Written by Meghnad Desai
US President Donald Trumpโs address to both Houses of the US Congress was a bizarre event in many ways. It was, at 100 minutes, one of the longest, if not the longest. His self-regard has now exceeded decent bounds when he claimed he was No 1 among all US Presidents with George Washington at No 2! A deeply divided Congress heard him with Republicans cheering and Democrats sulking.
Normally, in the US Constitution, separation of powers means there are limits on the Executive powers. President Woodrow Wilson, despite having taken US into the First World War and been victorious, failed in persuading the Senate that the US should join the League of Nations, his famous proposal at the Versailles Conference.
Trump has stretched the exercise of Executive powers. His decision to suspend US Aid, gutting the administration by Elon Musk in his newly designated Department of Government Efficiency, his summary dismissal of diversity and equality legislation as well as the dismissal of Foreign Corrupt Practices legislation are extreme measures. His Cabinet appointments, such as Robert F Kennedy Jr for Health and Pete Hegseth for Defence are peculiar. Some Executive decisions are being challenged in the Judiciary, but the Congress in both Houses is controlled by the Trump Republicans and at least until the next mid-term elections in 2026, there is no scope for separation of powers to operate.
Such one-party dominance and the Legislatureโs submission to the President are rare. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in the crisis of the Great Depression when he launched the New Deal did not have such untrammelled power.
At least in foreign affairs, where Ukraine is concerned, the European NATO allies seem to have got their act together and decided to raise their defence budgets (with Germany even ready to break constitutional restrictions on government budget), which will allow Ukraine to avoid being sacrificed by Trump on the idea of a one-sided peace proposal. It will be hard for Western European countries as their economies are in a fragile condition to raise funds for defence. But they want to break free from US dominance not to say arrogance (US Vice President JD Vance).
NATO is for all purposes dead. Indeed, except for the UK still hanging on to the โspecial relationshipโ (which Trump does not care about except for his self-congratulations that King Charles has invited him), no other European NATO country cares about the US. One presumes Trump is happy with this. Yet he may be frustrated if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gets his weapons from Europe and does not surrender to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Trump wishes. In that case, no rare Ukraine materials for the US unless Trump decides to invade Ukraine!
Short of impeachment of the President (which seldom succeeds as we saw with Bill Clinton) or the Supreme Court reversing executive decisions upon appeal, there seems to be no restraint on Trump possible. Unless he seeks a third term and tries to have a Constitutional Amendment passed!
