How much does Trump matter?

[Peter1469]

How much does Trump matter? (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-america-global-primacy-by-joseph-s--nye-2017-09)

I have argued that personalities don't matter all that much in geopolitics. Nations have constraints and leaders have limited options. This article goes deeper into that discussion. An interesting read.


The United States has never had a president like Donald Trump. With a narcissistic personality and a short attention span, and lacking experience in world affairs, he tends to project slogans rather than strategy in foreign policy. Some presidents, like Richard Nixon, had similar personal insecurities and social biases, but Nixon had a strategic view of foreign policy. Others, such as Lyndon Johnson, were highly egotistical, but also had great political skill in working with Congress and other leaders.

Will future historians look back at Trump’s presidency as a temporary aberration or a major turning point in America’s role in the world? Journalists tend to focus too heavily on leaders’ personalities, because it makes good copy. In contrast, social scientists tend to offer broad structural theories about economic growth and geographic location that make history seem inevitable.

I once wrote a book that tried to test the importance of leaders by examining important turning points in the creation a century ago of the “American era” and speculating about what might have happened had the president’s most plausible contender been in his place instead. Would structural forces have brought about the same era of US global leadership under different presidents?

[RollingWave]

I'd agree that the marco economics and geo politics ultimately matters more, but individual leaders does at least shift the direction a little bit one way or another, and given that this is long journey, if you tilt your ship a few degree one north or south when your ship leaves LA, you could either end up in Philippines or Japan. in the end. so ... those small shifts does matter, just maybe not as fast as you'd think.

Meanwhile, I think Trump is more reflective of a general trend than really being the big game changer himself. it's a pretty universal trend across all the democracies in the information age that neo-populism is rising, that divisive political tactics is taking to new heights and ironically with more information it seems the truth or even basic facts and science gets more and more difficult to come through.

[Peter1469]

Yet I see Trump's foreign policy trending as presidents before him. I think the realities of geopolitics and constraints upon the US leaving little wiggle room.

[resister]

Trump lives matter!

[Captain Obvious]

Trump doesn't matter, he's a stepping stone at best.

[AeonPax]

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I didn't find the article interesting. While it may be fun to postulate on the many "what if" questions it stirs, such is basically the domain for non-pragmatists who play in the sandbox of irrelevant and political mind games. I deal in the reality of "now'. Trump can arguably be compared to the terminal symptom of a far more hideous disease.

[Cletus]

Trump, or someone like him, was long overdue in Washington. The country needs what he brings to the table.

[Peter1469]

So leadership matters, but how much? There will never be a definitive answer. Scholars who have tried to measure the effects of leadership in corporations or laboratory experiments have sometimes come up with numbers in the range of 10% or 15%, depending on the context. But these are highly structured situations where change is often linear. In unstructured situations, such as post-apartheid South Africa, the transformational leadership of Nelson Mandela made a huge difference.

[RollingWave]

Yet I see Trump's foreign policy trending as presidents before him. I think the realities of geopolitics and constraints upon the US leaving little wiggle room.

I think for the US it's not as much of the geo political constraint as the domestic politics once , if Trump was like a literal totalitarian dictator and just order the US Military to invade and force countries to submit to the US's terms and all that stuff, the "constraint" would look a lot different. but even the most extreme political view folks would realize why that wouldn't fly. You can't just say "let's invade Mexico and take all their gold and enslave 20,000 of them to build that wall" and survive (even literally, let alone politically.)

But internationally the US did more or less draw up the current game rules, and they did so because it's relatively advantages to them. if they go out there and openly break it left and right (which the US has been certainly pushing the limits of quite a few times . ) it gets harder for them to get other people on board and actually follow those rules.

From someone watching geo politics I do feel one serious issue for the US is that the economic rationale binding the US together with it's allies are often non-existent anymore nowadays, one of the major reason is because China (or rather, East and South East Asia as a whole ) 's economic gravity just massively reorienting the world trade routes and center. the other is also the shale boom sort of changed the US' (and everyone else's) own calculus on energy . nowadays we're basically seeing the Saudi / US alliance already being dead and the Saudi's going around doing their own thing. and this contributes massively to further destabilization of the middle east.

When the economic rationale behind the US's military intervention is no longer logical, it's just not going to be sustainable long term, even if the middle east completely goes to hell the US trade with east asia doesn't require the ships to go that way and it's energy independent. what is potentially scary is that if we think in a beggar thy neighbor logic (which some of the current administration folks seem to display a tendency for . ) then having a middle east regional implosion and dragging Europe down with it might actually be better for the US because then it would be the only reliable producer of energy and because the European market died China and the rest of Asia's market leverage is greatly reduced as well.

[Common]

Trump is exactly what the country needed at this point and even with being confronted with a daily assault from all directions hes getting alot of things right.

More than trump and Potus need changing our Universities need changing, they are breeding holes for assholes like these worthless antifa brats, that have never did a damn thing for this country but take.