Why Congress Would Not Be Able to Rein in a President Trump

Paul Ryan and other Republicans who are acting much like German politicians and business leaders in the early 1930's who thought they could rein in and control Adolph Hitler truly need a wake up call.  They need to face the frightening reality that if elected to the presidency, it will be difficult if not impossible to rein in Donald Trump.  As commander-in-chief, Trump could initiate military action and create chaos and potentially unleash irreversible disasters on America.  Similarly, he could act through executive orders that would stand until struck down by the courts or overturned by Congressional legislative action.  A piece in Salon reminds us that  by the time Congress could act, it might be too late.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump has made many promises on the campaign trail about things he will fix (a broken immigration system), change (the way trade deals are negotiated) and build (a wall on the southern border) if elected president. Those who do not support Trump, regardless of political party, comfort themselves with the constitutional reminder that our government includes three co-equal branches designed to protect against the accumulation of too much power in too few hands. Those checks and balances aside, could President Trump accomplish any of his stated objectives through unilateral actions?

Scholars of the presidency and political pundits alike have noted the expanding presidential powers during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Each relied on executive action (executive orders, agreements, proclamations and signing statements) to implement and at times to bypass Congress on policies both foreign and domestic (particularly regarding war powers in the fight against terrorism since 9/11). This trend is not new, as the expansion of presidential power has often occurred during times of political crisis.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about executive power is that there is nothing to stop a president from initiating action, even if unconstitutional. The consequences — whether legal or political — come after the fact. If Trump issued an executive order to ban Muslim immigrants, the directive would stand unless and until checked by Congress or the courts. Congress can pass legislation to overturn an executive order, or through its power of the purse, it can refuse to provide funding. Federal courts can place an injunction on an executive order (as was the case earlier this year regarding Obama’s executive order to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation), or declare a presidential action to be unconstitutional. Public opinion can also turn against a president, as can support within the president’s party, and both can have electoral consequences.

Would any of this be enough incentive to give President Trump pause before taking action? An accurate prediction would be difficult, but aggressive action by Trump regarding key issues on his policy agenda would not be shocking. 

A reader sent me a link that reminds us sometimes a single unilateral action can unleash unexpected and ultimately vastly deadly consequences that could damage or end the lives of  literally millions of people.  The link is here.  Can we really believe that a narcissistic and politically and historically ignorant would not trigger what the author calls the "Archduke Francis Ferdinand moment,"referring to the assassination that triggered World War I.  A war that that lead to the downfall of nations and empires and likely cost 17-20 million lives.  

World War I: Prelude to Disasters that Continue Today

Map of Europe - August 1914 - click image to enlarge

I will be the first to admit that I am a history nerd.  I've always loved history because, in my view, it explains how the world has gotten to its current situation and, if one will bother to understand it, how to avoid the same mistakes of the past.  Sadly, most politicians - particularly Americans - and rulers around the world seem to never learn from history's lessons.  Anyone with a knowledge and understanding of the history of the Middle East could have predicted the disasters that ensured (and continue to unfold) in Afghanistan and Iraq which have now spread to envelop more of the Middle East.  One of America's biggest problems is one of hubris and a misguided belief in "American exceptionalism."  Americans think they know better than others and that they can succeed where others have failed.  The truth s that America is no different that other countries despite the xenophobia of the Christofascists in particular.  

A piece in The Daily Beast looks at two new books that examine how hubris and a lack of any serious true long term plan on the eve of and during World War I set the stage for many of today's problems not to mention the blood bath of World War II.  What happened during World War I - a war that many expected to be over in 6 months when it began - ought to make all politicians think in terms of the long game and not short term policies that will excite their party's base and/or policies that ignore the historic realities of the regions where America would seek to impose its will.  As the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Right now, there is plenty of reason to be very afraid. Both books ought to be mandatory reading for every politician in Washington and every senior military officer.  Here are some article highlight (I encourage readers to read the entire piece):

During the first half of the 20th century European civilization embarked on a journey into the abyss: it moved from being the epicenter of sophistication, civilization, high culture, and knowledge, to become home to the most savage episodes of collective-barbaric-violence ever witnessed in the history of mankind.

World War I was a catastrophic turning point for humanity: 70 million men were mobilized to fight; nearly 10 million perished; communities were annihilated, and massive populations were displaced across Europe. The so call “war to end all wars,” paradoxically, created a more violent planet than what had existed before the first shots were fired.

