https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/it-will-be-a-political-miracle-if-there-isn-t-a-major-uptick-of-violence-in-gaza-1.717429

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-pick-of-hawkish-bolton-raises-old-ghosts-of-2003-iraq-invasion-1.715442

And then there was one. “Grown-up” left in the Trump White House, that is. National security advisor HR McMaster was living on borrowed time for months. He never clicked with Donald Trump and openly disagreed with the sudden opening to North Korea and ongoing appeasement of Russia. Now he’s gone, to be replaced at the National Security Council by the ultimate Washington hardliner, John Bolton.

From the outset of the Trump administration hopes were pinned on a group of experienced and sensible professionals, usually nicknamed “the grown-ups,” to restrain Mr Trump’s most reckless and disruptive impulses and impose some order and continuity, especially on foreign policy. The group was generally held to include Gen McMaster, outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and former economic advisor Gary Cohn, all recently removed in what looks like a purge of level-headed and independent-minded officials.

Some originally included John Kelly, now Mr Trump’s Chief of Staff, in the group, but everyone paying attention to how he led the Department of Homeland Security crossed him off the list in short order. Indeed, he increasingly looks like Mr Trump’s South Boston alter ego. Sad.

All this means we can no longer speak of “grown-ups,” but only “the grown-up,” singular.

Defence secretary Jim Mattis was always the most important and impressive of them, and if he’s the next to go, profound anxiety would be warranted. For now, he seems secure, in large measure because he has defended his strong grip on the Department of Defence by avoiding any public disagreements with the president, keeping a very low public profile, and interpreting his authority exceptionally narrowly while defending it extremely tenaciously. His tenure has been an object lesson in how to be a successful and dignified senior official under Mr Trump.

This purge is accompanied by the rise of ideologues who are much more hawkish and politically aligned with, and personally beholden to, Mr Trump. It does seem to signal that the president is growing more comfortable in his first political position, dispensing with people he didn’t like, agree with or trust much but were appointed to communicate something or reassure some constituency.

The myth of the “grown-ups” was, in fact, deliberately authored by Mr Trump himself through these appointments. And now he seems to feel no further need of it.

The replacement of Mr Tillerson with former CIA chief Mike Pompeo will be applauded in much of the Gulf, which felt he was unduly sympathetic to Qatar and insufficiently tough on Iran. The same logic might even welcome having Mr Bolton, rather than Gen McMaster, at NSC.

And, perhaps, these appointments are designed to make the administration look “tough” as a negotiating tactic and intimidate North Korea and China, or Iran and the European signatories to the nuclear agreement, in pursuit of the “art of the deal”. But it looks increasingly likely that, in a few weeks, Mr Trump will simply withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.

If there is a realistic plan for what comes after that, it’s been concealed with an effectiveness rarely seen in Washington in general, and this administration in particular.

On Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir at the Brookings Institution encouraged Washington and the three European signatories to find a way to keep the agreement alive while dealing with Iran’s continued misbehaviour. His implicit point is that simply walking away from the deal would play directly into the hands of Iranian hardliners.

But Mr Trump has given no indication he understands that, and neither have Mr Pompeo or Mr Bolton, the latter of which recently made the legal as well as practical case for an attack on North Korea.

Toughness is a virtue. Recklessness is dangerous. Wars are best avoided. Hard-nosed negotiating and even psychological warfare can work, but, as recent American history has shown, bellicosity and impulsiveness can lead to miscalculations and colossal blunders.

If there is a serious plan for dealing with Iran in the aftermath of a deconstructed nuclear agreement, there’s been no hint of it. And, as the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrates, even when there is a clear plan, it’s not always a good one.

In a way, it’s useful that Mr Trump increasingly has the team he wants and is comfortable with. Hopefully, if nothing else, it will yield more policy clarity and predictability. And if belligerent rhetoric and bellicose advisers are all part of complex posturing by Mr Trump in preparation for getting “better deals” with Pyongyang and Tehran, that would be welcome. But the world and the region can’t afford another fiasco like the Iraq invasion.

