Maybe it will all turn out O.K. If it does, put me down as promising to applaud.
But
my fellow Americans, whatever mix of motives led us to create an
Electoral College majority for Donald Trump to become president — and
overlook his lack of preparation, his record of indecent personal
behavior, his madcap midnight tweeting, his casual lying about issues
like “millions” of people casting illegal votes in this election, the
purveying of fake news by his national security adviser, his readiness
to appoint climate change deniers without even getting a single briefing
from the world’s greatest climate scientists in the government he’ll
soon lead and his cavalier dismissal of the C.I.A.’s conclusions about
Russian hacking of our election — have no doubt about one thing: We as a
country have just done something incredibly reckless.
There
is actually something “prehistoric” about the cabinet Trump is putting
together. It is totally dominated by people who have spent their adult
lives drilling for, or advocating for, fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal.
You
would never know that what has actually made America great is our
ability to attract the world’s smartest and most energetic immigrants
and our ability “to develop technology and to nurture our human capital”
— not just drill for coal and oil, remarked Edward Goldberg, who
teaches at N.Y.U.’s Center for Global Affairs and is the author of “ The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs a New Foreign Policy.”
Don’t
misunderstand me: It is excusable to raise questions about climate
change. But it is inexcusable not to sit down with our own government
experts at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
for a briefing before you appoint flagrant climate deniers with no
scientific background to every senior environmental position.
It
is excusable to question if Russia really hacked our election. But it
is inexcusable to dismiss the possibility without first getting a
briefing from the C.I.A., some of whose agents risked their lives for
that intelligence.
That is reckless behavior — totally unbecoming a president, a professional or just a serious adult.
It’s
not that all of Trump’s goals are wrongheaded or crazy. If he can
unlock barriers to innovation, infrastructure investment and
entrepreneurship, that will be a very good thing. And I am not against
working more closely with Russia on global issues or getting more
tough-minded on trade with China.
But
growth that is heedless of environmental impacts, collaboration with
Russia that is heedless of Vladimir Putin’s malevolence, and greater
aggressiveness toward China that is heedless of the carefully crafted
security balance among the U.S., China and Taiwan — which has produced
prosperity and stability in Asia for over four decades — is reckless.
For
an administration that lost the popular vote by such a large margin to
suddenly take the country to such extreme positions on energy,
environment and foreign policy — unbalanced inside by any moderate
voices — is asking for trouble, and it will produce a backlash.
Already,
some G.O.P. lawmakers who love our country more than they fear Trump’s
tweets — like Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain — are insisting
that Russia’s apparent cyberhacking to help Trump win election be
investigated by Congress. If Congress affirms what the intelligence
community believes — that Russia intervened in our democratic process —
that is an act of war. And it calls for the severest economic sanctions.
At
the same time, Trump’s readiness to dismiss the entire intelligence
community because its conclusions contradict his instincts and interests
could really haunt him down the road.
Let’s
imagine that in six months the C.I.A. concludes that North Korea is
about to perfect a nuclear missile that can reach our West Coast and
President Trump orders a pre-emptive strike, one that unleashes a lot of
instability in Asia. And then the next day Trump and his national
security adviser, Mike Flynn, the purveyor of fake news about Hillary
Clinton, defend themselves by saying, “We acted on the ‘high confidence’
assessment of the C.I.A.” Who’s going to believe them after they just
trashed the C.I.A.?
Finally,
Trump has demonstrated a breathtaking naïveté toward Putin. Putin
wanted Trump to win because he thinks that he’ll be a chaos president
who will weaken America’s influence in the world by weakening its
commitment to liberal values and will weaken America’s ability to lead a
Western coalition to confront Putin’s aggression in Europe. Putin is
out to erode democracy wherever he can. Trump needs to send Putin a
blunt message today: “I am not your chump.”
As Stanford University democracy expert Larry Diamond noted in an essay on TheAtlantic.com
last week: “The most urgent foreign-policy question now is how America
will respond to the mounting threat that Putin’s Russia poses to freedom
and its most important anchor, the Western alliance.
Nothing will more profoundly shape the kind of world we live in than how the Trump administration responds to that challenge.”
Nothing will more profoundly shape the kind of world we live in than how the Trump administration responds to that challenge.”
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