https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-scaremongering-and-a-fictional-narrative-are-keeping-migrant-parents-and-children-apart-1.743367

The separation of migrant children from their parents is a massive and historically significant stress test for the American political soul and system.

At the heart of the issue is race and Donald Trump’s determination to weaponise white Christian tribal anger about the growing size and influence of minority groups. He was elected on a hardline anti-immigrant platform based on the stereotyping of Mexicans as “drug dealers and rapists” and Muslims as “terrorists”.

Mr Trump clearly believes that his principal commitment to the voters, many of them former Democrats, is an anti-immigrant crackdown. He is reportedly upset that he has, as yet, made little progress on this.

The separation controversy stems from his April zero tolerance order that anyone crossing the border without permission must be jailed and prosecuted, even though that is usually a misdemeanour.

Because children could not be jailed and parents had to spend weeks, if not months, waiting to be prosecuted, families were separated.

Mr Trump was apparently happy with that, especially because he viewed ripping children from their parents as an effective deterrent to migration. He seems taken aback the rest of the country has been less thrilled.

But every time Mr Trump has tried to enact xenophobic immigration policies, it has backfired spectacularly.

First there was the ban on travellers from mostly Muslim countries, which has been repeatedly rejected by courts and caused tremendous chaos at airports when it was first launched shortly after he took office.

Then came his efforts to pressure Democrats on immigration policy by threatening the status of the young adults known as “dreamers”, who were brought to the country as small children.

Now he has deployed the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children, hundreds of whom are now apparently missing within the labyrinthine system.

The chaos intensified after Mr Trump signed a fuzzy executive order against separating families last Thursday.

The Justice Department insists it requires the long-term jailing of entire families together and is getting the military to quickly build “temporary and austere” tent cities to house tens of thousands of migrants. US Customs and Border Protection, though, insists such plans are totally unworkable and because they involve children, probably illegal.

In all three cases, Mr Trump has bet that jingoism would prove a political winner while his opponents believed he went too far.

Whether he ultimately has to back down on family separation and imprisonment will reveal much about the condition of the American political soul.

If Mr Trump is right, the majority have become hysterically xenophobic.

If they’re not, he will continue to be pushed back on zero tolerance and child separation and will suffer a significant repudiation at the polls in the November midterm elections.

Even US allies who think they don’t care about the condition of the American soul need to pay close attention to both the process and the outcome of this unfolding fiasco.

First, white nationalist impulses strongly correlate with neo-isolationist foreign policy attitudes.

That’s potentially bad news for America’s allies, including in the Gulf, who need US foreign policy to remain committed to the international goals and concomitant alliances and military and diplomatic commitments that ensure their security.

The more Mr Trump is pulled in the white nationalist direction, the less Washington will feel bound by obligations to allies, who become easily dispensable, as Japan and South Korea may be discovering.

It’s also much harder for clear-eyed policy to overrule emotive politics when all relationships become zero-sum and bound in identity.

Secondly, it’s no secret the Trump administration has an uneasy relationship with objective reality.

Indeed, Mr Trump has managed to separate what he presents as a deeper, emotive truth — conveyed through the alternate realities he conjures in his largely fictional narratives — entirely from the verifiable facts, which he denies and dismisses if they contradict him.

But the American political system is premised on compromise based on institutional checks and balances, and debates between different power centres.

There’s always a gap between interpretations and some shading of the truth. That’s normal politics. But the Trump administration has introduced – and in the immigration debate considerably sharpened – the deployment of entirely fictiional alternate realities into the American conversation.

Mr Trump insisted he was forced to separate families by laws that did not exist and that he could not resolve the issue by executive order, as he then claimed to do. His officials bizarrely maintained there was no such policy at all.

The US president also invoked an immigrant crimewave in both the United States and Germany that is entirely fictitious. To reinforce that widely held misapprehension, he even held a press conference with the parents of those killed by undocumented migrants, although every study shows native-born US citizens are far more likely to commit crimes than immigrants of any kind.

Such utter fabrications made any serious discussion of both the underlying realities and policy options practically impossible.

One cannot debate someone who insists they’re bound by imaginary laws and who makes up and says anything they like to suit their immediate purposes, with no compunction or reference whatsoever to underlying reality.

The US is a status quo power. It needs to be predictable and stabilising. It cannot succeed in its international mission with impetuous, reckless, chaotic decision-making. And the American system cannot function with its discourse completely untethered to fact and reality.

