His instincts were commercial and transactional \u2013 a concern that America might lose defense contracts in a confrontation with the Saudi government. \u201cI don\u2019t like stopping massive amounts of money that\u2019s being poured into our country,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Trump began his diplomatic confrontation with Saudi Arabia by pointing out (and exaggerating) the kingdom\u2019s economic leverage against us \u2013 the deal completely stripped of art.<\/p>\n
Trump has reduced the cost of oppression and political murder in the world by declaring it none of America\u2019s business. And when you reduce the cost of something, you get more of it.<\/p>\n
The aggregation of such horrors \u2013 the sum of killing and human misery at this historical moment \u2013 is stunning. And America\u2019s president is not concerned enough to be ashamed of it.<\/p>\n
There is the Saudi war in Yemen, which has caused massive displacement, hunger and disease. The Trump administration has certified that the Saudis are taking sufficient measures to prevent civilian casualties. The United Nations, meanwhile, has accused Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of war crimes, including arbitrary detention, torture and rape.<\/p>\n
Syria remains a bleeding wound. Hundreds of thousands have died. More than 5 million people have left the country as refugees. More than 6 million are internally displaced. During the largest refugee crisis since World War II, the U.S. has slashed the number of refugees it will admit to the lowest level in four decades.<\/p>\n
In China, perhaps a million ethnic Uighurs are being held in re-education camps. Yet the whole of Trump\u2019s relationship with China seems determined by the level of our trade deficit.<\/p>\n
Then there is South Sudan\u2019s five-year civil war, in which perhaps 380,000 people have died and around 2.5 million people have fled the country. Decades of American effort to help give birth to that nation are being washed away on Trump\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n
I conduct this tour of global horrors, not to argue that America could easily resolve each one, but to point out that they don\u2019t even register in the president\u2019s priorities. This does violence to American ideals. But it also illustrates a foreign-policy law. A vacuum of American leadership is not occupied by good and pleasant things. It is filled by ruthless power politics, aimless allies, aggressive authoritarians, gathering threats and cruelty without consequence. And the trail of evidence leads from the villages of Myanmar to a consulate in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
Michael Gerson is a columnist for The Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" instincts were commercial and transactional \u2013 a concern that America might lose defense contracts in a confrontation with the Saudi government. \u201cI don\u2019t like stopping massive amounts of money that\u2019s being poured into our country,\u201d he explained. Trump began his diplomatic confrontation with Saudi Arabia by pointing out (and exaggerating) the kingdom\u2019s economic leverage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6040],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-michael-gerson"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97462"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}