There is so much to say about the Trump Administration that I don’t know where to start. I guess I’ll begin with foreign policy or whatever we should call Trump’s actions to and words about other countries. Not that there’s not a lot to say about domestic issues, but let’s put that off–a little while.

I believe I have said before that my two favorite TV commentators on public matters are Michael Smerconish and Fareed Zakaria, both of CNN. In case I haven’t said it, please take a look at their names now. Smerconish is on Sat AM and Fareed a day later, repeated in the afternoon. I’m sure you can find them on podcasts or wherever if you want to check out older ones. If you have any interest in all this(and everyone should in my opinion)then you’ll find them interesting and honorable, two guys who may have their own opinions but try to stick to facts and reasonable interpretations and to avoid fanaticism and extremists. Michael is perhaps slightly the more opinionated of the two and Fareed the more accomplished scholar and careful historian. Both of them are well worth your time and attention.

Most of what I write this time will be inspired by and based on (but not entirely limited to) information gleaned from Fareed’s program earlier today, Sun, Mar 9.

American foreign affairs are messy and chaotic. Those who paid attention during the first Trump Administration–including political leaders around the world–are unlikely to be surprised. But many of them I think must be dismayed with the speed with which the new President changed so many things and particularly the depth of trouble possible from what he changed to.

First there are the tariffs. I will not even make an effort to run through the many different stances Trump has taken on our trade relations with Canada, Mexico and China in this space of about a week–if you’ve paid any attention to the news you already have a good idea. He has threatened to put hefty tariffs on all of them, then backed off a bit, then declared a one month break for Canada and Mexico on some important items. The sheer confusion of the challenging and contradictory information coming from the Administration is astounding and must be infuriating to deal with for leaders and policy makers in other countries. And not just the countries I’ve referred to–people in other countries must be wondering and waiting.

Now if the worst that comes out of this is confusion, that may be not too bad. Given some quiet, maybe this could be calmed down and straightened out, reasonable tariffs(or none)established and everything brought back to as near normal as possible after this dislocation. But the odds on that are poor. Like it won’t happen or at least not for a long time and after a fair amount of economic damage has been done. And that could spill over into–well, wait a minute for that.

If actual action is taken on the more important of the tariffs suggested–autos, steel, many agricultural produces, for example-then there is likely to be economic dislocation of some kind and it might come fairly quickly. The US puts tariffs on someone’s goods exported here and they put one on some of ours. This has already happened regarding at least one case. This means that their goods will cost more in the US and, wow, guess what, Americans will buy a lot fewer of them. In return the citizens of the other country, for the same reason, will buy fewer of ours. Very possibly there will be reductions in hours worked, perhaps layoffs in both cases if this goes on for long.

Meanwhile, some American companies may get a break for a little while. With limited competition(or none)on the goods in question, they might increase their prices. But many American companies are unhappy about this too. Whatever, their business, there is at least some chance with most that they import some of the parts of whatever they make from, let’s say, county “X,”, our example here. Those goods, will be more expensive or unavailable here. American companies will have trouble getting parts they need and/or will have to pay exorbitant prices for them. Their prices will, in many if not most cases, soon rise. Their profits will be squeezed and their employees will be worse off, facing higher prices and no or little pay increase. Layoffs could be a possibility.

This obviously could have that famous snowball effect. It will gather strength like a snowball rolling downhill and get strong and stronger until it reaches the bottom. How much actual trouble this will cause for the economy and people at large I don’t know. Likely not as much as the Great Recession(2008-2009), would be my guess, but I still think it could be substantial.

Now along with this buy/sell issue of prices and economic retaliation, there comes a mostly(at first, anyway)non-economic result. This would be resentments and mistrust. And these do not bode well for our relations with other countries, regardless of their involvement in the tariff mess. Once a person or a country gets a reputation for dishonesty or untrustworthiness, such a reputation might be hard to shake off. And it is my impression that Donald Trump is particularly accomplished at proving his untrustworthiness quickly and forcefully. And this spills over, now, into overall foreign relations and national security.

On Fareed’s program today there were interviews with a number of foreign leaders. I won’t bother mentioning most of them by name as many of the names are both hard to spell and unknown to the larger number of Americans. But there was a common theme. Our allies do not like the way things are going. It was pointed out by Fareed and by at least one of the leaders that something approaching peace and order has been USUALLY kept in Europe for about 80 years. This is true, to a somewhat lesser extent elsewhere, though obviously not in the Middle East.

It happened like this–At the end of World War II the army of the USSR swept over Eastern Europe like a Red Wave. The correctly despised Nazi legions of Hitler and his allies were driven back and by the spring of 1945 were close to being non-existent. Most of we now call “Eastern Europe” fell under the control, direct or indirect of this army and there was no reasonable alternative authority.

