Murari Sharma: New Cold War?

Four weeks ago, I wrote that the world has once again become a dangerous place, so dangerous that it could trigger major conflicts across the world. The situation has gone bad to worse over the last few weeks. In several places, red signs have been flashing furiously. Are we standing on the verge of a new global conflict or its regional manifestations?

By design or default, political leaders set off conflicts and wars. For instance, in World War I, there were both long term and short-term elements to cause it. The long term, there was tension building up between Germany and Austro-Hungarian empire on one hand and the Russia, Great Britain and France on the other. However, the element that sparked the global war was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist.

The great powers of the day took sides that transformed the relatively small incident into a global war.

As we know, World War II was a byproduct of World War I as much as the rise of Hitler, who wanted to restore the land lost at the end of the war, in the wake of the punitive Treaty of Versailles that humiliated Germany. Once again, great powers of the day took sides to expand the war.

The conquest by Communist forces in parts of Korea and Vietnam with help from the Soviet Union and China gave rise to the Korean and Vietnam wars, in which the American forces supported the establishment in those countries.

In Kashmir, the first Indo-Pakistan war started when a section of Muslim fighters, supported directly by the Pakistani army, occupied some parts of the Muslim majority territory ruled by a Hindu king. When Pakistan infiltrated parts of Kashmir in 1965, the second Indo-Pak war started.

Through all these wars, one element is common: The leaders of the countries in question had been seeking to break the status quo and the leaders with the right temperament for war arrived on time to trigger the wars.

Once again, we have been witnessing this quest now. We all know, the United States had been seeking to disrupt the status quo for a long time and other countries, China and European states had been trying to maintain it. The previous American leaders tried to do it gently and through a combination of pressure and persuasion. However, the current president, Donald Trump, has taken a different approach: He has introduced the element of belligerence for a quick fix.

In his watch, Trump has withdrawn from several international agreements and understandings, including the Climate change agreement, Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, and some nuclear treaties. Other countries, like China and European states, have been trying to maintain it.

War bugles have been screaming in Kashmir as well. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has removed the special status of Kashmir from the Indian constitution, and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has threatened a nuclear war. The Japanese Prime Minister Shintaro Abe and the South Korean President Moon Jae-in at loggerheads over the issue of compensation in the wake of World War. 

Add to this deadly mix the desire of Trump to win the 2020 election by whatever means may lead him to attack one of the vilified states, like Iran now, so his popularity would go through the roof and his reelection would be assured. His major tax cut did not sustain a high growth rate. His tariffs on imports from several countries, including, China, India and the European Union, have been hurting the American consumers. The House of Representatives has started the process of impeaching him.

To overcome all these obstacles, he might start a war, and he will find a ready supporter in the embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson has said he would not obey the law and pull out of the EU on October 31, 2019. Thus, he has either been bluffing or been desperate, for he has lost every vote in the parliament since he became prime minister. Besides, he has been burning bridges with the opposition and the European Union for the short-term interest of wining the general election if it at all takes place.

In all fairness, Trump has so far been more smoke than fire so far, but the fear of losing the reelection, if it comes to that, may prompt him to do anything for anything, and the desperate Johnson will most likely be right by him, and this does not bode well.

Elsewhere, the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan may lose his cool and trigger was with India over Kashmir. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is still raw, and the Russian President Vladimir Putin may trigger a new round of conflict to shore up his own position.

As we see, all the ingredients for wars and conflicts are already there and the people with the right temperament for conflicts are also in there. As soon as these leaders see a personal benefit in triggering conflicts, they could very well do so, though you can’t say it for sure.

Where do the other countries fit in in this larger context? At the receiving end. If a new war starts in the Middle East with direct American involvement, it would have global ramification in terms of disrupted energy flows and economic uncertainty. If another Indo-Pak war breaks out, all South Asian countries, including Nepal, will be hit hard politically and economically.

