Trump is setting out to create chaos. That he's doing so is not an accident. It's deliberate. Can we react in time to save anything of value in the world that we've known?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Can we live with chaos?
It's an important question because it is very clear that Donald Trump is trying to unleash chaos on the world right now and we really do not know how to manage that.
We have lived in a world where basically people have, by and large, behaved predictably when it comes to things like international relations, international political economy, the way in which they manage the environment in which businesses work, in which supply chains are managed, and so on. But Trump is disrupting everything.
Literally, there is literally almost nothing about the behaviour of the US government at present that is in any way predictable.
Nobody would have expected the US government to basically close down its entire overseas foreign aid activity overnight.
Nobody would have expected that government to issue what are in effect redundancy notices to most of its employees, again overnight.
Nobody would have expected it to demand that Canada become the 51st state of the Union followed by, it would appear, Greenland and now Gaza.
Nobody would have expected it to threaten Panama with invasion if it doesn't give the Panama Canal back.
These are things that are just totally unprecedented. As is the fact that Elon Musk has been given apparent control of the payment system of the US federal government with five of his colleagues, the youngest of whom is 19, and the oldest is apparently 24. They are literally undermining everything that we know we can rely upon.
Now that, I suspect, is deliberate. There is a theory that was put forward, basically by the Austrian School of Economists, that chaos is the precursor of good things. In the chaos, what are called the zombie entities that hold back progress fail, and then, out of the resulting mess, new entrepreneurial activity arises. And I've little doubt at all that the likes of Elon Musk and those people who've written Trump's programme believe that this is where they're going. They think that by literally tearing down the instruments of the US government - describing them as illegal when they clearly aren't; sacking people who are competent just because they are competent, and everything else that is going on - they will end up with a new situation where America is great again. And what is more, US enterprise will be liberated, or so they think, to create new technologies, new businesses and new everything else in a world which will, unfortunately, on the side, be burning itself to death.
But that is a theory for which there is no evidential support. As a matter of fact, human beings are incredibly bad at dealing with uncertainty.
There is a very good reason why so many people suffer with what is called anxiety. It is because they quite literally cannot manage the day-to-day uncertainties that life imposes upon them, through no fault of their own, of course. They are living within the constraints that exist in the world around them, and they find them difficult to manage.
When you then remove those constraints, they don't suddenly feel as though everything is fantastic. By and large, they feel as though their world has collapsed. There are now no certainties left. So, instead of feeling better, they feel worse because there is nothing that they know.
Donald Rumsfeld, who was once the US Secretary of Defense, said that there were three categories of knowledge.
There were known knowns, which were, very obviously, the things that we did know.
There were known unknowns - the things that we did not know but which we could eventually work out or find out or which the passage of time would reveal to be what they were.
And then there were unknown unknowns - those things that we had not yet worked out that we needed to know.
But I'm not sure that Donald Rumsfeld's characterisations, useful as they are in many situations and the reason why he is remembered by so many, really cover the current situation where we're not talking about things that are even within the rational sphere, which is what he was talking about. Now, we're talking about things that are way beyond that rational sphere. We are talking about the behaviour of somebody who is deliberately, provocatively, irrational to the point of creating chaos to secure an advantage.
Now, the cynic might suggest that this is all simply an opportunity for Trump to release information in advance to his friends, who might then be able to exploit it for commercial advantage. And there is a horrible feeling that some of what he's talking about does provide that opportunity. The announcement on Gaza, which came from nowhere - which was that he now wants to take control of it, remove all Palestinians from it as if that is something that is within their right when this is a state, and turn it into what is basically a giant leisure park to be run by US corporations - clearly implies that Trump thinks that everything is about a bottom line, which is purely financial, and in the areas of expertise that he thinks he's got.
But there's something more to it than that. This is not just about commercial exploitation. This is about literally upsetting the order as we knew it.
Now, we shouldn't be surprised that Trump is doing that in some sense. He said he was going to clear the swamp, as he called it, in 2016. He went to Washington. And he very obviously failed to change very much.
Let's be candid, at the end of his period in office, the one thing that was glaringly obvious about what Trump had done was that it didn't amount to much really. Yes, he pulled out of the climate agreement in Paris, settled in 2015. He changed some tariffs. He certainly did give the rich a great many tax breaks that they could not have possibly justified on any economic basis. But in truth, he did very little. And that was one of the reasons why ordinary Americans rejected him because he had delivered nothing for their benefit.
This time, he's trying to have an impact. He's really trying to make a difference. But by doing so, he's creating chaos. And inside that chaos, almost everything that we know ceases to be known.