Even US allies who are happy with some aspects of the Trump foreign policy need to ponder if this is a transient moment or a new American normal – and fervently hope it’s the former.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-white-house-iftar-with-no-muslim-americans-perfectly-encapsulated-trump-s-attitude-to-islam-1.740747

The June 6 White House iftar, and especially the guest list, perfectly encapsulated Donald Trump’s relationship with Islam and Muslims.

Hosting an annual Ramadan dinner at the White House was started by then first lady Hillary Clinton in 1996 and repeated every year until 2017. Then Mr Trump abandoned the budding tradition. That didn’t surprise anyone, given his full-throated hostility towards Islam and Muslims during the presidential campaign.

This year he revived the practice but with an extremely telling twist. There were many diplomats from Muslim majority countries at his first iftar since taking office but no identifiable Muslim Americans, apparently not even his few but extant Muslim supporters.

This illustrates Mr Trump’s attitude towards Muslims perfectly. He doesn’t really care about religion. He has developed extremely friendly relations with many Muslim majority countries and doesn’t have any problem with Muslims “over there”.

His problem is with Muslims “over here”. Hence the travel ban; hence the absence of even his own Muslim supporters at the White House iftar; hence all his reckless rhetoric painting Muslim communities in the West as terrorist threats and promoting fear and hatred of Muslims in the United States. And hence the vitriolic Islamophobes populating his administration.

Mr Trump improbably ascended to the presidency, not based on a rational programme but on raw, visceral emotions. His appeal to his core supporters was never primarily about economic grievances, as many mistakenly think, or party affiliation, policies or any of the normal campaign issues of typical American politicians.

Instead, Mr Trump shrewdly and deliberately cast himself as the ethnic and religious champion of a powerful constituency that nonetheless feels profoundly threatened and embattled: white Christian Americans.

The cultural, demographic and religious transformation of US society in recent decades is striking. Many white Christian Americans feel they are literally losing control of a country that by rights “belongs” to them.

Beginning with the announcement of his candidacy in June 2015, Mr Trump’s pitch to the voters was mainly based on conspiracy theories, paranoia and xenophobia explicitly designed to appeal to the ethnic and religious fear and hatred of others by white, particularly Christian, Americans.

In that first campaign speech, he described Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and Muslims as “terrorists”, inaugurating his campaign against his two favourite targets, and inveighed against the rest of the world, particularly China, as swindling and mocking the United States.

It’s very cynical. While Mr Trump does have a long history of deeply held anti-black racism, his posture as the champion and saviour of the white Christian American is primarily calculated and opportunistic.

Hence Muslims “over here” are a threat and a problem and not to be invited to the White House while Muslims “over there” are potentially important friends and allies to be strategically embraced.

This dynamic also explains how the Republican Party has degenerated into little more than a personality cult, as Tennessee senator Bob Corker admitted this week, with support for Mr Trump being the only real litmus test. It’s why his supporters and party will follow him in virtually any twist and backflip imaginable on substantive issues.

Last week he effectively recognised North Korea as an equal nuclear power, heaping limitless praise on leader Kim Jong-un. Had any Democrat behaved like that, Republicans would be thundering “treason” and demanding impeachment. They often did so for infinitely less. Now there’s Republican unease but zero criticism.

White Christian fundamentalists generally love him, despite his embodiment of so many personal traits they supposedly despise. None of that’s a problem because he’s venerated as their tribal leader.

Mr Trump evidently greatly admires Mr Kim and other tyrants who utilise personality cults on a larger scale than he does, such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rodrigo Duterte and Xi Jinping.

Conversely, he distrusts democratic leaders such as Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, as he made abundantly clear at the recent G7 meeting.

Mr Trump’s horrifying anti-immigrant policies, now including callously separating children from parents accused of misdemeanours like unlawful border crossings, or even because of lawful asylum requests, are the essence of his appeal.

Gratuitous cruelty to non-white Americans and would-be citizens, including children, isn’t an anomaly. It’s a feature, a selling point and wildly popular with his angry, ethnically fearful supporters.

Mr Trump’s personal history leaves no doubt that he’s profoundly bigoted against black people. And the overtly racist and xenophobic nature of his political appeal means he’s not likely to stop being hostile and cruel to Mesoamericans, Muslims and many other non-whites in the United States, particularly immigrants.

