The sudden resignation of US defence secretary James Mattis is another depressing milestone in President Trump’s chaotic misrule. Mattis’ decision, prompted by Trump’s impulsive withdrawals of US personnel from Syria and Afghanistan – both major concessions to Russian and Iranian interests – is further evidence that Trump’s whimsical approach to weighty matters eventually wears out even the most devoted public servants.
With more tact than his leader deserved, Mattis’ letter of resignation said: “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are more aligned with yours on this [US support of its allies in the Middle East] and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down …” This diplomatic putdown echoes the frustrations of other generals who have left the administration. The point was quickly noted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is herself dealing with Trump’s brinkmanship over a government shutdown. “General Mattis[‘] resignation letter,” tweeted Pelosi, “is defined by statements of principle — principles that drove him to leave the Administration. All of us should be concerned at this time.”
If this were not enough, the Dow Jones has now fallen to its lowest point in the last 14 months and BuzzFeed is reporting that the US treasury department appears to have been infiltrated by Russian agents as far back as 2016. The Russians established back channel communications with treasury agents during the final year of the Obama administration as part of “a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.”
This constellation of bad news indicates a wider political dysfunction, one that is also evident on the other side of the Atlantic in Theresa May’s contentious Brexit deal. In both cases, incoherent and self-defeating policies have arisen in the political vacuum left by the collapse of an economic faith that served the narrow interests of an economic elite for more than a generation. Since then, political power has largely been ceded to insurgent candidates, but their faltering efforts to accommodate the populist backlash to neoliberalism’s failures have shown they are no better at managing complexity. It also seems unlikely that the resignation or removal of either leader would do much to arrest the aimless drift of domestic and foreign policy in either country.
More than anything else, the hyperpartisan bickering in these countries should alarm a country like ours which tends to view inequality and social, ethnic and political divisions complacently. Democratic governance in the West has never seemed less capable of addressing its most urgent challenges precisely because it underestimated the long term political corrosion these problems can produce. As more democracies surrender themselves to shysters and opportunists like Trump, Orban, and Bolsonaro, fledgling democracies like ours seem increasingly vulnerable to unprincipled and authoritarian leadership. We should all be concerned.