It isn't even an unknown unknown. It is, actually, simply total chaos. Unpredictable. Beyond conception. We cannot imagine what might happen next. We can't even predict the unknown unknown because it's not on our radars. And that's what's happening. And in that situation, the rest of the world is left gasping, wondering, desperate to try to work out where, and what, and how, and why, and to whom, it should do anything to try to compensate for the behaviour of this madman, and I use the term sensibly, I think, in Washington.
What is he trying to achieve? He is literally trying to achieve that uncertainty. He thinks he'll gain advantage from it.
I don't think he will. But in the meantime, we have to manage that chaos. And there are two ways of doing that. One is to try and pacify him, because he is the President of what has seemed to be the global superpower for the last however many decades, really, since the time of the close of the Second World War.
And, alternatively, we could say, “This man is dangerous.” We could have all the countries of the world join up with each other. We have an organization to do that. It's called the United Nations, but it might be in smaller blocks like the EU or whatever, who say, no, this is not acceptable. We cannot deal with the US on this basis.
We have to put it into isolation.
We have to stand up to it.
For example, NATO exists to defend NATO states, but NATO isn't saying it will defend Canada.
NATO isn't saying it will defend Greenland, although that's part of Denmark, effectively, and Denmark is a NATO member.
So why isn't it doing that?
Why isn't the EU actually standing up and saying Donald Trump's behaviour is utterly unacceptable?
Why isn't the UK Prime Minister calling out Donald Trump for what he is - a totally chaotic madman who's trying to disrupt all our relations and and pick off people, one at a time. Which, no doubt, will be what he does.
Keir Starmer is pretending at present that we might get a deal with the US and the EU won't and I bet he's feeling smug about it. But the reality is that isn't how bullies work. Once he's succeeded against the EU, he'll pick out the UK and bludgeon it as well. If Starmer thinks otherwise, more fool him.
We're dealing with a bully who's creating chaos, who's using that chaos to cudgel the world into believing that he is the power that everybody must obey. And we don't need to do that. We could reject chaos. We could say no to this. We could actually even begin to say, hang on - this is the moment for a new reserve currency. Remember, the BRIC states - the BRIC states are made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa - have been looking at ways to create an alternative trading currency for the world other than the dollar. This might be the time for the EU, and the UK, and Australia, and Japan, and others to join in with them and say, “Hey, let's get rid of the dollar, let's move on, let's ignore the chaos it's creating, let's get over the disruption.” The idea was created in 1945 by Lord Keynes. He suggested a world currency called the Bancor - BANCOR, for those who are curious - and the US rejected it.
Now we're paying the price for that, because chaos is being created by the fact that Trump, amongst other things, controls the supply of dollars on which the world really does rely for international trade and for debt settlement.
We could create a different environment. But if we're going to, if we're going to manage this chaos, then people have to react. They have to get together, and they have to call out Trump for what he is, a chaotic bully who is trying to bludgeon the world.
Are they going to do that? I don't know. It scares me that, so far, there's very little evidence that they are. Even in the USA, the Democrats aren't describing Trump as what he is - quite literally, the enemy of the people in that country.
So, what hope is there anywhere else when we are a little bit further removed from the chaos he's creating, so far?
We are in a very dangerous situation. Chaos always creates risk. And at the moment the risks could not be higher.
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[…] have already discussed the chaos being created by Trump this morning. He is destroying politics as we know it in pursuit […]
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions” – Primo Levi
This came up on Twitter this morning
https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-c-1819576375/
Be funny if it wasnt so close to the truth
Just wonderful. Thank you.
You can be sure that that is exactly what many of them (the jihadists) will be doing – sitting back & enjoying as the USA self-destructs.
Might the failure of N A T O to speak up for Greenland/Denmark indicate that N A T O is a military arm of the U S A?
Might the reticence of leading European leading politicians, with the honourable exception of Mr Swinney, indicate client relationships with the U S A?
You may be right
They are certainly discombobulated
It’s well worth reading Ian Dunt’s article in the independent about Starmer. It makes the case for what Starmer is doing as being utterly awful, but also the only sort of tactic he has to prevent being attacked right now. I can see the merit in it. I work in what is often a very chaotic environment and learned early on that sometimes standing still and waiting for a moment to present itself is better than trying to solve the problem right now.
However, I like the idea of everyone bandying together to form a reserve currency. If only we had politicians with that sort of imagination. If they did so, they should very rapidly and secretly be talking about doing precisely that. How would it work, especially in relation to something like the Euro which already works for several different entities. I suppose I’d have to read the relevant Keynes unless there other better resources to understand it?
