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Trumps Presidential State Visit

That Trump came on a state visit is not the problem. The problem is he was invited.

Some have argued it is only right he should be invited given the importance of the “special relationship” between the US and the UK. It is interesting, however, this relationship did not need such a visit during the 1950’s, 60′, 70′, 80’s, or 90’s. The first state visit of an American President under Queen Elizabeth II was President GW Bush in 2003. The only other was President Obama in 2011.

Those arguing against the visit point to both President Trump’s personal characteristics and his political actions. An inveterate liar, narcissist, misogynist, racist, bombast and bully… I could go on. These may be true, however there are a number of state visitors over the years who would not pass the smell test on at least some of these criteria, and it is a moot point about which is worse, someone who is not even aware of his awfulness as against someone who dissembles.

The second argument is that Trump is, at heart, an enemy of democracy. His attacks on the judiciary via tweets about judges who don’t do as he thinks they should and the blatant appointment of people he thinks more biddable; attacks on a free media; disregard for the constitutional principle of the separation of powers; failure to distinguish his personal interests from those of the office he holds. Another strong set of arguments but again the Queen has held banquets with many whose interest in democracy has been at best passing or indeed openly hostile.

Whilst it is very uncomfortable to sup with the devil you can understand why the UK government attempts to secure positive relationships with countries to further its economic and geo-political interests however odious the regime may be.

The key economic interest put forward as the reason for the current visit is a possible trade deal with the US. One can see that post Brexit such a deal would be an urgent priority. President Trump has responded to this, talking of what a fantastic deal that could be done once we throw off the “shackles” of the EU.

It was Lord Palmerston who set out the real politic of diplomatic guidelines, “We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” So we often have to treat with those we privately despise, and that includes using the soft power of pomp and royal access. So was Mrs May right to invite President Trump?

The answer is no. Not because of any liberal concern for his personal or political shortcomings. President Trump is unique.

Whatever the faults of the previous 110 heads of state they could be expected to act rationally even if that rationality was not in our interests. You could make sense of where they were coming from and going to, even if you did not like it. Further, they at least understood rational argument or had sufficient self awareness to listen to their advisors.

President Trump is special. All of his rationality is ex post facto. There is no point in trying to get close to him and secure a commitment. His commitments run nowhere near the length of his tie. There are a swath of staff in the White House whose job it is to make sense of ill informed tweets on major policy issues. In the middle of NAFTA trade negotiations President Trump, a la Homer Simpson, wakes up and tweets that he will be imposing tariffs on Mexican imports. Bemused advisors and spokes people try, with ever less success, to present this as part of a strategy of the President or as part of his instinctive deal making style. 

In two and a half years President Trump has normalised venal lunacy. There are a lot of very clever people trying to make what he does look like it is a radical shake up of a dated global order. Some have their own agenda and Trump is a useful battering ram for their alt right objectives. Some are no doubt patriotic Americans trying to limit the damage President Trump does to the nation’s reputation.

Mrs May’s proposal to the Queen was certainly embarrassing, but its ultimate sin is it was pointless. The only calculation President Trump will be making when the wheels of Air Force One leave the ground will be the impact pictures of him with the Queen will have on the 2020 election. Any thought of a trade deal will only be in the context of how such a prize may be used to expedite Brexit.

It is vital we do not lose sight of the base venality of the man. On his way back to the States he called off in Ireland for a meeting with the Taioseach, Leo Varadkar. The Irish government turned down the President’s proposal to meet at one of his golf complexes in Ireland! At the meeting in the VIP lounge at Shannon the President demonstrated his trademark depth of understanding and deft diplomatic sensitivity about borders and walls! Whilst you cannot help laughing at him this should not dilute a recognition of the danger he poses to democracy both in the States and around the world.

Mrs May’s invitation would have been valuable had it genuinely stood a chance of promoting the interests of the UK. It never did. It has only served to burnish the image of President Trump with his base and feed his voracious, narcissistic, self indulgence. The UK’s interests are best served by the departure of President Trump from the office he holds. Whilst the UK government should do nothing to actively promote this it is the hight of stupidity to do anything that might delay that happening.

 

 

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Queen’s gift to Trump.

The Queen very thoughtfully gave President Trump a series of books written by Winston Churchill. And there are those who say she does not have a sense of humour.

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Trump’s Legal Jeopardy

It is a source of continuous and mounting frustration that President Trump has managed to sail through outrageous scandal after outrageous scandal. Trampling over the separation of powers, abusing executive authority and undermining the constitutional foundations of the US political system.

Thankfully there are signs that the system of constitutional checks and balances, which operates slowly but surely, are catching up with him. Currently there are some 29 investigations into the President which are all starting to close in.

The New York Times is tracking the investigations and their progress through the courts and the House. At the moment there are 10 Federal criminal investigations; 8 State and local investigations (important as there is no presidential pardon power available for these) and 11 congressional investigations.

They cover a diverse range of misdemeanours and felonies from the donations and  spending of the Trump inauguration committee; collusion in attempting to hide hush money payments; inappropriate offers of pardon; inflated asset values in insurance submissions; misuse of charitable assets of the now defunct Trump Foundation; personal tax violations; possible obstruction of justice; abuse of security clearance process and much more.

The President has tried to stone wall all of these processes to the extent of defying the law. The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has a statutory right to ask for the tax returns of any person. The IRS under Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has refused to provide these. The Committee issued a subpoena to secure them. This was resisted. It then went to Federal court. The court have made clear that the Executive must comply with the subpoena.

Other court rulings have gone against the President relating to information requested from his accountants, Mazars, and his bankers, Deutche Bank.

