Trumpism and International Law
When Donald Trump ran for the Presidency in 2016, he told the country that he was the law and order candidate.
He also repeated the slogan “Make America Great Again” time and time again. Some interpreted this as an attempt to revive America’s greatness while others didn’t understand when America stopped being great. In contrast to the campaign rhetoric, Trump’s Administration has defined itself by hoisting a new world disorder upon the globe and failing to draw upon America’s traditional role as a force for order in the world.
Trump’s views on arms control have undermined the use of law in international affairs. The President has withdrawn from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (often called the Iran Nuclear Deal) and has announced our country will pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. In addition, Trump has also threatened to withdraw from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The concept of arms control is to apply the idea of law to the use and accumulation of arms. The law, in any form, seeks to control society from behaviors that are detrimental to its existence. Nuclear arms need to be controlled because nuclear war means death on a mass scale.
Different administrations have realized this fact since the development of nuclear arms in World War II. President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program, which led to the International Atomic Energy Agency, was an attempt to bring nuclear technology under international control. Later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which committed all countries that signed the treaty to work for nuclear arms control. President Ronald Reagan later signed the INF Treaty that eliminated Russian and American medium range missiles (1,000 to 5,500 kilometers) – which can be armed with nuclear warheads – from Europe. President Richard Nixon’s Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (1969-1972) and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972), President Jimmy Carter and President Nixon’s Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (1972-1979), President George H.W. Bush’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (1991) and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (1993), President George W. Bush’s Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (2003), and President Barack Obama’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (2010) and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (2015) are all attempts to apply the concept of law to the control of nuclear weapons.
Included in the “Make America Great” ideology is the idea that other countries are taking advantage of America and weakening us. This way of looking at the world says that other nations can’t be trusted and therefore treaties are not worth much. However, this point of view doesn’t understand the nature of nuclear weapons technology. A nuclear war wouldn’t recognize national boundaries due to its destructive nature. Therefore, nation-states must work together to control nuclear weapons. Russia has already said it will start a nuclear arms buildup in response to the planned withdraw from INF – a move that’s all about actions and reactions.
The tendency to help establish international norms to create a more orderly world – sometimes called international law – goes back to the founding of our republic. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, worried that our first form of government – the Articles of Confederation – was too weak for the federal government enforce the dictates of treaties. He also kept a copy of Renaissance thinker Hugo Grotius’ classic of international law “On the Law of War and Peace” in his library. In 1890, the Pan-American Conference established an arbitration system that Secretary of State James Blaine called a “New Magna Charta.” In 1897 Secretary of State Richard Onley negotiated a five-year arbitration agreement with Great Britain to resolve all differences not settled by diplomacy. Russian Czar Nicholas II held a peace conference at The Hague in 1899 and the United States attended. President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. President Woodrow Wilson advocated a League of Nations, which our country did not enter, and President Franklin Roosevelt advocated a United Nations, which our country did enter, with the idea of making and enforcing international law.
Our country must move away from the lawless and ahistorical direction of President Trump. Trump and Trumpism must be defeated for America to be great again.
