Photo by Tony Alter | CC BY 2.0
On the same day President Trump delivered a solemn address presenting his administration’s report to Congress on the threats to the national security of the United States, an Amtrak train jumped off the tracks on a new route from Seattle, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, killing at least 3 people and injuring about 100 others. While the damage caused by the train wreck cannot be compared to a possible nuclear attack by North Korea or how China and Russia “seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth,” according to the report, there is a relationship between viewing national security as tied to foreign intervention and the failure of domestic policies.
President Trump’s presentation of the required report followed his campaign’s vision of a binary world of us against them. The document argued that “great power competition returned,” specifying that Russia and China “are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.” In response to these threats, the report said, the government must put “America First” by canceling unfair trade agreements and rebuilding the military.
In the context of the document’s perceived return to great power competition, President Trump announced that “America is in the game, and America is going to win.”
All of this we have heard before. In the…