Alliances and anxiety

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Washington Wednesday.

King Charles is in Washington this week—marking 250 years since American independence and celebrating what he calls one of the great alliances in history.

As you heard a moment ago, the King becomes the second British monarch to address the U.S. Congress. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, spoke 35 years ago. 

But the visit comes at a moment of strain between the United States and Britain, and across the broader European alliance that has defined the post–World War II world.

MAST: And all of that unfolding just days after an attempted attack on political leaders here at home. So this week, we’re looking at stability—of alliances abroad, and of our politics in the U.S.

Joining us now is Hunter Baker. He’s a political scientist and a commentator for WORLD Opinions.

Hunter, good morning.

BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Before we get into the rest of the Washington news this week—you just heard Mary Muncy’s report on the Supreme Court stepping into the dispute over Temporary Protected Status. 

Hunter, this is a program Congress created back in 1990 for temporary relief—thus the “T” in TPS. But the longest-running designation is now as old as the law itself.

So, what is the court really being asked to decide here: whether that power to extend or end these protections is solely the domain of the homeland security secretary? Or whether there are limits the Court can enforce?

BAKER: Well, let me take a little bit of a different angle here, because I read a lot about the people who have this temporary protected status, and what you see is they're all frustrated because of the uncertainty of it. It has effectively been treated as something that just sort of goes on forever, and now the end is sort of being contemplated. This could end, you know, within a period of, say, two months, or something like that, and they would have to get their life together to leave the country, despite the fact that they've been living here a very long time.

And it made me think about something that I think is one of the big problems that we have with this area of immigration. Thomas Aquinas is the, the Great Western writer on the law, and one of the questions that he deals with is, is it better to have just a set of firm laws, or would it be better to have lots of wise judges to decide things case by case? 

Maybe it seems obvious to us, but Aquinas says, "No, we need to have firm laws, and we need to stick to those, and then people will be able to predict what will happen in a given situation." 

And that's the problem that we have. We have this crazy immigration situation that is filled with the discretion of judges and administrators in various cases, and what we really need to do is we need to back up and make some firm decisions about how this system works. 

I think that people are caught up in this weird web of discretion that we have, and maybe the Supreme Court can step in and do something that will put us on the path toward having a workable set of laws.

EICHER: All right, Hunter, well, let's return to the visit of the king to the United States. Interesting he would come to help commemorate a, what would we call it, a recent unpleasantness, 250 years ago? 

But you know, you had King Charles talking about reconciliation and renewal between the U.S. and Britain, while at the same time that relationship is under real tension, and the broader European alliance is facing serious questions too.

Do you think that this current state of affairs is just normal diplomatic friction? Do you think it's something deeper than that? Or how do you assess?

BAKER: I think it is something deeper. 

You know, NATO was really a response to the end of World War II, and then the advent of the Cold War, basically put in place to deter Russia and and maybe the additional designs that they might have for the expansion of the Soviet Union. 

Ever since the Cold War ended at the beginning of the 1990s you kind of have to wonder, so what exactly is this thing? I mean, to what degree does the United States need to be bound up in the affairs of Europe in a post-Cold War world?

And so I think that over time, American presidents have pushed for Europeans to deal with more of their own security. But nevertheless, we have borne most of the weight, despite the fact that the population of those European countries is significantly larger than the population of the United States. 

And so Donald Trump, of those American presidents, Donald Trump has been the one to push hardest on this issue of Europe doing more, including England, to protect themselves.

And so when we are doing something internationally, and when we perceive that those NATO members, including England, are not helping us or are ranged against us, then that brings about a lot of resentment, and I think that that's what we're facing now.

And the English have to be very careful, as do the rest of the Europeans, because on the one hand, they don't want to just sort of be, be a puppet of the United States. They don't want to just kind of back our play anytime that we decide to do something. But at the same time, they really need us, and the English in particular, they like to play up this special relationship. It benefits them a lot more than it does us. 

And so what I see with King Charles coming is an attempt to kind of build up that idea of the special relationship and the goodwill. 

And there is something to it, right? I mean, Americans do respond to what's happening in England and English royalty in a way that we don't for other countries, you know, whether other European countries or Mexico south of the border. 

So there's something here, and I think that King Charles is trying to cement it or hold it together.

EICHER: You know, it is interesting to me, because President Trump came into office for the second time around highly skeptical of aid to Ukraine, which was a thing that is so dear to the Europeans. He reversed course, he's on board with this, even though it's a thing that really isn't his choosing. And I think he, frankly, is surprised that the Europeans, even though this is not their war of choice in Iran, wouldn't come around and, you know, get on board and play ball the way he did.

