Lim Teck Ghee writes that Trump’s focus on external threats may distract from America’s deep internal disunity.
AS President Donald Trump makes his way across Asia to further the other pillar of his Maga (Make America Great Again) mission, he appears to be enjoying the break away from the rancour of American politics hounding his current presidency.
His meme showing him raining sludge on his fellow Americans during the recent nationwide protest against his leadership and administration shows not only a leader who thinks the worst of his political opponents. It also reveals a badly fractured country at war with itself.
The protests were geographically widespread and involved millions of participants turning out at thousands of locations nationwide. This demonstrates a broad and deep opposition across many communities and states and confirms evidence from recent surveys and studies indicating that the United States is experiencing its most profound internal division and disunity in modern times.
The table summarises findings that illustrate the depth and nature of this division manifesting in record levels of political polarisation, mutual distrust between partisans and concerns about political violence.
External threat bogeyman
The division and disunity in the US should not solely be a concern of the American people. It should also be a cause of concern for the rest of the world.
This is because the situation where internal division leads a government to focus on external targets to foster national unity through providing a distraction or fabricated threat is a well-recognised phenomenon in political history. The outcome is almost inevitably the ignition of needless and costly wars.
Political analysts and commentators, though not journalists employed by jingoistic media, have noted that external issues, such as tensions with countries labelled as adversaries, can serve to unite a divided political body or distract from domestic strife.
While it is difficult to prove that such a deliberate and coordinated strategy is taking place in the US today – Trump, to his credit, has been engaged in multiple peace-making efforts abroad – there are clear recent examples where Western leaders have leveraged focus on external adversaries, so as to paper over deep internal divisions.
Prominent recent examples categorised by the “external enemy” threat bogeyman include :
Focusing on Russia (especially post-2022 invasion of Ukraine)
The unified Western response to Russia’s full-scale invasion has been a powerful tool for managing internal discord.
- Divisions distracted from: Soaring inflation, cost-of-living crises, energy shortages and pre-existing political polarisation (e.g., the aftermath of the Capitol riot in the US, Brexit fatigue in the UK, rise of far-right parties in Europe).
- Moral clarity and unity: The war provided a clear, morally unambiguous enemy in Russian President Vladimir Putin. Leaders like (former) US president Joe Biden and (former) UK prime minister Boris Johnson followed by other Western leaders used it to frame a narrative of a struggle between democracy and autocracy. This created a temporary, powerful sense of purpose that overshadowed domestic squabbles.
- Justifying economic pain: Soaring energy prices and inflation were partly a direct result of sanctions on Russia and disruption to energy markets. By framing these hardships as the “cost of defending freedom”, governments have deflected blame from their own lack lustre domestic economic policies onto Putin.
- Revitalising Nato: The war effectively ended existential questions about Nato’s purpose (famously called “brain dead” by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019) and unified a fractious alliance, sidelining internal critics.
Focusing on China (The “Strategic Competition” framework)
The bipartisan focus on China as a strategic competitor has been used to advance anti-China domestic policy and mute internal criticism.
- Divisions distracted from: Intense political partisanship in the US economic pain resulting from deindustrialisation and supply chain vulnerabilities is increasingly attributed to China’s overcapacity and state subsidies.
- Bipartisan consensus: In the deeply divided US Congress, the confrontation of China is one of the few issues – perhaps the only one – to generate strong bipartisan support. Legislation like the Chips and Science Act, which aims to boost US semiconductor manufacturing, was sold primarily as a national security measure against Chinese dominance, rather than just a domestic industrial policy.
- Economic grievance channelling: Economic anxieties about job losses, particularly in manufacturing, have been successfully channelled towards China by both Republican and Democratic administrations. This redirects blame from domestic policy failures to a scapegoat that most Americans, even the highly educated, can readily identify and denounce in the effort to rally around the flag.
- Human rights as a unifier: Highlighting China’s treatment of Muslim Uyghurs and its governance in Hong Kong to create a unifying cause that distracts from domestic debates over human rights, race, religion and social justice.
Targeting Venezuela
For now, the Trump administration is targeting President Nicolas Maduro’s government as the immediate external enemy to take down.
Actions taken include:
- Designating the regime as a “narco-terrorist” entity and placing a bounty on Maduro.
- Imposing broad sanctions on the Venezuelan state, its officials and its oil sector, thereby significantly contributing to the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis.
- Military buildup in the Caribbean, including the deployment of warships and aircraft, with the stated goal of disrupting drug trafficking. The US military has conducted strikes on vessels it alleges are involved in narcotics smuggling.
- Authorising CIA covert operations in Venezuela with the explicit intention to drive Maduro out of power.
Responding to beating war drums
In the coming months, will we see the Trump administration and its echo chamber in the American and western mass media beat the war drums more strongly on new and old external threats and work to frame foreign policy actions in a way that distracts from the intensifying internal political tensions and disunity in the US?
If this happens, unmasking and exposing the foreign policy actions and hypocrisy of America and its allies that are driven by their domestic political dynamics and internal shortcomings and division should be a priority in response from independent stake players.
Lim Teck Ghee’s Another Take is aimed at demystifying social orthodoxy.
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