About half of the voters voted for Trump, having lived through 4 years of his first presidency just a few short years ago. The USA’s Electoral College voted for him by 312 votes to Harris’ 226. The Republicans have slim majorities in both the Senate and the House.
The USA has not, as yet, taken steps to act on threats of invasion of Canada, Greenland, Panama and, now, Gaza. They may be seen, for the moment, as the threats of a madman which may be resolved by a means yet to present itself. My money is on a cardiac arrest or massive stroke given his penchant for McD’s “food” which, as it turns out, is even unhealthier in the USA than in the UK, the French fries having no fewer than 19 suspicious ingredients as opposed to 3 here.Then there would be President Vance – not a great prospect – but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
The chaos is a matter for the USA to address. Other countries – with dishonourable exceptions (imperialists of which the UK was very obviously one but there are others) – tend not to interfere in a country’s domestic business. Quite rightly.
We are seeing a superpower intentionally disintegrate in real time before our eyes at the hands of its own elected President and its unelected Co-President. This is history being made and we have front row seats.
Starmer would be well advised to wipe the smug smile off his face. The UK is not yet in Trump’s view as the 55th state, after the others mentioned, but that could change in a heartbeat.
One can only hope that the failure thus far has been because everyone has been caught off guard by the extremeness of this Trump presidency and it takes a bit of time to co-ordinate what to do. Let’s hope there is a lot of urgent discussions going on in the background.
A factor that presumably countries will also be all too aware of is the number of America bases in their country and what madness will Trump unleash if countries act against him?
Trump and Gaza – is he showing signs of dementia? Some commentators are suggesting he starts off with huge breaking pronouncements in order to secure movement towards his real (hidden) position. It could also just be narcissism – a character failing that appears all to often in so called leaders. Perhaps as a child he was never told “no”?
There is some validity about a bit of what he says. Gaza has been massively destroyed including homes and infrastructure, and it will take a lot of development work to even get it back to the state before 7th October 23. It could even be the Riviera of the Middle East – if we (ie the World) give all the tools, materials and training needed to the Palestinians to rebuild their land as they wish. Just imagine if that happened – why would Palestinians living in their lovely Riviera of the Middle East want to carry on attacking their neighbour? Could Israel accept that though? Not with their current makeup of Government I suggest.
In reality there will be lots of handwringing and angst in the political classes, but it is likely that whatever Israel decides to do will prevail, as the US will allow them to. In the long run, as we seem incapable of addressing Global Warming, the Middle East will become increasingly unliveable. There will inevitably be a lot of climate refugees from the region, including Israelis, looking for help and homes in higher latitudes.
Israeli supporters are keen to make the point that the Palestinians could have created a Gaza Riviera and/or a Gazan Singapore years ago instead of embracing jihad. What they fail to point out however is that in order to be successful at either of these endeavours would require Gaza to have sovereignty over it’s land borders, air space to allow access by air and coastal waters to enable sea borne trade. None of which the Israeli Government would countenance.
“Gaza has been massively destroyed”
Yes – by Israel, aided and encouraged by the US (and others, including the UK). Surely that’s enough to remove all “validity” from anything proposed for Gaza by any enabler of its destruction.
The big issue is money -power.
What will money enable?
At the end of all this we have to ask should the power of money be held by people so unaccountable to others?
And then we should look at how that money was accrued. IMHO it is usually accrued through means that are just legalised daylight robbery.
Trump is a bankrupt – not just morally but financially and that should be unpicked a lot more.
In the mean time, humans will do what they always do in these situations – some will jump board the Trump train, others will endure and some will fight. That is all there is for now. You/we need to make choices.
My brother living in Ireland sent me a video the other day called ‘The Story of the Faraway People’ – an animated puppetry film that talks about Starmer ‘the tool makers son’ and how his taxing of farmers and not paying the elderly winter fuel payments pays for immigrants. Starmer and Rayner are shown wearing red soviet stars, and red clothes; Reeves is depicted with an empty purse.
Google it and watch it – witness the evil ideas this harmless looking film depicts and consider how it is being circulated. My brother and I fell out last year about this topic; yesterday we may have parted company for good. My brother should really know better, he is the son of union members and representatives. But there you go.
This is what civil war looks like;
this is what a lack of courage and nerve in the Left looks like;
this is what the failure of the centre looks like;
this is what Fascism looks like;
this is what corruption looks like;
This is what far right political success looks like.
Ever the optimist, me.
What better proof of concept could MMTers ask for than the demonstration of what happens when a fiat-currency-issuing sovereign state stops issuing its fiat currency?