The danger is that with Mr Trump growing in confidence and purging most of the somewhat independent and sober-minded “grown-ups” from his team he will be empowered to follow his instincts in situations where careful strategy and rational calculations based on fully-understood complex realities are indispensable. These instincts led many of his companies into bankruptcy.

Even those applauding now may one day miss the grown-ups more than they would imagine.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/saudi-prince-mbs-hits-the-road-in-america

For MbS to re-invent his economy, he needs help not just from Washington but also Wall Street, Silicon Valley and even Hollywood.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman arrived in Washington Monday for his first visit to the U.S. as presumptive heir to the throne. The trip comes at a crucial time in U.S.-Saudi relations, and a potential turning point in American policy toward the Middle East in general. But it is also telling that the visit won’t be confined to Washington: MbS, as the prince is known, will also be visiting Boston, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston.

The time-span and breadth of travel is a strong indication of how much is at stake for the brash 32-year-old national leader, and how central Saudi Arabia’s political and economic relationship with the U.S. is to his national, and personal, strategy.

The list of policy imperatives is extensive, but MbS also knows that, first and foremost, he needs to polish his image in the U.S. He’s been widely criticized as not merely brash and ambitious, but as impulsive and reckless by many American commentators. His personal efforts to counter this narrative began with a wide-ranging interview, aired on the eve of his arrival, with CBS’s “60 Minutes.” When discussing his reforms on women’s rights, such as allowing driving, and promising new “regulations ensuring equal pay for men and women,” he bluntly admits that, despite his efforts, “Saudi women still have not received their full rights.”

Such outreach was important because the detention of some 100 prominent Saudi citizens at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton last year, ostensibly part of a corruption crackdown, was widely perceived as repressive and arbitrary. In addition, MbS, who also serves as defense minister, has been widely criticized for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is leading an intervention against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

In other words, the young prince has had some bad press, and he wants send a new message: that he is taking bold and decisive action because Saudi Arabia has no choice but to change quickly and radically — and that this requires determined, no-nonsense leadership. But he also wants to appear thoughtful, realistic and progressive.

MbS’ most important meeting, of course, will be with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. But he’s also due to spend time with many cabinet secretaries and other administration honchos. If he’s smart, he’ll pay due attention to Congress, and to Democrats who may again hold crucial leadership positions following the November midterms.

His Washington agenda will certainly include pushing forward a wide range of high-tech weapons purchases, most notably a $15 billion contract for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antimissile system. Given a series of missile attacks on Saudi cities launched from Yemen by the Houthis, many of which were said to have been intercepted by American-supplied defense systems, Saudi interest in this technology is stronger than ever.

Both Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration insist that those missiles were provided to the Houthis by Iran, and coordinating policies toward Tehran will be high on the agenda. Beyond expanded American support for, and fending off criticism of, the war in Yemen, the Saudi and American teams will be hoping to forge common strategies on other regional hotspots where Iran is active, including Iraq and Syria. Washington and Riyadh have recently intensified pressure against Iran’s client in Lebanon, Hezbollah, through sanctions and other means.

But while they may share the broad goal of containing, and even rolling back, the expansion of Iran’s influence in the Arab world, it’s unclear how closely Riyadh and Washington are working together to achieve this. Indeed, one of MbS’s most important goals must be to ascertain what, exactly, the Trump administration hopes to achieve in regional battlegrounds like Syria and how, precisely, Washington intends to accomplish it.

Trump and his aides will almost certainly press MbS for a quick resolution of the Saudi-led boycott of Qatar, which Washington has come to regard as an unnecessary headache. Trump has made it clear he won’t go to a summit with Gulf Arab leaders until they resolve their differences. But MbS may be happy to stick to this week’s bilateral meetings for now, unless the American side can guarantee significant Qatari concessions to Saudi demands over ending support for Arab extremists and opposition groups, and curbing ties to Iran.