Yet that’s no reason why Muslim majority countries shouldn’t work closely with the Trump administration. Domestic politics aren’t key to foreign policy, especially for smaller states, which must be based on a clear-eyed reading of national interests. If Mr Trump’s policies align with those of Muslim countries, co-operation to secure those goals makes perfect sense.

But it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there were diplomats but no Muslim Americans at the White House iftar. It’s a precise reflection of Mr Trump’s approach to Islam and Muslims.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-kim-summit-failed-diplomacy-could-mean-the-return-of-a-stand-off-with-renewed-threats-of-fire-and-fury-and-possibly-the-real-thing-1.738324

It’s disconcerting that we might be on the right road and headed in the correct direction but we’re not really sure that the drivers are sober – or even awake. US President Donald Trump will indeed meet North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12, as originally planned.

That’s great because less than a year ago, they were exchanging nasty personal insults and dire threats. A US-North Korean war would be horrendous and with North Korea developing long-range missiles and hydrogen bombs, it was becoming unnervingly plausible.

But any agreement will probably require one of the parties to back down significantly.

According to South Korea, both sides insist they want a complete, full and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Yet they almost certainly imagine very different outcomes and both feel they are negotiating from positions of strength.
Mr Trump seems to genuinely think North Korea might relinquish its nuclear weapons in exchange for security and economic incentives. North Korea, as always, is hoping to divide Washington from Seoul and push the US out of the way so Pyongyang can eventually absorb the south.

Yet neither will be willing to make such concessions –unless they’ve completely changed their outlook.

The raison d’etre of the Kim dynasty completely rules out exchanging its nuclear deterrent for even the most generous economic and security incentives.

There are two Koreas and the northern regime was established with the explicit goal of uniting the country under the banner of its extreme and racist nationalism.

But since South Korea began completely outstripping the north in economic, technological and all other material terms in the 1970s, the Kim dynasty’s non-economic and even anti-economic ideology has further ossified.

North Koreans are generally well aware of the vastly superior living conditions in the south. The North Korean regime’s raison d’etre was never economic and that has grown more rather than less true over time.

According to its own narrative, North Korea constitutes a heavily militarised vanguard of a supposedly beleaguered Korean race for the purpose of defeating outsiders, especially the US and uniting Korea.

Evidence suggests many Koreans, including in the south, take that as a respectable and credible, if misguided, national mission.

North Korea’s modus operandi has always been primarily military. Having mastered the ultimate military technology, how could such a state give up its nuclear weapons?

The south might be the successful Korean material and economic model but the north supposedly embodies military power and genuine independence.

If Mr Kim agrees to genuinely forgo nuclear weapons, even in phased stages, for security and economics, he will be repudiating the world view and values of his father and grandfather and, indeed, the entire belief system of his country since its founding.

Nonetheless, an agreement is possible.

Mr Kim might disingenuously promise to relinquish nuclear weapons in the context of full denuclearisation without ever fulfilling that. And he might agree to genuinely stop any further thermonuclear and intercontinental missile development, essentially freezing North Korea’s nuclear weaponisation as it stands: on the brink of threatening the continental US but not actually doing so in a thorough or reliable manner.

In exchange, he would surely demand measures that would put Washington well on the way to full withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula, in the hope of an eventual reunification on his terms.

Such an agreement is hardly unimaginable. But there is no doubt which side would be effectively backing down. Through the upcoming summit itself, Mr Trump has already handed Mr Kim a major political and diplomatic victory in exchange for nothing.

When he agreed to a meeting as equals, Mr Trump almost certainly didn’t realise the huge unwarranted legitimisation he was handing “little rocket man”.

Any agreement, however it is packaged, that effectively leaves North Korea in possession of nuclear weapons and missiles that can threaten its neighbours, but not the continental US, will effectively be a US climbdown.

That is not necessarily a disaster though. Certainly, a deeply flawed agreement of that kind is preferable to a war and if it makes nuclear conflict less likely, then perhaps it should be welcomed. But if Pyongyang secures this and proclaims it a colossal victory, it wouldn’t be wrong.

Of course, if Mr Kim accepts real denuclearisation in exchange for mere security and economic pledges, the Pyongyang regime will not only have capitulated but effectively begun to dismantle itself.

A viable agreement regularising US-North Korea relations, ending the Korean War and permanently forestalling a nuclear confrontation in northeast Asia would not merely be welcome but one of the greatest triumphs of modern diplomacy. If Mr Trump can pull that off, he would deserve the Nobel Prize he craves.

