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EMILY MAITLIS RECENTLY asked on the News Agents podcast why people are running around talking to former diplomats about President Trump when they should be talking to psychotherapists. As a former diplomat, I have to say that I understand the wisdom of Emily’s question. So allow me a spot of amateur psychoanalysis…
President Trump’s illegal military intervention in Venezuela and his absurd territorial claims on Greenland confirm that he has made no worthwhile New Year’s resolutions.
Facing international and domestic pressures, he appears suddenly to have withdrawn, for the moment, his threats to seize Greenland militarily and to impose higher tariffs on Europe. However, it was clear yet again from his performance this week at Davos that he remains broadly set on the same dangerous path of impulsive intimidation, self-aggrandisement and childish narcissism.
He rarely, if ever, behaves rationally. It is therefore extremely difficult to understand what motivates him. Nevertheless, it is essential for other countries to try to make some sense of his erratic behaviour so that they can grapple with the threat it poses. This is particularly urgent for European countries now facing his preposterous posturing on Greenland.
One phenomenon identified by psychoanalysts that may help to provide at least some insight into Trump’s conduct is “projection”. Psychological projection involves attributing one’s own faults or failings to others. Trump is a textbook case of this phenomenon.
For example, he threatened the Iranian regime with US military intervention if it used violence against protestors. Obviously, one’s sympathies must be entirely with those Iranians who have faced vicious repression for wanting to bring democracy to their country. But Trump is the very last person in a position to condemn violence against peaceful protestors.
His ongoing deployment of the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) across the streets of his own country, which recently led to the horrific murder of an innocent young woman in Minnesota, demonstrates his own disdain for peaceful protest. It is a perfect example of “projection”, namely Trump attributing his own instinct for domestic repression to the Iranian regime.
Another example was the new US National Security Strategy published in December, at the same time both so toxic and so childish that President Putin described it as “largely consistent” with Moscow’s vision. The Trump administration’s psychological projection was reflected in the Strategy’s core criticism of the European Union, namely its claim that Europe is heading towards “civilisational erasure”. The US administration is in, in reality, scribing a threat facing not Europe but the United States itself if it remains on its current trajectory.
Certainly, Europe suffers from significant weaknesses. However, it is working determinedly to protect its imperfect but still admirable and vibrant civilisation.
The threat of “civilisation erasure” arises rather within and from the United States, a threat that looks increasingly real. Of course, not all Americans are Trump supporters, and many remain deeply attached to their traditional values. They will, presumably, work later this year to weaken Trump in the midterm congressional elections.
Meanwhile, the current US government continues to work relentlessly to erase important aspects of American and global civilisation: the rule of law, the balance of powers, the principle that the results of democratic elections must be accepted, the United Nations, the binding nature of international treaties, the environment, appropriate support for the poorest, both at home and abroad. The list is endless, and the pattern is clear.
Of course, threats to Europe come from elsewhere also, notably from Russia’s military aggression. However, it is President Trump’s abandonment of the assumption that the United States will continue to stand by other democracies and decent values that have emboldened Putin and unsettled the delicate balances of a fractured world.
Another glaring example of the Trump administration’s psychological projection is its unabated criticism of the alleged suppression of free speech in Europe. The point, in this context, is not the absurdity of the criticism. There can hardly be a single person of intelligence and integrity anywhere in the world who takes it remotely seriously. The point is rather the irony of Trump’s America posing as an advocate of free speech.
It is difficult not to conclude that, in this case also, Trump and his people are projecting onto Europe an unconscious awareness of the growing threats they themselves pose to free speech in their own country. Many people in Ireland will be directly aware of those threats from the requirement that applicants for US visas must divulge all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used over the previous five years. The necessary purpose and effect of that requirement is to undermine free speech by gentle intimidation or worse.
Beyond that, there are, for example, the threats to US TV networks for saying things the President doesn’t like and the intimidation of individual journalists.
Trump’s latest psychological projection is his nonsensical claim that European support for the sovereignty of Denmark and Greenland will undermine Nato. Most people, including, hopefully, an increasing majority in his own country, recognise that the threat to Nato comes directly from the White House.
The European Union has no alternative but to reject out of hand criticisms from Washington about civilisational erasure and free speech in Europe. That means defending our democracies against external intervention, including from the US, in support of far-right populism and xenophobia.
It requires acting courageously to protect meaningful free speech in Europe by combating disinformation and exercising the necessary controls in relation to US social media companies.
It means rejecting out of hand Trump’s bullying threats against the territory of a European partner. It requires the EU to stand by its civilisation and its values in a world in which such values are increasingly under threat.
Bobby McDonagh is a former Irish Ambassador to the EU, UK and Italy. He is an executive coach and commentator on subjects around the EU and Brexit.
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