A trickier question involves Saudi Arabia’s nascent nuclear energy program. The country wants to build 16 reactors in the next couple of decades so its oil reserves can be largely devoted to export. Washington is asking Riyadh to agree to a “123” formula, whereby nonnuclear powers agreed to forgo uranium enrichment, plutonium reprocessing, and selling U.S. technology to others. But since Saudi Arabia will be largely mining its own uranium and has other potential suppliers — and given that Iran still has the right to enrich even under the nuclear agreement — Riyadh simply won’t accept such terms. Reaching a compromise could help U.S. companies, including Westinghouse’s bankruptcy issue, and bring the project under greater American supervision and away from any stealthy weapons component. It’s a conundrum tailor-made for the art of the deal, if such a thing actually exists.

The prince’s social and economic reform program, much of which is included in his “Vision 2030” agenda, seeks to modernize Saudi Arabia in a generation. Shifting from an oil-based economy to a diverse one is one of his most ambitious projects, and it involves vastly increasing his country’s infrastructure, technological and, especially, human capacity, (including Saudi women). The partnership with U.S. is central to all three pillars, which is why MbS is going to spend so much time in so many cities around the country in the coming days.

In Seattle, MbS will be hosted by Bill Gates in a meeting that, along with San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Boston, will focus on technology. In Houston, he will confer with energy industry honchos, and in New York City with financial industry and investment bigwigs. Perhaps his most intriguing stop is Los Angeles, the home of the entertainment industry. MbS is determined to introduce an element of public fun, heretofore banished to private spaces and in many cases forbidden outright in Saudi society. He just lifted a 35-year ban on cinemas, and unheard of mixed-gender public entertainments like concerts are cropping up around the country. He’s the first Saudi ruler with a lot to discuss with Hollywood.

The asks will flow in both directions. MbS is sure to be pressed on listing a proposed multibillion-dollar initial public offering for the state-own Saudi Aramco oil company on the New York Stock Exchange, rather than in London or another alternative. And Saudi Arabia has been urged by Washington to foot the bill for U.S. policies in Iraqand Syria that, among other things, counter Iran’s influence.

Few foreign leaders are this expansive in their U.S. outreach, because MbS has a focus not only on the diplomatic and military ties but also on investments, technology and even culture. It’s potentially the beginning of a much closer era in U.S.-Saudi relations, but MbS has to persuade his hosts that his plan to rapidly transform his society can succeed.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/gun-control-debate-shows-how-motivated-minorities-dominate-us-politics-and-policy-1.713752

After the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, teenagers throughout the United States are trying to seize the initiative on a major public policy matter. Anyone who wants to understand American politics should take a good look into this revealing window into the system’s internal mechanisms.

American governmental decision-making is, simultaneously, exceptionally straightforward and unbelievably complex. The secret of the American system is that there’s no secret. It’s pretty much all on TV. There’s no cabal or tiny ruling faction calling the shots, either overtly or behind-the-scenes.

Even the Trump administration, which is the executive branch of the federal government, doesn’t work like that – despite the enormous executive authority vested in the president ex officio and the fact that Mr Trump runs his White House like a kind of medieval court. But even there, decision-making is usually complex and practical authority is mostly diffused.

When the aperture is widened to include Congress, the courts and all state and local governments, the lines become even more blurred. And, in reality, the decision-making process includes innumerable additional inputs from corporate and other moneyed interests, think tanks and policy groups, ideological factions, civil society in all its forms, academia and dozens of other points of pressure on any set of issues.

Which brings us back to the uprising among millions of teenagers over gun safety. Simply put, American children are sick of being murdered in their schools and are literally demanding that the adults who run the country begin to restrict, even just a little bit, the virtually limitless access to military-style weapons that allows lunatics to routinely massacre scores of people in mere minutes.

They’ve certainly seized control of the debate, captured the public imagination and inspired the country through eloquent advocacy and stirring activism, including a mass walkout from the schools last week, which was the closest thing Americans have seen to a student strike in anyone’s memory.

Moreover, there is solid public support throughout the country for enhanced gun-control and overwhelming majorities back limited measures as universal background checks for buying assault weapons and limiting the access to the most potent instruments of death by convicted criminals, the mentally ill or those too young to drink alcohol (to mention just a few categories).