There are only two solutions. First, the leaders in question maintain their cool enough not to throw their countries off the cliff with a war. Second, the people of those countries prevent their leaders from going overboard though elections of public pressure. In other words, conflicts are possible and probable but not necessarily inevitable just yet. It is a cold war of sorts, which can easily descend into a hot war.

 

 

Murari Sharma: A Brexit Prime Minister II

A few weeks back, I had written that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson could very well be another Brexit prime minister. Now it appears that he is headed in that direction slowly and surely. Unless he removes his red lines or the EU compromises on its, Johnson could well be the third prime ministerial victim of Brexit from the Tories.

Before him, David Cameron left the post because he called the EU referendum and campaigned for Remain, but the Leave side won the vote, making his position untenable. His successor, Teresa May, lost her post after failing three times to get parliamentary approval to the withdrawal agreement she had signed with the EU to deliver an orderly British exit.

From US President Donald Trump’s playbook, Johnson appears to have taken a page. Trump has been breaking the decorum, conventions, and laws left and right, tolerated by the toothless Republicans and acquiesced by a Supreme Court whose Republicans-nominated justices have been accused in the media of a partisan approach. He had advised May to take the EU to court rather than negotiate a deal. Since she didn’t listen to him, he has been quite scathing in his remarks towards her.

In public, Trump has favored Johnson over May and other British leaders, except for Nigel Farage. The bluff Johnson made to the EU during the leadership selection and after becoming prime minister amply suggests that Johnson has taken Trump’s bait to hang tough to bend the EU and to expect a quick trade deal with the UK upon its exit.

Both measures are non sequitur. While he may like to believe it, Johnson does not wield the same economic and military influence as Trump does to cow other leaders, including from the EU, into submission. For whatever reason, Britain is a medium-sized player in the EU and the world.

Besides, Trump cannot offer a trade deal to the UK unless the Democrats controlled House of Representatives approves it. The reason is simple. If Britain jeopardizes the Good Friday Agreement that ended the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland at the behest of US President Bill Clinton, the Democrats in the US have said they would block the new trade deal even if it is concluded, which is highly suspect, given Trump’s volatility. For starters, the US house has a strong Irish representation.

In view of all this, odds are stacked against Johnson. Though he has exuded optimism about the deal at the last minute, he has done everything to make sure there is no deal. For instance, he took weeks to meet his counterparts from the EU to get the ball rolling. He took weeks to meet German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. Only next week, he is meeting the EU president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. He hasn’t met other leaders and seems to have no plan for it right now.

In addition, while there was no green flag from France, Johnson has not, according to the EU leaders, submitted the alternative to the backstop negotiated by May and rejected by the parliament, though the 30-day time frame, a sort of, given by Merkel for a concrete and viable proposal to replace the backstop has almost run out. As EU leaders have complained, Johnson’s chief negotiator, David Frost, seems to beat around the bush in Brussels.

As such, the march towards crashing out seems irreversible at the level of rhetoric. Johnson has repeated umpteen times that the UK would come out of the EU on 31 October 2019, no matter what. As we know, the parliament has passed a law under which he must seek an extension if he can’t get a deal he wants from the EU.

Nonetheless, his acolytes have hinted that the prime minister could even defy the law or test it at the court. the parliament has rejected his proposal to call general elections twice.

But as some legal experts have suggested, breaking the law will bring its own consequences, including imprisonment. Therefore, Johnson will have to either resign or to ask his supporters to vote against him in a no-confidence motion possibly to force the Labor to support a general election. In the fixed-term parliament, a two-thirds majority is required to hold a mid-term election.

I say possibly considering, after the no-confidence vote, the opposition leader gets two weeks to form his government before the election is imposed. If Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, forms his government, then he would set the date for the election, not Johnson.

So for Johnson, all options—to request an extension of the Brexit date until the end of January 2020, as the parliament has asked him to, to resign or to break the law —  come with their exacting costs.

For instance, the request for extension will enrage the European Research Group, the hard-line Euro-skeptics, who would ask for Johnson’s head, as they had May’s. Resigning will get him out of 10 Downing Street and breaking the law will eventually catch up with him.