But it’s more likely that we will eventually see a dreadfully flawed deal marketed with Mr Trump’s patented “truthful hyperbole”.

Worse still, failed diplomacy could mean the return of an increasingly intense stand-off with renewed threats of “fire and fury” – and possibly the real thing.

In these pages in February, I explained how Donald Trump had begun to de-institutionalise the US political system by attacking the credibility and functionality of civic and political institutions that can balance the authority of the presidency, check his power or threaten his position.

Since then, that process has greatly accelerated, though few Americans fully understand what’s going on. As demonstrated in numerous formerly democratic countries, by the time most people realise de-institutionalisation is even underway, incalculable and possibly irreversible damage is already done.

Mr Trump’s first and favourite target was the news media. Ironically, he’s largely a creature of the media, a self-generated caricature who, in that sense, is essentially a figment of his own imagination.

His career as a property developer largely collapsed when his casinos went bankrupt in the 1990s. But he re-emerged as a branding franchiser selling the Trump name and then made it big as the star and producer of the reality TV show The Apprentice.

For decades, Mr Trump used the media to exaggerate his persona. Using the false names John Barron and John Miller, he planted absurd falsehoods about his financial and romantic exploits in tabloids and gossip columns.

When he ran for the presidency, Mr Trump exploited his skill as a controversial figure to gain vast quantities of free advertising as news channels broadcast endless hours of his political rallies. Without the media, he might not have become president or, probably, at all noteworthy.

Once elected, he made the media his principal foil (Steve Bannon, his former White House strategist, called the press “the opposition party“), denouncing them with Stalinist vitriol as “the enemy of the American people“.

He doesn’t hide his motives. Veteran journalist Leslie Stahl reports that Mr Trump told her: “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

That’s the logic of de-institutionalisation. Since the press can pose a threat, it must, as an institution, be discredited, lest journalists reveal inconvenient or embarrassing facts.

Mr Trump is not only at war with the press but with truth itself. As president, he has already told thousands of brazen lies, now averaging about eight falsehoods a day, according to the Washington Post, most recently falsely and angrily accusing journalists of inventing a source, who turned out to be his (real) senior Asia official, Matthew Pottinger.

The war against journalists was evident from the beginning of his presidency. But well into the second year, the prime targets now include the FBI, the intelligence community, including the CIA and the rest of the national security establishment.

For years, the American political right has contrived a paranoid fantasy that the country is secretly ruled by an all-powerful, unelected and unaccountable “deep state” cabal. Such “deep states” have indeed existed in some authoritarian countries, where shadowy military or intelligence officials, rather than formal or elected leaders, make key decisions.

But there is no “deep state” in Washington. There is a government with administrators and officials but the “deep state” is a conspiratorial delusion.

Mr Trump reportedly used to avoid this buzzword because he didn’t want to sound like “too much of a crank”. But now he has unleashed a series of tirades against the police and national security officials, labelling them a “CRIMINAL DEEP STATE” and accusing them, without evidence, of having embedded a “spy” in his presidential campaign for nefarious political purposes. He has dubbed this imaginary conspiracy against him “SPYGATE”.

Mr Trump has long purveyed wacky conspiracy theories and rose to prominence by championing the laughable claim that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. But now the scope is hugely expanding.

Last year he falsely accused Mr Obama of wiretapping him. Now he’s painting the entire law enforcement and national security establishment as a criminal gang determined to bring him down. There is no evidence whatsoever for these unprecedented accusations.

Mr Trump’s intention is again clear: he is pre-emptively discrediting the FBI, Department of Justice and special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the last election, to undermine anything they might reveal. He has even accused Mueller’s investigators of “meddling” with the upcoming midterm elections, without saying how and, as always, with no evidence.

Just as the media must be demonised in case they write anything negative about him, law enforcement must be utterly discredited lest they discover any unlawful acts.

Undoubtedly Mr Trump thinks he’s just fending off enemies so his probable next target is alarmingly obvious. An independent judiciary is an enormous obstacle and threat to any leader. The courts must be next, as telegraphed by his highly partisan and personal recent pardons.

The logic of de-institutionalisation is simple. There’s only one legitimate authority: the leader. Therefore, independent, autonomous institutions, whether within the government or civil society, are the adversary. They must be stigmatised and de-fanged or destroyed, after which there is no system left, only a leader.

This terrifying process has wrecked democracy, accountability and rule of law in numerous countries. De-institutionalisation is just beginning in the United States and there’s no way of knowing how far it can go. But it really is happening.