Functional democracies require collaboration and shared sacrifice. For more than 80 years, what has kept the western world thriving has been a belief in shared values, that we, as nations are stronger, safer, more productive and likely to thrive as amalgamations of interest.
Along comes a man whose nature is not to collaborate, in any way. His strength, as he sees it, but which is actually his Achilles heel, is his inability to collaborate. His zero-sum mentality leads to differentiation and the movement away from whomever and whatever nation seeks to assert hegemony over the ‘others’.
For 20 years I taught conflict resolution and was involved in corporate mergers and acquisitions where culture clashes between companies created conditions so divisive that management found it necessary to bring competitors together and teach them how to collaborate.
There are a number of mechanisms that may well be used to essentially teach organizations, groups and corporations how to deconflict. Making people aware of the processes they utilize and how those actions are not only perceived but how they can poison trust so completely that eventually there can be no rapprochement.
Interestingly, when I look at the existing situation that exists between the United States and, essentially, the rest of the free world, there are some interactions that are not just counter-productive but so poisonous that the patient of rationality, logic and reason, dies.
That is a situation that we are now approaching between Canada and the United States. Once the bridge has been burned, figuratively and possibly physically, there will be a situation existing that makes its reconstruction almost impossible.
The problem right now, is that no one inside the current trump administration has the intelligence to see the situation for what it is. So many competent negotiators and administrators have been axed within the U.S. administration and replaced with sycophants that no one is willing to stand up and tell the King he’s naked, both physically and intellectually.
Arrogance has replaced logic. Stupidity has replaced reason. And incompetence has replaced expertise.
Insularity Breeds Myopia
In the United States, America First has become a slogan that has created an insular environment so closed and irrational that like Irving Janus’s theory of Groupthink, no one will speak up on the bridge of the Titanic, even though this time the iceberg is a seen, clear and present danger.
Sycophants are so pervasive, and fear so rampant, that no one can grab the wheel and steer. Instead, blame is being assessed, apportioned and when the ship hits the iceberg, it will be voiced loud and clear, where the fault lies and why.
The real irrationality of all of this is that, all of the sycophants are on the sinking ship. They may well believe that they have secured a seat on a lifeboat, without realizing that the lifeboats are all unseaworthy.
Even America, as large as it is, and as powerful as it assumes itself to be, requires collaborators. Collaborators that can provide, materials, manpower, production and manufacturing from materials that are dependent upon access, supply chains, the necessary expertise, shipping, logistics, interoperability and cohesive action towards the integration of all of those disparate parts and pieces into a cohesive final product, be it a widget or an aircraft.
But America under Trump has lost both the will and the requisite skill to actually integrate these pieces. The Republican Party has been emasculated.
A great analogy is that America has been making omelettes for nigh on 80 years with its collaborators. Now it wants to make eggs sunny side up, from the omelettes.
Sorry, can’t be done.
Supply chains don’t work that way.
All the links would have been broken. To start over from scratch means creating a whole, new chicken.
And as the following illustration demonstrates, collaboration has a range of constraints, which if abrogated result not in collaboration but one of several other positions which are highly detrimental in the long run.
What this five positional framework illustrates is that collaboration requires two entities to both be assertive in order to get their needs met, but to also be highly cooperative in so doing.
America has alienated its partners by being highly assertive, without cooperation, ultimately competing. Competing where power between parties is unequal creates animosity and an underlying desire to ‘get even’ at the first opportunity.
It can work for short periods of time, but resentment will eventually lead the other party to seek restitution or retribution.
The ‘arrogance of power’ as demonstrated by the Trump administration has poisoned the well of good will to the point where the other party will never drink from the well again.
And who can blame them?
In my ethics classes at college, I taught students to carefully understand the constraints of seemingly overbearing power. The power of conceit, of disinterest, of greed and control, essentially of zero-sum thinking.
Coercion and extortion are not terms that will result in accommodation or for that matter anything but animosity, protectionism and eventually, hate.
Trump, as myopic and arrogant as he is, will find through his abject failure, that the world has turned its back on America, and moved on.
Like a child sitting in a pedal car, with no pedals, Trump will rail against his former allies and friends, now turned into enemies or wary competitors.
It explains why a man goes bankrupt six times.
Only this time, it might well be a nation.
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