However, a deal is not out of reach, not yet. If the Democratic Unionist Party agrees to the North Ireland only backstop, originally suggested by the EU but rejected by the UK, it is possible. But will the DUP agree? As DUP leaders have said, they wouldn’t. Already heading a minority government, after he removed the whip from 21 members of parliament from his party, Johnson has nothing to lose.

So if he bullies/disregards the DUP, whose support was essential to prop up May’s government but not enough to keep Johnson in his chair, the deal is still possible. Will Johnson take the bait? Only time will tell.

Murari Sharma: A Troubled World

We have been passing through one of the most troubled times in the world. Among the major problems, North Korea has been testing one missile after another. Hong Kong has been boiling with demands for non-interference from China and for democracy. Japan and South Korea have been going through the most serious tiff after World War II. India and Pakistan, both nuclear states, are on the brink of yet another war over Kashmir.

Besides, Syria and Yemen have been burning, and the relations between Iran and the West have significantly worsened after the United States pulled out of the nuclear deal.  Italy has been on the cliff economically and politically. Brexit, the British departure from the European Union, has created political rift in Europe and economic uncertainty across the world.

What is more, the Amazon forests have been burning, depleting the source of 20 percent of the global oxygen production. The United States has undermined everything–trade agreements, arms agreements, environmental agreements, and organizations that underpin these agreements– that had kept the post-World War II world on an even keel. 

Where all this is leading the world? I am afraid, such political and economic breakdowns have preceded major catastrophes and wars in the past. The breakdown in the European political order, triggered by the murder of a Prussian prince, opened the door for World War I. Challenge to British global domination and the rise of Adolf Hitler in the wake of a punitive reparation mechanism of the World War I gave way to World War II. The division of Korea into communist and non-communist parts unleashed the Korean War. The infiltration of Pakistan supported by Muslims into Kashmir gave rise to three India-Pakistan Wars. Has the world headed towards a major war?

A caveat. Countries do not go to war, their leaders take them to war. When things go wrong, they go wrong in many countries together, one thing leading to another. More importantly, a whole crop of bad leaders emerge, taking a cue from the other. Call me a fatalist if you will, but one rogue leader encourages others to follow suit. There is a contagion effect, like in diseases.

Without proposing what they want to replace it with and how it looks like, political leaders of our time have been undermining the existing world order. Starting with the big and powerful, US President Donald Trump has been fully engaged in undermining the post-World War II economic and security structures that had kept peace.

For instance, he has pulled out from the Paris Agreement, unclear agreement with Russia, and almost demolished the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has triggered trade war with China and a number of friends and allies. At the same time, he has befriended fascists and dictators, undermined democratic friends and allies, and blessed and nurtured far-right movements across the world. 

Xi Jinping, China’s president, has been itching to suppress the people’s movement in Hong Kong and minorities in western China. Other issues in dispute apart, his retaliation against the United States tariff is not unwarranted, but this has incited a president who doubles down to hide his mistake has aggravated the trade war that is affecting the entire world.

In the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, Trump’s friend and acolyte, has been out to wreck the European Union and the European order that had turned former enemies into friends and handed the longest peace and prosperity in Europe. In giving a lift to his nationalist credentials, he is likely to wreck the British economy.

Brazil, President Jair Borsonaro, has been imitating Trump as an anti-environmentalist and nationalist, and this might have prompted ranchers to burn the Amazon forest, which has been going on. Under growing international pressure, he has declared to send the military to fight the fire that has burned thousands of hectares.

If arrogance, hubris and far-right and far-left fanaticism hadn’t blinded political leaders, the world would not have suffered wars and conflicts.  The same phenomenon will play out in the future as well. At the moment, the world is standing on the brink of a major catastrophe. Sooner the world leaders understand it and step back from the edge, the better the world would be for everyone around the globe.

 

 

 

Murari Sharma: US-UK Diplomatic Row and its Broader Implications

Your son insults your neighbor; your neighbor berates your son; you abandon your son; your son breaks with you. This what happened between the United States and United Kingdom. And it will have broad implications for diplomacy across the world.