Much of Europe in 1914 resembled a world of cosmopolitan tolerance, noble aesthetics, grand opera houses, and paternal kingdoms—which in some cases, but not all, ruled with benevolence, providing the subjects were loyal and obedient to their masters. By the time the Great War had ended just four years later, however, the sweep of democracies that had replaced the Tsarist, Habsburg, Ottoman, and German empires resembled something closer to Dante’s Inferno: a chaotic-hellish nightmare razed to the ground. And any semblance of normality that had previously existed seemed to have evaporated.

So did this seemingly stable world, which inherited its rational values from key Enlightenment thinkers— who believed in the progress of humanity— tumble into chaos by mere chance? Or was there any truth to Leon Trotsky’s remark that while history offers no guarantees, it is not without logic.   

Technology played an important role in helping to destroy the existing social order. In his 1901 book, Anticipations, the British science fiction author H. G. Wells predicted the decay of political systems across Europe, describing how the mechanization of warfare—which developed rapidly in tandem with modernity—would bring about unprecedented violent changes to the world.

Horrific suffering and horror emerged across both the eastern and western fronts during this period. And by 1918 there had been a tumultuous upheaval of the four dynasties that dominated East and Central Europe. Politics across the continent would never be the same again.

As early as 1905, French sociologist Emile Durkheim warned that while a war between his own nation and Germany would be the “end of everything,” an even darker force was presenting itself in the East: revolutionary socialism.

[I]t would return European civilization back to a period of darkness not witnessed since the Middle Ages.

The sudden collapse of these societies is what the late British historian Eric Hobsbawn referred to in his book The Age of Extremes as “capitalist in its economy; liberal in its legal and constitutional structure; bourgeois in the image of its characteristic hegemonic class; glorying in the advance of science, knowledge and education, and profoundly convinced of the centrality of Europe [whose] major states constituted the system of world politics.”

To fully comprehend the short century that Hobsbawn has famously referred to as the “Age of Catastrophe”—that is the years 1914-1989—we need to understand how, and why, the existing social order dramatically disintegrated, almost without warning, as the First World War concluded.

{t}wo new books by two distinguished British historians both take a fresh approach in analyzing the conflict.

In the introduction to Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War 1914-1918, Alexander Watson claims this is the first modern history book to narrate the Great War from the perspective of the two major Central Powers.

The war began a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohneberg, by Serbian terrorists, on June 28, 1914. And it was existential fear, rather than feelings of certainties in the central powers’ military capabilities, that propelled the conflict into existence in the first place.

[T]he major losses of the First World War profoundly changed the political landscape of central Europe indefinitely.  The ramifications of this can still be seen today. One needs only to look at the violent culture that pervades in places like Ukraine, and some of the Balkan states—where respect for the rule of law is minimal, and ethnic tensions run extremely high—to see how they are a direct result of the politics of the First World War.

Watson also reminds us that the armistice signed at Versailles in November 1918 humiliated Germany into taking full responsibility for the war, as well as landing them with incredible debt that crippled the German economy and brought on massive hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic of the ’20s. In turn, this economic catastrophe subsequently led to the rise of the Nazi party.

Because the region was such a diverse mix of ethnicities, the self-determining-homogenous nation states that the American president, Woodrow Wilson, rather naively wished to see flourish actually sent this part of Europe into complete chaos, rather than creating the stability that he had predicted. . . . ethnic conflicts in the countries that emerged in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire nearly doubled after 1918.

If Watson’s book focuses predominantly on the voices of ordinary citizens across Central and Eastern Europe who actually fought in the war, Adam Tooze’s The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931 views the conflict from a geopolitical perspective.

Tooze is intent on analyzing this period from a revisionist perspective. He wants to make sense of how the politics of World War I shaped the interwar period and led to the nightmare of 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and all hell broke loose.

Tooze’s thesis continually comes back to a single point: how the United States emerged from the conflict as the most dominating force in the world economy. In this sense, he argues, it is unique as a nation. In no previous era in human history had one country ever completely dominated world finance with such ease.

In Tooze’s view, the political landscape that emerged from World War I was a failed ideological liberal-progressive project launched primarily by Woodrow Wilson, who used America’s position of privileged detachment to frame the transformation of world affairs.

Wilson wanted to end imperialist rivalries in European politics. And only a “peace without victory”—the goal he announced to the U.S. Senate in January 1917—could ensure that the United States would emerge as the undisputed arbitrator of world affairs.