The fear of that in the past, with its last-minute wheeler-dealer sessions in Congress, has been enough. But Musk appears to have no comprehension, and no fear.
Perhaps I need to seek out William [sic] Rees Mogg’s handbook on Chaos. “Blood in the Streets”, I believe it was called.
I was kidding in my opening statement.
This blog reminded me of the Chaordic Path (described by Dee Hock) and how we need to be able to realise where we are and appreciate what is our work to do. It is to walk and work the sweet spot in the chaordic path – the place between chaos and order. The risk is that Trump wants to instigate the chamos end of the model. That’s a more difficult place in which to work.
https://www.tennesonwoolf.com/chaordic-path/
Durkheim described the chaotic state in Europe in the mid C19, and called the mental state experienced by the majority ‘anomie’. Those who were not as deeply affected (in his study of suicide rates) had tight community ties, whether created by a shared religion or otherwise. Alliances create clear heads, and binding ideologies can lessen anxiety; religion is one such, but fascism/racism/misogyny can also flourish to that end.
An excellent video, Richard. You refer to the dollar’s role as the World’s reserve currency. I have been wondering if the Saudis, in response to Trumps proposal to ethic cleanse Gaza, would threaten to cut the link between the dollar and oil?
They are working with China to do that.
My only comment is that the Panama Canal wouldn’t be given “back” because it was never the US’s to begin with.
As your ‘spotter’ for good stuff on US current affairs TV (yes, mainly MSNBC) it’s well worth watching this clip from Lawrence O’Donnell on what he argues is Trump’s stupidity, which is a complementary argument to your ‘chaos’ argument :
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-any-rational-thing-opposition-says-to-trump-musk-bounce-off-the-solid-wall-of-stupidity-231131717570
Also this second clip about the US now being a nation without laws, given what Musk has and is being allowed to get away with while Congress – who are supposed to have oversight over US government spending – sit idly by.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-trump-letting-musk-intrude-into-treasury-is-biggest-most-important-data-breach-ever-231019589826
Thannks
I have been trying to catch up today on these discussions.
Please allow me to point out a three things.
First there is an article in the Atlantic, at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/ entitled “How Hitler Dismantled Democracy in 53 Days”.
Please don’t over-interpret it, to me its importance is in the look and feel as related to events now in the USA.
Then watch 2 YouTube videos from Rachel Maddow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9OP_a6MNg in which she highlights Trump promises that this last election in 2024 would be the last time Americans would need to vote. It’s noteworthy that all has gone very quiet on this topic since then.
Now watch this, again from Rachel Maddow
https://youtu.be/i29JtdyhO4s?si=3T1MSLndJkxjQQzM which discusses how certain media outlets are apparently under attack, the aim being to silence them.
Having seen this selection (and it is a selection and could be biassed as a result) I no longer see chaos at all. There is a figurehead fulfilling the role of DISTRACTION whilst the important events are happening elsewhere. I sense a plan, the aim of which I can only guess. But History is, or should be, our teacher, and reading the Atlantic article sent shivers down my spine.
Or have I got my sums wrong? And, in reality, I desperately hope I have…….
The worry is we’re being distracted by the dead cats, which his Gaza commnts could be…offensve as that would still be
Totally agree. I accept that all he is saying about what he wants could be genuinely in the plans. Indeed, they probably are. It is all worrying, and I fear for the future.
Everyone is right to react and say what they are thinking. To me, much is offensive, and that’s putting it mildly, but I suggest simply that the obvious is not the only “game” being played. We, perhaps, need to watch for other events to try to build a big picture of where this is heading. While we are reading about Trump and Musk, we are not reading other concerning newsworthy items.
Rich, you haven’t got your sums wrong, and Rachel Maddow’s always in the button with her analysis (as are her MSNBC colleagues, like Chris Hayes, Ari Melba, and Lawrence O’Donnell). As Richard says, Trump is being let lose to throw dead cats – although I’m sure he actually means some of the nonsense he spouts – while Musk and the hand-picked Project 2025 and MAGA zealots in Trumps government do the actual wrecking. As I’ve mentioned previously in comments on Richard’s blog Trump/Musk have to get to a position where they can interfere in some way with the mid term elections in 2026, and thus stay in power, as if they do nothing they’ll undoubtedly lose the House and Senate, and thus power. As of yet, I’ve no idea how they might do that, but I dare say they have a number of options – including destroying all anti Trump media and/or creating a ‘state of emergency’ which then allows Trump to call on the military.
Much to agree with
A lot of the world must be thinking ‘Who needs enemies when we have friends like Trump?’ We must hope Starmer soon thinks that way.