The UK ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, has resigned after his candid reports on US President Donald Trump and his administration were leaked to the media and his position became untenable. As it is, it has raised serious questions about the duty and responsibility of diplomats around the world.

A respected and senior career diplomat, Mr. Darroch’s posting would have ended at the end of this year. In his highly classified emails, he had described the Trump administration as ‘inept’, ‘incompetent’, and ‘insecure’. To report on the host country objectively, as they see it is the obligation of diplomats.

It is important to note that Prime Minister Teresa May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt backed their representative unequivocally. So did other ministers and members of parliament from all parties. However, those who are hell-bent to pull Britain out of the European Union seem to think that the diplomat is a Europhile. Make no mistake, anyone who sides with prudence is treated as their enemies by hard-line Brexiters.

As it is obvious, three people have made his position in Washington untenable. First. US President Donald Trump mounted a tirade of personal attacks against the British ambassador, calling him ‘very stupid’ and ‘a pompous fool’, and froze out from key events like the White House dinner in honor of the Qatari Sheik and the a meeting with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Subtlety is not one of Trump’s strong suits.

Trump proved himself as the British ambassador had described: Insecure, vengeful, and prone to flattery and his administration inept and dysfunctional.

Second, Boris Johnson, according to Europe Minister Alan Duncan, threw the diplomat under the bus. In a face to face interview with them, Hunt threw his unequivocal support behind the embattled representative in Washington while Johnson failed to do so, making his position, as the diplomat implied in his resignation, untenable.

Johnson is ahead by far in the Tory leadership contest, which could lead him to 10 Downing Street. He, as often characterized, proved that he is more interested in himself rather than his party and the country.

Third, the person or persons who collected and leaked to the media over two years the ambassador’s unvarnished confidential reports on Trump and his quirky administration, as Bob Woodward and others have described in their books and interviews.

The leaker, who should be a die-hard pro-Brexit aficionado, did a disservice to the country to promote the parochial interest of getting the UK out of the European Union at any cost. Though it should be a subject of investigation to find out who did it, the damage has been done to the British establishment.

Consequently, the question has arisen whether diplomats should provide their honest opinion on the host country’s leader and government in the service of the country they are hired to serve or keep an eye to prolong their position, if necessary, sucking up to the host country.

Of course, the host country has the right to declare any diplomat persona non-grata to remove him or her from the country if there is a good reason for it under the Vienna Convention. By informally speaking to the leader of the sending country, it can also quietly obtain the same result. 

Like several other things he has been doing as president, Trump has chosen the unconventional path to edge out the British diplomat. He has used his unadorned private twitter post. In the past, he has fired all his secretaries and advisers whom he wanted out through his twitter posts.

Even though the State Department spokesperson said the department had no instruction from the White House to that effect, the department understands that the most important instructions from the president come through his private twitter posts, and they need to defend them either by commission or omission.

Besides, it is difficult to ascertain what is true and what is false in what Trump or his administration says because they have been deploying shifting narratives as a story develops.

Nevertheless, this precedent will have far-reaching consequences for diplomats around the world. It will haunt the diplomats of rich and powerful countries more than smaller and less powerful countries.

The reason is simple. The diplomats of powerful and rich countries do not tire in interfering in the internal affairs of their host country.  Rather than going through the conventional routes, the host country now can deploy the same tactics as Trump to eject the pesky diplomat.

More importantly, this precedent will instruct ambassadors and other diplomats to be less candid and honest in serving their country more careful in protecting their job. To most diplomats of small/powerless countries like Nepal who are there to provide protocol service to their political masters and of those countries where diplomats service only at the pleasure of their leader, it probably does not matter.

However, it matters abundantly for diplomats from all countries who put service to their country above service to their political masters and their own longevity in their posts.

In terms of Nepal, though most of our ambassadors and diplomats have left much wanting, there have always been several competent and dedicated people in the diplomatic core.  The British diplomat’s case encourage the bad apple and discourage the good ones. 