Tooze provides the reader with numerous questions here, such as: What had gone so wrong after 1918? Why was American policy miscarried at Versailles? Why did the world economy implode in 1929? And why did the Western Powers lose their grip in such a spectacular fashion in the decade following the end of the war?

By way of answering these questions, Tooze guides us through the numerous diplomatic and economic catastrophes that emerged from World War I. Eventually we start to get a well-rounded and extremely comprehensive insight into why Wilson’s American foreign policy was so misguided.

Wilson placed his faith 100 percent in American capitalist values, which he believed were natural byproducts of American exceptionalism: the idea that the United States is guided by God’s will to be morally and spiritually superior to the rest of the world.

But Wilson was gravely mistaken when he placed his faith in the idea that “markets and business would replace politics and military power.’ As Tooze writes, “the consequences of this push to depoliticize the world economy were perverse.
Wilson’s biggest mistake was to place “the self-determination of peoples’” at the center of his post-war vision. While this slogan may have made for healthy wartime propaganda, and increased his popularity in the short term, it was an extremely naïve view of how the emerging order would eventually play out on European soil. And it merely delayed the apocalyptic maelstrom that followed rather than preventing it.

Both authors suggest that today we must recognize that a failed American foreign policy during this time only helped to aid the drastic ideas that emerged in the coming decades.

Following the Great War, tolerance across Europe would be replaced by extreme hatred. And ideas promising utopian living—in the form of both fascist and communist politics—would fairly quickly come to shape the new era: which was a zero sum game style of politics.

Back in 1918, as the remains of 10 million corpses began decomposing into the bloody soil of a world that would be forever changed, there were constant cries from statesman, citizens, and civil society of “never again.”

But if history teaches us anything, it’s that the past doesn’t prevent us from making the same mistakes, over and over again.

With each passing day the battle in the Middle East between Islamic State militants and the West more closely resembles Europe’s religious wars of the 17th century, and global stability once again looks increasingly under threat.

Therefore one can only remain optimistic: hoping that the brighter sides of our humanity, which increases our altruistic side as a species, will somehow overcome fear and hatred at all costs.

A first step in avoiding disaster is for American politicians to cease always believing that they/America knows best and toss aside the hubris embodied in the myth of American exceptionalism.   Will this happen?  Likely not, especially among the Republican Party base.

the fruits of hubris

Hamar House Center for Diversity and Inclusion

Blogger friend Bob Felton of Civil Commotion is vacationing in Michigan and came across this sign that he thought I would find of interest.  It turns out the project is at Michigan Technological University.  Here's how "Hamar House" describes its mission:

The Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Michigan Technological University is a resource for preparing and empowering socially conscious leaders who will create the future. The staff actively encourages the intellectual, social, and professional growth of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (GLBTQ) students; students of color; and women. Our programs focus on cultural awareness, community building, and student retention.

 I've been unable to find out how the  facility got its name, but if any readers know, please drop me a message.  I am not aware of any relatives in Michigan, but one never knows.  With many of the records destroyed during World War II at the German port that my father's ancestors from Austria sailed from as they headed to America, I could well have unknown relatives in Michigan (I have a likely distant cousin in South Carolina that I met on Facebook of all places.  Oh, and did I mention that he's gay too?)

A Century Later the Ghosts of Sarajevo Live On

One hundred years ago today the spark that ignited World War I was lighted when Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo.  Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire which at the time included far flung and very different ethnic and religious groups including parts of the Balkans which have been a powder keg for wars and sectarian violence over the centuries.  I am currently reading a book on Franz Ferdinand and his wife and the irony is that had he lived, Franz Ferdinand might have brought the reforms that Austria Hungry desperately needed but which his elderly, out of touch uncle, Emperor Franz Josef, refused to permit.  The other irony is that Sophie, who ended up dying with her husband, had been treated like dirt by much of the Court in Vienna for not being "sufficiently royal" to marry a Hapsburg even though she was from the aristocracy and had relatives in other royal houses in Europe.  Their murder was prompted in some ways by Serbian nationalism, but also involved was that always perverse factor: religion.  The empire included Catholics, Orthodox and Muslim citizens and, as seems always to be true of religion, hate and animosity were the results.  (Dislosure: my father's parents came to America from Austria-Hungry in 1913) A piece in the New York Times looks at the still smoldering divisions.  Here are excerpts:

As the 100th anniversary approaches, the clusters of visitors have thickened at the street-corner museum in Sarajevo’s old town that stands where Gavrilo Princip claimed his place in history on June 28, 1914, firing the shots that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, and setting off World War I.