Earlier this week he stormed out of a meeting with Democrats effectively saying he wouldn’t be doing any government until the investigations into him were stopped!

The heat is getting to him. Whilst in many ways this is welcome, it also carries real risk. A cornered Trump is likely to turn even more vicious and nasty than day to day Trump.

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Losing Earth

Reading this book you feel the United Nations ought to identify the crime of humanicide and turn to the book for its first list of suspects. It provides an account of how the issue of anthropocentric climate change was brought to the attention of politicians in the decade from spring 1979 to November 1989. What is shocking is the fact that the basic science was clear right from the start of the period. Indeed governments and the fossil fuel industry had been doing research into the issue for some considerable time before that and had come to the conclusion that fossil fuels were set to have a significant impact on climate if they continued to be burned at the rate they were.

At the start of the period the engagement of the coal, oil, motor and other industries seemed to be a genuine search for the truth. The problem was once they found it. They didn’t like it.

It tells a tale of how a few determined individuals, mainly scientists and environmentalists worked diligently to inform and then push to action politicians and policy makers. It charts the ups and downs of a process where two steps forward in scientific confirmation were pushed one step back, sometimes three steps, by doubt sowing special interests.

One of the three step back was the year Ronald Reagan was elected President. On taking office he increased coal production on Federal land, deregulated surface coal mining and appointed Anne Gorsuch as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. An “anti regulation zealot” she cut the Departments staff and budget by 25%. The parallels with the actions of the current President of the United States are remarkable.

Whilst the basic science and the trajectory of change was clear, the evidence of change in actual weather patterns, which voters could see, was not there in the early 1980’s. The scientists were aware this would not become apparent for “ten or twenty years” however they were also aware that if action was not taken immediately it would require far more dramatic change later, leave a legacy of negative environmental effects and in the worst case scenario simply be too late.

The book has numerous examples of issues which dogged the debate about climate change at the time and have continued to do so through the 1990’s, the 2000’s and 2010’s. In an early meeting of experts convened to provide policy proposals a public health scholar called Annemarie Crocetti made the following point, “I have noticed that very often when we as scientists are cautious in our statements, everybody else misses the point, because they don’t understand our qualifications.” This is a problem which the scientific community are still grappling with. The carefully calibrated language of IPCC reports does not chime with the existential nature of the threat they are reporting nor does it communicate the urgency of the issue they believe exists.

Another issue was how scientific results were spun to avoid what was regarded as precipitate action. The Changing Climate Report mentioned above was published in October 1983. Its preface made clear that action was required immediately, before all the detail could be confirmed with certainty as by then it would be too late. This is not how the Report was presented at the launch press conference. Its authors, the very people that had written the stark warning argued the opposite, no need for urgent action. The accompanying press release confirmed the no action needed story and of course this is what the press picked up. How many journalists read 496 page reports? Quite why a group of scientists provided a gloss which contradicted the findings of their report is not clear.

A rather sinister and worrying answer may be the direct intervention of the White House in the science. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies was one of the scientists who had been working to convince politicians of the importance of CO² emissions throughout the 1980’s. In 1989 he was asked to provide evidence to a Congressional Committee chaired by one Albert Gore.  As a public employee he had to submit his evidence to the Office of Management and Budget for review prior to publication at the Committee. When his paper came back it had been amended to change significantly the strength of the conclusions. 

Hanson wrote to Congressman Gore and explained what had happened. He then went to the Committee and read the paper as censored by the Bush administration. Al Gore then questioned him about contradictions in the paper. Through a series of questions and answers the attempted censorship was revealed. At one point Hanson explained that he appreciated the need for the White House to review the policy statements of employees but went on to say, “…my only objection is being forced to alter the science.”

I certainly had not appreciated quite how well settled the science was as far back as the early 1970’s. Reading this book  and seeing how the denigration of experts, “alternative facts”, “fake news”, doubt funding were all used to undermine science back then. If it was a scandal then, how much more so now, 30 years later, when every prediction made in the early 1970’s has only been proved wrong in being too optimistic.

It would be wrong to say that political elites around the world have done nothing on climate change over the past 40 years.There has been real progress in alternative energy development and greater fuel efficiency. There has also been a whole lot of lip service about the rights of future generations. However, there is an enormous gap between ambition and reality. There is also an enormous lack of real political leadership.

When we consider the amount of political energy and time given to Brexit over the past 3 years to secure Britain’s future inside or outside of Europe you might have thought a similar level of effort would be worth expending on humanities future inside or outside of planet Earth.

If the 1980’s was the decade we could have stopped Climate Change we now face the decade where we may have to mitigate the devastation it will inevitably wreak. If we stopped all CO²e emissions tomorrow climate change would continue for centuries to come however its impacts would be significantly less than if we fail to act. Whereas change commenced in the 1980’s might have been a very inconvenient process we now face a quantum difference in the scale of the challenge. It needs to be a much more abrupt, radical and consequently painful process. A process which will involve adaptation to problems which are already inevitable. And a process which will require dramatic and profound changes to our behaviour to prevent compounding problems which may make the world effectively uninhabitable.

Those purveyors of doubt in the 1980’s have much to answer for. However, with the scale of scientific consensus that has built up over the intervening years with every fresh piece of evidence confirming the basic thesis it is inexcusable for anyone, much less political leaders, to deny the existence of the problem. Everyday their culpability grows.

It is time that the International Criminal Court started to arraign those guilty of recklessly committing actions likely to result in the crime of humanicide. Call Donald Trump, Leader of the United Fossil Fuel Purveyors of Doubt.

 

“The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change”: Losing Earth. Nathaniel Rich, Picador, 2019.