To be sure, Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation when his position became unsustainable is a small blip in a long tradition of diplomacy. But it will certainly have far-reaching implications for diplomatic practices around the world. We all learn from others, don’t we?

 

Murari Sharma: Teresa May Deserves Some Appreciation

British politics is in grave turmoil. Prime Ministers Teresa May’s foes and opponents have opposed tooth and nail the draft agreement she has negotiated to pull Britain out of the European Union. While her foes — Brexit hawks — made the mess and wimped out, May is left to clean the rubbish behind them while the opposition — Labor, Scottish Nationalist Party, and others — understandably is at its own game.   

If a political party wants to self-destruct, ask David Cameroon, May’s predecessor, how to do it. To placate the Eurosceptic in Conservative Party, Cameroon called the referendum on British membership of the European Union in 2016, and the British voters voted to leave the EU.

Cameroon’s side lost and he stepped aside, paving the path for May to occupy 10 Downing Street. May has spent most of her time balancing the Eurosceptic and Europhiles within Conservative Party. The current political turmoil is the climax of the conflict between the feuding factions that may split and destroy the party. 

Let me focus here on May’s foes. They peddled the fantasy that Britain outside the EU will have milk and honey without paying any price. But the EU stood for its continued integrity. As soon as the Brexit hawks understood that their fantasy was just that, they abandoned May’s ship.  

First to leave was David Davis, a Brexit hawk and the first Brexit secretary of state. In his negotiations with the EU, Davis realized that the lies and fantasy Brexiters had campaigned on were just that. So he resigned citing the Chequers understanding based on what the EU could agree.

Next was Boris Johnson, the hawks’ leader and the first foreign secretary in the May government. He had said Britain could have a cake and eat it. He chickened out, citing the same understanding, rather than trying to negotiate a better deal from the EU. As mayor of London, he had done a decent job but as foreign secretary, he proved only a wrecker-in-chief. 

Davis’s successor, Dominic Raab, also quit when the going got tough as I see it. In the very first rounds of negotiation, Rabb’s abrasive approach and uncompromising position hit the wall with EU and May took charge of the negotiations to move the process forward, which was a slap on Raab’s face.  

Crafted in these circumstances, May’s agreement is not ideal but it is what was possible given the UK’s weak position in the negotiation. To run for the door, Raab has used it. Other Brexiters have done the same, isolating and attacking May. 

As I have said before, May has made her share of the mistakes on two counts. First, she took charge of negotiations from Raab when he failed to make any headway. She should have made him fully responsible, pinned the failure on him, and then only taken charge of it. Second, she never told the public that Davis, Johnson, and Raab resigned because they could not deliver. She should have said it.

As every student of dance and diplomacy understands, it takes two tango.  Crucially, you get in the negotiation is not what you want but what the other side is willing to give you.  In the EU-Britain negotiation, three things have worked against Britain.  

First was the relative power. The EU economy is seven times larger than the British economy is. Collectively, 27 EU members are a greater military power than the United Kingdom. Besides, the UK was leaving the union, not the EU. Owing to these reasons, the UK’s negotiating position was weaker than that of the EU. 

Second, the EU was not ready to wreck the union. In the run-up to the referendum in 2016, Brexit hawks had promised to pull Britain out of the EU, the European Court of Justice, and the Customs Union and curtail the freedom of movement of people while enjoying the freedoms related to goods, service, and capital at no cost.  But the EU was not prepared to compromise on its four pillars — Freedoms of movement of people, goods, services, and capital.

Third, Brexit hawks forgot the Good Friday Agreement under which the British government had promised to keep the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland open without any barrier to keep the peace. Because the EU was one of the guarantors of the agreement, it insisted on respecting that provision, which necessitated the backstop arrangements if there was no free trade agreement between the EU and Britain.

And the backstop has become a heartburn for the Brexit hawks. Rather than making a reasonable compromise with the EU on that matter, the hawks in their zeal for untrammeled sovereignty and power for them seem eager to jeopardize the integrity of the United Kingdom itself.

