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Donald Trump: America’s weak strongman
Trump is a weak strongman, and America’s adversaries may understand that better than most Americans.
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A mural by Berlin-based graffitti artist Eme Freethinker of United States President Donald Trump and lettering reading 'Made in China' is pictured on a wall at the Mauerpark public park in Berlin, Germany on April 26. (AFP/Tobias Schwarz)
O
ver the past two months, financial investors have hit upon a new trading strategy, based on a simple rule: TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. America’s president threatens to slap massive import tariffs on friends and foes alike, or to remove the Federal Reserve chair, only to back down when the whip of the market imposes its uncompromising discipline. Then he switches back to tariffs, only to back down yet again.
It is a pattern that extends beyond the economy. In fact, it is the defining feature of Donald Trump’s presidency. But Trump is not just “chicken.” He is a weak strongman, and America’s adversaries may understand that better than most Americans.
Many Americans fear Trump, so they imagine that others must, too. But no one outside America fears Trump as such. America’s friends fear an arsonist, someone who destroys what others have created. And America’s enemies welcome the destruction wrought by Trump and by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. When Musk recently stepped down, the leading Kremlin ideologue Alexander Dugin lamented his departure: “DOGE made a great favor to the entire world liquidating USAID, Health department and Department of education.”
Trump is strong in a relative sense, after he destroys institutions, what remains is his presence. But he is weak because, having destroyed the government departments overseeing money, weapons and intelligence, the United States has no actual tools to deal with the rest of the world. He plays a strongman on television, and he is a talented performer. But his strength consists solely in his audience’s submissiveness. His performance arouses a dream of passivity: Trump will fix it.
To be sure, Trump’s charisma is a kind of strength. But it cannot be brought to bear on any problem, and it is irrelevant outside the US. Trump’s supporters might think that America needs no friends because it can intimidate its enemies without help. But we already know that Trump cannot make Canada or Mexico, much less China, Iran or Russia, do his bidding.
That only works at home. For years, Trump has used rallies and social media to inspire random violence against his domestic opponents. This has led to a self-purge of the Republican Party and forged a docile cohort of congressional cadres. The people who submit to Trump perceive him as a strongman, but what they are experiencing is their own weakness. And their weakness cannot magically become strength in the wider world.
The capital letters and exclamation points in social media posts that Trump has directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months, demanding that he stop the war in Ukraine, have had no effect on Putin’s emotional state, let alone on Russian policy. And inciting stochastic violence will not work on foreign leaders. No one in Irkutsk is going to threaten or harm Putin because Trump posted something on the internet.
