WELCOME ABOARD THE TITANIC

I'm not sure which of Trump's never-ending stream of tweets, fiats, provocations, sadistic put-downs and flip-flopping decisions finally gave me that unmistakable sinking feeling. But I think it was the announcement in his National Security Speech of December 18, that he is cutting climate change out of America's national security strategy. This marks a major shift away from the Obama administration's security strategy, which recognized climate change as one of the major risks facing the nation and the world, and put international cooperation to minimize that threat high on the national security to-do list. As Trump said in his speech, “We are charting a new and very different course.”

 "Full speed ahead"--The RMS Titanic--the greatest ship of its day
Credit:  F.G.O. Stuart/Wikimedia Commons

It's been clear for a long time that climate-change denial has been the price of admission to the current Republican Party regardless of the real-world consequences. A saving grace, however, has been that the US Department of Defense and the intelligence agencies responsible for the security of the nation have generally resisted this politically convenient untruth and have made plans and deployed resources in response to such “risk or threat multipliers” as “livelihood devastation, state fragility, human displacement, and mass death,” not to mention extreme weather, coastal flooding, environmental degradation, threats to infrastructure, forced migration, and what James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence characterized as “unpredictable instability”caused by climate change.

Now, thanks to Trump, and as reflected in the accompanying 55-page document, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, by choice and design, climate change and its impacts are not to be found. Instead, there's a lot of focus on accelerated economic growth, bigger and better armaments, “fairer” trade and “energy dominance,” all of which, in the absence of a recognition of climate change and environmental degradation and destabilization, will only increase the threats and impacts we will be encountering.

This stance is all too reminiscent of the first (and last) voyage of the RMS Titanic, the greatest ship of its day, carrying the cream of international society as well as hundreds of ordinary people, and believed at the time to be unsinkable. Despite warnings from other ships about sea ice, Captain Edward Smith ordered the Titanic to steam full speed ahead through the north Atlantic night.

Everyone knows the result—nature in the form of an iceberg proved mightier than the great ship; the "unsinkable" vessel sank at 5:18 in the morning of April 15, 1912, and 1500 lives were lost, including that of Captain Smith himself. The Titanic, broken in two, is now slowly disintegrating 12,415 feet beneath the Atlantic.

The bow of the Titanic, in the depths of the North Atlantic
Credit: NOAA/ University of Rhode Island

Like the 2,224 souls aboard the Titanic on that ill-starred night, we are now shoveling on the coal and steaming full speed ahead across a treacherous sea with our captain and crew willfully blind to one of the gravest risks we face. That's making it a bit hard for me to just sit back and enjoy the glittering company, the fine food and drink, and theband's lovely music. I can't get the image of the dark, icy waters just ahead out of my mind.

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REX TILLERSON STRAIGHTENS US OUT ON AMERICAN VALUES VS AMERICA'S ACTIONS

On May 3, Secretary of State and ex-CEO of EXXON Rex Tillerson gave a speech to assembled State Department staff to interpret for them what President Trump's "America first" slogan means in practice.

Rex Tillerson, 2009

Credit: William Munoz

Tillerson led off with a few comments about "our fundamental values."

"I think it’s important to also remember that guiding all of our foreign policy actions are our fundamental values: our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated. Those are our values."

I suppose he could have added a few more "values around," ideals such as equality and unalienable rights, including to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but fine, at least he mentioned a few of the values that have in fact made America great.

Unfortunately, in his very next sentence he puts those values high up on a shelf where they can look good but can't cause any trouble:

"Those are not our policies; they’re values. And the reason it’s important, I think, to keep that well understood is policies can change. They do change. They should change. Policies change to adapt to the – our values never change. They’re constant throughout all of this."

The rest of his talk is about our policies--what we actually try to advance in the real world. According to Tillerson, they boil down to two--security and profit:

"And so we really have to understand, in each country or each region of the world that we’re dealing with, what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests . . ."

or again:

"So I give you that as kind of an overarching view of how I think about the President’s approach of 'America first.' We must secure the nation. We must protect our people. We must protect our borders. We must protect our ability to be that voice of our values now and forevermore. And we can only do that with economic prosperity. So it’s foreign policy projected with a strong ability to enforce the protection of our freedoms with a strong military."

What a great arrangement. We can have our high ideals and laudable values. We can pride ourselves on them and hold them up as examples for others to follow. But first and foremost we must "protect our ability to be that voice of our values" by projecting them with our strong military and making sure that the whole enterprise is profitable.

Despite the high-minded rhetoric, it seems to me that a person's or a nation's actions pretty much define their values. If I lie, cheat and steal, those are my values. If I abuse my wife, my kids, my students, clients or employees, those are my values. If we start preemptive wars, we value starting wars. If we kidnap people and keep them locked in Guantanamo for decades without trial, we value that. If we torture, we value that. If we kill hundreds or thousands with bombs or drones, we value that. If we close our borders to those most in need of sanctuary, we value that. Our actions, not our words, are the "voice of our values."

For a slightly different take on Trump and Tillerson's policies, which the author describes as "vulgar realism," click here.

If Tillerson as Secretary of State, or Trump as President, or we as a nation want to practice realpolitik--or as Ludwig von Rochau described it, the law of power--so be it. That's how most countries, and especially empires, act.

Let's just not wrap our iron fist and grasping hand in the Declaration of Independence so that we can pretend to be what we palpably are not.

Note: As of August 1, 2017, a new State Department mission statement is being drafted that clearly lays out Tillerson's new vision. Gone is the aim of fostering "a peaceful, prosperous, just and democratic world . . . for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere." As promised, the new focus is on "the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally . . .."

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES: PROFESSORS OF CYBERPSYCHOLOGY AND EXTREME-WEATHER RISKS

My email today included notices of two new academic posts that I found eye-opening:

KIT, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, has endowed a new professorship dedicated to the study of the risks from extreme weather events. I guess they haven't been convinced by the arguments of climate-change deniers.

Tornado, Andarko Oklahoma, May 1999/Credit Dizpics1/Wikipedia
Intense, large-scale tornado outbursts like this are happening more frequently

The University of Warwick, in the UK, has appointed its first cyberpsychologist, Monica Whitty. Professor Whitty joins other researchers at the university's Cyber Security Centre. Her focus is "on the human element . . . behaviour online to identify cyber criminals and in turn protect people from becoming victims."

Maybe if Hillary Clinton had known about Dr. Whitty a year or two ago, we'd have a different person taking the oath of office on January 20.