But for all the excited chatter among the tourists on the sidewalk where the 19-year-old Princip fired his Browning semiautomatic pistol, killing the 50-year-old heir to the Hapsburg throne and his pregnant consort, there is a pervasive ordinariness in the setting. Little about it conveys the enormity of the assassination and its aftermath: the major European powers and their allies — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires — marching in lock step into war.

In the centenary commemorations in Sarajevo, culminating on Saturday with a concert in the old city hall, peace is the official theme. But the ethnic and nationalist divisions that motivated Princip are anything but history in this part of the world, which was ravaged only two decades ago by bloody sectarian fighting and is even now the scene of dueling efforts to define Princip’s legacy. As Europe diligently promotes an ideology of harmony, broad areas of the continent, the Middle East and elsewhere continue to struggle with versions of the destructive forces unleashed that day.

“To me, what is happening across Bosnia today, and what is happening in many other parts of the world, is very much like the beginning of the 20th century,” said Vera Katz, a scholar at the University of Sarajevo’s History Institute. “Seeing how some of our communities have made Princip into a mythical figure has made me think that we have hardly moved on at all.”

A century later, Bosnia’s Serbs, Muslims and Croats remain deeply divided in their attitudes toward Princip. Many Serbs view him as a heroic fighter against Austro-Hungarian rule — on behalf of Serbs first, but also, they say, on behalf of Croats and Muslims — and thus as an early standard-bearer for the South Slav kingdom of Yugoslavia, which emerged from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disintegrated amid the resurgent nationalist and sectarian passions of the 1990s.

Among the largely Catholic Croats and some Bosnian Muslims, many of whom looked to the authorities in Vienna at the time of the assassination for protection against Balkan domination by the mainly Orthodox Serbs, it is more common to condemn Princip as an anarchist or terrorist, as the Sarajevo court did when it sentenced him to 20 years’ imprisonment. He died of tuberculosis, proud and unrepentant, in a Hungarian prison in 1918.

So it is small wonder that the centenary has revived the passions that made Bosnia a hotbed of violence in both world wars and again in the 1990s. In the last conflict, a vote by Bosnian Muslims and Croats in 1992 to secede from Yugoslavia set off a civil war with Serbs in which about 110,000 people were killed, including more than 11,500 under artillery siege in Sarajevo, according to records compiled since the war.

Despite the boycott by hard-line Serbs, the hope is that the centenary can be used to move sectarian groups toward a new sense of the benefits of a shared political life, and away from the political paralysis that has characterized Bosnia since the Dayton agreement.

That accord, which ended the 1990s blood bath, gave Bosnia a multilayered political structure, with more than a dozen governmental and parliamentary bodies — all elected on sectarian lines, and all now tottering under the weight of endemic corruption and fierce personal rivalries.

Nearly two decades later, Bosnia remains one of the poorest nations in Europe. It has an official youth unemployment rate nearing 50 percent and an economy that is still 20 percent smaller than it was when the fighting broke out here in 1992. Hundreds of thousands of refugees remain scattered across Europe, wide areas of the country are virtually depopulated, and tens of thousands of homes are still abandoned and in ruins.

Many Bosnians of all creeds say the country has already turned that corner. What is impeding the building of a modern, multidenominational state, they say, are the narrow-minded, sectarian politicians  . . .

When shells and mortars were falling in the 1990s and Serb artillery batteries were targeting bread and water lines, hospitals and schools

Visegrad, whose population was once two-thirds Muslim, is overwhelmingly Serb now. It suffered some of the worst Serb atrocities, including mass rapes and incinerations of whole families locked into burning homes, in the first months of “ethnic cleansing” in eastern Bosnia in 1992. 

You get the drift: Orthodox versus Catholics and Muslims.  Hate, murder, violence and atrocities spurred on by religion.  Religion is one of the foulest forces in the world.  As for the "narrow minded, sectarian politicians," here in Virginia the phrase could describe the Virginia GOP.   Some defend religion and claim it is a force of good, but if one reviews history, its main fruits are wars, death and violence.  Trying to pretend otherwise doesn't change the true facts.