Over the next few years nearly all of Eastern Europe became staunchly allied to the Soviet Union. By political coup, military force or whatever, the Communists, using (rarely)honest elections, crooked elections, political maneuvering and always backed by the presence of Soviet arms took over. By 1948 Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Czechoslovakia were all in the Soviet bag. Germany was still divided as the US. Britain, France and the USSR tried to agree on how it should be put together and ruled.

The Soviets, with their huge army and now with six “satellite” nations as allies faced the rest of the continent (or the world)together and there was a genuine fear in the west that they might try to take Western Europe by force. Had they done so, they had so many troops, many of them battle veterans, that they could likely have taken western Europe to the English Channel in a matter of weeks.

I don’t know if anyone knows or will ever be able to say for certain what went through Stalin’s mind during this time, but there was at least one good reason that they didn’t strike. From 1945 to 1949 the US was the only nuclear power in the world and this meant Stalin would have risked bringing down the power of the US nuclear arsenal upon his country and they had no real defense against it nor any retaliatory threat to use.

Nonetheless, the US and its European allies were worried. The had watched for several years and one after another the states of Eastern Europe had gone Communist and become little USSR’s. Where would it stop? Also, France and Italy, two large European industrial countries had large communist parties who contested the legal and fair elections both countries had. They had not done so well as they had hoped yet, but they had done well enough and generated enough followers that there was real fear one or both of these countries might legitimately vote themselves communist. And if they did, what would their relation to the Soviet Union and it’s foreign policy ambitions be?

It is also likely that the West knew the USSR was working on an A Bomb and might soon have it. Perhaps they did not know when. In any event, a collective defense pact seemed the only way out and NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance in the spring of 1949. It’s sole purpose was to deter the Soviets from attacking Western Europe and it stated–in its famous Article 5–that an attack on any one of the members of NATO would be considered an attack upon them all and all would respond.

The nuclear power the US had was assumed to be part of this and therefore served as a protection to our European allies. This came to be know as the “nuclear umbrella” which has been there for more than 70 years and is still no doubt a serious deterrent to the Russians. (As to the future, well…) But later in 1949 the USSR exploded its first nuclear device and since then each side has had the power to seriously damage or even destroy the other one. Doing so, of course, might imperil world civilization now.

I have explained this in some detail because it is relevant to the current situation. Trump’s foreign policy appears to be a mess;. He and Rubio are going to try to make some kind of deal with Putin by meeting in Saudi Arabia. What kind of deal my be offered or agreed upon is hard to predict.

Trump’s almost daily back and forth on tariffs has given an impression of disorder and confusion in the US and has done nothing to earn us respect anywhere. We have offended both Canada and Mexico, our two leading trading partners, to a very severe degree and neither one is sympathetic to us now. The Europeans too are mistrustful and held their own(without US participation)meeting on security a few days ago. Some European leaders, including the incoming German Chancellor, have said openly that the US seems to be changing sides; at least it appears that way from the way we are treating Ukraine. Consequently there are suggestions that the US “umbrella” will be withdrawn or has been already and that the Europeans must now go it alone against Russia with France and Britain using their own power to replace the American “umbrella.”

This is noble of them, our oldest ally and our mother country, but while I cannot quote you the exact figures, I can tell you that the combined French-British nuclear power comes nowhere near ours and this might be seen more a token rather than a real anti-Russian restraint.

I hope that Trump has not been foolish enough to decide to turn away from Western Europe. I hope he has not done anything already that might look like a permanent change. But if he has, then the world, and especially Europe, will have to live with it, perhaps for a long time. We can, of course, hope that the better angels of the Republican Party (and maybe the few Republicans with the political nerve to contradict Trump)will speak out and maybe prevent this. We hope the Democrats will find their energy and their purpose and join them. But we don’t know.

What we do know is that our foreign policy appears on the surface to be in a state of chaos, both inconsistent and sometimes incoherent. Our economy(watch the market), our influence in the world, our alliance system, our entire national security are all at risk. They could be made far safer by acts of common sense and restraint on the part of the Administration. It’s by no means too late. But they need to get on the right track and they need someone of common sense and with a sense of history and international politics to get on board with advice. I hope they don’t use Elon Musk for this. John Bolton would be a good choice. But somehow I doubt he will be asked.

Most likely they also won’t ask former NATO commander Gen Wesley Clark who was on CNN this afternoon(Mon Mar 10) talking to interviewer Brianna Keilar. He said that the Trump Administration had created a foreign policy which had alarmed Europe. He had talked to people from Ukraine and elswhere on the continent and “They’re afraid . . .They’re asking ‘How can the United States be neutral between an aggressor that stomps on human rights and all the principles of Western democracy and a country that’s been attacked?” Later he added “The American system of alliance basically kept the world away from. . . war for 80 years…This is a really scary departure for America to cast off our allies.” Thank you, General. I hope to hear from you on TV again. But don’t sit by the phone waiting for the Administration to get in touch.