When America Goes to War Against Itself

Donald Trump is attacking the US State's ideology and institutions. The destruction is clear; the regeneration is to be seen

- Prashant Jha

Since World War II, the United States (US) has only won one major war: the First Gulf War of 1990-1991. It didn't win in Korea. It was utterly humiliated in Vietnam. Its invasion of Iraq was based on a lie and hurt US security. And it lost so badly in Afghanistan that the force it vanquished emerged victorious and took over Kabul on the very day US troops left.

While the wars extracted a heavy cost, none of these external setbacks dented America's comprehensive national power. It remained the world's most powerful country. Clearly, if you have internal political, economic, military, technological and social resilience, even defeats don't devastate you.

But what happens when you wage a war against yourself, and when that war is not fought in distant fields but in the homeland? For that is the only way to make sense of what the US has been doing to itself in the past fortnight.

Americans elected Donald Trump, who was transparent about his intentions. His diagnosis was that America is sick and old. His prescription was a radical surgery. His action plan was to take the body parts out, without quite revealing what would replace them. Americans knew there was the risk of self-harm in such an operation, at the hands of a man not quite known for his fine touch, but they chose him. And true to the mandate, in merely two weeks, Trump has decided to take a torch to America's governing ideology, its State apparatus, its personnel and its political character.