Here are some relevant short excerpts from the article above:
…Let’s all take a deep breath, shall we? And after we have, let us agree that there is no practical benefit in attempting to meet Mr. Trump’s demands:
- because it is wrong to appease a bully, for starters;
- because to do so can only invite further demands, and further threats;
- because his “concerns” are not, in fact, “valid” – the amount of fentanyl entering the U.S. from Canada is trivial (U.S. customs agents seized a grand total of 43 pounds of it in the last fiscal year), the number of illegal migrants scarcely less so (U.S. border patrol officers stopped fewer than 24,000 people last year, compared to more than 1.5 million crossing from Mexico);
- because it is each country’s responsibility to control its own borders, that is, to police the entry of people and goods, not to demand that others police their exit;
- because if it were such an “easily solvable” matter as Mr. Trump, in his endless devotion to easy solutions, pretends, it would have been done long ago.
There is not, in short, a great deal we can do to satisfy Mr. Trump, and if there were, we would have no assurance that he would remain satisfied for long. There is no point in negotiating with terrorists.
(It’s not even a negotiation. A negotiation is when each side comes to the table, not only with demands, but with something to offer in return. Just threatening to do something horrible if your demands are not met is not negotiating. It’s blackmail. It’s the difference between offering to write a story in exchange for money and threatening to.)
More than that, it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Mr. Trump – a trap that those of us in the reality-based world continue to fall into, which is to attribute to him a rationality he does not possess. It is irrational enough to threaten to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on your nearest neighbours and major trading partners, for problems they did not cause. It is doubly irrational as a response to problems that are, in fact, subsiding: The number of unauthorized crossings on the Mexican border is falling, not rising (monthly encounters in September, at 54,000, were down 75 per cent from the year previous; for the entire fiscal year, they were down 14 per cent), as are the number of fentanyl deaths (off 10 per cent this year).
Nevertheless, there is at least in this a notional rationality, a potential for rationality, a theoretical connection between putative cause and putative effect, if not in this world then in some world it is possible to imagine. The idea, often expressed, that Mr. Trump is essentially “transactional” – that he may not be guided by the usual principles of statecraft, let alone any of the higher ideals, but is at least intelligible in purely “what’s in it for me” terms – is based on attributing to him a kind of grubby rationality, as if he were merely a debased version of ourselves.
…What should we do instead?
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- Play for time. Whatever he might imagine, Mr. Trump was elected with the thinnest of mandates. He is, what is more, a lame duck: The clock began ticking on his presidency from the day he was elected, as it is ticking on his mental and physical health. His thirst for dictatorship is real, but is in competition with his emotional instability and sheer incompetence. The longer time goes on, the more mistakes he is likely to make, and the weaker he is likely to become, politically and otherwise.
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- Prey upon his weaknesses. Probe his psyche. Figure out his break points. Do not be afraid to annoy him. Most people do stupid things when they’re angry; multiply by 100 in the case of Mr. Trump. Tempt him to give into his demons; lead him onto the rocks of his own intemperance. His mistakes are your opportunities.
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- Stand together. Work with allies, in Canada – yes, that means getting the Premiers onside, if only to shut them up – in Washington and state capitals, around the world. We are dealing with a dangerous lunatic. That is inescapable, at least for the foreseeable future. As with the Soviet Union, we cannot defeat him. But we can contain him.
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- Stand up straight. Ultimately we can’t control what Mr. Trump does. We can, however, control what we do. Maybe we can’t prevent him from wrecking the North American economy, or whatever else he decides to do to us. But we can at least maintain our dignity, our composure and our self-respect. That’s not the only thing that matters, but it’s something.
