooling to the European Union, defending torture, attacking the press: onward he and his people charged, leaving the wreckage of received opinion smouldering in their wake.
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His grenade-chuckers-in-chief, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller, have now carried that logic into government... Every time demonstrators and the media rail against Mr Trump, it is proof that he must be doing something right. If the outpourings of the West Wing are chaotic, it only goes to show that Mr Trump is a man of action just as he promised. The secrecy and confusion of the immigration ban are a sign not of failure, but of how his people shun the self-serving experts who habitually subvert the popular will.
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Americans who reject Mr Trump will, naturally, fear most for what he could do to their own country. They are right to worry ..., but they gain some protection from their institutions and the law. In the world at large, however, checks on Mr Trump are few. The consequences could be grave.
Without active American support and participation, the machinery of global co-operation could well fail.
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Because habits of co-operation that were decades in the making cannot easily be put back together again, the harm would be lasting. In the spiral of distrust and recrimination, countries that are dissatisfied with the world will be tempted to change it—if necessary by force.
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A web of bilateralism and a jerry-rigged regionalism are palpably worse for America than the world Mr Trump inherited. It is not too late for him to conclude how much worse, to ditch his bomb-throwers and switch course. The world should hope for that outcome. But it must prepare for trouble.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21716026-donald-trump-rages-against-world-he-inherited-president-americas-allies-are-worriedand
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