You’d be forgiven for expecting, therefore, that significantly strengthened gun-control measures are very likely, if not inevitable.

But you’d be wrong.

Just because the American system is open and there is no ruling clique doesn’t mean that strong majorities, even when led by an inspiring movement – in this case as compelling as children who don’t wish to be gunned down in their classrooms, no less – will get their way.

On the contrary, it is the very openness of the American system, particularly the First Amendment-guaranteed “right to petition the government for redress of grievances”, that results in hyper-motivated minorities, even relatively tiny ones, becoming hyper-empowered and, indeed, decisive on the very narrow issues to which they are devoted.

The National Rifle Association and the rest of the pro-gun lobby has consistently won the day and is likely to prevail again. They may make some trivial concessions about attachments that turn semiautomatic weapons into automatic ones and other minor tinkering. But they will circle the wagons, hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Then, when most Americans, who will still be in favour of increased gun control, have moved on to other topics, they will remain focused on demonising and opposing even the most limited and sensible measures.

Not all sentiments are equally potent. Commitment and consistency are the keys for a determined minority to defeat a generalised majority. Most people favour sensible gun control measures, but they’re not going to give much of their money to achieve that or grant or withhold their votes to candidates on that issue alone. Obsessive, dedicated, single-issue donors and voters will. That’s how they consistently win over politicians.

Therefore, in the American system, the political influence of one gun fanatic can be greater than that of 10,000 sensible people. Only when the general public, or another hyper-empowered minority group (especially a wealthy one), becomes as determined to secure gun control as the gun lobby is to oppose it will any such legislation become practically possible.

There are analogous phenomena in foreign policy, of course. For decades, the Cuban-American lobby ensured Washington maintained an embargo on Cuba the general public knew was ridiculous. They were a tiny subset of the population, but they were, crucially, the only ones who really cared, so they got their way.

Jewish-American groups were so successful at supporting Israel, even before they were joined by the evangelical Christians, and so unopposed by effective rivals, that Israel became effectively a domestic, rather than a foreign policy, issue.

Will the Parkland shooting and student uprising result in meaningful gun control measures? Possible, but unlikely.

So, this gun control debate is a fascinating case study in American decision-making. There is no ruling faction simply deciding things. And majority public opinion is rarely decisive The pivotal factor in the American system, at least usually, is highly motivated minorities.

http://www.agsiw.org/mbs-trip-will-test-strength-resurgent-u-s-saudi-ties/

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-12/how-trump-could-restart-israel-palestinian-peace-talks

President Donald Trump’s plan for face-to-face nuclear weapons talks with North Korea’s dictator isn’t his only bid for a historic diplomatic breakthrough. His administration has also been signaling recently that it’s about to unveil a plan to revive peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

It’s certainly a worthy goal. But don’t get your hopes up. The barriers to success are so high, and the chance that Trump would be willing to surmount them so low, that it’s probably better not to even try. Decades of bitter history have demonstrated that a failed Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative is almost always worse than nothing at all.

Start with the easiest problem to solve: Jared Kushner. The president’s son-in-law and designated Middle East peacemaker just lost the top-secret security clearance he’d need for access to key intelligence. So he now lacks the tools needed to do the job, though that shouldn’t be too big a deal — there are obviously lots of better qualified negotiators who could lead a peace effort. For that to happen, though, Trump would have to acknowledge that putting Kushner in charge was a mistake.

Beyond that, even the shrewdest negotiator would need the chaotic Trump administration to settle on a single point of view about what sort of “peace” the two sides should be aiming for.

Is it the establishment of two states, the U.S. position since the end of the Cold War that was explicitly endorsed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama? Maybe not, apparently. The Trump administration says it will support a two-state outcome only “if the parties want it.” Palestinian leaders largely still do, but many Israeli cabinet members are moving towards annexation, and even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about a Palestinian “state-minus,” whatever that means.

If the parties don’t share the same definition of peace, what exactly will they be negotiating toward? What’s the alternative? The Trump administration hasn’t said.

