Some 2400 years ago, Aristotle observed in The Politics:
And the rule of the law, it is argued, is preferable to that of any individual. On the same principle, even if it be better for certain individuals to govern, they should be made only guardians and ministers of the law.… Therefore he who bids the law rule may be deemed to bid God and Reason alone rule, but he who bids man rule adds an element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men. The law is reason unaffected by desire.
Aristotle extolled the supremacy of law neither out of goodness nor decency but because he understood that law enables the most durable and efficient form of political rule. Law, specifically, legitimizes and protects society’s rulers as they seek above all else the smooth and continuous extraction of wealth from the ruled. It has been apparent for centuries that upholding the system of law can at times compromise a particular ruler’s immediate goals even as it protects rulers in the aggregate. Frederick the Great recognized this well when the absolutist Prussian leader submitted to a court that had ruled against him in a civil suit brought by a neighbor who complained about the king’s windmill.
Leaders in the U.S., irrespective of their decency or lack thereof, have also largely understood the invaluable function of the rule of law. This is why, before 2020, losers of presidential elections have always conceded, even when, like Al Gore, they had valid reasons not to. Richard Nixon conceded the 1960 presidential election (in which there was likely foul play in Illinois) not because he was a good sport or decent. On the contrary, he was able to put his extreme bitterness and paranoia to the side in service to the good of not the whole or society but the golden goose of a remarkably reliable system of power.
Trump is the first major political leader in U.S. history who fails to grasp this concept. He is without doubt cunning and astute, and his policies did not emerge from nowhere, as many of them (most obviously shrinking the federal government and repealing civil rights and liberties) represent long-standing Republican goals. Nevertheless, Trump is explicitly violating court rulings and blasting away at the basis of the court’s – and thereby ultimately the government’s – authority: its perceived legitimacy. Without this legitimacy, every autocrat has learned, government is forced to increasingly rely on the brute force of power and thereby becomes dramatically more inefficient in enforcing its rule, a lesson that Trump’s successors, if not Trump himself, will inevitably learn.
I am partial to structural as opposed to psychological explanations of power, as they recognize the roles played by not only domestic historic but also international continuities and institutional imperatives. Trump’s belligerent authoritarianism can be identified in rulers from Andrew Jackson to Viktor Orbán, and he is more an effect of a restructuring global system than its cause. But it must be said that Trump is dominated to a remarkable degree by a raging narcissism. Not only is Trump incapable of accepting any form of defeat, leading him to cheat in golf tournaments, but he is driven more generally by a colossal desire for affirmation to the detriment of long-term and systematic thinking. Without reference to Trump’s pathological and vindictive narcissism, we cannot, for example, adequately explain his reneging on government contracts or his wildly erratic tariff policies, which not only hurt the markets but have, with likely more lasting consequences, opened a can of worms of deep international resentments and the type of retaliatory economic restructuring that might never be undone (this, by the way, already once occurred in the U.S. following the boycott of British goods during the War of 1812, leading to the expansion of U.S. manufacturing and the overall growth of U.S. power at the expense of Britain). And it is Trump’s fiending for instant gratification along with the more conventional myopia of the businessman that encourages Trump to abandon nearly century-old investments in so-called soft power along with the U.S.’s commitment to the postwar institutional order. That order was built in part upon the premise that the long shadow of the future would require states, at least those in the Northern alliance, to protect their credibility and thereby their relationships with one another. Abandoning the protection-for-influence partnership that had given the U.S. unparalleled say in Western politics, Trump is eliminating the long shadow in favor of the short trade. In international relations, though, the short-trade can be pulled off only once, and any economic benefit, say through reduced payments to NATO, will be more than offset by diminishing returns and lost credibility and clout.
Blowing up an order is in itself not new. But while Nixon upended Bretton Woods by floating the dollar, Nixon knew that U.S. military dominance would sustain the U.S.’s political and economic hegemony. Trump is not an anti-war president, but he is receptive to the electorate’s war fatigue (narcissism has its benefits), which has narrowed the U.S.’s range of action and forced it into partial retrenchment. Suffering two massive military defeats, along with a looming third defeat in Ukraine, the U.S. is in poor position to pursue its politics by other means and in this regard Trump, talking loudly while carrying a small stick, is the perfect man for the moment. But while he bellows that he is trying to avoid World War III in Ukraine, he fails to recognize that his destruction of the postwar international system in favor of an assortment of mistrustful and ideologically dubious regional blocs merely rewinds the clock to the volatility of the prewar era (although with everything on a far larger, and inestimably more destructive, scale and with the societal catastrophe of climate change looming over it all).
Try as he might, Trump cannot bend circumstances to his will not only because he is impetuous and myopic but because his “desire” is the lowest form of rule. This is of course not a demand for better rule or a lament for the lost power of the so-called glory days, but merely an observation that Trump is bound to fail. The main question is how far into ruin we go with him.
