A formation of US Carrier Strike Group Five and Expeditionary Strike Group Seven ships in the Philippine Sea. Sipa USA/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.A series of accelerating and interlocking security crises, from the Middle East and southwest Asia to North Korea, makes the first months of 2017 an especially perilous time. Increasing the dangers is the way that domestic politics in the United States are coming to shape the Trump’s administration's global military adventurism.
To understand what is happening, look back a few months. Trump's electoral success in November was partly owed to his stance as defender of the ordinary American facing an entrenched Washington establishment. This elite, he proclaimed, was out of touch with and ignorant of the everyday problems of post-industrial and rural middle America.
This political approach went beyond windy generalities. It involved clever targeting of relatively small constituencies, raising issues that struck a chord with them: an end to Obamacare, controlling Muslim immigration, walling off Mexico, scepticism on climate change, the need to expand US military power and to rapidly crush ISIS. Trump's broader concerns included suspicion of China (especially over currency manipulation), friendship with Putin, moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, closing the Export-Import Bank. and supporting the use of torture.