Moreover, all Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since 1993 have been brokered by Washington and predicated on the idea that five sensitive issues should be resolved by the two sides in a “final status” agreement. But now, astonishingly, Washington has unilaterally changed the rules regarding the most sensitive of all the final status issues by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Jerusalem, in Trump’s phrase, has been “taken off the table.”

Without a two-state outcome as the goal and the final status issues defining the talks, the diplomatic scaffolding and logic of the peace process is shattered. Without them the Palestinians can’t and won’t return to the table.

If the administration really wants to restart talks, it would have to clarify that Washington still endorses a two-state outcome.

It should further clarify that Trump was referring to West Jerusalem, where the Israeli government has been located for decades, and not occupied East Jerusalem, the status of which will still have to be determined by negotiations. The administration can point to the line in Trump’s Jerusalem announcement that states, “We are not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders,” to explain that, since the American declaration applies to West Jerusalem, and not areas occupied in 1967, East Jerusalem is not, in fact, “off the table.”

That would go a long way to repairing the damage the Jerusalem announcement caused to prospects for the positive engagement of Arab countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The administration also needs to deal with more on-the-ground political realities.

Rhetorically, the Israeli-Palestinian relationship is at its lowest ebb in ages. But administratively, especially on security cooperation, it continues to function. That’s essential, since security is indispensable to both peace and effective Palestinian governance.

Washington should increase financing, training and political support for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces and pressure Israel to limit incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank, which exacerbate tensions. It should also tell Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to cease disingenuously threatening to end security cooperation with Israel or risk such increased support. And it should tell Israeli politicians that U.S. support for their own pet projects will cease until they stop blocking measures approved by their own military that would empower the Palestinian Authority and provide Palestinians expanded opportunities.

Serious work to stabilize the dire humanitarian and political situation in Gaza is also required. And the Palestinian Authority should be pressured to drop implausible demands for Hamas to disarm as a condition of working together on aid and reconstruction.

The Trump administration should follow a Bush, and not Obama, approach to the key issue of Israeli settlements. Obama damaged the peace process by demanding a total Israeli settlement freeze while doing nothing to enforce it. A preferable stratagem would begin by reviving President George W. Bush’s effort to secure informal understandings with Israel that it can only build in areas that aren’t controversial or strategically sensitive. But that needs to be augmented by George H.W. Bush’s willingness to withhold financial support from Israel if it is uncooperative.

Palestinian elections, and a renewal of the administrative reform pioneered under former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, are a must. Washington can reward and reinforce them with a range of financial and diplomatic inducements without which they probably won’t happen.

Finally, the Trump administration would have to secure greater international buy-in. The Middle East Quartet (the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the United Nations) once gave peace efforts an international imprimatur but essentially became dysfunctional during the Obama era. The Trump team doesn’t seem to get it, but Washington definitely needs such support again now.

And, crucially, Egypt, Jordan and Norway should join the group. Norway would represent the countries financially underwriting the Palestinian Authority, Egypt the Arab world, and Jordan can leverage its Israeli-acknowledged role as custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem.

That’s all a tall order, and the Trump White House has offered little reason to think that it’s willing to undertake this kind of repair work, let alone correct its mistake on Jerusalem. The alternative, though, is a Trump peace effort that’s dead on arrival.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-kim-jong-un-is-following-the-playbook-of-his-father-1.711752

It has been argued that US threats have incentivized North Korean cooperation, but in reality Pyongyang is getting exactly what it wants

Let’s face it, Donald Trump’s new reality TV show, Presidential Apprentice, is pretty compelling viewing. And even if you don’t like it, there’s nothing else on. The second season, now underway, has introduced an unexpected plot twist: Mr Trump will meet the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in the next month or two. Cue collective gasps.

It would be ridiculous if millions of lives weren’t at stake. But this opening has actually been telegraphed for several months, and anyone who’s very surprised hasn’t been paying attention.

