Donald Trump has now forced out Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, and H. R. Mc Master, and replaced them with Larry Kudlow, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton, and this turnover after only 14 months in the White House is a danger sign of trouble ahead.
Trump’s “Tariff Wars”, discouraged by Cohn, now will move forward, and Tillerson and Mc Master, both strong in their criticism of Trump oriented foreign policy of “America First”, upending traditional foreign policy for 70 years, now will move into a phase of aggressiveness in foreign policy that is likely to lead to warfare.
One can now expect that we might end up in a Great Depression, or at least a Great Recession, as we are going down the road of protectionism, which was pursued by Benjamin Harrison in 1890 with the McKinley Tariff, which led to the Panic of 1893; and also pursued by Herbert Hoover in 1930 with the Smoot Hawley Tariff, which made the already begun Great Depression much more deeper.
And we can expect that with Mike Pompeo and particularly, John Bolton, two hawks in foreign policy, the first being a Tea Party activist elected to the House of Representatives, and the second, unable to be confirmed by a Republican Senate to be United Nations Ambassador, and only there for less than a year as a recess appointment under George W. Bush, and very much advocating “regime change” regarding North Korea and Iran, we can expect two wars before the year 2018 is over.
Trump may be thinking that getting engaged in two wars will cause “patriots” to rally around the flag, and help the Republicans to retain their control of both houses of Congress, and one must recall that in Presidential years, anytime there there has been a war, the President running for reelection has always won.
So Trump might be planning to use war as a way to a second term in office, which history must make every sane person be alarmed over such prospect!