Therefore, there was no way Britain could have cherry-picked what it liked and discard the rest in the negotiation.  

While the Europhiles in Conservative Party, like Justice Greening, have provided lukewarm support to May’s agreement, Eurosceptics have become raving made. Nearly two-dozens of them have sent letters to the 1922 committee challenging May’s leadership. In view of this, what surprises me is why May’s supporters and the so-called independent, objective media have not highlighted this aspect frequently and sufficiently.  

It does not mean May’s agreement is good; it is not, but it is the best she could get from the EU. If Brexit hawks were de facto in charge of the negotiation, the deal could have been much worse than this, I venture to presume, given their acrimonious relationships with their EU counterparts and their unbending attitude. In effect, Britain would have been forced to crash out of the EU at an intolerable economic cost.

More fundamentally, no negotiated deal, a product of compromises, is perfect. Therefore, May deserves appreciation for this imperfect deal. Only tactical were her mistakes.  She did not hold the hawks’ feet to the fire. So there they are backstabbing her to snatch her pedestal away.  

The agreement is likely to fail in parliament. If it does, May’s foes would be mainly to blame.  Changing the leadership will not change the dynamics with the EU.

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Murari Sharma: Transformation of May-Maybot-May?

British Prime Minister Teresa May presented herself as upbeat in her party’s annual conference, in September, in Birmingham. Her dance before her speech demonstrated it. However, recent developments suggest that the beleaguered premier had/s no political, economic or diplomatic reason to be euphoric.

Of course, May is a competent politician with a harsh edge. She rose through the Tory ranks to become home secretary and then prime minister beating her formidable competitors. She has proven her harshness with her ‘hostile environment’ policy, continued austerity under linguistic velvet, and Windrush legacy, which cost Amber Rudd her job as home secretary. 

However, after the snap general elections in 2017, she has not had much to celebrate. Politically, her party lost its majority in the parliament, making her reliant on the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland to retain her post. She is caught in the tug of war between her pro-leave and pro-remain party members at this critical juncture of sensitive Brexit negotiations. 

Boris Johnson, her pro-leave former foreign secretary, has been stabbing her front and center in pursuit of his prime ministerial ambition. Several members of parliament from her party have already written letters to the 1922 Committee, expressing their lack of confidence in her leadership.

Diplomatically, because of the above reasons, May’s credibility as a reliable negotiating partner in Brussels is next to nil. The European Union has rejected her Chequers Plan, cherry-picked from a number of EU agreements with different countries. It has asserted that either UK must ensure free border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, as agreed in the Good Friday Agreement or let NI stay in EU. 

Economically, the British economy has slowed down because of Brexit uncertainty and potential loss of free access to EU single market. Consequently, growth rate has been revised downward. The Bank of England, the central bank, and businesses have warned that UK economy will tailspin if Britain crashes out of EU without an agreement. IMF has warned the no-deal Brexit might push UK into recession. 

Above all, the issue of Northern Ireland is an existential question for the United Kingdom. If London breaches the provision that there would be no physical border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, IRA violence may resume. It it abides by the agreement but crashes out of EU, it will have to effectively cede NI to EU/Ireland.

Faced with this set of dangers, what was it that May meant to show with her upbeatness and her dance in the Tory annual national conference?

A few things come readily to mind. One, it was all optics to show that she was not intimidated by Johnson’s onslaught. Two, she might have sized up that Johnson does not have a majority to topple her from her perch. Three, she might have just wanted to shed the image of Margot, a robotic person.

Four, it could be a swan song. Why go out crying if you have to go out anyway? Show confidence and hope for the best. If the situation goes against you, so be it. Five,  she might have been confident that her soon-to-be-made announcement about the end of the austerity could buy her some breathing space from challenges from all sides.

Only time will tell, and the time to tell is around the corner. In other words, May is on borrowed time. Those actively opposing her within her party apart, some of her own current ministers wanted to know from her Tory Conference speech to give an indication as to when she was planning to step aside. She gave no such indication.