After the American and North Korean leaders traded bloodcurdling threats and preposterous personal insults throughout 2017, a thaw between Pyongyang and Seoul developed early in 2018. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said: “I am giving a lot of credit to President Trump,” and that the United States would be willing to begin talks with North Korea “at the appropriate time, under the right circumstances.”

Around the same time, Mr Trump was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying, “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un.” The White House denied this, insisting Mr Trump had said they “would” have a good relationship if he wanted one, but the recordings seemed to vindicate the journalists.

South Korean overtures to North Korea continued during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, which featured a great deal of collaboration and communication including shared teams and unprecedented interactions, and a much-publicised visit to the South by Mr Kim’s powerful and sinister sister.

Mr Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, snubbed the North Koreans, but no one cared.

In subsequent meetings following this remarkable rapprochement, South Korea first indicated North Korea’s readiness to enter into talks with the United States, and then its willingness to consider total nuclear disarmament.

At that point, a presidential summit was no longer unthinkable. But this is one of the most complex diplomatic equations imaginable.

Both leaders can plausibly claim victory.

Mr Trump will undoubtedly say that his bellicose rhetoric and, more plausibly, greatly intensified international sanctions, as well as major pressure on Pyongyang by China which he encouraged, has brought North Korea to the table at last after years of obstinacy.

Mr Kim, on the other hand, is almost certainly doing a victory lap. He has insisted that North Korea would become an intercontinental nuclear power capable of threatening all parts of the United States, and join the international nuclear club as a de facto equal member, to be treated as such. Given recent missile tests, it would seem that North Korea has got close enough to intercontinental missile capability that, prudently, one can only assume they have it. The same applies to an apparent successful hydrogen bomb test by Pyongyang a few months ago. Can they fit the two together now and successfully deliver hydrogen bomb against Los Angeles or even New York City? No one knows, but any sensible person has to proceed on the assumption they either already can, or soon enough will.

Mr Kim has long maintained that his nuclear programme is mainly designed to relieve all kinds of external pressure on the regime, to ensure it is treated with maximal respect internationally and therefore allow it to focus on economic development.

So, while it may be true that Mr Trump’s bellicosity and threats of “fire and fury” have incentivized North Korean cooperation, in fact Mr Kim is getting exactly what he wants. He’s meeting the American president, with whom he is technically still at war, apparently without any other precondition besides a generalized pledge not to conduct any major missile or nuclear tests during the period of negotiations.

If Mr Kim was hoping his nuclear program would ensure North Korea is treated as an equal of sorts by Washington, apparently that’s happening essentially as planned. He may be concerned about the possibility of a sudden and unprovoked American attack. But, judging by his pronouncements, this meeting is exactly what he would want precisely on schedule.

Mr Kim seems to be following the playbook of his father and grandfather: ratchet up tensions to the highest degree, and then offer some kind of enticing compromise. The next phase traditionally is to then take as much advantage of the period of calm as possible before resuming provocative and bellicose behavior. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Mr Trump says he will only accept full North Korean denuclearization. Good luck with that! Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what either side can offer to resolve this fundamental dispute.

Mr Trump may claim that he has accomplished more progress with North Korea than any of his immediate predecessors and at very little cost. We’ll see if that’s true. And we’ll also see if the same applies to his brinksmanship regarding the international nuclear deal with Iran and if he can secure new supplementary agreements restricting Tehran’s missile development and testing or its regional destabilization.

The whole thing may, of course, prove to be just another episode of a particularly silly and melodramatic TV show. As things stand, Mr Kim is definitely pocketing a huge achievement while Mr Trump may or may not be making progress, to be determined. Tune in next week, unless you’re incinerated.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-new-trade-war-is-absurd-national-and-economic-policy-but-it-s-great-politicking-and-exactly-what-he-promised-1.709647

Donald Trump has said many outlandish things throughout his career and a good many since he was elected president of the United States. But his tweet on Friday claiming that “trade wars are good and easy to win” as he announced hefty new tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum is arguably one of his most preposterous and dangerous declarations yet.

