Kos community:
What is the aggregate short- and long-term monetary cost of Trump’s combined statements and actions?
This is a tantalizing question posed to me by a retired US Foreign Service officer; a man with a distinguished diplomatic career dealing with the nuanced efforts of international diplomacy. Mr. Schmitz (inquiry and professional credits below) is as appalled as the rest of us at Trump’s shenanigans and would like to collaborate with an individual or organization that is attempting to glean such a data point.
Once such a number is derived it would be a powerful and focusing data point that would likely be leveraged by the media in a very useful way. Such a figure would also be understandable to even the craziest drunk uncle at the family BBQ. And, heading into the midterms, this financial cudgel would be quite valuable.
If anyone has a contact or inputs for this inquiry please contact me via the comments sections.
Please read Mr. Schmitz’s inquiry below:
We have just witnessed a two-week international rampage by our President that has damaged U.S. relationships with many of our allies and cast doubt on the value of U.S. international leadership.
We sense that a huge amount of damage has been done to an international public order that the U.S. taxpayers have spent 70 years helping to build through intricate and mutually supporting efforts of our politicians, diplomats, intelligence agencies, economic assistance efforts, and military. However, we cannot put a persuasive value on the loss because, I believe, we have not to date found a way to do so.
Now, we need to. It is not only our President, but many politically engaged citizens, who need to have a clear and simple handle, like a dollar figure, to be able to grasp the value of the pre-existing public order and of the damage it has suffered. A statement such as, “The President has just inflicted a 70 trillion dollar loss on the U.S. by his actions in Europe this week” would both attract short-term attention and help focus minds in the electorate of what the U.S. really has at stake.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is an adage from business management. So, businesses and even some think-tanks have found inventive ways to put values on non-monetary things, such as the life of a forty-year old man, the loss of an arm or leg, a house, open-heart surgery, climate change, unclean air and water, etc.
Can we put a value on NATO for the U.S.? The WTO? The G-7? The U.S-U.K special relationship? A predictable U.S. that will carry out its solemn undertakings? If we could do that, we would have a useful measure on the costs and probable benefits of bad and good governance in international relations and therefore, of these additional costs to the nation of our current President.
Of course, lots of assumptions and guesswork would be involved, and there would be arguments about the formulas; but that is okay: the process itself would be heuristic and draw attention to the costs to the U.S. of having an unfettered President disordering our international relations. The cosmological Drake Equation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation] is even more probabilistic but still has affected programs around the world on SETI research.
Charles A. Schmitz, U.S. Foreign Service Officer retired, founded and was President of Global Access Institute, a non-profit educational organization and co-founded and served as Chairman of Global Business Access, Ltd., an international business consulting firm. He was a consultant for many years with the U.S. Department of State for modernization of its diplomatic communications systems and was General Counsel for The Prospective Group of Rosslyn, VA. He has now retired.
During his 26 years as a lawyer-diplomat, Mr. Schmitz served overseas for the U.S. Department of State in Morocco, Japan, Panama, and Germany and reached the rank of Minister-Counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service. In Morocco, he created the legal structure and administrative framework for the University of North Africa. In Japan, he negotiated the Okinawa Reversion Agreement and subsequently was responsible for the U.S.-Japan security relationship. Subsequently, he managed negotiations to terminate the U.S. Trusteeship over Micronesia and the Marianas; and in Panama, he headed the U.S. team to implement the Panama Canal Treaties.
As Political Advisor to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Mr. Schmitz developed Command information programs relating to facilities operations, tactical activities and intelligence in East and West Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa and inter-mediated among the Command and U.S. Embassies in those regions. He formed and headed the Ramstein Council on International Relations and produced and hosted a weekly network TV program, “Inside International Issues.”
Mr. Schmitz is a graduate of Yale College (BA, magna cum laude), and Yale Law School (JD)
