World wearies of Trump’s disruption

Two and a half years into his presidency and the international community is suffering from Trump fatigue.

The condition manifests itself in an unprecedented early interest in who might be the opponent Donald Trump faces in the November 2020 United States Presidential election.

The crowded field of Democratic Party presidential candidates is being earnestly dissected and analysed by politicians and commentators around the globe.

There is lively debate over attempts to identify the man or women with the best chance of ousting Trump from the White House, even when the official start of the US Primary season is still months away.

Can Biden last the pace? Is Sanders too far to the left? Can Warren stand up to Trump’s jibes? Is Buttigieg too young, too idealistic? Maybe Harris is just too hard-nosed.

Trump is already campaigning — in reality his entire presidency has been one long campaign. He simply can’t keep away from rallies of the faithful, eulogising his achievements, slamming his detractors, dismissing any criticism as fake news.

Now an external view of the US president has revealed itself in startling detail resulting from a series of leaked memos sent by the United Kingdom Ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch to his bosses at the British Foreign Office.

In the memos he says the current US Administration is inept and dysfunctional and likely to “crash and burn” and “end in disgrace”.

He describes “vicious infighting and chaos” inside the White House and that US policy towards Iran is “incoherent” and “chaotic”.

Perhaps even more surprising than the memos themselves was the Foreign Office’s initially relaxed reaction to their leaking, with a spokeswoman making no attempt to dispute them.

“The British public would expect our ambassadors to provide Ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their country,” she simply said.

Adding, almost as an afterthought: “The views are not necessarily the views of Ministers, or indeed the Government.”

It was only a day later that the Foreign Office, probably under pressure from a Government desperate not to insult the mercurial US President with Brexit looming, launched an inquiry into the leaking.

If this is what the British, with their so-called Special Relationship with Washington, are thinking, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that similar opinions are being delivered by the various envoys in the US to their capitals — to Paris, Berlin, New Delhi and many others.

Quite likely to Beijing and Moscow as well. 

Trump delights in giving his opinions of other nations and their policies to the world at large. Anyone or anything that remotely conflicts with his US-centric views is likely to be in for a public bucketing.

So it is hardly surprising that many in the international community will be hoping that someone…anyone will emerge to halt another four years of disruption out of Washington.