Donald Trump’s singular moment of lunacy alienates the US further

In one moment of sheer lunacy Donald Trump made Barack Obama and George W. Bush look like foreign policy dynamos.

Barack Obama left office as a very popular President despite some obvious shortcomings. On the domestic front he was an undoubted success. Foreign policy was the area in which he was never comfortable and failed quite miserably. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, floundered on foreign policy as well.

The Middle East seems to be the world’s biggest trouble spot and the scene of the greatest American folly. The US hailed the Arab Spring and then watched its disintegration in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia and Libya. When America welcomed the Arab Spring they stuck stubbornly to the belief that democracy would finally become the norm in all these rogue states. They were strangely unable to realise that Sunni-Shia divides and thousands of years of tribalism rendered those hopes as false and even pathetic.

If you thought that American foreign policy had hit rock bottom you were wrong. Donald Trump’s blunder this week leaves Obama and Bush looking adequate by comparison.

When Trump released his bombshell statement that America would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel he managed to alienate every US ally around the world, he gave live ammunition to every US enemy and Middle Eastern terrorist group. The Palestinians reacted exactly as Trump should have expected — they went berserk. Riots and rockets were the entirely predictable response. Five decades of sensible US policy designed to breathe life into an often-flagging peace process was jettisoned in a single moment of Presidential lunacy.

Fatah leader Abbas is now refusing to meet with Vice President Pence when he visits the region shortly. Israel hit back at targets in Gaza and the ugly possibility of another intifada was becoming a reality. The chorus of condemnation of Trump’s stupidity did not stop with the British, French and Germans. The main US ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, was quick off the blocks in a bitter criticism of Trump’s decision. Not content with the mayhem he had already caused, Trump then could not help himself and slammed the way Saudi Arabia had behaved with the Houthis in Yemen.

The Trump White House team continue to leak to their dwindling bank of “acceptable” media that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will soon be sacked. Tillerson is being pushed aside because he is far more sensitive to world opinion than his boss. Trump can never handle having someone more articulate or more competent anywhere near him because the inevitable comparisons are more than just embarrassing.

Meanwhile Robert Mueller’s inquiry into the connections members of Trump’s team had with Russia during the campaign for the Presidency rolls on. The more that Trump rails about the lack of fairness his team is receiving from Mueller, the more suspicion falls upon him. How much damage the testimony of General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former security adviser, will do the President is anyone’s guess but it is not likely to do Trump any good.

As all this goes on Trump has finally managed to have a legislative victory. Congress has passed the Trump tax cuts and a nation with a massive deficit has now determined to drastically reduce its revenue and mightily increase the intergenerational debt that will push out further to following generations. It is voodoo economics at its worst, where the big winners will be the rich.

Trump though will likely label all this “fake news” so he can continue to ignore the consequences of is own failures. It doesn’t matter. This will all end in tears.