No, not in the sense that he won the war with Iran. The US is likely to lose there, much as we lost in Vietnam, and for much the same reason — asymmetrical warfare, which Trump does not understand. Nor is he winning the economic war, or the political war, and certainly not the moral war. Trump is winning the only war that really matters to a narcissist: the war to remake the world in his image.
John B. Judis argues somewhat along these lines in his NOTUS column this morning: Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else):
Trump himself may soon be disgraced, but he and his administration have set in motion long-term changes that are going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Trump, it is increasingly clear, is a figure of enormous historical significance who is reshaping America and the globe in ways that will not easily be undone by Democratic wins in future elections.
Judis calls on Hegel’s analysis of historical trends to make his point (though not in the direction Hegel may have been hoping the world would go):
Trump may or may not have fully understood what he was doing, but he did, clearly and correctly, sense that the world was at a turning point, which he encapsulated in his promise to “make America great again.” . . .
Trump’s break with neoliberalism and liberal internationalism perfectly fits Hegel’s profile of the world-historical individual standing at the center of a transition from one era to another. So do his character and leadership. He didn’t merely appear to act out of a “morbid craving” for power and glory; that is at the center of his being.
There is an eternal argument among historians over whether the times makes the man or the man makes the times. My position is that it is a combination of both, though one side is often weightier than the other. In this case, I think the times were ripe for a person like Trump. David French makes this point in his NYT op-ed today: We Have Reached End-Stage Polarization :
Does anyone think a healthy nation with a healthy political culture would elect a man like Donald Trump not once, but twice?
He explains:
We’ve known for a long time that America is deeply polarized, and we’ve known the problem is only getting worse. . . . This approach is profoundly dangerous to our republic. The American constitutional system is, at its heart, a dispute-resolution mechanism. It takes all the differences and divisions inherent in a continent-sized multiethnic, multifaith democracy and channels them into a political system marked by checks and balances and firewalls against tyranny. . . .
But hatred puts this system to its most severe test — a test we’ve faced over and over again. It is relatively easy to support the civil rights of people you like (even if you disagree with them). It is profoundly difficult to support the civil rights of people you hate.
Into this cauldron plunged Trump. He began his 2016 campaign with hatred — blaming Mexicans for crime in that infamous escalator ride (that he was riding it down was in itself an unintended signal). Since then, he has continuously poured oil on troubled fires, as it were. There is no bigotry too extreme, no discomfort too petty, no disagreement too minor, for him to seize on and make worse.
This, I contend, makes Trump different from the precious personages that Judis cites as Hegel’s models: Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon. This much is true:
Trump, like Hegel’s world-historical individuals, has ignored or repudiated “sacred interests” including the Constitution and its checks and balances. . . . [His] willingness to defy law and morality, and to pursue power and glory relentlessly, has been integral to world-historical individuals — and to their ability to detonate outworn ideas and institutions.
Trump may, as Judis hopes, shortly self-destruct. Not only is he old and in poor mental and physical health, he is acting far more recklessly than Alexander’s campaign in India, Caesar at the Rubicon, Napoleon thrashing through the snow toward Moscow. But those rulers, for all their faults, their greed, their destruction of lawful order, did not act with the sheer malice, the cruelty for the fun of it — Trump Talks Hitting Iran ‘for Fun’ as Admin Criticized Over Tone — that Trump and his hirelings display at every moment.
That is the mark Trump is really making on the world. And the world is molding itself to fit. Stopping that, reversing that, will take a lot more than just beating him back at the ballot box. It will take generations of hard work to restore the ideals of Hegel’s Enlightenment era: civility, human rights, the use of reason to settle disputes, and yes: diversity, equity, and inclusion. We were making progress; Trump has set that progress back.
He did not do that singlehandedly; he has had lots of help, lots of backing. He did not make the fractured world that French describes; he took advantage of it and widened the fractures into chasms. Repairing the world will also mean fighting back against those who egged him on, who bribed him to do what he wanted to do anyway, who plan to continue to remake the world in Trump’s image once he is gone.
That is the challenge we face in the world Trump is leaving us.
