Timothy Snyder on The Politics of Catastrophe -- Five Trumpian Logics Explanations
Checks from elections, from the law, and from other government bodies force an executive to think before speaking. The interests and utterances of voters or other politicians can help us see what might happen. Insofar as they have a voice, we know that the executive is at least hearing that voice. Insofar as they have an ability to check, we know that the executive faces limits. Trump is now largely free of all that; and so we are forced, sadly, to try to figure out what is in his mind.
So why is Trump (or people in his circle) talking about building an American empire that includes (depending on the day) Greenland, Canada, Panama, Mexico? ...
Even if we cannot be certain about what Trump has in mind, we have to be serious about the consequences of his statements. I would caution strongly against treating Trump's outlandish imperialism as a joke; whatever Trump's motives, the things he has said are dangerous in the extreme, making ongoing wars less likely to end, making new wars more likely, and promising a future of senseless resource war. Here are five Trumpian logics explanations, all of which can function together, and probably do...
1. Putin and Xi. Trump is assisting Putin and Xi, making present Russian wars easier and future Chinese wars more likely. The international legal order is based upon the notion that states are sovereign and borders are inviolable. To be sure, these principles have been ignored in the past. But hypocrisy is a very different thing than nihilism. By advocating a violent American empire, Trump is saying that there is no international legal order. Worse still: he and the people around him are repeating arguments that Putin has made for more than a decade: borders are not real; people on the other side of borders want to be ruled by us; the law does not apply to big powers. It is objectively the case that this makes Russian and Chinese imperialism easier. Trump is removing the arguments, supported by most of the world, against a Russian invasion of Ukraine or a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The reactions of Moscow and Beijing make it very clear that Russian and Chinese leaders understand the work that Trump is doing for them... He is enacting a policy of fighting with friends and enabling enemies.
2. Musk. It is important for Trump's supporters to believe that Trump is the one actually in charge. One way to accomplish this is for Trump to seem more outlandish than Elon Musk. In recent weeks, Musk has expressed the view that Germany can only be saved by its far right, called for Britain's government to be dissolved, and even expressed preferences about who should lead the radical parties in these countries. Now, Musk's actions are broadly consistent with Trump's: he supports people in Europe who can be counted on to oppose alliances with the United States, to break the European Union, and to make life much easier for Beijing and Moscow. But, as even Trump's ideologues have to admit, Musk's money means that he might even be able to achieve these goals. What Musk has been doing has been outrageous, by any standard.
If we regard Musk as an individual, he is claiming that he has a special power to make and break governments around the world ("we can coup whoever we want." ).
If we regard Musk as an American co-president, he is interfering in the domestic politics of other countries in a way that is openly imperial.
Like Trump, Musk has never provided any evidence that he has a view of the American national interest, or cares in any way how changes in the world affect the lives of Americans. He uses the power that he has for his own purposes, and does not really seek to hide that. In this situation, where Trump may have less real power than Musk, he can compete at the level of spectacle. Musk's designs on Europe and the world may be more sinister, in the long run, than Trump's on Greenland etc. But today at least they are less spectacular and receive less media attention.
So Trump's rhetorical imperialism might be there to distract from Musk's real imperialism. And, of course, Musk might very well be behind Trump's rhetoric anyway. Who do we think told Trump that Greenland and Canada had valuable mineral resources? Is this something that Trump read about on his own? Musk's own rhetoric on Canada, though it has received less attention, has been even sharper than Trump's...
It would make much more sense to preserve our present alliances with Canada and with Europe, and to trade on a fair basis with our friends. Invasions and threats thereof will not actually get Americans access to valuable goods. They will undo the world order and leave everyone, including Americans, far worse off... And the hard truth about the real world is this: it makes no sense to dream of conquering northern lands for gas and oil. Even were it possible, it would be the worst of all possible policies. Given the state of the global climate, the resources currently under the ice have to stay in the ground if we want to have any chance of maintaining ourselves as a functional civilization. Even if Greenland and Canada were controlled by America, in some dark imperial world, the resources American imperialists want are only becoming accessible because global warming is melting ice.
The people who want to profit from them are imagining themselves getting very wealthy in a world in which America is flooded on the coasts and on fire everywhere else, in which a very large portion of the American population is living through Asheville or Los Angeles every day.
The aspiration to control these assets amounts to a politics of catastrophe, a plan to burn the world for the profits of the few.
And this is the logic in which we take Trump at his word.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/why-greenland
Happy Sunday. 
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