BAKER: I think that’s exactly right. I mean, ever since World War II, the United States has occupied this role of sort of guaranteeing the peace. And yes, I think that you're right, I think that he has kind of come around on Ukraine, and I think that he's surprised and angered not to get more support on Iran, not only because it's his policy, but because it clearly affects everyone in the world. And really, it affects a lot of other countries more than it affects the United States.

EICHER: Like Europe, yeah.

BAKER: Yes.

MAST: Well, and the King's visit comes at the same time that you've got this instability, not just between nations, but within our own politics, and that brings me to what happened over the weekend, Hunter: a third attempt on the life of President Trump. 

Investigators say the suspect in that attempted attack left behind a manifesto explaining his motives. And I have to say, reading through it, there's nothing in it you wouldn't hear on cable news, or read in mainstream political commentary, or in places very close to where I live, see in yard signs in people's lawns.

So what do you make of that? Is this extremism, or is it something more mainstream being taken seriously enough to act on?

BAKER: It's very interesting to me to read the young man's thoughts. You know, he comes from a Christian home, his father appears to be an elder at a conservative Reformed Church. And as I look through the young man's thoughts, I really recognized some of the thinking of Martin Luther. 

Luther talked about, you know, when Christians are supposed to engage in non-resistance, and then he kind of underlines that there's no virtue in not resisting when someone else is being harmed. And so that you might step in—right?—to stop an act of violence against another person.

And this young man has identified Donald Trump as the aggressor, the villain, the person who is putting other people in danger, as though he were committing physical violence directly against him. 

And I, you know, I noticed that one Christian academic in England, who, at one time, many professors of my generation would have read, argued for mercy for this young man, that this young man was seeing himself as a kind of a Bonhoeffer, right? So, so it's very, you know of course, Bonhoeffer resisting Adolf Hitler, this young man resisting Donald Trump. And so why does this young man see Donald Trump as though he were Adolf Hitler? 

And I think that we have to say that part of that blame falls on our political culture and parts of our media, because there are certainly people who, they don't just treat Donald Trump as somebody they disagree with, they treat him as though he were Lex Luthor, you know, a super villain, a would-be Hitler, a fascist, a dictator, when none of those things are really true. 

But we have seen people be rewarded for that kind of narrative, I'm sure there are people who get rich and have lots of supporters behind that kind of narrative. And we see even, even high level office holders who, whenever they're criticized for that kind of narrative, react angrily and simply double down.

MAST: You know, the president, for his part, came out afterward calling for Americans to settle political disputes peacefully. That was something I noticed was not the headline in a lot of the coverage. 

What do you make of that, both his response and how it was treated?

BAKER: Yeah, so I think that one of the good things about Donald Trump is that he doesn't appear to be rattled by these attempts on his life. You know, I looked at the record; we've had four presidents who have been assassinated, and there have been 12 additional attempts on the life of presidents. Well, out of that 12, three are on him! And he has, he has reacted with tremendous equanimity, and, you know, and as you say, calling for people to settle political disputes peacefully.

So, it sort of reveals, as much as he is a person who gets a lot of attention, who sometimes engages in this kind of professional wrestling style rhetoric, there are moments where the gold can shine through, and I think that this is one of those moments where he's trying to get people to settle down and realize the way we should actually try to talk about our disagreements.

EICHER: You know, and you can hear things like, as he said, Why did they go after you? And his response was a very Trumpy sort of, "Well, you know, I'm the only one who's really doing anything serious. And so, yeah, you take out the ones who are consequential. I'm consequential." And you are surprised when you hear things like that, but then you sit back and say, he's kind of right.

BAKER: Yeah, certainly one thing that will never be said about Donald Trump when it is all said and done, is that he was a placeholder. He is not somebody who has simply occupied the office. He came to office with a very definite agenda. He managed to move an entire political party kind of in his direction, you know. And even though there was tremendous resistance to him, he's been able to kind of bring it to heel. And he's dominated American politics, really, by the time it's over, for about 12 years. 

So yeah, he has mattered, and that's part of why he's attracting the negative attention. 

I think, you know, there are young men who they don't know what to do with their lives, and Trump has been made out to be a kind of Emperor Palpatine, and they think that they can, you know, have meaning in their lives by killing him.

EICHER: Hunter Baker is a political scientist, provost at North Greenville University, and a commentator for WORLD Opinions.

Hunter, thanks!

BAKER: Thank you.

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