In fact, history strongly suggests that trade wars are incredibly dangerous and, in almost all cases, no one wins. In the contemporary, globalised economic environment, the idea is even more ridiculous than it was when it was last embraced by populist American demagogues in the 1920s, leading directly to the calamity of the global Great Depression (which arguably then led, indirectly, to the even greater cataclysm of the Second World War).

The only economist who seems to agree with Mr Trump that such hyper-aggressive protectionism is a good idea is Peter Navarro, who is reportedly being promoted in the administration. Everyone else, notably almost all Mr Trump’s other trade aides, including chief economic adviser Gary Cohn (who reportedly threatened to resign over the issue), understands how dangerous that is.

Even on its own, most narrowly drawn, terms the idea is just bizarre. A total of 6.5 million Americans work in industries that use steel and all of them will suffer, as will most consumers. Only 140,000 Americans work for steel manufacturers. Moreover, the biggest exporter of steel to the United States, Canada, is an even bigger consumer of US steel, purchasing 50 per cent of what the US sells. You do the math!

That leaves aside the complexities of a system in which global supply chains are virtually seamless, markets are almost borderless and few items are simply made in a given country in a simple, straightforward way. Then there’s the obvious potential for a downward spiral with trading partners beginning to impose retaliatory measures.

It is quite obvious why the risks hugely outweigh the benefits, which may even not exist at all and that a lose-lose scenario is by far the most likely outcome of any trade war, as has historically been the case.

However, it’s also important to recognize how appealing this will be to many in Mr Trump’s white working class base. Much of the country has been, and remains, in economic decline. Mr Trump and other demagogues blame this on a combination of foreign threats, in the form of unfair competition and predatory immigration, and the weak leadership of their non-nativist rivals on both the left and right.

When Mr Trump rails against immigration and declares that the era of American “surrender” on trade is over, that resonates powerfully in much of the country because blaming foreigners is easier than facing up to more complex, painful and often homegrown realities. And the appeal is bipartisan.

Along with immigration, trade was a defining issue in Mr Trump’s campaign. He shared much of this agenda with senator Bernie Sanders, who ran another major insurgency among the Democrats and nearly defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Mrs Clinton, too, had to shift, albeit disingenuously and unconvincingly, on trade.

Democrats have long assumed that demographic changes that are about to transform the US into a nation of minorities will favor them. Their support rests on a coalition of thematic interests like unions and a variety of identity groups, including many ethnic minorities, among them Latinos, black people and Jews.

Republicans, on the other hand, represent a coalition of interests between other interests such as big businesses, with just one gigantic identity group: white Christian Americans.

Democrats hope the growth and proliferation of tribal minorities will advantage them. But since the Republican tribe is, and will remain, by far the largest ethnic bloc, that’s by no means necessarily correct.

The white Christian Republican tribe is not only the biggest. Most minorirty groups are inefficiently clustered in big cities and some large states, whereas the Republican tribe is geographically dispersed to take maximum advantage of the American federal system.

In much of the US, this tribe is also quite united and staunchly Republican, according to all polls. Its increasingly neo-Jacksonian attitudes, particularly in non-urban areas, make consistent and powerful emotive messaging fairly straightforward for a skilled demagogue such as the current president.

Democrats may well have a larger potential base and voting bloc. But the system doesn’t favor them, as demonstrated in the last presidential election, in which they won the popular vote but lost in the federal electoral college. Their current divisions and bitter infighting demonstrates how difficult it is to message to all these different and incongruous Democratic constituencies simultaneously, especially in contrast to the relatively unified white Republicans.

Worse, by utilising populist, blue-collar appeals such as anti-globalisation protectionism and playing on racial anxieties, Mr Trump was able to convince large numbers of mostly white Christian former Democrats to vote for him. Indeed, that’s how he won.

Mr Trump’s new trade war is absurd national and economic policy. But it’s great politics and, after all, exactly what he promised the public. Even though it makes absolutely no sense, this bellicose, downright irrational, protectionism sounds great to many Americans right now, while its negative impact will mainly accumulate only over time. That’s exactly why Mr Trump is doing this. It could help him win again.