Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Alienating allies

Last week Donald Trump behaved in an unprecedentedly (for a world leader) petulant manner towards the other members of the G7. He, and his minions, insulted Prime Minister Trudeau; he left early; and he refused to sign the joint communiqué.

Does this matter? After all, his counterparts must by now have gotten over the shock of his boorish behaviour and his lack of fidelity to the facts. They are grown-up enough to get past any personal feelings of (justifiable) animosity, although I doubt that any of them experted to have to exercise the same kind of restraint they need when dealing with the leaders of pariah states like Russia or North Korea when dealing with the President of the United Sates. When it comes to any call for joint action, it seems unlikely that they (Trump excepted) would let their personal feelings interfere with their rational decision making.  

But the answer to "does it matter" is a resounding: yes it does. A country's leader is not only the chief executives of its government; they are also figure-heads, with symbolic meaning for their citizens. When you insult a foreign leader, you insult that country's people. That makes cooperation with the US more politically difficult. Theresa May may have a harder time asking Parliament to go out on a limb to help the US (as for example, Tony Blair had to at the onset of the Iraq war) when MPs are facing an electorate that takes a dimmer view of the US than it did when Barack Obama was president.  That reduces America's influence on the world stage, and further paves the way for the rise of China. 

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