WHEN DONALD TRUMP sat down in the Oval Office with four reporters from The New York Times for two hours in January, he was asked if there were any restraints on his global actions. “Yeah, there is one thing,” the president replied. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” That unvarnished truth came as many were wondering what was signaled by Trump’s military operation in Venezuela to extract President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and what to expect next. The answer? It was a prototype, and we should expect more.
Trump’s worldview was expressed transparently by Stephen Miller, his trusted deputy chief of staff. After Venezuela, Miller explained that “strength,” “force,” and “power” are the “iron laws” that govern the world. It’s all a matter of transactional relations, where deals enriching the U.S. are obtained by force.
After two devastating world wars that killed millions through unimaginable barbarity, the world tried to create an infrastructure, albeit fragile and imperfect, based on universal values and resulting international norms. For Trump, this seems anachronistic, naive, and irrelevant. It undermines his creed that America is first among unequals. The U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict, the Charter of the Organization of American States, numerous international treaties including those related to climate—none of these can be regarded as effective restraints on Trump. Domestic legislation such as the War Powers Act will fare no better. These will be evaded, ignored, challenged, and nullified whenever necessary by a president whose own sense of “morality” supersedes them all.
Trump’s way of being is dominated by narcissistic grandiosity. “I alone can fix it,” he declared when first seeking the presidency. His assessment of his own righteousness seems unencumbered by any reflection on his experience. “I’ve been right about everything,” he told The New York Times in January (not the first time he has made this claim). Moreover, the justification for his actions is emboldened by narratives of deceit. In a way that is presidentially unprecedented, 30,573 lies were documented in his first term. Trump’s self-glorifying and protective versions of events become a lens for interpreting reality.
In essence, the world’s greatest superpower is presently controlled by a leader who is convinced that might makes right, that the U.S. can act as a law unto itself, that vengeance can guide policy, and that actions can be justified through purposeful deceit. As with most authoritarian rulers, Trump wants to connect his self-righteousness and public image with unbridled nationalism, glory, and power.
Jesus promises that the power of might is subverted by the power of love.
More unilateral operations should be expected: Action against Greenland, undercutting NATO. Bombing suspected drug facilities in Mexico. Intervening in Colombia. And at some point, actions to undermine the Cuban regime. The “Donroe Doctrine,” an egocentric name for reasserting U.S. primacy in Western Hemisphere, won’t geographically limit Trump’s military intervention to the continental neighborhood. In recent months he’s bombed Nigeria and Syria and threatened Iran.
The history of American intervention to replace regimes not serving our economic and political interests can’t be ignored. Historians can point to 41 coups from 1898 to 1994 in Latin America fomented by U.S. support and complicity. But today’s events reveal a frightening constellation of autocratic power, open disdain for universal values, the shredding of respect for international law, and vesting the standard of morality in the ego of the commander in chief that is without modern presidential precedent. Our nation is on an unpredictable glide path with no guardrails.
How should people of faith bear witness? We should remember the strident biblical resistance to unaccountable power, including the divine warnings about the desire for kings (1 Samuel 8) and placing trust in chariots and horses (Psalm 20:7). The prophets continually challenged the pretense, pride, and self-serving power of rulers that fomented injustice and violated God’s intentions for the world. Jesus proclaimed a promised reign of God breaking into the world, undermining the false claims of the reigning empire. The power of might was subverted by the power of love.
Centuries later, the theological rationale for democracy is centered on systems of institutional accountability and public consent designed to deter autocratic power. Personal hubris infecting the souls of public rulers creates collective injury. Shared systems of mutual constraint are required to protect the common good. But all of that can crumble.
We are facing modern expressions of ancient idolatry. Always, in such times, people of God are called first to faithfulness. Proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” had direct political, as well as personal, meaning for those first called Christians. It does as well for us in our day. For if everything is Caesar’s, nothing is God’s.
Wes Granberg-Michaelson is a contributing editor to Sojourners. His most recent book is The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements of Contemplative Action (Orbis Books). He and his wife, Kaarin, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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