But the reality is going to come to bite her sooner than later, and the bite will come from the Brexit quagmire unless EU generously accommodates her at the cost of undermining the single market’s integrity.

 

Murari Sharma: Damage that will Take a Long Time to Repair

The American President Donald Trump returned to his country after wrecking havoc to US relations with its closest allies and cozying up with its strategic rival, Russia, who is also viewed by US allies as a threat to their democracy and security. He has created a fine mess, and it may take many years to rectify. You can wreck things up quickly but you require a long time and right policies to repair the damage. 

His first trip was to Brussels, to the NATO summit, where Mr. Trump rubbed other NATO members the wrong way by bullying. While he was right to insist that other NATO members reach the target of 2 percent of their GDP to be spent on defense, Mr. Trump didn’t stop there. He asked them at that last minute to up the spending to four percent, something that had not been discussed, and threatened to pull out of the organization if the allies did not heed his demand. 

From Brussels, Mr. Trump flew to London where he insulted his host and stayed away from London. He undermined the sitting Prime Minister Theresa May, his host, and sang paeans of Boris Johnson who had just resigned his post and who was doing everything to undermine the prime minister. He said Mrs. May was wrecking the negotiations with the European Union and Mr. Johnson would make a fine prime minister.

That was not all. Mr. Trump broke the protocol by walking ahead of Queen Elizabeth. He mostly avoided London where huge protests took place throughout his UK trip against his intemperate remarks and false claims made by him multiple times in the past. 

Mr. Trump had insulted the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, blaming him for the terrorism and spate of knife crimes in London. He had even said mentioned the non-existent bloodbath on different occasions, though so far whatever has happened here in comparison to what happens every now and then in gun crimes in the United States. 

From London, he flew to his golf course in Scotland, where protests became a constant feature. But the worst happened in Helsinki when he met with Mr. Putin.  From there, Mr. Trump walked into his most embarrassing performance in Finland where he met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. 

Mr. Trump’s officials, as well as the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, had warned Mr. Trump to act tough with Mr. Putin with respect to Russian tampering of US elections and role in Syria and other hot spots. But Mr. Trump not only didn’t raise the irritating issues, at least as much as is publicly known, he also put down his own intelligence agencies and sided with Mr. Putin on the election tampering. As he returned to Washington to a barrage of criticism from all sides, Mr. Trump rowed back by saying that it was a slip of tongue. 

That was not all. He branded the European Union, something the previous US administrations had helped build to keep the peace in the perennially warring European states, as the biggest enemy of the United States. Besides, he criticized Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, while he lavished his praise on Mr. Putin on multiple occasions.

It all came on top of the trade war that has started between the USA on one side and the European Union, China, and other countries, on the other. Mr. Trump has also threatened to pull the US out of the World Trade Organization, the successor of GATT, which the US had helped create for rule-based international trade.

Where will this destruction of the existing world order without anything to replace it lead? Chaos.  It will harm not only the United States and its allies, it will also weaken the World Trade Organization, and other mechanisms that have kept the world’s strategic and trading balance largely stable. It will adversely affect the rest of the world and seriously.

Will it make America Great Again, as Mr. Trump has vowed to do? Highly unlikely. 

When will the sun shine on Mr. Trump? He has already silenced his officials by ruthlessly firing those who disagreed with him. Congress, both houses controlled by the Republicans, could bring stop Mr. Trump from all this nonsense by standing up to him. But as the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has said, the Republicans in Congress have proved spineless to prevent Mr. Trump from his madness and shamelessness.      

So the ‘Trump madness’ will go on during Mr. Trump’s term unless Congress changes hands in November this year. It may continue if the American people give Mr. Trump another term. Because of Mr. Trump’s unprincipled and erratic actions, Mr. Putin and other leaders who flout democratic norms are having a great time.

But the United States and the rest of the world will pay dearly for Mr. Trump’s actions. We don’t know what other dangerous ideas Mr. Trump has up his sleeves and how much more damage they will do. But what Mr. Trump destroys as the occupant of the White House will take decades to mend. Building something is always takes more time and resources than destroying it.